- 最后登录
- 2011-9-12
- 在线时间
- 38 小时
- 寄托币
- 107
- 声望
- 0
- 注册时间
- 2008-6-6
- 阅读权限
- 10
- 帖子
- 0
- 精华
- 0
- 积分
- 48
- UID
- 2502034
- 声望
- 0
- 寄托币
- 107
- 注册时间
- 2008-6-6
- 精华
- 0
- 帖子
- 0
|
本帖最后由 静水深流01 于 2009-3-11 10:53 编辑
同Issue69~~ word:609
The responsibility of government is to make a better life for the citizens in the country, and thus what should or should not be done by government depends on the standard above. Therefore, when we take a look at its obligation of placing restrictions on scientific research and development, the basic principle is whether the restrictions benefit the life standards here.
In most case, government or its members are too ignorant to decide how to control or lead the development of science, because they are not scientists. As a result, these people impose restriction totally based on their personal interest or political standpoint. For instance, in the medieval period, science was severely suppressed by Rome's Pop only because their results greatly showed objection to the Pop's credence. What is more, Reagan' s government set up a program about national defense, which leaded the direction of development of science to the military application and restricted science in other field. It had its interlocking effect that China set up its similar program called 863 in order to learn from the USA. These restrictions ignore the right rules of science and not only restrict the development of science but also delay the improvement of people's lives.
In addition, even if government that employs experts to help them make decision about restriction on science, these restrictions are also doubtful because of no one really knows the possible or potential value of a research. Marshall and Warren, who found helicobacter pylori in stomach that leads to peptic ulcer, won the Nobel Prize in 2005, 23 years after they published their work on the magazine called Lancet. Before that time, no one believed that any bacterium could survive in stomach where there is full of acid enzyme. If the government had adopted other expert’s belief and stopped funding the research, there would not have been such great result and improvement for treatment of stomachache. Similar example also exists in other scientific field, when we take evolutional theory as an example. Darwin' travel brought us a magnificent theory which are not full accepted by all of us. Though the results are lack of empirical evidence, alone this cannot obscure virtues. On basis of this theory, people can explain many phenomena and thus have developed fantastic results in genetic field, which eventually introduced a new medical treatment called genetic therapy.
However, there are other cases in which without restrictions of government scientific development will do harm to people's life and thus restriction is necessary. First, such case happens when the scientific research itself is dangerous such as research for nuclear weapons. After people realized the strong strength when the US air force bombed the Japan with two atomic bombs, almost every country wants to develop its own nuclear weapon. To avoid the world being destroyed by nuclear war, The pact called nuclear nonproliferation was subscribed by many governments, which means that they have obey the rule and place restriction on research in such field. Second, another case in point is that surfeit and meaningless research waste lots of money which could be use to solve other social problems such as starvation or educational problems. Many years earlier, a prevailing research done by scientist in various countries is to create a machine, which will work without exhausting any energy. These efforts were all in vain because they disobeyed the basic law of universe called the first law of thermodynamics.
All in all, we cannot simply judge the topic of the issue without taking the effect of scientific research into account. In fact, governments should support researches which will benefit the society, while properly put restrictions on that is harmful or vague. |
|