“Life’s short and hard, like a bodybuilding elf.” (“Lift your head up high” – The Bloodhound Gang)
We had a nice chat at journal club about the ethics of biotechnology. Like most conversations about ethics, very little was resolved. One thing that’s pretty clear is that scientists have an ever increasing obligation to share their discoveries in a format accessible and comprehensible to the general public. To that end, the Human Genome Project dedicates about 10% of its budget to outreach and education at the high school level. Interestingly, you can come to the conclusion that you have to do this from a number of directions:
* Knowledge should be shared
* The public pays for academic science, they should reap the benefits
* If we don’t share accurate knowledge, hateful fear mongers like the ELF will come and smash our labs and kill us.
Leave a Reply