Between Ends and Means
...ducts have been made. There seems no control over in science these days. This is why scientific products and research like the Fen-Phen recall and the AIDS's scandal have occurred. Today, "the bond of technical science burdens and threatens us" because we are often trying "to employ the body without the spirit; we are trying to buy the corpse of science" (93). Originally, medical science began from the thoughts of people wanting to save lives. Most medical products have side effects more or less. Scientists should not ignore even small errors, because it may cause big problems after all. Unfortunately, these days, there seems to be no end to the number of people complaining about or suffering from medical products after they were already spread over the market. One such example is Fen-Phen. In the United States, experts say that adverse reactions to medications kill 100,000 Americans a year (Grady 1). The use of Fen-Phen began in the early 1980s and it was used as an appetite suppressant (Canedy 2). This supplement appeared as a quick fix for excess fat. A Government survey showed that 97 million people in the United States, which is 55 percent of the adult population, are overweight (1). Therefore, an estimated six million Americans took Fen-Phen and brought manufacturers tens of millions in profits (2). However, Fen-Phen is no longer marketed in the United States after studies showed that they might cause a deadly heart-valve disease (Rogers 1). This is one of the examples that scientists took a shortcut in their processes. In this obese society, many overweight people are desperate to shed pounds in easy way. The society pressured to people to make skinny. Some scientists also wish to make a quick profit. This made the situation have worsened. If scientists could have studied more, giving respect to the Bronowski's principle, this sloppy consequence could not have happened in public. Scientists have to try "to bridge the separation between science and the humanities" (Bronoski 88). If scientists and the public are not willing to take both the progress and progression into consideration, we will not make "the proper application of scientific advance" (Bodmer 165). When scientists ignore or make light of the harm of medical products or treatments, they often cause health problems, which is also called pharmaceutical damage. Science can exist only within "justice and honor and respect between man and man" (90). Needless to say, since scientists involve human life, each scientist has a responsibility to respect every single human life. However, in Japan, during 1970s until the 80s, horrible inhumane incidents occurred. The doctors recommended the patients who had the genetic disease, hemophilia, to receive non-heat treated concentrated blood products which the patients trusted to be the only effective medicine but which had been contained with the AIDS virus (Opinion 1). About 400 hemophiliacs have since died from it and "hemophiliacs with HIV make up 52 percent of all HIV-infected people, and hemophiliacs with AIDS account for 60 percent of all those with AIDS" in Japan (Yasuda 1). In this world, as we already know, AIDS makes a person to face death from the b...