The Bioethical Engineer - Biomedical Ethics for Engineers - page 154

Discussion Box: Four Persons Who Changed the Way We Think about Nature 21
Ethics, especially bioethics, is concerned about what makes us do right things. One distinction is
between “nature and nurture.” Interestingly, the term nature took on new meaning in the nineteenth
century, combining elements of both nature (genetics) and nurture (environment). The lives of
four people illustrate the transition.
John Muir
John Muir came to America at eleven years of age. He and his
family settled in Wisconsin. He suffered an eye injury that made
him temporarily blind in 1867. When he recovered he had gained
a newfound appreciation for things visual and decided to turn his
eyes to fields and woods. He walked from Wisconsin to the Gulf
of Mexico, then sailed the Caribbean and the West Coast of North
America, landing in San Francisco in 1868.
Muir walked all over the country and started to write about
his travels, eventually publishing over 300 articles and 10 topics.
He became an “environmental activist” (before there were such
designations) and partly due to his efforts and the assistance of
President Teddy Roosevelt with whom he had become friends,
the Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon national parks were established.
His single greatest disappointment was the flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Canyon in California.
However, the area would later become the Yosemite Park. In 1892 he and his friends established
the Sierra Club, which remains one of the most influential environmental organizations in the
United States. The club has become almost synonymous with the term “environmentalism.”
Rachel Carson
After graduating from the Pennsylvania College for Women (now
Chatham College) in 1929 Rachel Carson (1907-1964) worked
at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and continued
her education with a master”s degree in zoology from Johns
Hopkins University in 1932. She was a writer, scientist, and in
1962 wrote perhaps the most influential topic ever published
in the environmental field, Silent Spring . The title comes from
what she foresaw as the death and destruction of birds due to
the extensive use at that time of chlorinated pesticides and she
called for an end to their indiscriminate use. The reaction by the
chemical industry to Carson's topic was immediate and vitriolic.
She was branded as anything from a flake to a communist