What's the Verdict???

"J. Robert Oppenheimer was a respected theoretical physicist, an organizer-director who earned the loyalty of hundereds of scientists, technicians, and military personnel, and a troubled philosopher of the responsibilities of his mission (Shattuck 176)." Oppenheimer's mission was the overseeing of the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. The fruits of his and many other people's (including Albert Einstein's) labor was the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II. Oppenheimer later gave a talk where he expressed "'a legacy of concern' left by World War II and the development of the atomic bomb...[Oppenheimer said that] 'despite the vision and the far-seeing wisdom of our war-time heads of state, the physicists felt a peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of the atomic weapon. Nor can we forget that these weapons, as they were in fact used, dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose (Shattuck 175-176).'"

'[The Human Genome Project] is the grail of human genetics...the ultimate answer to the commandment, 'Know thyself.'" - Walter Gilbert, 1986.

So the verdict comes down to this question, "Does scientific research, backed by immense technological and political support, represent the ultimate sin of Western civilization? Or is it the grail we seek as our only remaining form of salvation? (Shattuck 173)"

Please put all answers in the comment section of this blog. If you want to know more, check out these links here and here. Talk to you soon, ME!!!