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What would our forebears have made of test-tube babies, microwave ovens, organ transplants, CCTV and iPhones? Could they have believed that one day people might jet to another continent for a weekend break, meet their future spouse on the internet, have their genome sequenced and live to a private soundtrack from an MP3 player? Science and technology have changed our world dramatically, and, for the most part, we take them in our stride. Nevertheless, there are certain innovations that many people find unpalatable.
Leaving aside special-interest attitudes such as the fundamentalist Christian denial of evolution, many controversies over scientific advances are based on ethical concerns. In the past, the main areas of contention have included nuclear weapons, eugenics and experiments on animals, but in recent years the list of “immoral” research areas has grown exponentially. In particular, reproductive biology and medicine have become ripe for moral outrage: think cloning, designer babies, stem-cell research, human-animal hybrids, and so on. Other troublesome areas include nanotechnology, synthetic biology, genomics and genetically modified organisms or so-called “Frankenfoods”.
To many scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy. That, however, is an abdication of responsibility. Some moral reactions are irrational, but if scientists are serious about tackling them – and the bad decisions, harm, suffering and barriers to progress that flow from them – they need to understand a little more and condemn a little less…
I left Jones’ Headline alone. It’s could be construed as opportunism, deliberately leading discussion to the sensational and uninformed – excused as “inviting comment”.
As societies become more scientifically literate, scientific developments may well be judged more from a position of knowledge and less on the basis of intuitive responses driven by moral heuristics. However, there is another serious obstacle to the rational approach: our emotions, and especially the most morally loaded of emotions, disgust. In the wake of the creation of Dolly the cloned sheep, bioethicist Leon Kass of the University of Chicago argued that the visceral feeling which many people have in response to the most contentious scientific advances embodies a kind of wisdom that is beyond the power of reason to articulate. Many people are guided by this supposed “wisdom of repugnance”.
Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is not one of them. He has coined the more disparaging term “yuk response” to describe this reaction, and believes we should challenge the idea that repugnance is a reliable moral guide and the ultimate arbiter. “You begin the process by questioning the validity of the yuk response, calling it into doubt and pointing out that the yuk meter may be untrustworthy,” says Caplan. Then it becomes possible to start exploring the reasons and justifications for people’s initial intuitions of right or wrong, and see how they stand up to scrutiny.
Most of what Jones describes is cultural and parochial, of course. How shall I oversimplify? If I included an illustrative photo at this point of a nubile, bare-breasted young woman, our religious brethren would reel back, aghast. Slightly less hypocritical Western males would leer – and hope ther wives and fellow workers didn’t see them looking. Much of the rest of the world – from Euro sophisticates to Oceania – would admire her beauty. In Japan there wouldn’t be a peep even if she was barely into puberty.
Found by KD Martin at Cage Match
#211 – Paddy-O,
If we’re choosing who gets to breed, I’ll take intelligence as the factor. Trolls who would practice eugenics need not apply.
#172–KD Martin. You’ve just proved that math and humor have little overlap. Everything I posted was meant as a compliment to your expertise. Kind of balances out the fairness in life doesn’t it?
#210–SL==everything about modern life is artificial. I assume you mean that people with chronic diseases (or anyone else) who cannot care for themselves and who wish to end their lives with dignity should not be prevented from doing so?
Government should be ALL ABOUT providing choices, and leaving the individual alone to make them.
Wow, are you guys still at this? Going for the magic 300th post?
#214 – QB,
No. Not necessarily. We’re all assholes. I’m just the particular type of stubborn asshole who can go at this as long as anyone. And, I haven’t found other threads to be all that interesting. So, I’m sticking with this one. Is that why you checked back? (And, thanks for helping get to 300.)
#215 I saw the subject line in the Recent Comments sidebar so I took a look.
You guys are hardly assholes (OK well 2 or 3 are). Stubborn and opinionated, yes. That’s what makes for great argument.
Well, time to write some unit tests and code. See you later.
#192
RE: Obesity
As I suggested, the WHO is using body mass index to determine overweight which is a flawed formula. The body mass index would calculate that almost all professional athletes are overweight. For example, Vernon Davis plays for the SF 49ers. He’s 6’3″, 253lbs and 3%-6% body fat (hard to get an official stat on his body fat). He is obese on the BMI. A better formula is needed before one can claim that 1/6 of the planet is obese.
#193
RE: Population growth.
It does not take an authoritative source to deduce that infinite population growth will exhaust a planet’s resources. That is as obvious as it gets.
