If we keep our farm animals in cosy sheds, we know that we not only affect them by depriving them of outside air and sunlight, we also deprive the fields of their presence. For the animals the fields are certainly part of the context. When it comes to manipulation of the gene, scientists themselves are already aware that they need to proceed with caution. And then there are the risks posed by releasing Genetically Modified Organisms into the environment, risks addressed by the 1992 Rio Biodiversity Convention, the methods for dealing with which depend on a level of brotherly international co-operation, which was it in place, would possibly not have sanctioned such activity in the first instance. These apparently laudable attempts to do things properly, these applied ethics, are actually false gods.
Biotechnology is big business.
The genome project is a multimillion pound investment. The screening done for things like cystic fibrosis is thought to be connected to the fact that it is cheaper to abort such children than to maintain them. This is the atmosphere in which what little debate there is takes place. Applied science gives us tomatoes in February, vitamin pills and tampons. Scientific endeavour is often presented to us as the apogee of the search for knowledge, yet the science we have often seems more like the expression of a wish to become invulnerable and safe and to have certainty, and appears to have little to do with true knowing.