<p>Knowledge is power. In agriculture, medicine, and industry, for example, knowledge has liberated us from hunger, disease, and tedious labor. Today, however, our knowledge has become so powerful that it is beyond our control. We know how to do many things, but we do not know where, when, or even whether this know-how should be used.</p>
<p>Assignment: Can knowledge be a burden rather than a benefit?</p>
<pre><code>Knowledge can most certainly become a burden as we juggle moral dilemmas that seem to suggest acting with our greatest intellectual knowledge may cross the line over to immorality. An example of this might be genetic testing and hormone manipulation. From prenatal screenings to tests after the deaths of loved ones from cancer and other diseases, choosing whether to utilize all of science’s, particularly medicine’s, bank of knowledge is not always an easy choice when the burden of knowledge may not necessarily directly benefit us emotionally. Similarly, advances in doctors’ abilities to manipulate sex hormones allows adults to undergo physical sex changes with relative ease, yet major moral dilemmas come into play when parents struggle with the notion of allowing a child with gender identity disorder to forgo puberty in their biological sex.
Prenatal testing for many relatively common diseases and disorders has become commonplace in the modern world. Parents may, however, be aware of variations in their gene pool that might cause them to consider further screenings. Similarly, a woman whose mother dies of breast cancer may consider testing for genes related to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. In both cases, the knowledge that something is wrong is not necessarily a remedy; Testing the fetus and determining the child has a rare disorder allows the parents to discuss their options in terms of potentially terminating pregnancy or preparing for a disabled child, but it can’t, in many cases, actually allow the family to fix the problem. Likewise, once a woman discovers she carries a genetic propensity toward breast cancer, she is quite often simply left with the decision whether or not to undergo a mastectomy or similar procedure. This knowledge doesn’t guarantee a good outcome by any means, and this knowledge may only bring about more stress.
An extremely controversial area in hormone therapy is the use of hormone blockers and introduction of sex hormones of the other sex in children with gender identity disorder. An example of a candidate for such treatment might be a ten year old biologically male child who identifies as a girl in all respects, aiming to live her life as a woman and terrified of the physical changes of puberty. While a sex change later in life may still be an opportunity, the body changes associated with puberty could be particularly traumatizing for such a child, and transgendered children, teens and adults face a much higher suicide rate than the average population. Still, major concerns exist over the use of such methods, especially in terms of the child’s real ability to make a decision to halt or change their sexual path in puberty at an age when they can’t drink, vote or even drive a car. These children aren’t yet in middle school, but they are juggling a decision that will drastically affect their social and personal lives forever, and will leave them infertile. Today’s doctors have tremendous knowledge of hormone therapy, and it can be used for great purposes, but this bank of knowledge doesn’t come without serious debates over the ethics of use in young children and teens.
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