However, let’s take your other argument about the lack of land for reasonable population growth. There are approximately 18 million people in the greater NY area which covers an area of about 6700 sq mi for a population density of 2790 people/sq mi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area). Nebraska has a population density of 23 people/sq. mi. If half of NE turns into NY, it could support another 2700 people/sq mi or so and there are 38,500 sq mi in half of NE. That comes out to over 100 million people.
There is *a lot* of open land in the world even if you take out natural reserves and parks. I’m not suggesting we turn NE into NY (or even move there), but there are plenty of places to build that are not the traditional cities.
#196
> Native Americans were agrarian.
Yes and no. It depends on the time period, the tribe and how strictly we are defining “hunter-gatherer”. Many tribes were at least hunter/farmer by the time of Europeans contact.
20-30 million in North America is tiny considering the relative lack of competition for resources, the supposedly healthier life style and the unlimited food supply. By 1600, Europe’s population alone, after the Black Plague wiped out 1/3, was 78 million (http://www.answers.com/topic/1600).
#213, bobbo, well sometimes math and humor overlap. I wasn’t trying to be humerous in this thread.
Now, if you want an overlap between math and humor, I suggest you read this post on Cage Match, one of the longest (and most popular posts there.) It drove me nuts, and still does.
#217 – Thomas,
#192
RE: Obesity
As I suggested, the WHO is using body mass index to determine overweight which is a flawed formula. The body mass index would calculate that almost all professional athletes are overweight. For example, Vernon Davis plays for the SF 49ers. He’s 6′3″, 253lbs and 3%-6% body fat (hard to get an official stat on his body fat). He is obese on the BMI. A better formula is needed before one can claim that 1/6 of the planet is obese.
The high body mass index athletes you describe are a negligibly small percentage of the population. If you want to want to contradict WHO, you’ll have to do better, such as, finally posting a link to back up anything you say. You have yet to state anything other than your own opinion. This is getting boring.
#193
RE: Population growth.
If half of NE turns into NY, it could support another 2700 people/sq mi or so and there are 38,500 sq mi in half of NE. That comes out to over 100 million people.
However, living in New York, I attempt to buy food as locally as possible. I still end up buying salad from California. I avoid buying apples from New Zealand, but am probably in the minority for knowing or caring about this. I buy Californian or French or Chilean or South African wines. I buy organic beef or preferably bison, neither of which comes from less than 200 miles away, usually much farther. Etc. Etc. Etc.
In short, New York is not self sufficient. So, the planet cannot become as populous as New York.
There is *a lot* of open land in the world even if you take out natural reserves and parks. I’m not suggesting we turn NE into NY (or even move there), but there are plenty of places to build that are not the traditional cities.
And yet, consider this, also from The Dominant Animal by the Erlichs. From page 240.
The note about inferior quality is mentioned elsewhere in the book. The simple explanation is that humans picked the best land first. The land that has not yet been cultivated is, at this point, quite far from the best land.
From the same book on page 242.
You (and everyone else on the planet) must learn to think globally. To begin with, you must remember that food does not come from your supermarket, at least not initially. It tends to come from very far away these days. And it takes massive amounts of water to grow it, massive amounts of oil to process and transport it, and even quite a significant amount of oil to make most industrial fertilizers. (Eat organic whenever possible please.)
If you eat up the food chain, i.e. meat, as I do, then your food requires dramatically more water and energy. It also requires multiple pounds of vegetation to produce a single pound of meat. This may vary depending on the meat. At a lecture, I heard 6 pounds of vegetation for a pound of chicken, 8 for a pound of beef, and 200 for a pound of tuna (though the vegetation is not grown by humans in the last case, obviously). Tilapia, carp, and catfish are all better than the other meats I mentioned.
#220 – Me,
Minor correction. There is a link in one of Thomas’ posts regarding the population densities of New York and Nebraska. I apologize for my inaccurate claim that he has not backed up anything yet. My mistake.
#218 – Thomas,
#196
> Native Americans were agrarian.
Yes and no. It depends on the time period, the tribe and how strictly we are defining “hunter-gatherer”. Many tribes were at least hunter/farmer by the time of Europeans contact.
Yes. And the more numerous were presumably those practicing pure agriculture, especially in South and Central America. Still though, I do not believe this qualifies as a group of hunter-gatherers on which to base any comparisons. Further, the fact that Europeans had better/worse germs to bring with them doesn’t mean anything about the lifestyles of either group.
20-30 million in North America is tiny considering the relative lack of competition for resources, the supposedly healthier life style and the unlimited food supply. By 1600, Europe’s population alone, after the Black Plague wiped out 1/3, was 78 million (http://www.answers.com/topic/1600).
