Scientists Continuing to Put Human Cells into Animals
There is a place in science for putting human cells in animals as a method of examining disease precesses and biological development, which according to this report is growing in frequency and potency. But what is the limit? Or to put it another way, how much human in an animal is too much human in an animal? Scientists won't pause long enough to allow us have this important discussion.
Moreover, why should we trust these researchers? Many have shown no willingness whatsoever to accommodate the hesitancy of society in these areas, nor respect the moral sensibilities of society. Only scientists have the right to decide what is moral in science, some in the Scientific Establishment tell us. But open your pocketbooks and let us in.
Science is in danger of becoming little more than a special interest. If that happens, the people's faith in the enterprise will collapse and the anything goes crowd will only have themselves to blame.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:37 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
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After how Melton took after Dr Hurlbut for altered nuclear transfer in I believe it was the NEJM I can't see how he can justify this.
I think it depends on whose ox is being gored.
I think there's a historic root for this unwillingness on the part of the Scientific Establishment to participate in ethical discussion. As far back as prior to the Middle Ages, the learned generally acknowledged an ordering of all sciences according to an order of being that proceeded from theology (revelation, not theological science) to metaphysics (ontology and epistemology, including ethics) to the moral/humane sciences (history, literature, etc.) to the natural sciences (including what we would now call "science"). The natural sciences were thought to be of lesser value ultimately because the knowledge of particulars generally allowed only inductive reasoning, requiring the higher sciences to lend them any deductive merit. Ethics was seen to govern the natural sciences rather than to arise from them. The terms science and scientist as used commonly today have their origin in more recent centuries as those formerly called natural philosophers developed the philosophy of the Enlightenment into a full-blown elevation of the natural sciences as the exclusive avenues of truth. A sort of intellectually bigotry has developed such that non-scientists are now seen by the Establishment as ignorant of the true nature of things, whereas previously the exclusively natural scientist was seen as ignorant of the higher forms of knowledge, having little of any value to say apart from the proper ordering of all sciences.
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