Elliott Chan B4 ELCT RE 2023 - Google Docs
Elliott Chan B4 ELCT RE 2023 - Google Docs
Question 2:
“Science cannot stop while ethics catches up.” (Plant biologist, Elvin
C. Stakman) To what extent do you agree with this statement?
Elliott Chan
B4
29th August 2023
I declare that this research essay is my work and no plagiarism is involved. I declare
that I have neither enlisted another individual to perform the work for me nor allowed
another person to edit and significantly alter my work. All borrowed ideas and
expressions are properly and fully cited.
_______________________
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DATE: 29th August 2023
The quote, “Science cannot stop while ethics catches up”, said by plant
biologist Elvin C. Stakman covers grounds of how although science and ethics are
usually unified at its core, ethics regarding things such as the testing of products on
live specimens or collection of widely sought after materials used for diseases such
as cancer all pose many ethical issues in the eyes of many people. Ethics in the field
science from the process of data collection and further beyond to the publication of
said data and research. I agree to a small extent that science cannot stop while
ethics catches up due to the harm the beneficiaries of said research may face if
heavily regulated and slowed down. However, I personally think that having ethics to
guide scientists and researchers when conducting research and collecting data holds
more weight in this ethical dilemma as it keeps the researchers accountable for the
researchers can and cannot do, especially in fields regarding human specimens,
helps to regulate the reliability of the data that they collect in no matter what field they
are in, moreover helps to ensure that research is conducted in a responsible and
respectful manner, and that the rights and well-being of participants are protected.
The Tuskegee Syphilis study is a good example of how without proper regulations
put into place, research participants can be exploited to a point where it may even
cos them their life. From 1932 to 1972, researchers studied the development of how
syphilis affected African American men, in hopes to find out whether syphilis deferred
significantly from black and white men and whether it caused more neurological or
cardiovascular damage. Although the idea behind conducting this experiment may be
innocent, the way that the researchers carried it out is ethically wrong. They had
hidden the truth about what disease they had or that it is mainly transmitted through
coition from the subjects, but instead lied and said that they had, “bad blood”, in order
to gain more subjects to join the study (Alsan and Wanamaker). Moreover, penicillin,
the drug to treat syphilis that came out during this experimental period was also
denied to the men for more than 25 years, as the researchers wanted to follow the
effects of it to the subject’s death. From this we can see that due to the lack of
policies and transparency between researcher and participant placed onto this
experiment, many unsuspecting lives were put in harm’s way, when it could have
Furthermore, these policies not only protect the reliability of the data collected,
but also help to protect the natural wildlife in many circumstances. For example, the
drug that is used to treat many forms of cancer is derived from the bark of pacific yew
trees, called taxol. When biomedical scientists found out about this anti-cancer drug
that could be extracted from these trees, many rushed to get their hands on it, so
much so that, “its conservation status has changed from vulnerable to endangered
because the estimated global population has declined by more than 50% in the past
30 years (Mayors)”. This sudden and very real effect on the species of tree sparked a
of the yew would not deny cancer patients taxol for treatment, but on the contrary
would increase its supply and make it secure (Walsh and Goodman)”, providing a
win-win condition for both sides of the argument. In this case of people harvesting the
anti-cancer drug from the pacific yew trees, we can see that without the help of
ethical policies protecting the whole species of trees that had to be put into place, the
scientist and researchers would not be able to conduct research on them as they
would have gone extinct, defeating the purpose of collecting them for research in the
first place.
and make more informed decisions about many different fields of interest. An
example of this would be the research being done in the field of cancer-treating
medication. Data collected in Singapore from 2016 to 2020 shows that 1 in 4 people
may develop cancer, and that 16 people die from cancer a day (Singapore Cancer
Society). Furthermore, almost 10 million people die from cancer each year, making it
the second leading cause of death in the entire world. Finding a cure for such a
deadly disease as this would mean the saving of a significant number of people each
year, even if the treatment is not a 100 percent cure to the disease. By placing ethical
policies on certain areas of research into finding a cure for diseases, it can massively
slow down the rate at which we can get to saving the lives of the people afflicted with
such illnesses. In the case of cancer, the process of researching the cure involves
the creation of special stem cells called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs for
short, which are essentially, “enables the development of an unlimited source of any
type of human cell needed for therapeutic purposes (UCLA broad stem cell center)”.
The creation of iPSCs not only is used in regenerative medicine, but also allows for
scientists and researchers to test newer drugs on the iPSCs as it allows them to
record data of how the drug affects humans, which is a step up from testing the drugs
on animals. However, in order to create the iPSCs it would require the destruction of
a human embryonic stem cell, meaning that a human life will be lost if we want to
take steps towards finding a cure towards cancer. This trade off in terms of the
possibility to save millions of lives versus the certainty that in order to do that, one
must sacrifice the very real embryos. Hence by putting restrictions on certain areas
for individualistic purposes, it can really slow down the possible saving of millions of
In conclusion, I think that despite not having scientific research be held back
having more regulations with ethics as the concern can not only help to regulate the
reliability of the data that scientist and researchers collect and help to guarantee that
(1141 words)
Sources:
Alsan, Marcella, and Marianne Wanamaker. “Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men*.”
Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 133, no. 1, Oxford UP, Aug. 2017, pp. 407–55.
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“Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS).” UCLA Broad Stem Cell Center,
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Susan, M. “Tree That Provides Paclitaxel Is Put on List of Endangered Species.” BMJ, vol.
www.britannica.com/event/Tuskegee-syphilis-study.
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Walsh, Vivien, and J. A. Goodman. “Cancer Chemotherapy, Biodiversity, Public and Private
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