Ethics in Science and Technology
Year:2007 | Volume:2 | Issue:1-2|Papers Count:17

This paper consists of short review of history of Egypt, India, and ancient Iran and considers the philosophy of ethics based on historical exhortations, continues pointing to views of Kant in wisdom, intellect and ethics. After making references to Percival's" Medical Ethics" in London, Adler's ethical movements in the USA, Kuwait Cultural-ethical movement in London, Publication of a book of two volumes by Wester Mark, it has been tried to gather various areas of ethics in altogether 80 fields, such as philosophy, social sciences, medical and biological sciences, engineering and technological sciences, environmental and ethnological sciences, and finally economy.

Introduction: It can be said that many of the human researches are followed after animal testing’s. But the researchers should be concerned about animal legal rights and the ethical animal research.Material and Methods: In a descriptive study in 11 research centers in Tehran University of medical sciences were evaluated considering housing, feeding, care and use of the laboratory animals as well as the knowledge, attitude and practice of researchers and animal care givers. The results were analyzed using Spss software.Results: In this study, 29 researchers and 10 personnel evolved in animal care were evaluated. Most of the researchers had the high score of knowledge, attitude and practice in choosing the adequate species and numbers of the animals to obtain valid results also knowing the signs of stress and pain in them, but they had poor knowledge about animals' appropriate environmental conditions, breeding, breast feeding, and euthanasia and emit of animal bodi's. Only 40% of animal care givers knew their important role in animal health and its influence on the accuracy of the investigations on them as the result. 60% of them had enough information on animal disease, breeding and light and dark cycles in their environment but their attitude and practice was not enough. 60% of them didn't know human killing methods of animal, preventing methods of transmission of zeonosis. 50% of animal care givers didn't know about emit of animal bodi's but 80% of them used one of methods for that. Their room or cage condition, food, water and cage sanitation were at a standard condition.Conclusion: According to the result, it seems that general procedure including standardization of their room, specialty control of environmental condition and providing the capability of emitting of animal bodi's should be applied by animal care providers. Also for safe living, care and use of the laboratory animals it is necessary to provide appropriate training for the research staffs and animal care givers.

Main factor for development of societies is their people, because human is both End and means of development therefore, Countries and International organizations had special notice for human development and its causes. This paper focused on importance of human development for growth of Societies, and the influence of administrative corruption on it. The analysis of information in 86 countries showed a significant negative influence of administrative corruption on human development indicators, especially in developing countries. Finally, this paper proposes Codes of Ethics in organizations as a main way for decline administrative corruption.

The biotechnology industry has in recent years come under attack from an ethical point of view concerning its intellectual property rights and the non-accessibility of life-saving products for many of the poor in less developed countries and developing countries. The industry has replied with economic and legal justifications for its actions. The result has been a communication gap between the industry on the one hand and low income nations critics on the other. This paper attempts to present and evaluate the arguments on many sides and suggests a possible way out of the current impasse. It attempts to determine the ethical responsibility of the biotechnology industry in making products available to the needy, while at the same time developing the parallel responsibilities of individuals, governments, and NGOs. It concludes with the suggestion that the industry develop an international code for its self-regulation.

This paper is going to examine critically the philosophical foundations of John Dewey's ethical views. Dewey argues that ethical inquiry is of a kind of empirical inquiries. Value judgments are some instruments for enabling the satisfactory redirection of conduct when habit no longer suffices to direct it. As tools, they can be evaluated instrumentally, in terms of their success in guiding conduct. We test our value judgments by putting them into practice and seeing whether the results are satisfactory whether they solve the problems they were designed to solve. This pragmatic approach requires that we locate the conditions of warrant for our value judgments in human conduct itself, not in any a priori fixed reference point outside of conduct, such as in God's commands, Platonic Forms or pure reason. The main problem of moral philosophy of John Dewey is relativism.

In this article during description of the research importance according to anatomy and physiology of human, the ideal psychological aspects of a researcher were discussed.

