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David Ng is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia - this is a just a fancier way of calling himself a science teacher.
Benjamin Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Science, Tech., and Society at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of S & T in environmental history, policy, and ethics. He also writes other stuff.
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Category: Ethics Palace: Where ethical questions go to live or die
Posted on: June 21, 2007 11:34 AM, by Benjamin Cohen
He again insists on ending the Iraq War, or, again, so I surmise from this quote half-heard on the radio this morning:
"Destroying human life to save human life is just not ethical."
I always suspected he didn't read our blog. Maybe he didn't check the RSS feeds he signed up for, or maybe he just read it too quickly, I don't know, it's just, we don't really talk as much as we used to.... But anyway, didn't we handle this life and ethics thing yesterday?
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Comments
I'd say destroying human life with no clear indication any life has been thereby saved is even more unethical, but perhaps Bush is actually taking a stand in favour of irresponsible anarchy.
Posted by: martin heavisides | June 24, 2007 9:50 AM
So uh, what's the justification for war?! Seriously. If it's unethical to destroy life to save life, then it's blasphemous, irresponsible and downright insidious to destroy life to save a way of life.
Oi!
Posted by: ChrisD | June 25, 2007 12:22 AM
Ramesh Ponnuru, author of the book, Democrats: the Party of Death, appeared on the Daily Show some time ago. Jon Stewart asked him why he only went after Democrats when there was this war going on. Apparently, this hypocrisy had never even occured to him, because he had to ask Stewart to explicitly spell out his logic. When Stewart forced him to give an answer, he said that the war was different because, unlike in abortion and stem-cell research, innocent lives weren't being specifically targetted.
In other words, if Ponnuru speaks for the anti-stem-cell-pro-war crowd, killing innocent people is fine as long as it's an accident. And if we want Bush to support stem-cell research, we need to tell him we're going after cells donated from terrorists and mourn for the innocent cells caught in the crossfire.
Posted by: Brandon | June 25, 2007 2:26 AM