new fact of present reality, and the choices we need to make are not just "natural" biological choices. They are moral ones (Heinrich 43).
However, even such a global morality does not answer all the questions raised by new developments in medicine and biology, and more and more often, the issue is specifically whether because we can do something means we should:
At their best, these new technologies extend life. But often the quality of that life is questionable and the cost of treatment phenomenal, as in the case of a woman tethered to an artificial nutrition IV in a Washington, D.C. hospital. The woman lingered through 38 years in persistent vegetative state. At issue here is a conflict between medicine's duty to preserve life and its duty to preserve it without undue suffering (Phalon 134).
We may agree that the preservation of life is the highest good. At the same time, more and more people today are asking about the quality of that life as a determining factor, usually related to the degree to which the wishes of the individual in the matter should be considered.
The classical point of view is offered by researchers in "basic" natural science, meaning the study of nature without an immediate practical goal, and they like to think of themselves as an autonomous intellectual community following agendas developed by the internal history of science itself and adhering to principles of pluralism, openness, and competition thought to assure "objectivity." On the other hand, the "radical science" movement emphasizes this vision of scientists as an autonomous group producing objective "knowledge" is illusory and that this apparent autonomy derives from the congruence of the career interests of scientists and the economic interests of dominant social sectors. The institutional frameworks of science, such as academia, engineering firms, and drug companies, involve class, race, and gender hierarchies, and only those near...