Before the evolving of the new knowledge, named bioethics; ethics had been the pivot of medicine for more than 2000 years since Hippocrates. In the complex world of today, bioethics education is obligatory in the course of medicine; because, medical policies and legislation for maintenance of patients' rights are ever-changing, the function of health-care system has been altered from the past, and today, clinical medicine considers decision-making about every new subject as an important issue.In order to perform medical care in an ethical and humanistic manner, it is necessary that the physicians learn special aspects of medical ethics better and learn to think about the increasing complexities of the world of medicine.The academic programs of education for students, residents, and continuous education for physicians are the best way to achieve this goal. Today, medical ethics is taught in many medical universities throughout the world and it is necessary that a group of skillful teachers conduct educating medical ethics to the physicians. Teachers should be encouraged to accept this important responsibility and provide practical recommendations to the physicians in order to promote medicine at the bedside. Educating bioethics to the physicians is facilitated using a clinical approach. Educating this science should be established in the entire phases of the medical education including pre-, post and continuous education. It is necessary to form a culture in the academic programs and clinical education courses that is sensitive to the ethical issues which patients and their families are interested in. clinical teachers should consider personality-making process of the students, because personality is a pivotal issue for an ethical life.

These days, the seriousness of environmental crises is reached to what extent that human life and other creations are going to be endangered on Earth. Hence, heoretical foundations of determinants of human-nature interaction are considered by whoever concerns environmental preservation. Ethics is among these foundations and most of environmental specialists believe that clarification of proper environmental ethics is necessary for environmental preservation and exploitation. Environmental ethics is based on an intrinsic value spectrum with two extremes. One is anthropocentrism and the other one is ecocentrism. However, religion and spiritual beliefs have been getting recognized in establishing proper environmental ethics since recent past years as the right human-nature interaction and the solution for environmental crises are being searched in getting back to religious and unworldly beliefs. This article tries to illuminate essence of and views about environmental ethics concerning two basic questions in philosophy of ethics namely, 1) What possessed intrinsic value? 2) What are the criteria for evaluating a behavior as moral one? This article concludes when environmental ethics is based on Theocentrism and Theology, it is possible to have the most comprehensive outlook for preserving nature. Based on Theocentricity and the view of human from the religion of Islam, it tries to establish an approach entitled Ego Ecology in environmental ethics that emphasizes on divine aspect of human's self to preserve the natural environment by self-definition and inner self-defense.

Attention to the Ethical problem from ancient times have been an alive field of great civilizations even the most impatient scientist have given idea about this matter. This study is a bief summary related to this trend.

Some study methodologies have drawn particular ethical scrutiny when used in psychiatric research, both because of their inherent risks, and because of the subject population of persons with mental illness. Clinical psychiatric research creates challenging ethical dilemmas. The choice of research design can have significant implications for subject safety and must be carefully considered. While these issues are not necessarily unique to this context, the particular vulnerabilities attending psychiatric illness merit close attention in the design of research involving persons with psychiatric disorders. This review focuses on ethical aspects of psychiatric research in particular study design issues.

For understanding the relationship between ethics and rights we need to digest the real meaning of each. In this article it is mentioned to the differences between ethics and rights and explained social rights meaning and some example related to it.

Objective: There are still worldwide controversial attitudes regarding embryo donation (ED) program. The aim of this descriptive study was to evaluate the infertile couples' opinions regarding ED program for infertility treatment in Iran.Methods: A total of 120 infertile patients (women, n=6l; men, n=59) residing in Iran were asked to fill out the questionnaires. Part I of the questionnaire form contained general demographic information. Part II contained 17 questions to reveal their knowledge and attitudes about ED program in Iran.Results: The vast majority of the subjects had formal education. One-third had complete objection toward ED. 21% and 14% of the women and men thought that ED is not permitted by their religion, respectively. Nearly half of participants believed in informing the general public about ED in mass media. In addition, majority of the participants were in favor of ED over adopting a child. Psychological counseling was strongly recommended by vast majority of respondents for both donor and the recipient of the embryos.Conclusion: The vast majority of infertile patients had positive attitudes toward ED as treatment for selected infertile cases. However, their knowledge on their religious attitudes was limited. Therefore, the mass media and healthcare professional should develop programs for informing the public regarding the ED.