Wednesday, June 15, 2016
With Great Science Comes Great Responsibility (and sometimes great goggles)
Ah, summer, when birds sing, breezes ripple the pool, and the gentle aroma of EEs wafts through the trees. As I plan your schedules for next year, my thoughts turn to the responsibilities that come with the knowledge and skills you develop. For your first post, please write about one moment in your science studies when you felt the burden (actual or potential) of the responsibility inherent to what you were doing and learning. Consider the bases for the ethical implications of that moment. What ways of knowing were at play? How did they interact? If there was an ethical decision to be made, on what grounds did you make it? This writing is due on Sunday 19 June by 11:59 EDT (no matter what time zone you are currently in). Enjoy, and wear your goggles.
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Coco writes:
ReplyDeleteThis year, I took IB Chemistry. As we all knew, chemistry do a lot of experiments, and unlike ESS or biology, the experiments conduct the most pollutions, especially to the sewer system. The biggest burden that I felt from this course is the use of Sodium Hydroxide. Not only because it can corrode people's skin, but also when it meets water, it can transpire into toxic vapor. I feel it is a problem evolved with ethic, because it is not hard for us to think if someone inbreathed the toxic vapor somehow, the consequence is unimaginable.
By examining through sense perception, reason, and imagination. The problem is mainly based on ethics and natural science. I saw the substance went through the sewer, then I have searched the internet to gain my reasoning, after that, I imagined what will happen if there is no proper ways to recycle the wasted Sodium Hydroxide.
In ESS this year, we learned about many environmental problems that were created by human influence on the planet. One thing we learned about was Fracking and the water problems that stemmed from it. Emotion played a large role for me during class time, since we watched many videos about water pollution and environmental hardship that made me sad on account of no one doing anything to fix the problems. I reasoned that there was a way to fix the problems created by fracking and felt the responsibility of thinking up a solution. Later, on a college visit, my parents and I drove right through Gas Land (what we had been watching videos about in class) and I was struck by how hard it would be for the system of energy and fracking to change. Even though I myself could imagine a world were fracking and its environmental problems could be less determental to the environment, I realized that it would be much harder for humans to let go of the resource.
ReplyDeleteThis year I took IB Biology. Because Biology is the study of living organisms and how they work, many classes use animals such as frogs and squid in their experiments. In the IB however it is against their ethics code to experiment on animals to a large extent and can only happen when the teacher feels it is necessary to the learning process. One of the experiments that we will most likely be doing next year is creating a sustainable habitat for a creature (fish). If the experiment works then there is no ethics problem but if our habitat fails then the fish will die. Would it be ethical to risk an animals life for an experiment. Using emotion I deduced that it was not ethical to risk an animals life but using reason I thought that many scientists use larger smarter animals in their experiments and risk their lives as well as fish don't live very long any way. Also using reason I figured that if we used a text book procedure that it was more likely than not that the fish would live. From this I concluded that it would be ok to use fish in the experiment because were were not doing any thing such as dissecting them.
ReplyDeleteThis year I took Enviromental Systems and Societies. This course was filled with topics that affected my emotions, for example pollution and global warming. One specific topic that affected my emotions was when we learned about how GMOs are affecting the universal gene pool, cutting it down dramatically. My emotions were all over the place since I was really upset to hear how we have been perpetrating this by buying Gmo produced foods. From learning this I realized that I should do my best to try and avoid buying foods that have been produced with GMOs because they are not only harmful to me but to the enviroment, causing our overall genetic variation to decrease greatly.
ReplyDeleteThis year I learned IB biology. In this class we learned about GMOs, and we watched a documentary about how GMOs can affect our environment and our health. One burden I felt through this movie was the experiment they shoot in the movie. A group of scientists feed some laboratory rat GMOs, and eventually a lot of the rats got tumors. I feel this is a experiment that evolved with ethic. People damaged these rats' life on purpose to deduce conclusion that's helping human beings. This problem is mainly based on ethics and natural science.Using reasoning, I understood that these rats are artificially cultivated for experiments. Technically people are not hurting animals that's naturally in the environment, and human need to do these experiments to see the effects of GMOs on animals. However, through emotion and sense perception, I still felt that it was a cruel thing to do. I imagined what it would be like if human beings are not the dominant species on earth, but rather a species like rates. Other animals will do these experiments on humans for their benefits. Therefore through sense perception, imagination and emotion, I feel the experiments on life animals are cruel.
