Notion of progress : is a progress always a progress ?

Notion of progress (oral = 5 min)

I’m going to talk about the notion of progress that we saw in class. First of all, I’d like to give a definition of progress. It can be defined as an improvement, or a scientific development, which contributes to make the world a better place to live in.
To illustrate this notion, we studied in class four documents: the first document was an extract of Huxley's book Brave new world. The second document was a newspaper's extract about Molly Nash and her “medicine” brother. The third document was an oral understanding. The last document was an extract of Barack Obama's speech in the White House about scientific advances. To explain this notion, we mostly studied scientific progress. I think that all these documents are good examples because they give different points of view of what is progress.

Problem:   – But, we can wonder if progress is really always a way to improve our world.
or:             – Is progress always a progress ?

In a first part, we can see that progress can be a good thing. Indeed, in the article about Molly Nash’s life, we can learn about a real scientific advance. This teenage girl was cured thanks to her brother! In fact, this baby was the better candidate to save his sister, ill of Fanconi's Anemia, by transplantation. It was the first case of “medicine baby” in the world, which is an important progress.  Like always, this kind of progress asks many ethical questions, but also shows that science can save people, and especially children! So, we can say that this kind of progress represents a really good improvement.
It is this kind of improvement that world needs to become better. And that is exactly what Barack Obama encourages and supports in his speech. In fact, the US president defends research and advance in the medical side. In his speech, Barack Obama supports different medical progress and explain why it is important to give a better life to ill people. For example, he would spare a lifetime needles to diabetic children and for this, medicine has to make more progress again. The aim of speaking about it in his speech is to encourage investments for this cause.

However, progress can be a bad thing too. We can see in Huxley's book, that progress can become dangerous in bad hands. Indeed, in this story, the director of a scientific centre shows the cloning process to some students. It takes place in 2495 and in this society, it’s possible to divide one eggs from 8 to 96 embryos.  The upper class created clones and they are used to perform some particular tasks. The aim of this process is to control all the people: they are manipulated by the ruling class and they can’t thing anymore by themselves.
With this book, Huxley wants to warn us against the dangers of progress put in wrong hands. And his book can become the reality, because it is possible to clone since 1996. Moreover, today it’s possible to choose how will be our baby. The oral understanding is about this topic: it is an interview of different people who choose the sex of their baby. They explain the reasons of their choice and their motivations. But, if to have the possibility to choose this can have bad consequences. In fact, maybe one day, there will not have enough girls or boys because too much people choose only one sex. Therefore, these kinds of progress make society worst, and can be the beginning of the end.

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