Science: To Kill or to Cure

[Lombardian]

Alright Nerdfighters, next week my English class is having debates, and my topic is whether or not science has a greater capability to kill, or to cure. I'm arguing that it has the greater capability to kill (not that I necessarily agree with that, it was just the luck of the draw). I'm somewhat stuck for ideas on how to best debate this.

What do you guys think?

[Kenny]

Well it unarguably has a greater capability to kill. Killing is easy. Set off a few nukes around the world and you've got a nuclear winter that will eradicate 99% of life on the planet. The real question is is science more used to kill or to cure. The answer: to cure obviously. Most people will say to kill because the killings are a lot more obvious. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Anthrax, missiles that can be fired from America and bulls-eye some poor sod's ingrown pubic hair in Cambodia. Now to see what science does to heal, you have to look a bit more closely, at the things we all take for granted. For one, let's look at our population. 6.5 billion and climbing. Do you know when the population starting rapidly growing? Well it was right around the time we stopped putting leaches on sick people and started developing modern medicine. We take it for granted because it's always there, and it's not nearly as flashy as the future we've always hoped for (sorry, no flying cars yet =/) but science with modern medicine is responsible for infinitely (it's a hyperbole people) more healing than death has been caused with our gears of war.

[danman]

If i calculate in a humorous way, science has a greater capacity to cure than kill simply because the caveman could kill but could not cure anything except by accident - empirical methods that were repeatedly found and lost as often all of "those in the know" died before passing it

And any small ratio exceeds 0

[President Clive-φ-Davidson]

"Cavemen" did cure, they had archetypes as much as we do, one of them was the archetype of The Wise old man or Sage, who was capable of seemingly magical healing (bandages, herbs etc). Using natural drugs is in our nature. We use many of them ourselves.

[danman]

I agree, but as i said such knowledge was quite fragile, and was mostly chance acting. And curing bacterial (ie pus) infections was almost impossible before penicillin

[Joey Joe Joe Jr. Shabadoo]

Argue in a rebuttal that science kills even when it's not trying to (i.e., climate change, Chernobyl).

[thedragonfruitking]

climate change is a lie, at least how you propose it to be. the chernobyl was caused by russian incompetence not science

[Joey Joe Joe Jr. Shabadoo]

Here's what the forum head says:

Alright Nerdfighters, next week my English class is having debates, and my topic is whether or not science has a greater capability to kill, or to cure. I'm arguing that it has the greater capability to kill (not that I necessarily agree with that, it was just the luck of the draw). I'm somewhat stuck for ideas on how to best debate this.

We're supposed to help with the debate and the concern isn't for being accurate, it's for winning the debate. Furthermore, does it imply killing exclusively people?

[danman]

Sorry but as i have already said you will not win a debate with this especially since there might be people who know something. Since there exist other good arguments there is no point in using bad ones.

and killing or not of other lifeforms is not necessarily important - killing pests ,or germs is good for example

[Joey Joe Joe Jr. Shabadoo]

Ecology.

[danman]

it was caused by untrained operators not by russian incompetence

[Kenny]

So it wasn't caused by Russian incompetence, it was caused by incompetent Russians?

[danman]

Incompetent in-training ukrainians to be exact. They were running an experiment but the regulars were at vacation.