TOK Essay – Natural Science
Science is an accumulation of facts that have been proven right. The natural science is an area of knowledge that studies the physical world such as biology, chemistry, & physics. Natural sciences are stationed by observation than reason. To what extent should scientists be held ethical responsible? What are you responsible for? Do you hold a responsibility? Ethical responsibility is when a moral path is being followed which means that and individual is compelled to promote the ethics based on their responsibility. The ethical responsibilities for scientists are formed by society. If it wasn’t for society scientists won’t do their job of research. Society funds for the research based on the issue. scientists cannot take responsibility for their actions. There is no limitation in science due to the narrow investigation of the unknown world. Research findings are made by the society which lead the scientists to proceed. Personal definition on ethical responsibility is when an individual is involuntary obligated to hold responsibility for an organization. Ethics in science has become important in society. It is unethical to use people to experiment for science as some people may disagree which is why some scientists use animals to test out things as animals are not able to disagree and it is more ethical. Also, we can generalize findings from animals to humans as they could be similar as rats have the same neurons as humans which we could generalize the findings to humans and use that information to understand how neurons work. Science that is unethical leads to a variety of problems even though scientists are continuously finding out new things that would not be found out if they were to do it in an ethical manner. If humans believe that it is unethical to test out their bodies for an experiment, they have the right to disagree which could have problems for the scientist to experiment as they would not be able to investigate using humans and the information for testing out the animals could be incorrect and not as reliable as it would be to test out humans. It would not be right if scientists become unethical, scientist’s jobs are to not tell people what they are discovering because that is their job and that is what they are supposed to be doing. However, sometimes the only way scientists are supposed to find out new things and expand the future’s knowledge is by finding out more things that are not already found out and could be unethical to do. They will not be able to find out things if they would constantly enable it to be unethical. One unethical experiment is an experiment of removing brain cells from a live subject. This is a very unethical experiment as it is an invasive surgery with serious risks so it could harm the patient. Although, it is a very beneficial experiment to scientists as it would answer many questions to the public on how the brain works and new things that they would be interested in finding out.
Ethics are moral principles that hold responsibility to an individual’s behaviors. According to the scientific America they state that “Ethical decision-making involves more than having the right gut-feeling and acting on it.” This means that what society decides to what they want to happen from their thoughts happens by making scientist acting up for it being their profession. The impact of ethical decisions come from society based on what they want to happen. The term scientists are a profession, which requires them to research. Although society blames scientists for the negative impacts that has happened, that’s not how it’s supposed to be because society asked for it. Responsibility is when someone agrees with having power to agree and to deal with something over control. Scientist are basically human beings with the title of a scientist because of their ability to do research for a living. They have the right to accept or avoid responsibility for their actions. Although they hold a big responsibility for what they do as their profession they shouldn’t be blamed for they research that has been funded by society for them to proceed therefore they have to accept the responsibility. Due to science being something that will never end, there is always something new to research. There is always a cause to the effect that happens with the various discoveries such as risks and catastrophes. To some extent scientists do hold a special responsibility to what they do as a profession. Such events happen when society create organizations to raise public awareness. At the end of the day society decides whether they want a research to be done which make scientists to hold responsibility being their profession.
According to the Scaiencemag human organs are grown in pigs, and the reason being so that human can survive longer. As stated by the Sciencemag, the idea behind this is that “the new work is that if the cells from one animal are unable to form certain tissuesa pancreas, for examplethe transplanted stem cells from the other species will take their place during development and form an organ of “donor” cells. The trick works in rats and mice: Yesterday researchers reported in Nature that they had grown a pancreas made of mouse cells inside a rat, and that the tissue could cure diabetes when it was transplanted back into a sick mouse.” This statement makes it so promising that such research is going to end up being a positive addition to the human nature without thinking of the ethics. The ethical issue is that the researchers are merging pluripotent stem cells with pig embryos. There are benefits of this but can be really disturbing and that’s why the human DNA links with monkeys. That’s how diseases such as AIDS are tramistted to humans cause of organ transplants from monkeys, but there are debates of using pig organs because their transmission rate is really low. Such testing methods are considered to be illegal due to it being close to humans. Another ethical issue with using pigs or animals for organs are the cultural and religious aspects. Muslims are not allowed to eat pork or have any association with pig. An example from the National according to Ali “The main reason pork is forbidden for Muslims is because it says in the Holy Quran that some food is allowed, while others are explicitly declared haram, which means forbidden” Another example is the cow, although Hindu’s do not pray to the cow they respect it and praise it. As stated by the National student’s forum, “The cow symbolizes all other creatures. It is a symbol of the Earth, the nourisher, the ever-giving, undemanding provider and represents life and the sustenance of life. The cow is so generous, taking nothing but water, grass and grain. It gives and gives and gives of its milk, as does the liberated soul give of his spiritual knowledge. The cow is so vital to life, the virtual sustainer of life, for many humans and is a symbol of grace and abundance.” Due to the negative cultural and religious aspects that us humans have against animal transplantation make the scientist fall into the blame. As the research is found and yet to be successful it proceeds and transplantation events happen and faults are blamed on the scientists. Despite the fact that scientists understand about such ethical issues they wouldn’t not do the research, as scientists whatever is funded for the research has to be proceeded and decisions have to be made by society realizing what is right and wrong. A solution to this can be to start funding money towards a technology that does 3D bio-printing. Since technology advanced daily and has made a positive impact to society today such ethical concerns will be tackled.
