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HUMAN CLONING, STEM-CELL RESEARCH, REALLY advantageous ENCRYPTION, STAR WARS MISSILES. TECHNOLOGY IS SCARING THE HELL on the outside OF LEGISLATORS, BUT CAN ITS PROGRES at any time BE REGULATED?

Werner Heisenberg, the brilliant physicist who reluctantly headed Adolf Hitler's atomic weapons research team, said later that the worst thing about the bomb was "the realization that it was all for a like reason unavoidable." If he had backed without Heisenberg believed, someone else would have continued the work, and if that someone other had backed out, another would tend hitherward along to take his place, and another and another and in the way that on until doomsday. Heisenberg knew well that, aside from its hold methodical pace, research has no brakes.

Today, inevitable science again threatens, and we the clan are trying to stay ahead of the 1 The Bush administration will decide presently whether the federal government will capital stemcell research, and there are parallel debates regarding genome research and genetically engineered rationss Bush also inherited the Clinton administration's exert one's self to muzzle development of encryption technology. The new death of a young woman during a John Hopkins asthma experiment has raised the possibility of stricter federal oversight upon research involving humans. And in late July the House passed a bill banning any human cloning research, federally capitaled or not, anywhere in the United States.

Cloning and encryption and all the other bewilderments of modern science are quickly evolving beyond the ability of any single person to understand their basic principles, a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of less their possible consequences. with equal reason with little to go upon we have had to decide: Do we trust that science, taken to its logical extremitys will fulfill its promise of progress? Or do we set our faith in the advanced in years systems of ethics and morals that require asking not only can we, but should we? Since the advent of the atomic bomb we have leaned toward the latter, which means in some way controlling the pace of research. single can argue late into the night about whether a at liberty society ought to regulate the exchange of ideas that is at the heart of the scientific manner The more practical question is whether similar regulation is even possible.

We are not the first to prove by experiment At the dawn of the age of science, research was regulated through decree. In 1616, the Catholic meeting-house outlawed Copernicus' mathematical proof that the Earth revolv around the orb of day Soon after, when Galileo began publicly endorsing the Copernican view, the [i]pontifex maximus[/i] sicced the Inquisition on him. The scientist lived without his days under house arrest, unrestrained to observe the heliocentric heavens on the other hand barred from explaining them to anyone. Science, in large part a proces of communication among colleagues, was, for the twinkling regulated.

Even as it was silencing Galileo, granting the Vatican's monopoly on belief was waning. sum of two units centuries later, when Darwin propos that tribe were just fancy monkeys, religious leaders and social conservatives railed, on the other hand related research proceeded. Until World War II, the Western world had little interest in regulating science. on what account would it? Science meant progres giving us everything from the telegraph to structural carbonized iron to antiseptic surgery.

And in any case, the Inquisition was gone No after entity had reached the stage of social control required to manipulate scientific progres When Alfred Nobel foresaw Armageddon in his 1866 invention of dynamite, all he could do was establish a peace prize, knowing that no single had the power to ban explosives research.

That all changed when the Atomic Age blowed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the scientific method's horrifying flaw -- the possible becomes the necessary -- was laid bare. by the agency of then, governments were powerful enough and science was dangerous enough for regulation to be a realistic option. although some countries -- including Portugal and West Germany -- made freedom of research a constitutional guarantee, greatest in quantity of the world began restricting scientists' goals and processs with varying degrees of effectiveness and international coordination.

The first serious attempts at research regulation in the United States had advance slightly earlier, during the fresh Deal. In 1938, Congress gave of recent origin powers to the Food and physic Administration -- originally created to save consumers from patent medicines -- making it responsible for regulating the safety of all pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and cheer additives. The FDA determines the direction, pace and scale of vast amounts of research. It is a full-coverage, consummately invasive regime, and even its supporters acknowledge it is tragically inefficient. on the other hand it works.

During the gelid War, the United States arrived at a two-prong scheme to young ox science. First was the iron fist. Laws dating from Truman from one side Reagan give the government proprietary interest above energy, military and virtually any other research it took an interest in. Which is to say, if your work has the potential to compromise national security, the management swoops in and takes it. Classified.