Devrions-nous avoir peur du progrès? (document en anglais)

Should we fear progress ?

Man and science progressing day by day, man is constantly inventing new technologies that make our life more enjoyable. But advanced is so rapid that some problems, including ethical, then we can ask the question: "Should we be afraid of progress?" We will initially "negative examples illustrating progress" and a time second "positive examples illustrating progress".

To begin with, I'd like to speak about Genetic manipulation to gender selection.

We saw in documents that In the US, Institute of Fertility offers to couples to select the sex of their babies. For some these "test tube babies" is going against nature. The technique is called PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis).

Indeed, if we can choose the sex of her child, we may in the future choose the skin color, the color of her hair out of her eyes ... We then exceed ethical issues. It is possible for them to choose the sex, the physical appearance and the genetic predisposition of their future child. This has become the natural way of engendering children in this society.

Furthermore, Cloning is also a worrying process. In "O brave new world!", the cloning process is called Bokanovskification. The idea is to create dozens of identical human beings who belong to the lower classes of the society and who will be submissive, who won't criticize the system. Here, progress leads to the standardization of the society. The novel aims at denouncing the excess of a technology- based society, in which developments are not under control...

But progress has not only negative aspects

It is also possible that progress can help our society without exceeding the ethical or without scare people taking unstoppable proportions as those we have seen before. Indeed, progress can be used for quite noble, like medical example. Since then, he is equipped with artificial limbs and he went back to climbing. Research and scientific progress enable people who suffer from a disability to lead a normal life again. Disabled, paraplegic people can walk again. The system can also be applied to soldiers, for a military usage.

The detection of the major genetic diseases can certainly be considered as a progress, if such diseases can be treated, even cured.

I believe progress is something positive, it can be scary because it comes out of our customs, nature and can lead to breakthroughs that often touches the boundary of ethics, yet it allows us to move forward, and is necessary to the evolution of humanity. I think However, that ethical issues cannot be avoided. If we want to build a sensible world, the world of tomorrow, we should consider riskes too.

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