We live in an age of high public anxiety, currently at a peak following the terrorist attacks on the US in September. Much public anxiety relates to science-based technology. Some technologies are troublesome, but in many cases public fears greatly exaggerate the dangers involved. In general, science and science-based technology offer both physical and psychological comfort and reason for optimism about the future.
A brief list of topics will illustrate my point that some science-based technology induces public anxiety: nuclear and biological weapons, nuclear power, genetic engineering, genetically modified foods, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, mad-cow disease, chemical pollution, to name but a few.
We should feel concerned about these technologies in proportion to the objective risks they pose. Some are quite dangerous, others moderately so, and some pose very little risk.
Take nuclear and biological weapons. Obviously, these are highly dangerous and their development was a perverse application of science. From the early 1950s to the mid-1980s, the world lived under a cloud of hopelessness - a mushroom-shaped cloud signifying the end of civilisation in the insanity of mutually assured destruction in a nuclear war between the superpowers. Some readers will remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, when we were waiting with bated breath as US ships sailed to meet the Russian ships heading for Cuba. The public feeling of hopelessness was intense. We tortured ourselves with visions of the nuclear winter that would follow nuclear war, when the survivors of the war would envy those who died. Some UK local authorities were issued with stocks of lethal drugs for public distribution in the event of nuclear war.
When the Soviet system collapsed in the 1980s, the threat of global nuclear war lifted, and brightness returned to the world. This was a momentous development, but there was little public celebration. And now, unbelievably, we are at grave risk of revisiting the old horrors with the rise of global terrorism.
Turning to the intrinsic dangers associated with the appliance of science for peaceful purposes, there is no doubt technologies such as nuclear power, large scale burning of fossil fuel and emission of ozone-depleting chemicals carry serious downsides in terms of risk. But it is possible to identify and quantify those risks and to take steps to minimise or eliminate them.
I believe that nuclear fission power is a failed technology. It generates waste that must be segregated from the environment for 100,000 years; it offers governments a cheap way to develop nuclear weapons; nuclear power stations are built on the open surface of the earth and are very vulnerable to terrorist attack and to bombing in conventional warfare. The industry should be phased out. If future exigencies call for the reintroduction of nuclear fission, it can be redesigned to make it much safer intrinsically.
At this stage, only the foolhardy or those with vested interests deny the danger posed by global warming. It is clear what the main causes of the warming are and what must be done to minimise the problem. Granted, drastically reducing emissions of greenhouse gases on a global scale will be painful, but the price of taking inadequate action is greater than the price of adequate action, so what choice is there?
Then there is a long list of anxiety-causing, science-based technologies that feature regularly in the media, such as genetically modified foods, genetic testing, radiation from mobile phones and chemical pollution of the environment.
The risks associated with many of these matters are low, easily avoided and well understood by the professional. However, the small risks involved are continually exaggerated by various pressure groups, and the media gives all voices, expert and amateur, equal weight. Since it is much easier to alarm than to reassure, public anxieties are readily inflamed.
Some people see science-based technologies are sharp double-edged swords. This is entirely untrue - most technologies enhance our lives and have little or no downside. As a result, the ordinary person today lives a life of convenience and opportunity unknown even to the most privileged of previous generations. Think of the benefits enjoyed from electricity, computers, telecommunications, radio/TV, antibiotics, vaccines, medical X-rays, surgery, washing machines, electric cookers . . .
Science has also shown that the world is a wonderful place. It began in a big bang in which the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, were formed. The remaining 90 elements were later forged in the stars. Life spontaneously arose on earth four billion years ago as a simple form of bacteria, and the myriad forms of life that now inhabit the earth are descended from that original simple life. Who knows what wonderful developments will occur in the future.
The world has bootstrapped its way from hydrogen in the beginning to self-conscious beings who can reconstruct the whole story and wonder at it. This insight, produced by science, is most uplifting to the spirit. We are made of no mean stuff.
Of course, in order to prosper, people must be wise as well as knowledgeable. Science produces knowledge, but not wisdom. The wonderful knowledge provided by science can be applied for good or for ill. If we are wise, we apply science only for good, so, let us learn to be wise.
William Reville is a senior lecturer in biochemistry and director of microscopy at UCC.