Question of the week: Should science be separate from ethics?
Jansico Chu Man-fai, 17, Queen's College
This is the most controversial topic of the 21st century as it arouses lots of questions. Should we design our babies? Should we change someone's genetic information? After pondering it seriously, I believe science should be separate from ethics.
If science is not separated from ethics, development will be hindered to a large extent. For instance, if we had not accepted our ancestors were apes, we would not have been able to create the Theory of Evolution and this would have adversely affected science today. Therefore, ethics sometimes blind us to the truth.
Some may argue that if we do not consider ethics when developing science, life in the future will be totally beyond our imagination, full of horrific disasters - there will be monster babies, mutant diseases that we cannot control, cannibal mice that attack humans. It all sounds terrible.
But if we have to consider ethics before every step of scientific development, our scientific progress will be very slow and may even stop. For example, if we had to worry about the potential danger of explosives, they would never have been invented and today we would not even be able to build tunnels.
So the most important thing is how best to apply science in the real world. Undoubtedly, pure scientific development should not be hindered by anything. However, the application of that science should be supervised and regulated. I suggest a global regulation system should be set up to check the application of advanced science to avoid any nightmare scenarios.
To conclude, the development of science should be separate from everything, including ethics. What we need to consider is the practical application of science.
Of course, science has both positive and negative sides and it is hard to control its applications. But if we still want to improve our world, we should not suspend our scientific development because of ethical reasons.
A global regulation system should be set up to check the application of a development to ensure it won't harm us.
Faristha Fathima, 14, St Margaret's Co-Ed English Secondary and Primary School
If science is separated from ethics, there will be too many developments which are against Mother Nature.
Moral values are laid down in all religions and societies and anything against those values will be detrimental to humans and to the entire world.
Science can only give results on whether something is true or false but it doesn't tell us the consequences of implementing changes over a period of time. Moral values or ethics have been time-tested for generations and proved to be good for the human race.
Any experiment, such as genetic engineering, which is against these moral values or ethics will have dire consequences.
Now science has developed so drastically scientists can alter DNA and change people's original characteristics. No one knows the long-term consequences of this.
Scientists say they can alter the characteristics of any species - plants, animals or humans. We don't know what effect this will have on other plants, animals or humans.
Any science which interferes with the ethics which have been revealed by God through all the prophets will have a devastating effect and will ultimately bring the human race to an end.
It is also contrary to morals and ethics to alter the individual characteristics of a person.
Genetic engineering uses artificial laboratory techniques - rather than natural mechanisms - which breach natural reproductive barriers and greatly increase the likelihood of unexpected side-effects.
We are seeing these changes all around us. Right now we have genetically modified food on the market. No one knows what impact this modified food will have on human health in the long run.
Since genetically modified foods have not been tested over long periods, they could bring about future health disasters we have not even considered.
Thus, any science experiments should keep ethics in mind when making any inventions or discoveries.
Faristha was the debate winner on May 29.
Jansico was the debate winner on June 5.