I'm gonna soapbox. I said I wouldn't, but this falls under the category of media criticism, so, I'll allow myself to do it. Just as I'm sick and tired of "Controversy" being newsworthy, and Elizabeth Vargas or Fox News or MSNBC reporting on every time anyone is pissed off about anything they have video that roughly goes with the subject, they run with it. It warps public perception, and generally makes this a bitter and pissed off nation of folks. Americans were much better people before they had to wait in 2 hours of rush hour traffic every night just to go to bed after hearing on the news that everything in their house will kill them and everyone outside their home is going to destroy their way of life.
There can't be a story about Science in the media anymore without this same controversy, every discovery has a detractor and... well... fuck it all. Everyone who has ever questioned the morality of ANY scientific discovery needs to abandon anything made after the invention of the slightly sharper rock. The history of discovery shows just how bad we are at knowing where knowledge will lead. You tomorrow could make some observation about birds outside your back yard, or numbers on a calculator that some dude 20 years from now will do some thesis about, 30 years later it leads to some minor breakthrough and then a technological revolution in 2143, and all of a sudden two inventions and a leap later humanity wipes itself out. How dare you look out your window. How dare someone came up with math.
You can't apply some abstract morality to any science. On the morality side, well, every one has a different yardstick to measure by. On the science side, you don't know how it's going to go until you've done it. Once done, it doesn't get undone. In medicine, some things are going to live and some are going to die. You don't tell your vegan friend how many rabbits got plowed for his salad. You want to keep your friend, or you tell her, just to drive her nuts...
Morality and ethics are, unfortunately illusions. Most of the "bad" people you've ever heard of, didn't see themself that way, and many felt guided by some moral compass.
Most people have some result they would love to be able to gain from technology, science, or medicine, and they all have an idea of what obtaining it would be worth to them. It's probably aligned with their morality too.
The media though, seems to be loosing it's moral compass more and more every day, and mor and more are telling us what are morality should be.
We're smart enough to figure out if we think somethings a good idea or not.
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