Belmont Revisited: Ethical Principles for Research with Human Subjects Book

I think the most important question raised by this book is the importance of strong public health policies. Ruth Hubbard states the obvious when she says it is not worth developing methods to detect or treat medical conditions if people are not able to afford such technology. This is similar to the question regarding GMOs: the problem is not so much in the shortage of food as it is in food distribution, so perhaps we should focus on it instead of trying to develop new crops. This is not, however, a scientific problem. Scientists try to learn as much as they can about their field with the funds they are granted. Surely the distribution of funds is subjected to policies and industry lobbies, but sometimes I got the impression the author was saying the science itself was fundamentally flawed.

I also think the author thinks of science as a purely pragmatic enterprise, that is, it is only worth pursuing scientific questions as long as they will be useful. I completely disagree with this. Scientists must learn about the world for the sake of learning. That's the main objective of science. If something useful is found along the way - and history has proved us that happens a lot -, that's wonderful, but by assuming that's the end of all scientific enterprise we are limiting ourselves.