Bioethics (????), Technology, and Environment

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Bioethics (????),Technology, and Environment

• Life Science 2010

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Bioethics

• The consideration of new responsibility that has
  fallen upon us has produced a philosophical area
  that has come to be called bioethics, the ethics
  of life.
• Ethics itself implies inherent right and wrong,
  and so bioethics deals with the moral values of
  our behavior toward life on the planet.

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Bioethical questions

• Bioethical questions are of many types. But they
  all have one thing in common they are difficult,
  if not impossible, to answer.
• Should we send food to countries whose population
  is spiraling out of control, thereby encouraging
  more childbearing?

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• Should we build a dam to create electrical energy
  even if it means the extinction of yet another
  species?
• Should abortion be encouraged or even allowed?
• Should we spend public money to spare the lives
  of severely handicapped infants who may have to
  spend their lives in pain?
• Do we have the right to visit pain on the other
  species?

Bioethical questions
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Fig. 29.1 This raccoon, caught in a steel leg
trap is in great pain awaiting the trapper's
club. Its coat will be sold to make coats for
humans.
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Essay 29.1 Whose rights are they anyhow?

• Someone argue that the animals themselves have
  rights and that it is unethical for humans to
  violate those rights just because they can.
  (???)
• Medical researchers argue that experimentation
  with animal models must continue because this is
  the best way to learn about specific human
  problems and their treatment.

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Essay 29.1

• Animal rightists are opposed to furs for human
  apparel.
• If one agrees that it is possible to go too far
  in the abuse of animals for human safety, health,
  or whim, then where does one draw the line?
• The search for that line is an exercise of the
  ethical approach to our behavior toward our
  fellow animals.

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The ethics of doormats(???)

• Herny David Thoreau(??) once refused a doormat
  for his cabin at Walden Pond(Fig. 29.2)
• because he figured he wouldn't have time to sweep
  it.
• He needed that time, he said, to sit or walk in
  the woods .

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Fig. 29.2 Walden Pond.
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?????? bioethics

• Some people still enjoy the simple life, but even
  for them, things are becoming more complicated
  and they are being forced to deal with their own
  bioethical decisions.
• ?????(Fig. 29.3)????????????????????

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Fig. 29.3 Back packers often can't escape these
days, simply because so many others share the
wilderness with them.
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Fig. 29.4 Each year Americans throw away 1.5
billion pens, 2 billion disposable razors, over 2
million tires, and enough aluminum to build the
country's airline fleet every three months.
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Environmental pollution

• A pollutant is a substance whose presence in the
  environment is harmful.
• ??????
• 1. ????????????????
• 2. ?????????(??)??????????,????????????????????
• 3. Threshold effect.
• 4. Synergistic effect.

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Fig. 29.5 We sometimes consider pollution as
human-made. However, those steamy crevasses that
belched sulfurous smoke when the Earth was young
were polluters, as are today's volcanoes that
spew chemicals and ash into the air.
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Fig. 29.6 Traffic jams are not only inconvenient,
but down-right dangerous.
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Essay 29.2 Temperature inversions (??)

• Normal pattern

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• Thermal inversion (??)

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Fig. 29.7 Photochemical smog(?????) hanging over
Mexico City.
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Fig. 29.8 The smiles are gradually fading from
many of the ancient carved figures in Venice.
Sulfur dioxide pollution.
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Essay 29.3 Holes in the sky

• Ozone depletion was first discovered over the
  Antarctic in 1985, but data analysis shows it
  that been going on for ten years by them.
• Today. Two-thirds of the ozone disappears over an
  area the size of the United States each Antarctic
  spring.

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Essay 29.3 Holes in the sky

• In the northern hemisphere, where most people
  live, the ozone levels have declined by several
  percent since 1969 and decrease even more sharply
  in the early 1990s.
• 1987, industrial nations sent representative to
  Montreal (???) to sign the Montreal Protocol, and
  agreement to cut CFC production in half by 1998.

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Water pollution

• In many locales in the USA, the water is simply
  not safe to drink, as evidenced by the continuing
  outbreaks of infectious hepatitis.
• Infectious hepatitis is believed to be caused by
  a virus carried in human waste, usually through a
  water supply that is contaminated by sewage.

