From Douglas Holdstock, Medact
A. C. Grayling identifies contradictory human endeavours, such as constructing weapons of war and rescue work (31 May, p 52). The underlying difficulty is that research in one field can often be put to “good” or “bad” uses: in microbiology, for example, to warn us of an influenza epidemic or to produce organisms for biological warfare.
This led the late Joseph Rotblat to propose the equivalent of a Hippocratic oath for scientists. Martin Rees, in Our Final Century, suggests that there should be constraints on scientific research.
But it is surely not a contradiction to look forward to humankind as a global society. It will need a well-educated and stable population (lower than today’s) with adequate food and housing – and much less inequality. There must be universal access to healthcare, and to modern methods of contraception in particular.
As Grayling notes, this can only be achieved by small steps over many years, but it is achievable. It does not need armies but does need education – and learning from experience – to change attitudes.
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