Science and Ethics

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the power of science to do good and to do harm. Several examples are used to illustrate this often blurred line. The author points to Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" and how it dealt with science, nature and morality. The controversy surrounding its connection to the Nobel Peace Prize is also evaluated. The paper also describes some practices from previous centuries to acquire bodies in order to do anatomical research. The paper concludes that the debate regarding medical ethics will continue, although today it is becoming less blurred because of standards that are being developed in this field.

From the Paper:

"There are many examples of scientific and technologic discoveries, not limited to medicine, that have blurred this boundary, like dynamite, an invention intended by its creator, Alfred Nobel to help not hurt, but rather was frequently utilized to destroy and as a tool of war. "He received the tribute of scientists and educators but the ignorant people regarded him with a mixture of awe and fear--'he had put the long hammer of Thor to work again among the giants.'" (Marble 6) Nobel is best known for the award named for him The Nobel Peace Prize, a distinction and a foundation said to be founded, by Nobel in the name of Nobel's concern for scientists to create without censure but for peaceful means and the betterment of society. (Marble 4-6) The blurred line between the power of science to do good and to do harm is a universal of literature and life, and was especially important during great periods of human growth, such as the naturalist movement, and the industrial revolution, taking place during the Shelley's lifetime and frequently discussed by the literary and scientific set, "The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation." (Shelley 5) Shelly goes on to discuss a rumor of the ability of Darwin to reanimate a vermicelli, that he had kept under glass, as the source of the literary conversation about the ability of science and humans to discover the spark of life and then reapply it to previously dead beings, including human bodies. Through her apologetic prologue and later in her introduction Shelley speaks of the logical fear of such an occurrence, though recognized as unlikely, as a common place fear among people both in an outside the scientific community. (Shelley 10)"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Adler, Robert E. Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004.
• Harvey, William. Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy: An Annotated Translation of Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis. Trans. C. D. O'Malley, F. N. L. Poynter, and K. F. Russell. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961.
• Jecker, Nancy S. "Knowing When to Stop: The Limits of Medicine." The Hastings Center Report 21.3 (1991): 5.
• Marble, Annie Russell. The Nobel Prize Winners in Literature. New York: D. Appleton, 1925.
• Radest, Howard B. From Clinic to Classroom Medical Ethics and Moral Education. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000.

More papers on Science and Ethics:

• Analytical Essay # 114966 : "Science and Society"
• Analytical Essay # 108111 : "Dostoevsky, Science and Free Will"
• Term Paper # 129508 : "Science and Literature Term Paper"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: