Biological Ethics

III. Ethics of the researchbiological

Introduction: Ambivalence of the technique

N. López Moratalla

The experimental sciences have brought mankind a great good: knowledge. The natural sciences, together with what are often called the "human sciences", have provided many dataabout man. It can be said that we know much more about ourselves today than we did a few years ago; but at the same time it should also be noted that we have learned less about what, or who, man is than we have about his biological substratum.

This quantitatively great increase in knowledge has brought with it the sometimes serious responsibility of knowing how to deal with the new situations created by the scientific development, insofar as they may threaten due respect for human dignity and the preservation of nature, the world of man.

It is not a negative attitude to face up to these new situations that the technological developmenthas brought about, to channel it so that it serves man and is not used against him, or for the destruction of the natural world. It should not represent a curtailment of progress and a search for brakes on researchout of fear of Science. Such coping requires the vital inner energy - moral energy - to seek solutions in accordance with the truth of man and nature, even if, at times, those solutions may be more costly or difficult than other alternatives.

It is said that today there is a more underhand misery than that of the Third World; it is the misery of the so-called "Fourth World": the poverty of human values and the lack of ethical resources of societies which, possessing abundant means and resources, scientific knowledge and available technologies, show no respect for the real and concrete human being, for every human being whatever his race, age, state of health, or capacity to perform. The immense power of science today makes it all the more urgent and necessary for scientists to have true moral convictions, so that their work does not exclude or alienate man from his natural world, nor dilute him in it, as just another "object to be manipulated".

The future of science always depends on ethics: scientific creativity is safe when the scientist, because he has ethical criteria, is constantly and honestly confronted with the question of truth: with the meaning and the proper sense of the realities he is dealing with.