bioethics ( 生物倫理 ), technology, and environment life science 2010 鄭先祐 (ayo) 製作

Bioethics (生物倫理 ),Technology, and Environment

Life Science 2010

鄭鄭鄭 (Ayo) 製作

Life Science 2010 2

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. ( 動物權 )

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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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.

Essay 29.1

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The ethics of doormats( 擦鞋墊 )

Herny David Thoreau( 梭羅 ) 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 .

Life Science 2010 9Fig. 29.2 Walden Pond.

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自然愛好者的 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.

譬如：登山者 (Fig. 29.3) 。自然野地常常也會受到大量登山者的傷害。


Fig. 29.3 Back packers often can't escape these days, simply because so many others share the wilderness with them.


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.


Environmental pollution A pollutant is a substance whose

presence in the environment is harmful. 新污染的風險：

1. 生命世界尚未有足夠的時間去適應。 2. 因為大多數的新產品 ( 污染 ) 都未曾作過

長期的試驗，這些新污染物都有可能產生慢性長遠的影響。

3. Threshold effect. 4. Synergistic effect.


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.


Fig. 29.6 Traffic jams are not only inconvenient, but down-right dangerous.


Essay 29.2 Temperature inversions ( 逆溫 )

Normal pattern


Thermal inversion ( 逆溫 )


Fig. 29.7 Photochemical smog( 光化學煙霧 ) hanging over Mexico City.


Fig. 29.8 The smiles are gradually fading from many of the ancient carved figures in Venice. Sulfur dioxide pollution.


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.


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 ( 蒙特婁 ) to sign the Montreal Protocol, and agreement to cut CFC production in half by 1998.


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.


Water pollution

The water one drinks has already passed through the bodies of seven or eight other people.

為要清除污染，加入大量的氯。 Chorine can interact with organic

material to produce potentially carcinogenic hydrocarbons. 容易產生大腸和膀胱癌。


Fig. 29.9 Sewage sludgy ( 淤泥 ) accumulates in waterways before reaching the ocean.


Heat Pollution

Fig. 29.10 Cooling towers at an electrical power plant.


烏克蘭車諾堡核電廠爆炸後的情況。

為避免風險，只好低效率運轉，因而熱排水量 ( 污染 )最大。


Essay 29.4 廢水處理 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.


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.

Essay 29.4 primary treatment


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

Essay 29.4 secondary treatment


二次處理之後的三次處理 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


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.


Fig. 29.13


Dioxin ( 戴奧辛 ) ，類似 DDT ，易積存於脂肪和奶製品。


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( 爐心溶毀 ), when the nuclear core overheats and melts.


Fig. 29.14 The worst nuclear accident in the USA occurred at Three Mile Island( 三浬島 ) 。


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.

( 半衰期 )


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.


Essay 19.6 The Chernobyl meltdown The first warning

came at 9:00 am on Monday, April 28, 1986.


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.


Essay 19.6 The Chernobyl meltdown


反核，是全球生態環保運動的重點工作。


Essay 19.7 Nuclear winter


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.


Hidden decisions ( 隱藏的決擇 ) 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.

譬如： we can influence the environment by our vote.


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?


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.


問題與討論！

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Ayo NUTN website: http://myweb.nutn.edu.tw/~hycheng/

bioethics ( 生物倫理 ), technology, and environment life science 2010 鄭先祐 (ayo) 製作

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