A moral dilemma - or not?

[Skybird]

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49294861


I say use it, reprint it, make it available, but also tell its full story. It saves lives, it helps in securing healing. The evil in its creation is not getting undone by ignoring the book.


But never help in a creation project of such a thing when you know during the work how the creating of it is being achieved, nor just tolerate when others create it - step up against it.



I take no position of absolute, total moral here (I almost always dislike absolute morals), but a position of pragmatic, realistic moral.

[Jimbuna]

Rabbi Joseph Polak - a Holocaust survivor and professor of health law - believes the book is a "moral enigma" because it is derived from "real evil, but can be used in the service of good".

Can't argue with that.

[captainadccdacaptain]

Its always true justice when something designed by and for evil can ultimately be used in service for a more true and honorable Cuase, such as helping others and saving lives.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by captainadccdacaptain

Its always true justice when something designed by and for evil can ultimately be used in service for a more true and honorable Cuase, such as helping others and saving lives.

The tricky part lies in the precedence. It could become the excuse to commit another crime for the sake of by that achieving a higher good, or helping others. I think this is where most people hit the moral wall. Some break through, some not.

[ikalugin]

The past is the past. After you punish everyone responsible for immoral/illegal acts in accordance to the law you may (and should where appropriate) use any positive outcomes of their actions.


In this case after you give out prison (or death?) sentences to the NAZI scientists you should use their work if it is useful and could be used to the benefit of the mankind.

[Rockstar]

Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, from Harvard Medical School, says at least half of the 800 images in the atlas came from political prisoners. They included gay men and lesbians, gypsies, political dissidents and Jews.

That evil wasn't so much just political Nazi Germany. It was eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population by excluding certain genetic groups judged to be inferior. Influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, advocated a system that would allow "the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of survival" The practice of which was just as big in the United States and Britain as it was in Nazi Germany. Heck I think even the happiest place on earth still has mandatory sterilization requirements for those genetically and morally inferior humans called transgenders.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The tricky part lies in the precedence. It could become the excuse to commit another crime for the sake of by that achieving a higher good, or helping others. I think this is where most people hit the moral wall. Some break through, some not.

I think the doctor sums it up nicely:

For Dr Mackinnon, it remains an vital tool - even if its past can never be forgotten."I would think that as an ethical surgeon I would take it as a given that I should use whatever educational resource I thought would help me to maximize a successful outcome," she says, "and that my patient would expect that of me.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawren...al_development