Governments should place few, if any,
restrictions on scientific research and development.
Write a response in which you discuss
the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain
your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your
position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation
would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your
position.
It seems obvious that government does
currently have mechanisms in place for controlling research and development in
the sciences. For instance, there are
many laws prohibiting the acquisition of precursor chemicals for scheduled, and
therefore, illegal drugs. Government
also regularly determines what institutions receive public funding for research
and development through grants, scholarships, and the conferring of non-profit
status that results in lower tax rates for the agency. So, government is clearly already in the
business of regulating scientific research and development. However, some people think that government
ought to go beyond this level of control and assert restrictions on entire
ranges of research. Two examples might
help to elucidate this point.
Some people claim that psychological
experimentation on unsuspecting children and adults ought to be regulated by
the government. One main goal of
government, they argue, is to protect the innocent and those among us
susceptible to corruption. It seems
obvious that children ought to be protected, and that no sane person would
suggest otherwise. But, exactly how we
go about determining susceptibility to corruption in adults is arguably a
sticky problem that ought to be treated in the psychological sciences. Once this information is uncovered to the
satisfaction of scientists and laypeople alike, there is a need for the control
and maintenance of the information, so the story goes. For instance, if we were to discover that a
certain type of person were easily manipulated into obeying commands, then this
information, in the wrong hands, could have potentially disastrous
effects. If the goal of government, as
was suggested earlier, is to protect the innocent, then it seems that
government’s job has now extended to controlling and maintaining potentially
harmful information and discoveries. One
more case study ought to illuminate the main point in this slippery slope
argument.
Some people maintain that
experimentation that affects the agency of individuals ought to be regulated. For instance, if a new drug has the potential
to help curtail the deleterious effects of cancer on the body, but is known to
inhibit the same neural pathways that have been discovered to be associated
with the willful control of human movement by the individual, then everyone
would agree that this new drug, although perhaps beneficial in a small subset
of the population, i.e. those with cancer, ought to be fiercely regulated.
Now the key assumption in both of the
above scenarios is that government ought to have a more active role in
scientific research and development, rather than the limited role stated in the
first paragraph of controlling scientific R&D through ordinary measures and
safeguards. In that case, the burden of
proof is on those individuals that claim that there should be more active
control, rather than on those who believe in the basic decency of scientists as
ordinary human beings that would assent that children and corruptible adults
ought to be protected.
Prime numbers are funny things: they
have only themselves and one as a divisor.
Furthermore, every integer greater than 1 can be expressed as a product of factors that are prime
numbers. So, while prime numbers only
have themselves and being to account for their existence, they also support the
creation of the entire number line.
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