Gayle Dauterive responding to Paul Root Wolpe: It's Time to Question Bio-Engineering

I just finished watching the TED talk on bio-engineering, and I have to admit that it really disturbed me. Wolpe talks about what has been going on in bio-engineering in a rather matter-of-fact but cautionary way. Not being a real science-minded person myself, I was not aware of all of the progress that has been made with regard to bio-engineering and the "designing and altering the physiological forms that inhabit our planet." It is disturbing to me that scientists have taken animals such as cockroaches and beetles and implanted computer chips into their brains to use them as "robots" and control their movements. Don't get me wrong, I am not a fan of the cockroach at all, but I don't think that it is morally right to use animals as guinea pigs (no pun intended) for our scientific curiosity. When Wolpe talked about removing "...the autonomy from these animals and turn them into our playthings" I was really bothered by it. Is it ethical to do such things? Are we trying to play God? Should we, for whatever reason, use other animals this way? Is it okay, as Wolpe questions, "to manipulate and create whatever we want?" For years, there have been back-and-forth discussions between religious leaders and scientists about what is and what is not ethical in the world of science. It is easy to see why some people are so passionate about it.

When I was in college, I had to read a children's novel in the genre of science fiction. I am really not a huge science fiction fan, but I chose a novel that was about a girl whose father was a scientist and who worked in a lab with monkeys. When the girl was involved in a horrible accident, the father took out her brain - she had lost brain function due to the accident - and replaced it with the brain of one of the monkeys in his lab. I can remember thinking how awful and how impossible that was. As I listened to Wolpe's talk, I thought back to that book and the impossibility of it. Life has really turned into science fiction, hasn't it?

As far as ethics in education goes, I think there are probably just as many questions with just as many varied answers. In a religious school, the subject of morals, values, conduct, ethics, right and wrong, etc. come up every day. We want to teach our students right from wrong and good from bad and instill in them a set of values that benefit humanity. I think the biggest problems that schools have in this area is that we don't have the children 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When they leave us they go to homes that may not share the same values that the school shares. They go to Facebook, to television, to music, to movies, to parties, etc. where they see things and hear things that are not always up to good moral standards. How do we combat these things? It is a challenge to teach ethics to students today. We use our religious education programs, peer helper programs, stop bullying programs, Challenge programs and other community resources to try to instill in them good morals and values. I think that non-public schools have a bit of an easier job with this, but it is still a challenge, especially in the world in which we live today where there are so many negative influences.