One of the most vexing things about being an experimental scientist is the possibility of your discoveries—as with all cultural goods—having horrific unintended consequences, as this obituary of the inventor of a precursor of Agent Orange reminds us.

re: bioethics, science, war

Andy:

He once thought, he said, that the way to be a moral scientist was to avoid projects with bad applications. But he had changed his mind. The vital thing was to stay involved; to speak, write, testify, and make sure that research was turned not to evil, but to good. For more than 20 years he taught bioethics at Yale, a course he had started and which, by his last year, was one of the most popular in the college. His country forgot, but he did not, the mangrove ghosts.