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• +2

  A reply on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Apr 17 2011: If Lycaon pictus branched out earlier than wolves, how can we call it a "dog", and also call domesticated dogs (which are descended from wolves) "dogs", and NOT also call wolves "dogs"? That makes no semantic or evolutionary sense.
  
  Which was precisely my point about the ambiguity of the term "dog."

• A reply on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Apr 17 2011: You are right, David, I was speaking too fast and meant only to say that it had genes from the Chinook. Thanks for the correction.
• +5

  A reply on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Apr 12 2011: You have set these up as oppositional -- it is not scientific progress versus ethical morality. It is scientific progress with ethical reflection. You make the error of assuming that ethics is about saying no. It is not. It is about the responsible conduct of research, that considers carefully goals, suffering, harms, and consequences. To reduce ethics to "saying no" and then to oppose it is to set up a straw man, and is the way scientists have often justified doing profoundly unethical research.
  
  Ethics is not subjective. There is widespread consensus on a wide range of ethical topics. Claiming that ethics is subjective and therefore arbitrary is a second way science tries to avoid self-examination.
  
  Ethical reflection on research adds value to the research, promotes public acceptance of research, and maintains the integrity of the scientific enterprise.
• +4

  A reply on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Apr 12 2011: Who does? If you are referring to me, I would like for you to point out the place in my talk where you claim that I do that. I have actively written and lectured on the naturalistic fallacy, that human beings are divorced from "nature", whatever that means.
  
  Suggesting that some interventions with animals or humans raises ethical questions does not at all postulate that we are separate from nature. In fact, there is quite a lot of work that has been done on the evolution of morality, and the neuroscience of moral decision making, showing that ethical questions are very much a part of our neurophysiological functioning.
• +5

  A reply on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Apr 12 2011: This will be my last response to this thread. The evolutionary and taxonomic literature on dogs is simply unsettled on many of these questions, despite your suggestion of certainty.
  
  But if it makes everyone more comfortable, rather than arguing dog trivia, assume I was only referring to Canis lupus familiaris (domesticated dogs). Then all these objections are irrelevant.
  
  And by the way, TED is not a "scientific setting"; it is an educational one, and most of the speakers, and most of the audience, are not scientists. TED talks are for a general audience, and use colloquial language and common understandings, not technical terms and citations.
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Apr 5 2011: Liz A, It depends entirely how widely you use the term dog:
  "Dog is the common use term that refers to members of the subspecies Canis lupus familiaris (canis, "dog"; lupus, "wolf"; familiaris, "of a household" or "domestic"). The term can also be used to refer to a wider range of related species, such as the members of the genus Canis, or "true dogs", including the wolf, coyote, and jackals; or it can refer to the members of the subfamily Caninae, which would also include the African wild dog; or it can be used to refer to any member of the family Canidae, which would also include the foxes, bush dog, raccoon dog, and others."
  So the question of whether all dogs are descendants of domesticated dogs depends on how you define dog. Still, many authoratative sources disagree with you, and think African wild dogs and dingoes are descendants of early paleolithic domesticated dogs, with interbred jackal or other genetics.
• +6

  A reply on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Mar 28 2011: Daniel,
  
  You are simply incorrect. All dogs are human creations. We domesticated dogs from wolves. Wild dogs are dogs that escaped human captivity and became feral. Dingos and Wild dogs in Africa probably interbred with jackals or wolves, but their origins were with domesticated dogs, which were wolf pups bred to keep puppy like traits. That is why, for example, puppies lick your face - like wolf pups who lick the face of their mothers to get them to regurgitate food.
  I suggest you watch the National Geographic special, "And Man Created Dog."
• +11

  A comment on Talk: Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

  Mar 28 2011: I would like to respond to all the comments here, but there are far too many. i suggest people read the separate thread I began here. But i will say a couple general things:
  1. I am not against biotechnology, I am very much for it. The purpose of the talk was to get people thinking about the ethics of biotech, and there the talk succeeded.
  2. I purposely did not give my ethical opinion. I wanted people to think about these many ways we are manipulating the natural world and make their own decisions about ethics.
  3. Ethics is, and always has been, integral to science. To suggest that science be guided by ethics is NOT to suggest that these technologies be stopped; only that - as most scientists agree - science must carefully consider what it is doing and why.
  4. I was not trying to show biotech that was "scary". I was trying to show biotech that raised ethical issues. I was not suggesting anything be made illegal. I suggested that we need to be thoughtful about the ways we use animals and the goals of our research.
  5. The title of this talk was not mine, it was TED's.

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

  Mar 26 2011: Those are the kinds of ethical dilemmas that people like me use all the time in class. But note: the problem there is that there are TWO ACCEPTED ethical principles in conflict, and the question is how you balance them; no one would argue that it is not an ethical dilemma at all, because it is OK to kill people. The fact that we argue over ethical specifics does not mean that there is no consensus over ethics, any more than arguing over whether the 1972 Dolphins or the 1962 Packers were the greatest Football team ever means that we have no consensus over what makes a great football team.
  The vast majority of ethical principles we all agree upon. The vast majority of cases we all agree upon. That we can construct cases where there is disagreement is not remarkable. It is what ethics is all about.
• +2

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

  Mar 26 2011: Of course we argue about ethics, and there are disagreements. We also argue about science, and there are disagreements, but no one suggests that science is arbitrary. When I suggested that ethics does not allow us to do an unethical experiment to save lives, I was reflecting the ethical consensus we have arrived at as an ethical community.
  Ethics is, in my view, a conversation that evolves over time. So we have generally reached a consensus - internationally, by the way - that there are certain ethical principles that should guide human subjects experimentation. That does not mean noone disagrees, or some nations don't, but it is remarkable that in virtually all developed, scientific nations, we have a set of ethical standards for how we can experiment on human beings.
  All societies condemn murder. Even Nazi Germany had laws against murder (ironically). Different societies have different standards of what murder is, and some are, in the view of most of the rest of the world, very misguided. But note: even those countries who violate our standards of murder CLAIM they don't. That is, by claiming that the person they framed actually committed murder, or convicting someone of a crime they did not do, or denying that the government did not assassinate that political opponent, they are implicitly ACCEPTING the general ethical standards of the world (or else they would just say "Yes, we assassinated him, and we believe that was the ethical thing to do.").
  Ethics evolves over time, and we as a society, and as a world community, reach ethical consensus. As the world has gotten smaller, and communications faster and more ubiquitous, the global conversation about ethics has allowed more of a world consensus than was possible in the past. So the interesting thing about ethics today is that it is more universal than any time in history.