Environmental ethics chemist

Social Responsibility of Chemists of the XVIII Mendeleev Congress headed by N. Tarasova and V. Lunin attracted 100 Russian and more than 20 foreign specialists. The plenary reports were presented by Prof. V. Petrosian (MSU), The Ethics of Chemistry Teaching in 21st Century, and by V. Kuznetsov (MUCTR), The Knowledge in Environmental Chemistry as a Factor for Social Responsibility Increase. 

An alternative response would be to proscribe the causes that threaten human and environmental health, thereby extending the Hippocratic principle of medical ethics primum non nocere (first, do no harm) to professional chemists. In their efforts to treat their patients, medical doctors should, according to this dictum, ensure that they do not harm them even if they are not able to cure them. Similarly, in their noble effort to improve on nature, chemists should, at the very least, not degrade the environment they are attempting to ameliorate. 

Caught between the activists criticism and an antiregulation administration, a small group of epa scientists, many with backgroimds in environmental, political and labor activism, took the unusual and impressive step of organizing a union of toxicologists, chemists, biologists, attorneys and other environmental professionals in the name of scientific ethics. ... 

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