Ethical and Social Issues in Science teaching

I had reason this week to teach a lesson with my year 12 Physics class which addressed social and ethical issues. The relevant learning outcome from the AS Specification was this:

Discuss the social and ethical issues that need to be considered, eg, when developing and trialling new medical techniques on patients or when funding a space mission

And this is a typical examination question that tries to assess this learning outcome:

And there is a quite reasonable website www.peep.ac.uk which provides web pages that students can use and guidance for teachers about how ethical issues relating to Physics can be addressed through classroom activities.

I did manage to put St Thomas defintion of Natural Law into my Powerpoint (writing on a whiteboard is now archaic - I literally don't do it anymore, using pen/paper and a visualiser to project on screen instead). But overall, something nagged away at me about the whole thing.

The whole thing seems very superficial. The students simply do not have a sufficient philosophical education to really appreciate the meaning of a phrase like "doing good, avoiding evil". The result is that many of the ethical considerations raised in the teaching materials on the PEEP website are reduced to a certain arbitrariness or pragmatism. Take this, for example:

Future generations
Everyone is entitled to equal treatment, including access to resources and services. How will actions today affect those not yet born? This principle means thinking about others yet to come and making sure resources are sustainable for future generations.

The underlying idea that the resources of the earth are at the service of the good of the human person, indeed, of all human persons is missed out. I can be reasonably comfortable with the principle as expressed, and wouldn't find it objectionable. But, on the other hand, it does not really say what I feel would need to be said. There is no substantial attempt made to link ethical principles to how the human person is understood.

The unit of work that we were just completing included some work on ultrasound techniques, including in medical physics. In real life, a rather more acute ethical difficulty arises for a sonographer who has a conscientious objection to participation in abortion. Should they carry out ultrasound examinations of expectant mothers knowing that, should they detect an abnormality in the unborn baby, the parents and doctors might decide for an abortion?

I did find this principle, from the PEEP materials, objectionable by omission:

Value of life.
Can you put a cash value on a human life? How much should a civilised society be prepared to spend to save a life? What damages should be paid if someone is injured? Should other forms of life, such as apes or trees or a whole landscape, be valued equally?

I do not think it was intended, but students could easily go away from this principle not realising that the criterion of financial value is not the appropriate one to value human lives.

The addressing of ethical issues is, though, in the end, rather more apparent than real.