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A thought about the ethics of science and progress

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Earlier today I saw a publication in Facebook by the page IFLScience about an experiment done in 1929 where they connected some electrodes to the skull of a live cat and, basically, turned him into a telephone. Later a friend confirmed that it was real and that the experiment, in fact, lead to important discoveries about how the inner ear works and the development of hearing-aid implants.

I am sure there are a lot of scientific and technological advancements that we take for granted, but we probably owe to more experiments that were less than ethic, by our standards, and probably even by the standards of their own time.

I can appreciate the inmportance of such discoveries without loosing the sense that it is still weird. I don't think I would be capable of doing something like that, but maybe that is why I am not a scientist. It also makes me think, how many scientific breakthroughs are being missed because of today's more strict ethics in experimentation? But I am not critizicing that, I can certainly live with a little less "progress" if it means being more "humane", I am just wondering if everyone really thinks the same, or they have convinced themselves that they don't need to sacrifice any scientific breakthroughs in order to be more ethical; because if that is the case, when they realize that ethics is an abstacle to progress, I bet ethics goes out the window first.

And it makes me think of one more thing: Who are we kidding when we say that we want to save the planet from global warming because we do not own the Earth, we are not God? Of course we own it, we have always played being god.

Progress cannot be stopped that easily. The same industrialization which lead to the current global warming issues, created an unprecedented economic growth which has elevated the quality of life, health, life expectancy, of billions of people, and to which we have become utterly dependent too. The best we can do is try to elevate the quality of life of the more vulnerable population so that, when the shit really hits the fan, we can adapt and continue to grow.