Simon Beaufoy Quotes

The difficulty with telling stories about real people is you have to find a way of mixing yourself into the matter.

It's so difficult writing about living people.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

I strongly oppose cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts or creating life for our convenience. And while we must devote enormous energy to conquering disease, it is equally important that we pay attention to the moral concerns raised by the new frontier of human embryo stem cell research. Even the most noble ends do not justify any means.

Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy aim.

Vivisection is wrong because it is an abuse of man's power over the helpless, involving pain and suffering. The name for this is cruelty, and cruelty is immoral, no matter what the reason for its introduction.

I am a moralist. I worry.

We spoil ourselves with scruples long as things go well.

Many good Christians are confused about complex social issues of our day, such as doctor-assisted death or medical research which uses stem cells from human embryos. They wonder, 'Why shouldn't science use discarded fetuses for research?' And if someone finds his medical condition intolerable and hopeless, 'why shouldn't he have the legal right to end his life?' Although the Bible does not address these issues in particular, it does provide guiding insights.

For whatever reason, I have never separated the technical from the ethical.

Ignoring moralities is always undesirable, but doing so systematically is reallyworrisome.

I'm a supporter of embryonic stem cell research. I do think there are very important moral and also religious questions at stake in the debate over embryonic stem cell research.

The dismembering of a human being routinely in 30 minutes on an outpatient bases - or any other way - is barbaric. Four blocks from our church all year long - like churches within smelling distance of Auschwitz or Dachau or Buchenwald.

There are a lot of weapons that we've developed which we've pulled back from - biological weapons, chemical weapons, etc. This may be the case with armed autonomous robotics, where we ultimately pull back from them.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.

It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government-sponsored execution.

The thing that has always interested me in the kinds of shows that I do have more to do with the consequences of behavior than the behavior itself. Pulling a trigger and shooting somebody, or dismembering somebody.

...the proposed air force and army experiments were designed so that many animals would suffer and die without any certainty that this suffering and death would save a single human life or benefit humans in any way at all; but the same can be said of millions of their experiments performed each year in the United States alone.

Requiring that an execution be relatively painless...actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

With humans it's abortion, but with chickens it's an omelet.

I do not think that we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems, with psychological, ethical and economical aspects, and as many others as you like.

When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?

How do you get from, "We do not know whether this is protectable human life," to "Therefore, we will not protect it?" Wouldn't the logic just as likely (some would say far more likely) be, "Since we do not know whether this is protectable human life, therefore we will protect it?" Why does the judicial uncertainty about the humanity of the unborn lead to unbridled license to destroy it?

Every other civilized country has determined when life begins and it's something that eludes us. We've got things that have to be done! "We didn't fix that bridge because you are all down at the meeting house discussing abortion again."