The idea of progress : in what way can progress improve our daily life ?

The idea of progress

Key issue : In what way can progress improve our daily life?

Progress encompasses all developments that can improve the lives of human beings in their daily, professional or social lives. There are several forms of progress. In this notion, we approached the question of progress from an ethical point of view so we studied the progress in science and the impact it could have in the future. We asked ourselves: In what way can progress in medical field can improve society?

To answer the question, first of all, we are going to see the pros of scientific progress, precisely how it can improve our life and society then we are going to see the cons of progress, so how can it affect society.

The pros of science progress

Surrogacy.

The desire to have a child is very present in many families. The document “Having a child-an happy story” shows us the joy for parents to expect a child. However, gays couples or infertile couples can’t have their own children.  Thanks to science, nowaday infertile women or men and gays couples can have a child. This is what we saw with the document : “having a child - a harsh situation”. But in order to be safe you have to do a contract. This is also what we saw with the video : “A women and her surrogate”. Many women are dedicated to surrogacy to receive money. In example in the document : “Having twins with a surrogate - in india”, vaina an indian women helped a couple that had 3 miscarriages by becoming a surrogate mother to earn money. Thanks to this surrogacy, her husband could at least by a taxicab and her children had opportunities to have access to education. Here we can say that progress in science can bring happiness especially because it is a common decision and it can allow some people to earn money.

Secondly, we saw the progress of science with the concept of designer babies called PGD with stands for Pre implantation Genetic diagnosis. The first purpose of this concept was to eradicate serious diseases or for gender selection, but now the main goal is to “design” the main features of your babies such as eyes and hair. This is what we saw with the document : A baby, please ! Blond, with green eyes. It is said that laboratory have set up a system of genetic manipulation to design the baby of your dream.

In the document : “Designer Babies in fertility institutes”, Dr. Jeff Steinberg is on behalf of PGD because he feels like it’s an obligation to give this opportunity to the parents. Moreover, you can choose the gender of your child and finally it can be used to eradicate genetic diseases. In the document, the couple have decided to have a daughter thanks to after 5 sons. They consider PGD as an option.

The cons of science progress

We can say that progress can obviously improve our society but sometimes this is not the case.

We saw with the document “Ethics and Science need to shake hands” that Sometimes ethics and science are two concepts that are moving away. The concept of designer baby is a example. It is absolutely this concept is absolutely unethical. It can enlarge the gap between the riches and the poor. It’s a simple business as Dr. Capton said in the document.  And for Dr.Caplan, choosing better trait for you baby is a subjective choice, so this is useless.  Genetic manipulation has also given rise to cloning. This is also what we saw with “O brave new world” which is a imaginative novel who have anticipated genetics therapeutics and manipulations in the field of cloning and where only upper classes would have the opportunity to create clones. In this novel, the director of hatcheries has created a standardized society based on a caste system where clones would be part of the base of the pyramid in the category of workers. Despite the fact that this novel is far fetched, it’s a representation of the danger of genetics manipulations.