TED Community » John Mihalko

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• A comment on Conversation: Misunderstanding Ethics and the purpose of this talk

  Apr 12 2011: I think what scares us the most isn't what can be done but that it will be done. Regardless of a society's ethics there are always outliers (and even those in the mainstream) who will do the unethical. Paul mentions "the history of human subject experimentation is scandalous" and it will continue to be so. Whether it be politicians or unscrupulous media people, we have debated, talked and thought about many important aspect of our society both on a local and world wide scale and nothing has been accomplished other than a lot of hot air being blown around. The quesiton of ethics in science is moot because there is no one to report or enforce any code of conduct. This is more than apparent in the fact mentioned by Paul that most of the food we eat is bio-engineered and we the consumers of that food are not even told on the package. If they are hiding something, there is something to hide. And yet, Paul asks us to think about and debate ethical issues regarding bio-engineering? Why? So science can remain unethical? Science has hidden bio-engineered food on our plates and we are talking ethics after the fact? Before we can have any discussion on ethics, we first need to have the discussion on how to punish unethical behavior because if we refuse to do anything about unethical behavior then all this talk about ethics is just a bunch of hot air.