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Water pollution

• The water one drinks has already passed through
  the bodies of seven or eight other people.
• ??????,???????
• Chorine can interact with organic material to
  produce potentially carcinogenic hydrocarbons.
  ???????????

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Fig. 29.9 Sewage sludgy (??) accumulates in
waterways before reaching the ocean.
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Heat PollutionFig. 29.10 Cooling towers at an
electrical power plant.
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Essay 29.4 ????

• When our population was smaller, sewage could
  safely be emptied into moving rivers, where
  bacteria and fungi could digest it.
• When the numbers of waste producers along rivers
  became too high, the natural processes of
  decomposition proved too slow, and sewage
  treatment plants were devised.

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Essay 29.4 primary treatment

• A two-stage sewage treatment plant collects the
  wastes discharged into our waters, gets rid of
  the waste, treats the water, and pumps it back
  into our supply.
• First, the largest pieces of waste are screened
  out. Then the water is pumped into settling
  tanks where finer material sinks to the bottom as
  sludge.

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Essay 29.4 secondary treatment

• Biological aeration
• Chlorination
• secondary sedimentation
• water returned to rivers, lakes or oceans.

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???????????

• Advanced sewage treatment to remove pollutants
  after secondary treatment is possible.
• However, the advanced techniques are rarely used
  because the plants cost about twice as much to
  build and are expensive to operate.

Essay 29.4
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Fig. 29.11 We often eat from the top of the food
chain and thereby encounter food that may have
concentrated DDT in its tissues.DDT is soluble
in fat and is often stored in human fatty tissue,
and it can make its way into human milk.
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Fig. 29.13
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Dioxin (???),??DDT,???????????
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Pollution from nuclear reactors

• The worst nuclear disaster in history was due to
  a mysterious explosion in 1957 at a place called
  Kyshtym in the former Soviet Union.
• Today the names of 30 towns have been removed
  from maps of the area.
• A more likely threat is a meltdown(????), when
  the nuclear core overheats and melts.

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Fig. 29.14 The worst nuclear accident in the USA
occurred at Three Mile Island(???)?
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Essay 29.5 Radiation

• The nuclei of some atoms are unstable.
• Of the more than 320 isotopes that exist in
  nature, about 60 are unstable, or radioactive.
• In addition, humans have created about 200 more.
• Radioactive isotopes are called radioisotopes.
• Radioisotopes decay at predictable rates. (???)

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The danger lies in the molecules of DNA being
altered by free radicals, thereby producing
mutation. Such changes in DNA can result in a
variety of damage to the body (including
cancers), or if the change occurs in the DNA of a
gamete, the result can produce abnormal offspring.
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Essay 19.6 The Chernobyl meltdown

• The first warning came at 900 am on Monday,
  April 28, 1986.

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Only two months before the disaster, the Soviets
had calculated that a meltdown of this type could
statistically be expected only every 10,000
years. The Chernobyl reactor had been operating
three years.
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Essay 19.6 The Chernobyl meltdown
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Essay 19.7 Nuclear winter
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Essay 19.7 Nuclear winter

• According to computer analysis, nuclear
  explosions at several target cities would send
  clouds of smoke and ash high into the atmosphere,
  
• where it would hang suspended for long periods,
  blocking the sun's radiation
• and throwing the world into a dark and starving
  winter.

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Hidden decisions (?????)

• It is the role of the educated person to uncover
  these hidden decisions and bring them to light so
  that we as a society can begin to understand the
  cascading impact of our behavior.
• ??we can influence the environment by our vote.

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Our hidden decisions is endless.

• Do tax deductions for home mortgages encourage
  building?
• Does home building affect forests?
• What are the effects of building booms on land
  use policies? on sewage disposal problems? On
  water supplies? On road buildings?

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The future

• We must bear greater responsibility than do our
  ancestors.
• The reason is quite simple
• we know more about our world.
• Know, in a general way, how bad it is and how
  good it can be.
• have enough information to enable us to
  understand
• we can see more clearly than ever.

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• ?????!

japalura_at_hotmail.com Ayo NUTN
website http//myweb.nutn.edu.tw/hycheng/