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Blaming science:Justified or not?

With the advent of the lifestyle of people in past years, there has been a significant advancement in the field of science and technology to quite a lot extent. It not only fulfills our daily requirements but also enhances the quality of our lifestyle.

HOW DOES SCIENCE PRACTICALLY HELP IN TECHNOLOGY?
First, we take a back seat and with help of science, we try to understand how things happen, what prompts it to happen, how to change its behavior and observe it under different circumstances.
Then we take the driver seat and make things to work the way we want by the help of technology.

However despite all the field of science being so much advantageous, is it the only shade of it visible?

The latest episode of the demise of American firefighter Willie Brown brought the topic into the limelight that "Learning to control the fire made us human but adapting its use brought us cancer."
Willie Brown was an American firefighter who succumbed to cancer. The severe exposure to smoke, tar, heat and a battery of toxic materials that he had in his 16-years career may be one of the reasons cancer started in his body. The death toll from cancer among firefighters is alarmingly high, so high that a couple of months ago the Trump government passed a law requiring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to start collecting data on it.But how did cancer first start among humans? The answer is not easy, there are many conflicting views. In 2010 Rosalie David, now an Emeritus Professor at Manchester University in the UK claimed that cancer is a man-made disease."In an industrialized society, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease.
But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and change in our diet and lifestyle."
Cancer historians often claim that the disease started spreading like the plague in Europe only from the time of the Industrial Revolution. The most notorious was the epidemic of cancer among chimney sweeps, little boys who were used to climb chimneys-full of smoke, ash, tar, and other toxic materialsto clean them. In fact, a research team from Pennsylvania State University led by Gary Perdew has theorized that this may be the reason for the extinction of the Neanderthals who knew the use of fire.
So are we here going to blame science or its inventions?

So, the use of fire got us two things: "Bigger brain and a mutation that lead to Cancer."
But if we see the other way around, who came to the rescue, was another field of Science-Medical Science.

So, here we see by means of science we do inventions and when we are not able to apply them successfully, we need other inventions, and when an accident occurs switch to another fieldof science, so are we not working together? This is how we march forth.
So, one thing is to be kept in mind before blaming Science is:
The sole purpose of scientific developments was to find solutions to our problems not deliberately landing into problematic situations even if we know how to tackle our mistakes already.


Article by:
Sana Kamal
Computer Science Department
2nd Year
1751158
Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata

References: The Telegraph

Picture source: http://www.researchweek.uwa.edu.au/events/science-ethics-and-communication/

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 5, 2018 at 9:34 AM

    Dear Sana, Thanks for this exposition. Do let us know more about this.

    ReplyDelete

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