My answer for the most part is "No".
The reason why I say this is that once you start making moral and ethnical arguements it becomes nearly impossible to avoid science. There are always going to be risks, dangers, and moral questions to anything signifigant that you try and achieve.
Today you'll find that people are very technophobic, I see it as a part of liberalism to a great extent, though conservatives are just as bad in their own way (and on specific issues). "Techno Horror" has taken off over the years, and it seems that a lot of fiction out there revolves specifically around the "Frankenstein" complex of people playing god and then losing control, or massive revolts by technology, or whatever. It also seems that there are some intentional efforts by techno-phobes to spread this kind of message by taking stories like Asimov's "Robot" novels and producing movies like "I, Robot" that have nothing to do with the very pro-tech, pro-robotics slant of the original books. Then there is of course the whole "Terminator" thing among others.
Basically it's all Doctor Frankenstein, with little Reed Richards in sight (to use fictional examples).
The game "Bioshock" also seemed to be a criticism of unrestrained technological development, a point I might add that I got from it more than it "zapping" Ayn Rand because if that was the intent the people doing the game know very little about the subject.
The flip side to all of the "Techno-horror" is of course humans (tool users) to cease progressing, or at least at any noticible level, then inevitably running into a crisis that we can't deal with (which might very well be something like the death of our sun due to the sheer passage of time as we're locked on the planet).
When you get down to it, pretty much ANY development, especially major developments, is going to be against someone's morality or code of ethics. What's more there is always going to be a danger despite the nessecity. As a result scientific progress should be seperated entirely from morality. I'm fine with moralists making criticisms, as long as they have very little abillity to stop the scientific progress as a whole.
The one caveat to this of course comes about due to "human rights". I for example do not think that NASA should be allowed to run around and test radiation on people they abduct in the streets, or the CDC to infect random people with diseases to see how they spread/progress and test cures and such.
I do however believe that it is reasonable to do the things above (and more), but that the people involved should either be volunteers, or condemned prisoners or the like.
As I've said before, I have little issue with going to some guy on Death Row and agreeing to let him go in exchange for his participation in a potentially lethal or crippling experiment (ie if he survives it). As long as we kept the deal with survivors (who are probably going to be crippled) it would be cool by me.
As monsterous as he was, even guys like Dr. Mengele can be sort of "Defended" by pointing out that he worked with condemned prisoners. The Holocaust simply providing him with a vast number of condemned prisoners. To an extent his research can apparently be seperated from The Holocaust, and rapidly becomes about the morality of what he did to obtain the results he achieved (which could not have been accomplished any other way).
It's a touchy issue, for sure, but as messed up as it is when discussing science to an extent you have to judge the needs of the many in the long term against the needs of the few in the short term. Nobody wants to be one of those "few" (nobody says "Mommy, I want to grow up to be a Death Row inmate" either amazingly enough). But in the end humanity as a whole NEEDS that science.
It's sort of like in ethnics class, you discuss concepts like "Morality by the numbers". It's easy to argue against as long as the numbers are small enough, however it becomes less so as the issues become bigger. This is why the wise do not envy people who have to make the hard desicians.
In the case of scientific progress, even if I was to say kidnap 5,000 people (the population of a small city) and subject them to horrendous, and torturous experiments, but in the end saved the lives of hundreds of billions of people, or even infinite people (if say my research lead to the development of a cure all, immortality, or space flight), it cannot easily be said that I'm wrong. The short term survival of that comparitive handfull not being worth the fate of humanity as a whole. Heck when it comes to five thousand people it's probably worth far less.
Of course keep in mind that I *AM* against such random "rounding up" of experimental human cattle (as the one moral exception). The point is that it's not an obvious right or wrong situation for anyone with half a brain.
The reason why I'm against it though is that in practical terms not all theories (and experiments) pan out. You allow that, and your not guaranteed results. You might wind up with 5,000 mutilated corpses, and small library of snuff flicks that were intended to be scientific records of the experiments. Indeed for every success your going to see many such failures so it becomes difficult to set policy allowing it without basically depopulating the countryside every time some PHD has a big idea.
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