Many of the arguments against emerging technologies now focus on what are described as the "ethical issues" - which can be boiled down to mean whether it is right or wrong to apply a new technology or technique. Ethics are being applied to scientific knowledge, despite the fact that terminology such as "right" and "wrong" can't be applied to raw information. A scientist discovers a powerful new type of laser. The invention is "right" if used for cataract surgery and "wrong" if used against troops on a battlefield. Yet how can ethics be applied to the discovery itself? It is, after all, only research information.
This cat-and-mouse game is now being played out across all the sciences - and yet society has a way of slowly dissolving even the most contentious of scientific rows. Voters in the democratic nuclear powers didn't want their weapons of mass destruction used but didn't vote them out of existence either, which was their right. Vaccines were dismissed as dangerous nonsense when they began to be introduced earlier this century, but are taken for granted today. When Louise Brown, the world's first test-tube baby, was born in 1978, the ethical debates followed thick and fast but the techniques developed then are today in widespread use, including in Ireland, and their value is not questioned.