You’re still confusing numbers of people with individual health. Look at the most densely populated nations on earth today and tell me that the individuals are healthier there.
Even for nations that do not have the highest density, but have high density and personal wealth, it must be noted that such nations could not possibly survive in isolation. Consider Japan as one such example. They have high wealth and high population density and get nearly all of their food and raw materials from elsewhere.
Group size is not a measure of individual health.
Try this, go through this list of countries by population density. For each country, ask two questions: 1) Would you want to live there? and 2) Are they largely self-sufficient or reliant on other nations for the majority of their food?
http://tinyurl.com/63sdv
Since nature cares only about reproduction numbers and not for individual health, agriculture wins. We both agree on that.
For people who may want a better life, lower population density is far preferable. You have not stated anything to make me doubt this at all.
I will admit though that there is a minimum for a healthy group. Most of us, of any society, would be short lived without enough genetic diversity and without group cooperation. That minimum though is far below any numbers we’re talking about. For most of history, group size was around 150-200 individuals with interaction with and especially marriages between nearby tribes.
Since the number of people on the entire planet around 70-80,000 years ago was between 2,000 and 7,000 depending on the source, it clearly shows that the minimum cannot be higher than 7,000 for the entire planet. So, I think we have a large range of numbers available for discussing optimal population level for both group and individual health.
#219–KD==that is an excellent link. My edge got dull around 50 of them, but I will review all of them over the next few days. The “ambulance patient” that rolls out the back of the pickup was a good demonstration of inertia.
When I stated that math and humor have little overlap, I expressly was saying there was “some” overlap. Humor is often idiosyncratic and often comes across wrong–so does being serious? I think humor will beneficially spice any conversation–once the participants are on the same wave length (a math reference).
Thomas and Scott are busy demonstrating that communication can be difficult even when both parties are being serious. I’d rather be mistaken while being humorous.
#213, no, I meant exactly what I said – that we shouldn’t be going out of our way to keep people alive far beyond what they would otherwise. People living longer because of better hygiene and sanitation practices is one thing, 400 pounders not having their hearts explode because of pills they take between stops at McDonald’s is another.
#224 – Sea Lawyer,
Hmm… You bring up some interesting questions of morality. I would agree that the 400 pounder with cheese you describe should probably change eating habits. However, some of us who would die without medicine through no fault of our own would still like to live a while longer.
What about cases where someone has done something stupid in the past and now requires care even though they have learned their lesson and will no longer repeat the stupid action. Consider someone with illness from smoking who has successfully quit. Do we take away their care?
How do you decide and who gets to decide?
I think I’ll go with bobbo’s suggestion. If someone wants to live and we have the means to help, we probably should. It’s about freedom and basic human rights.
No country can provide health care to everyone. In the U.S., we say, no money? Go die. (And, yes, that is what emergency room only care does say.)
In more civilized countries, they make decisions based on things like QALYs and cost per QALY and moral issues of life-sustaining treatment versus non-life-sustaining treatment. They also weigh a host of other issues, many of which I probably don’t even know about.
I only know this much from participating in a focus group pertaining to public health care spending.
In short, they have a large symposium of people from government, the medical profession, the public, and others who get together to discuss what treatments will and will not be provided so that all have some input. I think this is a much better system than pump air through the nearly dead meat until his/her money runs out.
#224 – Sea Lawyer,
Hmm… You bring up some interesting questions of morality. I would agree that the 400 pounder with cheese you describe should probably change eating habits. However, some of us who would die without medicine through no fault of our own would still like to live a while longer.
What about cases where someone has done something stupid in the past and now requires care even though they have learned their lesson and will no longer repeat the stupid action. Consider someone with illness from smoking who has successfully quit. Do we take away their care?
How do you decide and who gets to decide?
I think I’ll go with bobbo’s suggestion. If someone wants to live and we have the means to help, we probably should. It’s about freedom and basic human rights.
No country can provide health care to everyone. In the U.S., we say, no money? Go die. (And, yes, that is what emergency room only care does say.)
In more civilized countries, they make decisions based on things like QALYs and cost per QALY and moral issues of life-sustaining treatment versus non-life-sustaining treatment. They also weigh a host of other issues, many of which I probably don’t even know about.
I only know this much from participating in a focus group pertaining to public health care spending.
In short, they have a large symposium of people from government, the medical profession, the public, and others who get together to discuss what treatments will and will not be provided so that all have some input. I think this is a much better system than pump air through the nearly dead meat until his/her money runs out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
Turns out we aren’t in a black hole===its all a hologram:
http://newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true&print=true