What is supposed to be the role of science and technology in our lives?

Science as defined in the article titled ‘The Medawar Lecture 1998 - Is Science
dangerous?' is the best way of understanding the world in a reliable, logical, quantitative,
testable and elegant manner. Science is at the core of our culture. However, technology is
also defined by the article mentioned as usable objects. The confusing idea here is what
is the main role of science and technology in our lives. For me, the role of science and
technology in our lives is to make our lives more comfortable, easier, and more accessible.
Today, we can't deny that science and technology are increasingly intertwined
as our generation advances. Even in our daily lives, some of us cannot survive without
these two components, which we see as essential to our survival. First, the role of
science and technology in our lives is to make our lives more comfortable. In this world
that full of unexpected objects and phenomena, science is the only one that can deal
and explain to those unexplained events which gives us more comfortable
understanding to the existence of those things such as force causing acceleration and
not the motion. Similarly, technology also gives as the sense of comfortable in lives as
technology advances than human. Technology provides various way to make our lives
more comfortable. For example, with just one tap on the screen, we can easily get food
from our chosen restaurant, and in just a minute, it will arrive at the door of our house.
In that sense technology gives us more comfortable lives without going outside and go to
the restaurant just to satisfied our cravings. Even in our workplace, technology gives us
comfortable work. Due to the increasing demand for technology in various industries and
the like, workers make their jobs more comfortable and at ease.
Secondly, science and technology make our lives easier. As science and technology
are connected to each other in all fields, it makes our task easier, such as in the field of
criminology, where, as a part of their responsibility as law enforcers in the near future,
they have to study chemistry as part of their duty to investigate crimes and their causes,
especially if you pursue becoming part of the forensic group of the Philippine National
Police (PNP). We all know that chemistry is a branch of science that deals with the
properties, composition, and structure of substances. In relation to the technology, the
Philippine National Police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) uses
a lot of machinery and advanced technology that makes their investigation easier and
takes less time, such as their newly acquired most advanced follicle test machine that can
detect how much the person is involved in taking drugs. Lastly, science and technology
make our lives more accessible. Science, as it deals with the properties, composition, and
structure of substances, enables everyone to have access to necessities for daily life. For
example, the latest production and development of the company named ‘UPSIDE Foods'
in California, USA, where they produce meat that is not from a raw animal, shows that
science is accessible to all because we don’t have to kill animals just to produce meat on
our table. We can say that our scientist really does a great job in our community by
making essential things more accessible for everyone at a lower cost. Nonetheless, as
technology evolves time-to-time, it is easy for everyone to get access to the information
around the world and most especially to the events happening inside our government
through the use of the existing technology that are really beneficial to everyone such as
cellphone, televisions, radio and the likes. As technology evolves, our government also
adapt with it, such as their newly launched application “eGOVph” that are now available
for both android and IOS user. This application aims to get more accessible at the same
time an easy transaction with our government through our gadgets. In this application,
we can transact with the government by just tapping on our gadgets instead of going to
offices of every government agency that we intend to transact to.

At this point, we can’t deny that science and technology are somehow connected
to each other in providing commodities that are really helpful in human existing. The
prevalent of science and technology’s objective is to make our lives more comfortable,
easier, and more accessible in divergent fields in our life. From providing explanation to
existing of phenomena, helping our authority in solving and providing justice to providing
administration in an unchallenging way. Today, we can undoubtedly assert that science
and technology are everywhere and truly evolves time-to-time.

How was S&T used immorally? Cite examples in historical perspective.

Science and technology are everywhere, and now they already occupied the entire
world as they evolve time-to-time. We can’t oppose that technology make our task more
ease every day but somehow science and technology are also exposed in using it
immorally, most especially in the field of biomedical industry that mostly harmed animals
and yet there are some instances that even human too.

In the desire of many scientists to provide medicine to cure the timely diseases,
they have to sacrifice the lives of other notably animals just to satisfy their objective but
what hurts the most is there are instances where humans are used too. In 2004, the FDA
estimated that 92 percent of drugs that pass preclinical tests, including “pivotal” animal
tests, fail to proceed to the market. More recent analysis suggests that, despite efforts to
improve the predictability of animal testing, the failure rate has actually increased and is
now closer to 96 percent. The main causes of failure are lack of effectiveness and safety
problems that were not predicted by animal tests. HIV/AIDS vaccine research using NHPs
represents one of the most notable failures in animal experimentation translation.
Immense resources and decades of time have been devoted to creating NHP (including
chimpanzee) models of HIV. Yet all of about 90 HIV vaccines that succeeded in animals
failed in humans. After HIV vaccine gp120 failed in clinical trials, despite positive
outcomes in chimpanzees, a BMJ article commented that important differences between
NHPs and humans with HIV misled researchers, taking them down unproductive
experimental paths. Another example of human suffering resulting from animal
experimentation, six human volunteers were injected with an immunomodulatory drug,
TGN 1412, in 2006. Within minutes of receiving the experimental drug, all volunteers
suffered a severe adverse reaction resulting from a life-threatening cytokine storm that
led to catastrophic systemic organ failure. The compound was designed to dampen the
immune system, but it had the opposite effect in humans. Prior to this first human trial,
TGN 1412 was tested in mice, rabbits, rats, and NHPs with no ill effects.
 Because of our desire to protect everyone’s lives against the timely diseases by
exploring its best cure, we also tend to harm everyone’s lives in making them as a model
for its preclinical trial. Our objective to provide cure and best treatment are somehow
resulted to the loss of lives of human beings and animals and in that sense of unsafe and
unjustifiable action, we can firmly say that even science and technology are helpful in
some aspect of our lives but they are still used immorally somehow due to careless use.

Do you think the scientists who invented for S&T would agree how their
inventions are now being used by humans?
Nowadays, science and technology can be used positively and negatively. Science
and technology represent a successively larger universe of activities which are highly
interdependent, nevertheless distinct from each other. Due to the high demands of these
two, some people use it to take advantage too but somehow when it comes in innovation
development each of these plays a big part. Do the scientist’s invented science and
technology would agree how their inventions are now being used by humans? For me, it
depends on how we use it. As science and technology advances time-to-time as our
generation, it's greatly to say that they really contribute a great deal in various aspect in
our lives. If human just used science and technology to take advantage with others, I’m
surely that the scientist who invented this would feel huge dismay with this action, that
is really contradictory to what is supposed to be the major purpose why they invented it.
However, if people use these two in an appropriate way, they will be proud too as their
ambition in inventing it follows.

References:
Wolpert, L. (2005). The Medawar Lecture 1998 Is science dangerous? Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B, 360(1458), 1253–1258.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2005.1659

Akhtar, A. (2015). The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation. Cambridge
Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 24(4), 407–419.
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963180115000079

Brooks, H. (1994). The relationship between science and technology. Research Policy, 23(5),
477–486. https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-7333(94)01001-3