From John Noble
I have just read your editorial “Cults for the rational” (8 April) in which you express astonishment that “chemists, biologists, physicists and even a rocket scientist” were found among members of the religious sect Aum Shinrikyo, which is suspected to be responsible for the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Your further editorial “The colour of danger” (29 April) concerning “red mercury”, which you describe as “the ultimate terrorist weapon”, adds “deep chill” to your earlier wonder.
You go on to wonder whether such cults as the Aum Shinrikya offer something special which appeals to otherwise rational people who, having had a scientific training, should in theory have been inoculated against the lure of irrationality.
My wonder and astonishment concerns the willingness of scientists, supposedly immune to irrationality, to develop weapons of mass destruction and terror for the use of governments and states of all political shades.
If chemists, biologists, physicists and rocket scientists had in the first place not developed these weapons, religious sects and other cults would not have been able to utilise them.
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