I think it is safe to say that the billions of dollars that the US spends on military (ie, to get better at killing people) is for 'evil' rather than 'good'.

The context of development is what needs to be considered. Obviously what the US is doing (developing better ways to kill people that is) is highly unethical and should not be allowed. Where as stem cell research, cloning and genetic engineering (practices that are generally discouraged or are outright illegal) should be allowed (so long as it is not creating an army of superhuman clones).

Certain contexts of research should be disallowed.

US army developing rail guns so they can kill people more easily? Should not be allowed.
NASA developing rail guns so they can deliver materials to orbit cheaply? I'm cool with that.

So it's not the ends, but rather the means that you're worried about.
Would you not agree (at least in some situations) that the ends justify the means?

I agree that finding better or more efficient ways of killing people isn't the best use of the research funds, it should be put into research that could actually benefit society instead of being wasted.

As for the example you provided about the Army and NASA developing the same thing (railguns), wouldn't that just lead to the army taking the information and building themselves a few once it's been created?
Sure it could be outlawed, but once it leaks out to the open or black market, there would be little anyone could say to stop them from doing just that.

I think the ends from a NASA project and a DoD project even on the same subject will be very different.

In almost every situation the product created without the sole purpose of killing people is invariably better.


Imagine if your toaster was designed and developed with the purpose of killing people.

With the situation of rail guns, the information and development is the same, it's only in the construction that it changes.

Ok, I'll run with the unlikely scenario; market it for home security, who would expect a deadly toaster? Self-defense would make it a "good" thing to buy and it's purpose of killing people would be justified. (in some sense)

I would prefer tasty cooked bread.

I would not say that. Suppose you were working with, say, biofuel. Biofuel is a good thing right? It provides alternative energy so we don't have to rely on unstable Middle East oil production near as much. Well, you could also look at it as something that is killing people, or atleast contributing to people's death because our number one source of biofuel is Petroleum. If you didn't know, Petroleum comes from corn that farmers grow originally to contribute to the U.S.'s food supply, and, since we are one of the major agricultural exporters, other countries food supplies as well. If we were to cut food out of these food supplies, the hungry in our country and other countries will starve. There are an endless number of such situation where one thing looks like a beneficial, ethical thing but it actually has largely negative impacts. I believe the same applies for this problem as well. Before we completely set aside ethical practices in the pursuit of scientific advancement and vice versa, we need to consider possible byproduct problem that could arise from such changes.One such problem could be, conceivable, religious outrage. For example, Christianity, which is the second largest religion in the world, believes that all humans are made in image of God and are therefore equal. They also believe that since all people are equal that they should have freedom. Well if we decide to abandon ethics, we are violating a person's freedom to volunteer, and are therefore going against God's Word. Many Christians will be furious, which could lead to rioting and/or rebellion. This is just one of many possible problems that could sprout from such a broad problem as the one you have presented, so we can't just focus on specifics parts of a single problem.
Adolf Hitler even tried to erase ethics from science during the Holocaust. He experimented on Jews and others at death camps, and actually did manage to increase Germany's scientific knowledge. But look at what happened because Germany discarded ethics. People and animals were tortured beyond imagination, thousands of people were killed, and for what? A couple years leap of knowledge?
I think this is not a simple topic that has a single answer, or even an answer at all. It all depends on who you are, and what perspective your coming from. That's my opinion.

Perhap posting links to the controversial issues of science, hopefully non-biased articles that are in a discussion format. Some topics include: Eugenics, cloning, AI etc.

I don't see your comparison.

I am sure the military would care even less about poor people, and worse than that, they would try to weaponise bio-fuel and control it's usage to the military, so the technology would not be widely available.

As a part of my job, i work on an Institutional Review Board (IRB) at a major medical school. IRBs ensure that research conforms to federal regulations enacted to protect human research subjects, and I can tell you from experience, morals or ethical standards are absolutely necessary in the context of scientific progress.

What is progress? The whole point of scientific progress is not just the accumulation of knowledge in itself, but the idea that having such knowledge can make our lives better. If, in the pursuit of progress, we actually make people's lives worse, that's something of a contradiction, no? You could make the utilitarian argument that well, sure these research subjects' lives are worse off because of the experiments we use them for, but but the knowledge gained, which contributes to the greater good, outweighs their suffering. There is a pretty interesting movie highlighting this issue, where a rogue biomedical scientist kidnaps homeless people, takes them to a lab, and severs their spines in the hope to create a cure for spinal cord injury. Does this support the greater good? Maybe. Is this ethically problematic enough that moral considerations should "hold back" scientific progress in this instance? Absolutely.

After the Nazi atrocities, the Nuremburg trials prosecuted some of the German war criminals involved, out of which was born the Nuremburg Code. This Code was the first standardized research ethics guideline, which was followed later by the Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report. As a result of these documents, informed consent is held as the cornerstone of ethical research; informed consent rests on a foundation of respect for persons, or respect for autonomy. Experiments that do not utilized informed consent contradict our culture's supposed value of individual freedom, the freedom to autonomously determine one's own ends.

Thus, disrespecting the moral standards codified in biomedical research guidelines, just so we can move forward with scientific "progress," reveals systemic hypocrisy, in that the Enlightenment values putatively underlying the use of reason and science contradict the realities that the system creates. And, therefore, moral standards should hold back science to mitigate the trampling of rights that unchecked scientific progress will certainly facilitate.

I will make the Utilitarian argument.
For those who's lives the experiments have worsened, countless others can receive a great benefit from them. I'll give another example that can explain why this makes more sense:
You are a trained field doctor and right now you stand in between two groups. One group is made up of 20 people with minor/moderate injuries, the other is only two people with serious injuries. Assume that all injuries are life threatening if not dealt with, the minor/moderate label is only referring to the amount of time it would take to fix.
In the time it would take you to help the two people with serious injuries, all 20 of the other group would have died. Just the same goes for helping the 20, you would be able to help them, but the two others would die.
It makes sense to sacrifice the two in order to save 20.

Now take the results of that and apply that ruling to the world at large; would sacrificing a few to save many be worth it?
If no, then why? What is the difference?

This does not allow for countless people to be rounded up and tossed into gruesome torture sessions, it simply means that some may have to be taken in for (however bad this sounds) "the greater good".
I do think that pain should be minimized as much as possible, and with the anesthesia we have available today, it would be possible to perform experiments without the patient feeling any pain whatsoever.

As an added benefit to this, it would shorten the development time for new technology, which would theoretically allow for painless surgery, "hands free" experiments, and countless other methods that would not only help humanity, but also lower the need for any future medical visits.
Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself here, I do realize that it would be a long ways off, but I think it would shorten the time needed drastically. Less moral standards is needed for faster progress. Cloning would allow for "guilt-free" experiments if you leave out the cognitive functions or just don't bother to develop the brain. There are many ways for it to work, but again, "moral" standards impose themselves on these alternatives.