The next chapters answer most of the questions posed after reading the first two. The main reason businesses have so much power is tha they are the ones who control the information that governs business itself. Scientists are the ones who provide studies which give information that is used to create the basis for healthcare and government regulations. They are the ones who are creating the standards for businesses to follow. Unfortunately, they are employed by the businesses and so have vested interest in making sure that they still have jobs after they publish a study. Because of this there has been a huge moral dilema between what scientists find out and what they actually pass on to the government and the public. Also this has led to many cases where scientists have lost all sense of morality for a chance to make more money by putting their trusted name on a study they neither did nor can say is factual. What is in fac the biggest predicament and the one which we had the most trouble with in class discussion is the decision about what makes something immoral. We could not come to an exact conclusion that giving up ones job for the sake of saving others lives is the right thing to do. We did agree that other people should come first but when it comes down to what people can realistically do for the justice movement, we were not ourselves entirely willing to give up our livelihood in place of feeling better about producing information that might save lives.
The second part of this reading section was the presentation of Shrader-Frechette’s idea that human rights is the biggest proponent of environmental justice. Her idea for this book, unlike the others, is that the people affected have a right as humans not to be taken advantage of and we as humans have an unwritten duty to not harm others. This means that we are not to benefit off the exploitation of others which caused another interesting discussion in class about the willingness of people to participate in such a system. The general consensus was that we have no choice about whether or not to participate in the system because there is no realistic alternative. What this means in terms of what we should do, is that we need to work towards adjusting the system so that it does not operate in this way. For myself as an “educated” citizen should be working towards a better economic system because it is benefitting me directly. While I cannot disagree that I have benefitted, I personally do not believe that I am in a real position of being able to change. Even after class discussions about how immoral my choices may be and the effect of these decisions, I was not presented with an alternative that I could apply tomorrow.
