Comment on the issue of science and ethics by giving examples from ''Rappaccini's Daughter'' by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Dr. Rappaccini seems to
exhibit a complete lack of medical or scientific ethics. Ethics are the moral principles that
govern someone's behavior or their participation in a particular activity. When Giovanni
Guasconti, the , goes to meet Signor Pietro Baglioni, a professor of medicine at the University
of Padua, Baglioni tells Giovanni that "'there are certain grave objections to
[Rappaccini's] professional character.'"

Baglioni tells Giovanni that
Rappaccini cares "infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are
interesting to him only as the subjects for some new experiment." In other words, then,
Rappaccini does not actually care about his patients and their well-being; he only cares for
them as subjects of his medical experiments.

His medical and scientific
ethics ought to dictate that the well-being and humanity and dignity of his patience should come
first. After all, doctors are supposed to "do no harm" according to their Hippocratic
oath. Yet Rappaccini does not concern himself in this way; by ""growing his daughter,
Beatrice, among poisonous flora, hequite unethicallyrenders her poisonous as well.

Then, to make matters worse, he masterminds the relationship between herself and
Giovanni, an intimacy that turns the young man poisonous as well. Rappaccini does a great deal
of harm because he cares more about science than he does about people, and this is unethical in
the extreme.