ReplyDeleteThis year I was in IB Biology. In the spring term, we learned about GMOs — their pros and their cons. GMOs can be good to some people because after being genetically modified, the plants might become more resistive. However, it can also destroy our environment and produce “super bugs”. This is where I felt the burden. Compared to damaging the environment, the benefits of GMOs seemed much smaller, and producing GMO crops might just be like people damaging our environment on purpose. This problem is mainly based on ethics and natural science. I used reasoning and language to figure out whether the pros of the GMOs seemed more important to me or the cons. The result of my thinking led to emotions. I felt angry and was worried because even though the environmental damages of GMOs might seem small, however, in the future, it might really destroy the environment completely.
ReplyDeleteIn IB biology 1, a common discussion was over the fact that the IB prohibits us from doing experiments on living organism as we would risk harming them. This summer, we are required to create a sustainable habitat for living organisms. As I began planning the habitat, I felt a large amount of responsibility to create the right habitat because if living organisms were to live in it, their lives would be in the hands of my creation; if done wrong, I would not only be harming the organisms, but would also be going against the IB regulations. This triggered the usage of my memory for it made me recall experiences that I've had while visiting zoos; during my visits I noticed many animals were put in the wrong habitats; I remember seeing a panda enclosed in a small cage, with barely any bamboo, and an unsustainable temperature. This allowed me to imagine the harshness organisms/animals can live in an unsustainable environment; therefore, this motivated me to research requirements for building sustainable habitats, hence allowing me to plan logically using the reasoning I gained through memory and research.
ReplyDeleteIn IB Biology this year in our genetics unit we were discussing genetic conditions that resulted birth defects, such as trisomy 21 (also known as down syndrome) and Fragile X syndrome. We also discussed the ways that these conditions can be detected before birth, if at all. At this moment I thought of the ethical implications terminating a pregnancy had, or choosing to allow a new born to die seeing as their quality of life would be poor if resuscitated. This prompted me to think of what I do at the farm if a lamb is born with birth defects. Deciding whether or not to let the creature die, or spend time, energy, and money, that could be more sensibly used on a different task, trying to save it. The ways of knowing at play were memory, emotion, and reason. Emotion was in conflict, and in part harmony, with reason as I knew from past experience that it's not worth saving a dying creature if its quality of life would be poor in the long term. I felt empathetic towards a creature who was suffering and would want to save it, knowing that letting it die is the sometimes the wiser choice and also knowing that it is generally frowned upon by those who aren't farmers to let "cute, fluffy" lambs die. This ties back into the discussion of birth defects because I find these situations similar, and I believe that I would do the same thing for a new born as I would a lamb with genetic birth defects.
ReplyDeleteIn IB Biology HL, we were learning about genetics and the act of cloning. Within genetics,we learned about selective breeding, offspring probability, phenotypes, and genotypes. Even though cloning among humans is illegal, there have been experiments tested on animals such as the famous "Dolly the Sheep" who has a clone. Cloning can have ethical situations surrounding that idea because one may believe that making a copy of one's life is sinful and degrading to that said life. For me, ways of knowing such as reasoning, faith, and emotion are involved. Reasoning is essential because I feel that cloning devalues one's uniqueness and originality in the realm of existence because one can be created again. Faith because under the category of ares of knowledge of religious knowledge systems, some religions may argue that God is the creator of life and the humans do not have the authority to genetically recreate life. Emotion is also involved because if cloning is not allowed among humans, what makes an animal be of lesser value to not obtain that same belief. The interactions of the WOKs serves as a perfect justification as to why cloning should not be allowed under any circumstances.
ReplyDeleteFew years ago in Physics class, I did a research on the nuclear plants. The nuclear power generation has many merits. For example, a lot of electricity can be produced by low cost without the emission of CO2 because resources such as oil, coal, and LNG do not have to be used. However, there is also huge demerit of the use of the nuclear plants. The biggest demerit is that its dangerousness. If radiation is released by some accident, it affects on people’s health like causing cancer and damaging their genes.
ReplyDeleteI used emotion, reasoning, and imagination to think about this problem. By reasoning, I understand all the merits the nuclear power generation has. However, when I imagine the emission of the radiation, I fear it a lot.
The base of the ethical implication here is the contradiction of convenience and safety. In order to make people’s lives more convenient, we use high technological skills. It is good thing to pursue the convenience, but we should never forget the risks we own at the same time.
