Despite the Nazi horrors, in 1953 the new eugenics was founded, when Watson and Crick postulated the double helix of DNA as the basis of chemical heredity. In 1961, scientists have deciphered the genetic code of DNA, laying the groundwork for code manipulation and the potential building of new life forms. After thirty years from the discovery of the DNA structure, the experimenters began to carry out the first clinical studies of human somatic cell therapy.
The practice of prenatal genetic tests identifies genes or unwanted genetic markers. Parents can choose to continue pregnancy or give up the fetus. Once the preimplantation genetic diagnosis occurs, potential parents can choose to use in vitro fertilization and then test early embryonic cells to identify embryos with genes they prefer or avoid. Because of concerns about eugenics, genetic counseling is based on a “non-directive” policy to ensure respect for reproductive autonomy. The argument for this counseling service is that we should balance parental autonomy with child’s autonomy in the future. Specialists have not yet given a clear answer to the question of whether these practices should be considered eugenic practices, or if they are moral practices.
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28777.95849
Author: Dictionaries
Life and death in a pandemic
At the beginning of the crisis, the international media called China’s strategy to combat coronavirus “tough”, “extreme”, “severe” and “controversial”, stressing that it offered “no guarantee of success”. (Qin, Myers, and Yu 2020) After the difficult experiences that other countries … Read More
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Philosophical aspects of pandemics
Throughout human history, there have been a number of pandemics. The most devastating pandemic was the plague known as the Black Death, which killed about 200 million people in the 14th century, (Philipkoski 2015) and the 1918 flu pandemic (Spanish … Read More
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Newton’s Principia on God-mediated action
As John Henry states, Newton simply wants to reaffirm the truth of God’s omnipresence without directly involving him in the physics of the world system. Newton simply wants to distance himself from a Cartesian concept of God and convince the atheists that God is a real presence extended in the world. God must exist in space for the space to exist, but God does not only act through contact. Henry believes that Andrew Janiak and Hylarie Kochiras give us a wrong picture of a Newton who believes in opportunism. Newton, Henry asserts, has always assumed that God acted through secondary causes:
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35495.39846
What came first: the virus or the cell?
Viruses reproduce only inside the living cells of organisms, (Wu 2020) being known so far more than 6,000 species of viruses. (International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) 2020) When it infects a cell, the viruses force it to rapidly … Read More
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Unsolved problems in physics, in theory and observations
This is a list of some of the great unsolved problems in physics. During the long-term process of evolving theories according to the scientific method, there is an intermediary phase between two periods of stability where questions remain unanswered and … Read More
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Falsifiability
Falsifiability (also referred to as the use of refutability) was introduced by Karl Popper and is considered an important concept in epistemology, allowing to draw a line between scientific theories and those that are not. An assertion, a hypothesis, is … Read More
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Atomic nucleus
(Atomic nucleus of helium.) The atomic nucleus refers to the region located in the center of an atom made up of protons and neutrons (nucleons). The size of the nucleus (of the order of a femtometer, ie 10-15 meters) is … Read More
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Social equality
Social equality is a legal and philosophical concept. It stems from the principle of equality, which appears at the head of the declarations of human rights (universal declaration of human rights of 1948). This has two main aspects: civil equality, … Read More
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Paradoxes of causal loops in spacetime
There is, among some scientists and philosophers, the idea that any theory 
that would allow the time travel would introduce causal issues. These types of temporal paradoxes can be avoided by the Novikov self-consistency principle or by a variation in the interpretation of many worlds with interacting worlds. The world in which we live has, according to David Lewis, a Parmenidean ontology: “a manifold of events in four dimensions,” and the occupants of the world are the 4-dimensional aggregates of the stages – “temporal lines”. The causal loops in backwards time travel involve events that appear to “come from nowhere,” paradoxical “self-existent” objects or information, resulting in a bootstrap paradox. Many believe that causality loops are not impossible or unacceptable, but only inexplicable.
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28792.70407