I personally think that science has an obligation to consider and accept the ethical concerns found in the general public. For instance, the Nazis did not have any ethical qualms about experimenting on Jewish prisoners but the larger human population had very different views.
I cannot be in further disagreement. Science has almost always been at its best when operating outside of ethical concerns found in the general public.
To begin with your nazi example seems contradictory, or at least problematic. It was okay in germany to experiment on jewish prisoners, much as it is okay today to experiment (to some degree) on the poor and prisoners. The degree of experimentation was greater then as the jews were considered much the same as lab rats. So if they were to listen to public ethics, then that would be just fine.
If you expand this to say, yes but the rest of the world (I wouldn't necessarily say Europe which was pretty antisemitic) didn't think so, then you are about to set some very odd standards for science. Should our nation's scientists be worrying about ethical considerations of Africans, Indonesians, MidEast nations, China, Mongolia etc etc? Why and how do we begin to measure this? What other limits do you think these other regions would put on our scientific research?
Indeed will this not reflect directly on modern scientific issues? We already saw (in another thread) that both APA's have agreed to doctor all scientific research on sex in order to fit cultural and political beliefs, including denying all contrary research no matter how well done... would you agree with this?
And what about evolution?
Creationism is growing in popularity and it seems nearly 50% of americans prefer that "science" to real science, such that museums are now popping up with wholly creationist perspectives to fill demand. Shall evolutionary research be curbed for ethical concerns?
Certainly Galileo's research was curbed to fit ethical concerns... was that right? In the end many scientists were forced to flee to nations where they could conduct research without hampering. And the west benefitted from nations outside the Xian west who did not labor under the same ignorance.
This may be much the same as US scientists who may flee to Europe to continue therapeutic cloning.
As a human with a sense of ethics, morality, and common culture there can or could be moral wrongs involved. This is one area where science should listen to religious, moral, and ethical convictions and weigh them on their own merit outside of the realm of purely scientific thought.
I am also a human with a sense of ethics and morality, but--- being from a free and diverse nation which espouses secular government--- not necessarily a common culture and so do not have to agree with another's moral "wrongs", including the majority's.
If the above is true then it seems much more than embryology is at stake. Certainly abortion and work on abortificients (such as the pill) would also have to be curbed. If you have a set of consistent rules which would allow for abortion and abortificients to go on being tested and used while scientists using mere fertilized eggs get sanctioned, I would like to know what they are.
I honestly do not see what differentiates this from test tube babies, which were once a large moral concern and are now nothing. I do agree that with reproductive cloning there is an issue of technical capability, and so research should not allow for full gestation of a human until the kinks have been worked out. But again, that seems much like the test tube issue.
Once made viable, the technical capability "perfected", there may be an issue of parentage or guardianship. This could be worked out through laws, without chucking the whole process.
As far as the slippery slope fears of human organ farms and slave rings, this happens already and cloning will not make it any more viable a practice. How could it? And the issue then would not be how the humans came to be, but how they were treated as human beings.
Circling back to your original example, nazis abused jews because they were considered by society to be less than fully human. As long as the children produced by reproductive cloning are not viewed or treated as less then human, and with full human rights, there should be no moral or legal concerns beyond what we have already due to fertility issues.
Sorry if this seemed like a lecture. I did not write anything "in anger" so please don't take it in that nature. I did write "in surprise" so you could take it that way. It seems to me the history of science is clear with regard to how ethics should impact research.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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