An interesting history of the development of Sarin and other chemical weapons in The Guardian yesterday which shows the relationships between technology, war and production quite starkly. You can read it here: http://gu.com/p/3tp3b/. It may be useful information for any of you thinking about doing projects in this area.
What struck me was a real problem I have with utilitarian, social based philosophies (and not necessarily the act forms but…) . The concern came to me when reading about the poor solider used as a test subject. The ethical justification of this to government and to the soldier’s family would no doubt have been the benefit to the many. Utilitarianism, of course, will not necessarily agree with this, but — and here is my problem — it cannot rule out the use of an individual’s life in ethical calculations. Utilitarianism will always bring to the table the possibility of the one life being expendable and that strikes me, in ethics at least, as “beyond the pale”. Even if such a course of action is rejected (by fudging the figures or some sort of indirect form of utilitarianism), the fact that the idea has to be first rationally entertained, illustrates the corrupt nature of such ethical thinking. Here one feels the pull of rights as trumps or some deontological conditions.
Of course, the utilitarian may just say I am begging the question, but he has all the work to do because intuition is not on his or her side.