Rick Santorum's candidacy ...

russ_watters

Not necessarily, but an amoral persom might do something a moral person finds immoral because they didn't consider the moral implications. Bioethics was created to keep scientists from crossing that line, for that reason.

You don't spend a lot of time in ethics classes examining cases where people acted ethically.

Ryan_m_b

I'm not sure I understand, the research always contains moral considerations. For example is it ethical to perform experiment X if the cost of it is to subject a number of animals to Y. I don't think it's entirely fair to say that bioethics as a field was created to keep scientists in line if only because that implies that scientists are unable to regulate themselves. Rather I think the field is a formalised/institutionalised version of what happens anyway.

Number Nine

I doubt that he was thinking that hard about it. Santorum is attempting to court a demographic that by and large distrusts science for ideological reasons, and he saw an opportunity to say something vaguely consistent with those beliefs ("those people you disagree with are bad". There's nothing more to it.

ThomasT

I basically agree with your assessment. But I do, currently anyway, think that Santorum has a real personal aversion to science. Which, for me, is reason number two (2) to not vote for him.

turbo

Santorum has some people working very hard to keep Savage's definitions out of the #1 slot in Google. It probably costs him a bundle.

Jack21222

I can only go by what he said. I'm not a mind-reader like you, russ.

Number Nine

I absolutely agree, I just think his aversion is mostly a dogmatic and emotional one; I don't think there's a thoroughly reasoned position behind it, and I don't think he intended to offer one with his statement.

ThomasT

I'll just say that that was interesting.

ThomasT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum

russ_watters

Why would the field need to be formalized? My engineering company does not employ an engineering ethicist.

...although along the same lines, my engineering field has a technical society that writes/sets standards. Why would we need a committee to write standards if engineers are capable of regulating themselves? Because we're all human, not all engineers will agree about what good engineering practice is, even if we assume that all engineers will attempt to follow what they believe is good engineering practice. Furthermore, a praciticing engineer does not have the time to spend writing a position paper on every engineering problem they have to solve, justifying why a certain choice is a good one. It is much easier to just follow the standard that the committe spent years researching and justifying. Similar logic, just not about ethics.

Surely you're not suggesting that LAS researchers don't have the same human failings as everyone else - that all LAS researchers always made all the same decisions regarding research ethics prior to formalization of the field? Or even that there has never been a bad apple in the research field?

MarcoD

I think he's stating that the current formalization (bioethics) is a morality which follows scientific advances. Which would be a bit lousy since 1% of the world's population are sociopaths who wouldn't care about experimenting on children, except for the fact that it may make them look bad. So I guess at the moment we're just following the sociopaths.

Number Nine

We do experiment on children. I ran a 7 year old through an experiment yesterday.

MarcoD

Yeah, but we normally don't do it without ethical consideration. (At least, the we who are the 99% non-sociopaths.)

Char. Limit

I'll be honest, here's my views: I can't vote for Santorum. His anti-gay, anti-abortion, rabid evangelical views are sure to turn me off even before I get to the fact that he urges the teaching of creationism in public schools. There is no way I'd ever vote for someone like this.

Jack21222

Santorum is acting like a contortionist twisting Obama's words on education.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...e-is-snobbery/

Here is Obama's comment:
Here is Santorum's response:
It goes on with Santorum claiming that Obama said he wants every child to GO to college. All Obama said is that he wants every child to be READY to go to college if they so choose, or a career if they so choose. In any case, Santorum believes that giving our kids a proper high school education is "snobbery."

Jimmy Snyder

This is funny. Santorum's family back in the old country are communists.

Not that there's anything wrong with it.

ThomasT

That is funny ... especially if true.