A Measure of Progress

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Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly - Robert F Kennedy

Meet Radium. It is number 88 on the Periodic Table, discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie, has radioactive properties, and ended up in killing many people such as the 'Radium Girls' who conacted radiation poisoning via radium in paint. Oh boy. Sounds bad. Or at least Chet Raymo, writer of The Virgin and the Mousetrap, thinks it was. He uses those negative facts to affirm that scientific development, including the current ongoing research about genetic engineering, will turn on us, and harm us, much like the two faces of Janus.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, I think our dear Mr. Raymo forgot to say a lot of things. Radium, with proper caution, was once one of the most early and popular methods in fighting cancer, or more specifically, bone metastasis. Even the FDA approved its medical effects. 

Raymo was certainly correct about science being the "circle of the Janus-faced god." However, this applies to other couple million things in our everyday lives. Take Blogger, for example. People can use it to share their experiences in watching TV or their thoughts about a ridiculous essay. However, people can also use it to share videos that infringe copyrights or post the privacy information of other people. Oh. Do I smell some sort of similarity between the very system we use to blog and some random element on the Periodic Table?

Yes and no. Radium quite certainly can be decieving, and you must be very cautious about dealing with the radioactive metal. However, they are both essentially similar in that they can both be used in good and bad ways. It's just that Blogger, or Google, can certainly censor things that they determine dangerous, while there certainly isn't a Chemistry God who can decide to censor things like Radium. Humans have to do it for themselves, ourselves.

Remember what I said about radium? It's helpful in cancer treatment "with proper caution." Raymo is certainly right about the fact that scientific discovery could be harmful. This is preceisely the reason mankind must learn how to harness science correctly, and be ready to be responsible for any harm. Progress is not simply about finding new discoveries; it's also being able to use it for our benefit. Only then is Radium effective in removing tumors, not the patient's life. 

Science is two faced. So what. Deal with it. Humanity dealt with it since evolution from chimps. If prehistoric people decided not to use fire because it was hot and potentially burn eveything including themselves, and decided not to use it, the only sort of meat we'd have is sashimi. But why hold back on science now?

Maybe "Consumer" should be replaced with Raymo...

No progress can be made without risks. No success can be made without the possiblity of failure. Raymo decides ignore this. Sure, the "unexamined quest for knowledge is hemmed with peril", but when you hem it all together, you get a piece of T-shirt called progress. Of course the T-shirt might be itchy or too unfashionable to wear. But there's no gurantee that all T-shirts mankind makes will be unwearable. So here sits mankind, diligently sewing together progress.