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From: breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.sci,net.bio,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: What's All This, Then (Workshop on Exploding Particle Accelerators)
Message-ID: <937@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Feb-86 20:12:15 EST
Article-I.D.: h-sc1.937
Posted: Tue Feb 11 20:12:15 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Feb-86 17:33:22 EST
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Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
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Xref: linus net.physics:3579 net.sci:260 net.bio:211 net.philosophy:3946

||Isn't it funny? When molecular biologists started working with recombinant
||DNA, there were actually bozos who thought it was dangerous!!!!! :-(
||
||We must be careful with technologies that are not well understood.
||Molecular biologists worked with extreme care and precautions until
||it was found that recombinant DNA from non-pathogenic organisms is
||harmless. I wish that physicists had exercised the same caution
||when exploding the first fission and fusion bombs. I am not certain
||about the historical development, but it seems to me that *at the
||time* of the first atomic bomb, there was no way to exclude the
||possibility of starting a chain reaction in the atmosphere or ground
||with a reasonable degree of certainty. It does not matter whether
||it turned out to be 'harmless' after all, if there is the possibility
||that an experiment endangers the survival of our whole species, it
||is irresponsible and criminal to conduct it.
|
|ANY new experiment POSSIBLY may endanger the survival of our species.
|Unless you are willing to define:
|	1) What is a reasonable degree of certainty?
|	2) Who decides what the probability for disaster
|	of a given experiment are?  By what criteria?
|	3) Should or should not the possible benefits of such an
|	experiment be weighed in the balance?  Who judges the benefits?
|such talk is meaningless.

[Sorry for quoting the whole thing again]

No, you cannot hide behind administrative mumbo-jumbo to avoid the question.
This is not a question of 'who decides' or 'how can we weigh'. If
YOU are a scientist and other people are uttering doubts about 
the safety of YOUR experiments, you MUST take them seriously.
This is YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY as a scientist. 

As the self-control of molecular biologists has shown, scientists
are willing to slow down their research and avoid experiments that
are potentially dangerous. What worries me is that such self-control
is in effect discouraged by existing funding and employment policies.
If you study the Manhattan project, for example, you will find that the 
logistics and psychology of the project precluded this self-control of 
scientists. It was only after the war that many members of the scientific
staff began to reflect on the implications of their project.

						Thomas.

PS: needless to state explicitely that I believe that there is no
possible benefit, political, ethical, moral, economical, that
justifies an experiment that poses a threat to the survival of
our species. Once there are no humans anymore, there is no-one to
benefit anymore either... (but, then, there is no-one left to accuse the
experimentor of mass-murder either).