Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Science and Religion--Christianity and stem cell research
Here's Francis Collins, a devout Christian, who Obama appointed to be Director of the National Institutes of Health, explaining how faith and science can be consistent. And this article in the New Yorker describes his struggle with the recent court decision prohibiting stem cell research.
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Here is a link for sites that detail embryonic stem cell research around the world: http://www.isscr.org/public/regions/country.cfm?CountryID=93
ReplyDeleteI think that using science to see how nature works, to test out Darwin's theories, and create solutions to genetic problems are all very good things. From what I have read, a big question is "should we use 'science' to play God?" We touched on this a little bit in class when we talked about cloning human and cloning your organs to be harvested for future uses. It seems that sometimes scientists have amazing discoveries or interesting theories (such as the full range of uses for embryonic stem cells) that need further testing, but then pose the questions, "What should we do with this knowledge and/or technology?" "What's the right/moral/ethical thing to do?" I don't think scientists should stop trying to understand nature, we just must be prepared to handle the outcomes and possible future uses of that knowledge. What should we do with it? Can our country afford not to be conducting the same sort of research going on in other countries if we want to remain a leader in scientific research and discovery?
ReplyDeleteOn Being this week, the story was on stem cell research. It's fascinating, and explains the whole thing in a way that is very different than I've heard it explained anywhere else.
ReplyDeleteHere is the site, you can download it: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/stem-cells/
Sidenote: It's funny how closely this program seems to be following the class. Every week I seem to find something from it that relates to class.