In Biology class last year, we studied photosynthesis in extreme detail. I was expecting just a reflection on what I had learned in elementary and middle school (foolishly), however, what I had to learn was so much more complicated and intricate than I had ever thought possible. I used several ways of knowing, emotion, memory, reason, sense perception, and language. I used emotion because I was very surprised by the complexity of the information that we had to learn, and saddened that it was not as simple as it was when I was younger. I used memory because I had to base my knowledge in photosynthesis off of my previous experiences of learning it, photosynthesis being a very simple process of turning sunlight into food for plants. I used reason as I was learning the new material, understanding what made sense to me, and asking for help for those that didn't. I used sense perception to understand what my teacher was saying and language to express my confusion if there was any. The material we had to learn in itself was not a burden, however the expectations I had created caused the information to be very difficult for me to learn.
ReplyDeleteWorking in a biochemistry lab this summer I have had the opportunity to participate in a variety of new scientific procedures and activities, one such procedure was a transformation. A transformation is a process by which one is able to insert a plasmid, which codes for a specific gene or two, into the cells of another organism. In doing this you are changing the genetic makeup of that organism. One is adding DN, and hence characteristics, to an organism that it would not naturally develop on its own, which raises some ethical questions. Do we have the right to change on organism so fundamentally and ‘play god’? While the specific transformation I performed was fairly benign (simply importing a new enzyme pathway and making the bacteria resistant to ampicillin) the principle is still the same. In thinking about this I chiefly used reason as a way of knowing as I logically thought out the different aspects of this ethical question, though memory and emotion also played a role. While I was aware of the more questionable applications of genetic modification, I still could not control the fact that the my overwhelming feelings were of simple excitement and curiosity at being able to do something so fundamentally awesome, for the lack of a better word. While I was able to reason that changing an organism's genetic makeup raises questions of if science should slow down to let ethics catch up and use memory to recall past controversies over GMO’s; emotion as a way of knowing still won out as I simply continued to be delighted by the pure science behind it.
ReplyDeleteIn IB Chemistry HL this year, we did many in class labs dealing with how compounds reacted with one another. For every lab we had to take many safety repercussions been there was always the risk of something bad to happen. In every lab, we must have long or loss hair tied back and have something on to protect your eyes. In one lab specifically, we combined chemicals and then observed how they reacted at different temperatures. To be able to do that, we used fire and dry ice; this then called for gloves and a lab coat. These conditions were ethical behaviors because they were meant to best support and protects the chemists doing the experiments so that no one gets hurts or injured in the midst of scientific explorations. For me, ways of knowing that I associate with this experience are emotion and faith. Emotion is involved because the fear of something going wrong caused the chemist who created the lab to provide safety instructions makes me wonder what might happen if something were to go wrong and I did not have the proper equipment. Faith is also a component because I have to trust that the safety regulations that the professional chemist instructed me to follow will protect me and I also have to have faith in myself to not mess up measurements and have the incorrect combination that may cause harm to my classmates, teach and me. Emotion and faith are good representations as to why safety guidelines must always be followed in a scientific lab.
ReplyDeleteWorking in a biolevel safety 2 laboratory presents some occupational hazards. Possible contagion, and exposure to toxic fumes and known carcinogens are among the risks involved. For this reason, Environmental Health and Safety officers strictly enforce the use of PPE: safety glasses, gloves, and lab coat. However, many labs do not follow strict safety precautions. For example, the lab I work in handles a BLS level 2 pathogen, and operates within sterile hoods, meant to keep contamination out, but our PI doesn’t wear gloves around the lab. The grad students often wear shorts, and the only times people wear gloves or a lab coat are when dealing with liquid nitrogen or Ethidium Bromide (a known carcinogen).
ReplyDeleteDespite everyone’s apparent disregard for safety, every lab member treats their samples with utmost detail. Last week I was clearing an Ethidium bromide area to use to run an experiment. While cleaning a piece of equipment, a shard of dried agarose (containing ethidium bromide) pierced my glove and made a cut under my nail. I immediately removed my glove and checked for blood, before washing it out. It was a small wound, but regardless, I got Ethidium bromide in my body. It had taken me two weeks to prepare my samples, and the experiment I was conducting was meant to prove to my PI that I could perform a difficult experiment with precision. I should have gotten help, because technically, I could get cancer, but instead I chose to finish the experiment and obtain my data.
Even an issue of personal safety is an ethical issue. It was a combination of my fear of failure, remembering that other researchers also valued work more than personal safety, reason that developing health issues from a single exposure was unlikely, and the feeling of knowing the cut was washed out thoroughly (Emotion, memory, reason and sense perception respectively).