We all take risks, every hour of every day. The average Briton takes a bigger risk with a single Mediterranean plat du jour than in a lifetime's subjugation to Whitehall's health and safety mafia. Talk of risk is costly mumbo jumbo, designed to make us quake at the feet of Big Science. Other professions that play fast and loose with public fear are subject to ethical review. Mischievous doctors answer to the General Medical Council, accountants have audit, policemen take sick-leave, politicians get the sack.
Scientists can apparently terrify with impunity.
Wilson is right. Biology is plunging ever deeper into morality. Such science, and such scientists, must be supported and encouraged. Yet I cannot believe science really wants politicians or the media to police its ethical frontiers. When scientists go astray, surely they would prefer their peers to hold them to public account.