What Price Better Health?
Hazards of the Research Imperative
Chapter One
Is Research a Moral Obligation?
In 1959 Congress passed a "health for peace" bill, behind which was a view
of disease and disability as "the common enemy of all nations and
peoples." In 1970 President Nixon declared a "war" against cancer.
Speaking of a proposal in Great Britain in 2000 to allow stem-cell
research to go forward, Science Minister Lord Sainsbury said, "The
important benefits which can come from this research outweigh any other
considerations," a statement that one newspaper paraphrased as outweighing
"ethical concerns." Arguing for the pursuit of potentially hazardous
germ-line therapy, Dr. W. French Anderson, editor-in-chief of Human Gene
Therapy, declared that "we as caring human beings have a moral mandate to
cure disease and prevent suffering." A similar note was struck in an
article by two ethicists who held that there is a "prima facie moral
obligation" to carry out research on germ-cell gene therapy.
As if that was not enough, in 1999 a distinguished group of scientists ... read full excerpt from: What Price Better Health?: Hazards of the Research Imperative ebook
