To pick, or not to pick. Is it an issue of morality?
A Swiss federal committee raised eyebrows in both the scientific and religious communities by professing that plants deserve respect, and that killing them arbitrarily is morally wrong.
In a report on “the dignity of the creature in the plant world,” the Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology condemned the decapitation of flowers without reason.
Committee member Bernard Baertschi conceded that the sheer pleasure a human might get from picking the petals off a daisy could be reason enough to make it morally justified.
The report stipulates that “all action involving plants in the aim to conserve the human species is morally justified.”
Only a minority of the group’s members said they objected to patenting plants, with the majority ruling the action did not infringe on “their moral value.”
Photo: iStockPhoto
Digg This 