Science in place of utopia?” “

An opportunity to discuss the position of science towards the biotechnologies “in a calm and constructive way” was offered by the debate “Humanity faced by the promises of the biotechnologies – Science and society torn between hopes, utopias and risks”, held in recent days at the Goethe Institut in Rome, with the participation of Giuliano Amato, vice-president of the European Convention, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Episcopal Conference, Edoardo Boncinelli, molecular biologist, and the German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who has recently expressed a highly critical position on science, also in a book soon to be published. Science, a totalitarian “European” thought?: The position of Hans Magnus Enzensberger is highly critical towards science at a time like the present when “the new sciences, such as biology, and the applied sciences, such as the biotechnologies, information technology and artificial intelligence, seem to have taken the place of the utopias”. The former utopias have collapsed “leaving a vacuum into which modern applied science has insinuated itself with its promise of miracles”. In contrast to the political utopias of the past, “modern sciences – says Enzensberger – don’t have a well-defined project”, but “promise infinite progress, so that even the political institutions seem to be following them blindly”. What is presented by science today “is a form of totalitarian thought, a utopian dream that later becomes totalitarian.” Precisely due to the unconditional euphoria they generate, the new and applied sciences have been vigorously attacked by the German intellectual, who urges that they “be not left to their own devices”. They are not mature, or rather they are not “sceptical”, like the old sciences, “such as physics, which already knows what it has given rise to”, argues Enzensberger, alluding to the atomic bomb. He also poses the provocative question: “Why don’t the applied sciences conduct research on malaria and tuberculosis, which have a far greater impact on humanity, rather than on rare diseases?” The reason, in his view, is “economic”: malaria “is a third world disease, the profits for the investors would be minimal”. Scientific community and civil society in Europe: According to Giuliano Amato, “the corporative persuasion in the scientific community – the persuasion, that is, that “science pertains to the scientists, the moral choice to everyone else” – needs to be opposed”. Nor should it be forgotten that “each choice made by a human being is a moral choice because it concerns his/her relations with others.”. We must oppose the “blackmail of scientists, who threaten to expatriate themselves if they are not given what they want, i.e. stem cells for research”. This, says Enzensberger, referring to recent cases in Germany and in other European countries “is a form of blackmail at the bounds of legality and politically unacceptable”. Stem cells, embryos, cloning. “Is it morally licit or not to conduct research on embryos?”: the question is posed by Cardinal Karl Lehmann who maintains that “what the research of recent years has demonstrated”, namely, that the embryo “soon participates in the control of its own development, is fundamental. It is a human being right from the start. It needs to be protected.” Intervening on the question of experimentation on embryos for therapeutic ends, Lehmann wonders whether this is not too high a price to be paid to conquer diseases and whether “it is licit to kill so many embryos in the name of progress”. For all the participants cloning is “inadmissible”.