What they say about family bothers me very much, however. I say no moral conduct is worth maintaining if one can only enforce it by threat. Ten years ago, the chemistry professor turned to writing novels and plays - not science fiction, he emphasises, but sciencein fiction. He gets his students to discuss ethical puzzles. By these means he hopes to broadcast the moral dilemmas that scientists feel but too often suppress because of their own tribal culture, and the much bigger dilemmas their discoveries pose for the rest of society.
Ethics starts with individual scientists.
Not only is science neutral, you don't even know what you are going to discover. Yet the moment a scientist starts getting some answers, ethical questions enter. The story of the Pill, the first medical treatment for healthy people, shows that the chain of responsibility is a long one. Basic science is one thing, technology another, even if the division between them is not always clear. Djerassi and his team at Syntex did not set out to invent the Pill.