• Question: Do you often come across moral dilemmas in your work? What kind of ones do you and how do you address them?

    Asked by u26rumfordh to Andrew, Emma, Marianne on 20 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Hi u26rumfordh,

      I come across a lot of social dilemmas, some of which overlap with moral dilemmas. Here are just two:

      1. Scientists are now developing the ability to design genetic code on computers, and download it into living organisms – essentially designing new organisms and bringing them to life. Should they be allowed to do this, or is it going too far? There are no right or wrong answers here, but it’s important that everyone in society has a chance to understand the facts, and help decide whether this is an acceptable thing to do or not – that’s something that I hopefully help people do.

      2. New materials like nanoparticles are being put into products that you might use (like sunscreen), before companies are 100% sure whether they are safe. The companies say that they should do this because the products are better and safer than the alternatives. Others say that nothing should be sold until the technology being used is shown to be 100% safe – even if it might be better than what we already have. This is a tricky issue, and one that I help people work through by looking at the scientific evidence, but being mindful of the social consequences.

      What do you think about these – should scientists design new organisms (which might be beneficial)? Should companies sell better products, even if there is some uncertainty over how safe they are?

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      I haven’t had any real belters in scientific work yet… In medicine there are often moral dilemmas and I think that there is no universal solution to the handling of them. You have to go with what feels right after thinking it over, discussing it with people you trust and doing your best to walk a mile in the affected person’s shoes (To Kill a mockingbird-Atticus).

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Hey u26rumfordh.

      Not so much in lab work I don’t think; that’s more domain of the hospitals, I expect.

      We always have to think about ethics when we use our animals though. Sometimes the considerations for whether to do an experiment a certain way, to use some of the mice but not others… I guess that could sometimes qualify as a moral dilemma.

      But not the same as, say, a person being in a huge amount of pain and asking you to give them an overdose of pain meds.

      Really in our field it’s mostly about finding some answers and that tends to involve only using cells, sometimes lab animals (mice), and nothing more ethically questionable than that.

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