[Futurework] Science and society.

[Cordell, Arthur: ECOM]

Pulling the science handbrake; Stop and smell the ethics; Massey lecturer questions the pace of progress

Publication: TOR - Toronto Star

Oct 08 01:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Page: D3

Section: Ideas

Edition: ONT

Byline: Stuart Laidlaw

 

It might just be that we have too many bright ideas, and almost certainly more than we can handle.

 

In fact, Margaret Somerville, one of Canada's leading ethicists, is starting to wonder if maybe we need to slow down a tad while the ethics surrounding today's wonderful new technologies catch up a bit.

 

"We have to be careful about maintaining the essence of our humanity," says Somerville, founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University.

 

Somerville is particularly concerned about reproductive technologies and stem-cell research, touchy subjects that she tackles in this year's Massey Lectures and her accompanying book, The Ethical Imagination.

 

The Masseys, which begin Wednesday in Montreal and wrap up in Toronto on Oct. 27, are sponsored by CBC Radio. They will be broadcast on the CBC radio program Ideas the week of Nov. 6.

 

Somerville is no stranger to controversy. An opponent of gay marriage based on her research into child development, she was the focus of a gay-rights protest last June when she was given an honorary degree at Ryerson University during Gay Pride Week.

 

Modern technologies give people choices, Somerville says. For instance, reproductive technologies such as test-tube babies give women who could not conceive the option of doing so, and raise the possibility of designer babies.

 

"These are questions that no human has ever had to face," Somerville says.

 

And with choice comes ethics - the essential question of whether something should be done just because it can be. Where no choice is available, she says, there are no ethics involved. "There wasn't anything you could do, so there was no ethical choice."

 

For too long, the progress of science has been regarded as an inevitability in Western society, she says, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Critics of scientific advancement have been dismissed as Luddites or fools afraid of what the future might hold.

 

That needs to change, Somerville says, because there's just too much on the ethics side to work out first.

 

"Sometimes it can be more courageous to say no rather than yes," she says. "Scientific progress without the accompanying social progress is a hollow victory."

 

This crunch of ethical dilemmas comes just as Western society is loosening its connection to the institution that once guided people through such minefields organized religion. For a while, it seemed that religion would be replaced with a theology of science, Somerville says.

 

"We made science into a secular religion," she says, pointing to such catchphrases as "miracle drugs" and "modern medical miracle."

 

Religion, she dryly points out, used to be the only source of miracles.

 

Somerville says society needs to find a "secular sacred" - a set of values that people can agree on, whatever their faith or belief system.

 

"We've got to find these areas of overlap," she says, adding that once the commonalities are found, we can move on to exploring what is needed to protect those shared values.

 

"Let's start from a basic presumption in favour of the integrity of the natural, for us, for our world, for animals, for crops or whatever else.

 

"Which doesn't mean you can't change it, but it means that the person who wants to change it has to show that they are justified in doing so."

 

Somerville is confident her message will strike a chord. After decades of breakneck scientific advances, she says, many people are searching for more meaning in their lives.

 

"We are meaning-seeking animals," she says.

 

The old definition of progress as scientific advancement or monetary success is no longer enough for a growing number of people, she says, and they are seeking other definitions of success in their lives.

 

"They are interested in progress in areas that we haven't been interested in for quite a while," she says, "like spirituality or values."

 

===========================

_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca
http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework