Quote Originally Posted by Seraphim View Post
The A-bomb led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atiomic power led to Three mile Island and Chernobyl. Is that what we're saying?

Well, sure if you take a specific event and judge purely on that!

I guess what I'm saying here is, would human life be worse off without atomic research, taking into account Hiroshima etc. and Chernobyl etc.? I say a resounding yes. Our lives would be worse. Same applies to Cloning or Stem Cell research.

But I still reckon legislation against research such as this is pointless anyway. How do you stop progress? Sure, you can delay it, but it's going to happen. GM foods is a case in point. Europe and UK spent so much time and effort trying to outlaw GM... even going so far as to damn what little GM crop research there is in the UK with stories about the risks of cross-fertilisation with normal crops. And the whole time we import foods which are GM. Now, I don't see GM issue reported anymore in our press. They've moved onto the next Frankenstein's monster, be that Cloning or growing an ear on the back of a mouse. (OK, old example, but you get my point I hope.)

Instead of trying to outlaw such research, we should be devoting our efforts to thinking about how we use our new-found knowledge to the best of its potential.