Morals, Manipulation and Science

In Cat’s Cradle what caught my interest was the way the Dr. Hoenikker was manipulated by the government into working on the atomic bomb. The reason I think they manipulated him was because of the turtles. When Dr. Hoenikker started working on the bomb and then became interested in turtles and stooped working on the bomb, “Some people from the Manhattan Project finally came out to the house to ask Angela what to do. She told them to take away Father’s turtles.”(12, Vonnegut) This to me is manipulation. If Dr. Hoenikker had been left with his turtles the research on the atom bomb wouldn’t have been finished or at least not in a timely manner, which meant they wouldn’t have been able to use it in that war.  It seems as if Dr. Hoenikker is merely a child with great intellect and creativity so he is going to play with first off whatever he is interested and if nothing is interesting whatever is in front of him. The people in the Manhattan Project used his childish persona to benefit their goals and tactics. Can it be said that Dr. Hoenikker was a heroic scientist or an intelligent childish tool of the government? Another part of this that caught my attention was the fact that even though Dr. Hoenikker was researching and creating the bomb it wasn't unrealistic to him. To him the bomb was a concept that was groundbreaking to science not a tool that would win a war and kill millions. Was Dr. Hoenikker thinking of the real life purpose of the bomb or was he simply interested in the scientific aspect of atoms? Based on Dr. Hoenikker’s dependency on Angela and the way people in Illium portrayed him I would say he was merely in it for the research. On the day of the bomb he was playing with string, not staring at the news to see what he had created. I think this was because he hadn't attached morals to his research, he knew it was him who had made the atom bomb possible but I think he also knew he wasn’t the one using it to destroy people. Dr. Breed says, “Pure research men work on what fascinates them, not on what fascinates other people."(31, Vonnegut) This means he was only doing research and not thinking about the application of the device, or any of his creations for that matter. When he created Ice 9 he wasn’t thinking I can freeze the world with this speck of ice but instead he could condense a great amount of ice into a speck and that in itself was what mattered to him. Which makes me question do pure research men in the story or in real life apply ethics to their research or do they, as they say in the story, just work on what fascinates them? Nothing in this world can be completely detached from society and in that case morals/ethics but certain people, scientist for example, can be doing this research and not be aware of the way it will be used. In that case the scientist does not carry the moral burden of what they have created but without their creation the application would not have been possible.  I would imagine that is a paradox for scientist in that sort of field, caught between learning more about the world or protecting the world from the knowledge they have learned.