Paul Nitze Quotes

Bioethics is a very, very important field. As we get more and more in the arena of understanding science and getting better opportunities, the fact that you can do things with biological sciences that have an impact on a human being means you must have ethical standards.

There are lots of things that science will enable us to do that we shouldn’t do.

What we think is ethical today, we may not have thought ethical five or 10 years ago. Cloning, stem cell research? However we feel about those things today, we may feel differently 10 years from now.

We've made science experiments of ourselves and our children.

Today, it is research with human embryonic stem cells and attempts to prepare cloned stem cells for research and medical therapies that are being disavowed as being ethically unacceptable.

Stem cell research must be carried out in an ethical manner in a way that respects the sanctity of human life.

Existing [biological ethical] standards, in some cases regulated by government agencies in the United States and other developed countries, were a generation old and therefore outdated.

When gene therapy was believed to harbor latent risks, research was largely put on hold until the risks were better understood. Sometimes, the theoretical risks have led to a principle of absolutist precaution that impedes progress.

There's nothing within science per se that says medical researchers must not experiment on human subjects; it is the imposition of ethical dogma that constrains the scientist.

I do not believe that it could never be justifiable to experiment on a brain-damaged human.

Scientists surely have a special responsibility. It is their ideas that form the basis of new technology. They should not be indifferent to the fruits of their ideas. They should forgo experiments that are risky or unethical.

Science is not inherently good.

Stem cell research holds enormous promise for easing human suffering, and federal support is critical to its success.

The growing professional disciplines of medical ethics and bioethics have had a profound impact on researchers, bedside doctors, associations of physicians, and government.

My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.

The refusal to acknowledge the scientific value of embryonic stem cell research is one more tragic misstep.

There are lots of other issues in policy including the stem cell issue.

Mr. Speaker, the goal of stem cell research should be to help our fellow human beings. The debate on this issue has, unfortunately, moved into dangerous unethical territory when perfectly moral alternatives exist.

I am all for stem cell research.

The traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments… it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalist will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct.

I am not prepared to explain to a sick child with cystic fibrosis, facing death and fighting for breath, the ethical grounds that hinder the science which could save him.

Stem cell research has the greatest promise of any scientific development.

The business of biomedical research is mostly about failure. Few projects we commission will ultimately result in success. But every study we do contributes to the body of knowledge that brings science and society closer to a solution.

Embryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards.

"They've been trying to test on animals for the past 50 years. Nobody's come up with a cure,"he says. "If you want to test on somebody, test on me."