Can we change our personal ethical beliefs?

What happens if we were not taught to be what others deem to be ethical in our youth? Is it too late or can we change?

I think that we are constantly changing in tweaking our minds, sometimes in large ways, usually in small ways.  As we grow and experience new things, and acquire new information, we are able to process this in our minds.  Once the new information has been analyzed we can decide (subconsciously or not), whether or not it is something that we wish to align with our values or ethics.  Surviving a horrific car accident with a drunk driver or being hit by a drunk driver may alter your ethical view of the situation.  You may look at drunk driving, road safety rules and even car safety rules in a new way, or you may hold onto the same ethics.  If you find yourself or someone close to you in an abusive relationship, you may have a new look at the situation.  If you are raped and have to look at possible pro-choice options, it may change your views again.  As someone in a hostile or wartime environment, the experiences you are immersed in are always evolving your ethical view of the world.  We are given a basic ethical blueprint as children, but each layer of life expounds upon and at times changes the ethical values that we hold dear. 

I know that I personally have a strong ethical view of different things to do with women; specifically topics such as abuse, alcoholism, codependence, lack of standing up for oneself, parenting values, marriage, etc.  Living with certain experiences within my own families and of those of close relatives shapes my ethical values of basic things.  I saw a lot of people doing things or not doing things when they should be that felt wrong to the core of my being.  Witnessing this and living through first-hand accounts largely shaped my basic core of ethical values.  However, someone experiencing the exact same things may have come up with completely different ethical values.  While my father is a recovering alcoholic, he did go to treatment and remained in remission for decades, I attended AA meetings with him and learned a lot about the disease that he fought, this helped me know the dilemma in an intimate way.  I could have instead become desensitized to this issue if handled or viewed from another way and not have seen alcoholism as an issue, but rather as a way of life.  There are very few things in our society that do not, in one way or another, include alcohol.  Does that make me anti-alcohol, no, but it could have for someone else.  Our personal ethical beliefs are comprised of the totality of our personal experiences, knowledge and our perception of such.

Ethics of Stem Cell Research

Last week in my Technology in Society class we were talking about the ethics of stem cell research, I learned a lot of new alternate procedures that I previously was unaware of.  What are your thoughts?  These are mine:

Ethics of anything can be a touchy subject, however when it comes to cloning and stem cell technology, I feel that the positive outcome outweighs the negative.  We are in the early stages of testing and in some cases already successfully curing cancers and saving lives with this research.   Stem cells in bone marrow are now being successfully used to treat leukemia, but the real promise of stem-cell therapies lies in the future.  There are countless other diseases, cancers, organs and limbs that could benefit from successful stem cell and cloning technology.

There are many things that can be used to aid in stem cell research to include placenta, babies that are miscarried, and even aborted fetuses, this is not too different from organ donation from a scientific perspective.  Explorable stated “Aborted fetuses are not the only source of stem cells; there are stem cells in the both placenta and blood contained in the placenta."    I take the stance that when I am dead, I don’t need any of my organs; let someone have it and live or use them for research.  I have a  grandfather who died due to an inability to receive a transplant.  The movie Seven Pounds with Will Smith took this to a whole new level.  It showed the impact that he was able to have with one body on so many people’s lives.  In the movie Will Smith played a man who researched seven people to atone for seven people that he had killed, he donated different parts of his body to save their lives.  He donated his eyes, heart, lungs, bone marrow, liver and kidney.  

The majority of positive support for stem cell research comes from leftover embryos from IVF (in-vitro fertilization) that would otherwise be discarded anyway.   A possible solution to appease both sides is ANT (altered nuclear transfer) where an embryo is never created.  Murnaghan clarified with “A derivative of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the nucleus of the somatic cell (any body cell other than an egg) is altered, or genetically reprogrammed, prior to being transferred into the egg."  Another option is blastomere extraction, where an embryo is created but not destroyed.  This procedure is performed on a two-day old embryo, following the division of the fertilised egg into eight blastomeres or cells.   Another option is to strictly utilize adult stem cells.  Therapeutic potential rates take a dive because the cells can’t be differentiated into as many different types.   Another negative aspect of using adult stem cells, as depicted by Murnaghan, they are also more likely to have developed genetic abnormalities over time and they don't tend to replicate as efficiently. 

 

Borrowed from wikipedia.com

In case you want to read more from my sources: 

Explorable

Murnaghan