[Opinion] Science and Ethics

Since National Bioethics Advisory Commission of the Ministry of Science and Technology revealed the draft of the Bioethics basic law, the heated discussions have stirred. The experts of the biotechnology have warned that the strict regulation might excessively restrict the researches on the biotechnology and finally it may lead to the lack of national competitiveness in the era of the biotechnology in the 21st century. On the contrary, religious groups and scholars of ethics have asserted that the law needs to be strengthened since the dignity of life is more important than the national competitiveness.

An issue over the field of science has rarely attracted the attention of people even now. Koreans tend to consider science as an instrument for the economic development and as something that the ordinary people may ignore. However, the influences of science and technology have permeated in the every-day life and no one can escape from them. Many problems related with the individual life and value system, such as croning, gene-modified products, environmental pollution, and privacy protection in the information society, have emerged.

Since these problems are basically related to the individual values, it is important to find a national consensus rather than a scientific answer. Therefore, the debates on the Bioethics basic law would be the foundation for the discussions related to science and technology in the future. The debates could be a learning process to draw a consensus through the efforts in understanding the opinion of other people. For such a successful learning process of an agreement to take affect, the scientists and engineers need to acquire the general knowledge on ethics and philosophy and the scholars of the humanities and the social science need to expand their knowledge of the natural science.

However, it would be a tough road. Scholars have more and more concentrated on their specialty and the focus of the college education correspondingly has moved to the instruction of specialized knowledge. The true crisis of the universities and the basic studies derives of the specialized education. The universities are in the danger of becoming the training schools for high-technicians such as scientists and engineers who ignore the dignity of life and lawyers who do not understand the change of the world, rather than fostering the intelligent minds who could comprehend the knowledge of science and ethics.

Oh Se-Jung (guest editorialist, professor of Physics, Seoul National University)

sjoh@plaza.snu.ac.kr