"Restoring Science"
President Obama took a jab at former President Bush with this phrase from his inaugural speech; "We will restore science to its rightful place….". This implies that science has been taken down off of some pillar that it should reside on.
Science is important in the betterment of humankind, but science must be tempered by morality (as must all things). Dubya, for example, kept federal funding for embryonic stem cell research for those cell lines already existing at the time, but his moral concerns over the issue prevented his allowing it unhindered. (Private funding is still available and, indeed, the research is continuing.) Is Obama suggesting he’ll place science above morality? Is submitting science to the scrutiny of morality robbing the former of it’s "rightful place"? Is this his worldview?
Filed under: Doug • Ethics & Morality • Science • Stem Cells
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No, Obama is not suggesting we’ll play science above morality.
The way it seems to many is that the Bush administration tried to make science a slave of business and politics. If a scientific opinion was offensive to the auto industry, then by all means, let’s find another scientific opinion.
This is what Obama is speaking of, or so it seems to me. I see nothing whatsoever to justify making the assumption that it’s to supplant morality. In fact, if anything, it’s quite the opposite.
Medical News Today seems to think that phrase was related to “issues such as stem cells, sex education and contraceptives”, all of which have a moral component.
The NY Times used the same list, but added climate change.
This writer notes Obama’s pledge to lift the ban on federal funds for embryonic stem cell research.
Granted, his was a rather general use of the phrase, although the topic of the sentence in which it was used was health care. Sounds like ESCR to me. He said, in that pledge, that he would make sure it was done ethically, ignoring the fact that the ethical issues, raised by those who have them, is that it happens at all. “I will subsidize murder with federal funds, but I will do it ethically.”