Title: The
1The enlightened party'
- has just made you its candidate for president.
Debates with your rivals from the other parties
loom. You have to be prepared to respond to
these burning issues
2To promote the general welfare
- The government should double the amount of money
allocated - to support scientific research, theoretical and
applied? Or - to provide free medical coverage for all? Or
- put the money into primary and secondary
education - What are the advantages of each? And given the
financial constraints you cannot do all three.
3Politically you must hold other agencies
harmless financially, hence to cover the costs
of this critical investment
- you will either have to
- double taxes or
- double worker / industrial productivity
- Attempt to cut or limit access to other popular
government programs - or some combination of the three.
- What is your strategy?
- What does reason tell you will deliver the
maximum advantage / benefit? What does your
political sense tell you about the the
countervailing forces. - That is Are there costs associated with your
strategy? And who will object?
4Geneticists tell you that they can
- produce a cloned strain of wheat that is
resistant to drought and insecticides and has has
a yield and nutritional value 50 greater than
conventional wheat. - They assure you that there are no health
concerns, and the need for this product in the
fight against hunger is manifest. - Can you embrace and promote this product? For you
country? Or for other countries that experience
famine?
5The National Institute of Health tells you that
population growth is unsustainable given the
national and global resources. A new policy is
required
- Some of your more enlightened and scholarly
advisors want to - Limit the number of female children to one per
family - Others want
- to raise the taxes on those who choose to have
more than one child. - Still others want to
- Limit the number of Pampers / Huggies that can be
sold - Require those whose GPA is below 3.5 to have a
vasectomy or tubal ligation - Use advertising / persuasion to convince
potential parents that their life style will
suffer. - Other?
6The CDC informs you
- With a simple screening test of both parents, we
can insure that no child is born with genetically
determined disabilities or deformities
(congenital deafness, blindness, epilepsy, etc.) - What should be done with this assessment of
risk? - Should the test be required of all those who wish
to marry and / or have children? - And what should be done with those who wish to
proceed anyway to have children? Should society
cover their medical expenses?
7Your science advisory board anticipates that
- It will soon be possible to use therapeutic
cloning to generate tissues and organs for
transplant. - To do this the DNA would have to be extracted
from each the person in the fetus stage and
inserted into an enucleated egg. - Organs would be generated from the cloned human
embryos. - What is your policy? Who will support this
program? Who might object and why?
8Your science advisory board informs you
- That with a simple restructuring of human DNA
of each American we can insure that congenital
diseases will be eliminated. - Who will support such a program? And who will
object? - What is your policy recommendation to the voters?
9To vaccinate or not to vaccinate??
- An outbreak of influenza or measles? Or polio,
or whatever is at hand. - Your science board assures you that
vaccinations are safe and effective, and that if
95 are vaccinated even those who cannot be will
be protected by the herd. - Many of your political supporters reject
vaccination as dangerous and as an offense
against freedom to choose what is best for
their children. - Science and culture appear to be at odds with one
another. What is your solution? Politically Can
you afford to offend your most progressive and
energetic supporters?
10Resources are disappearing we need a new
strategy to stop the bleeding. Your program
for saving the planet involves
11Bothun and Nicols argue
- Because our scientists are trained to be
skeptical and rational aka beyond politics
and - Because they are also apolitical and amoral, and
- Because the average voter is venal and
un-enlightened - we should put ourselves into the hands of the
enlightened scientific establishment when it
comes to deciding the critical policy issues of
the day. Do you agree?