From David Gadd
Chesterton, Cambridge
In your editorial “Brave new medicine” you state that “we should at least
insist scientists justify their research stringently beforehand to regulators
armed with the will to veto all but the most necessary experiments”
(1 December, p 3).
When an influential and very widely read popular science magazine makes such
a contentious statement so strongly, I believe that you owe it to the scientific
community—the whole scientific community, not just those concerned with
cloning—to justify it, in detail.
There is, indeed, a legitimate debate about how the direction and pace of
scientific research can remain in line with society’s needs, aspirations, fears
and prejudices. I suggest that the need would be better served by making New
Scientist a forum for the debate, rather than uncritically accepting the
need for draconian regulation.
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