ITRE
Mad Scientists, or with a Vision? By Lola Hourihane
Scientists have long held a reputation for questionable morals - take a look at many recent superhero films and this becomes extremely clear. In Ironman 3, the genetically modified humans use their super-heat powers for evil. In The Amazing Spiderman (the one with Andrew Garfield), Dr Curtis Connors miraculously discovers a wonderful serum for cell regeneration, and then uses it to become a lizard overlord who terrorises New York; let’s not even get started on Dr Frankenstein. Consequently, it appears that science necessitates unethical behaviour – but is this the case in ITRE? When I entered the committee room on Friday evening, I witnessed behaviour I had never expected from such supposedly upstanding EU citizens: they were auctioning each other off. Among the choice lines of the ‘game’ was, “We cannot buy you if you cannot dance.” Can we trust people who think that buying and selling their theatrically talented friends is acceptable? These delegates are supposed to be making a huge decision regarding the future of funding for research in Europe, and yet one of them had to be told that, “you cannot draw any fake money, sir”. These are people with no limits or moral boundaries, and who fear no punishment for unethical behaviour - apparently they have “no fears that have not been dead for 65 million years”.
Perhaps they are not all bad, though – at the end of the auction they were asked to “do something nice for the people you have bought”, so it seems that they may actually treat their human property well. The issue of where funding for research comes from is most certainly one concerning ethics; sourcing funds from private institutions can lead to altered results in important experiments. Are these delegates simply depraved scientists with no moral boundaries, prepared to overlook any problems with the validity of their results to get funding? Or, will this “good crew that work well together” manage to finally strike the balance between competitive in science, and ethical research? Either way, ITRE is a code-cracking, jellyfish-imitating, chair-hopping, street-fighting, samauri-defeating, relatively focused team of delegate super-ninjas with unnaturally strong fingers. This is a dynamic group of aspiring flying superheroes with strong opinions on their favourite shades of unicorn and a pony in their committee chant. ITRE: two chairs, twelve actual chairs, seven delegates, three hundred and twenty teeth, an infinite number of ideas, one unbelievably talented, beautiful and creative journalist, 10 brains and one goal: to write a bulletproof, flawless resolution on the ethics of funding for research. Will they succeed? We will just have to wait and see.
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