When Science Gets Ahead of Morality

"An Instance of the Fingerpost," Iain Pears' wonderful novel set in the Oxford University of Cromwell's England, is one of the most delightful novels you'll ever have a chance to read. It's a murder mystery, but it deals with science, religion and academic life. The church is portrayed as holding up scientific discoveries (specifically how blood circulates and thus the life-saving art of transfusions) because it disapproved of using dead human bodies in research.

Of course, we ultimately, both the churched and the unchurched, decided that there is nothing wrong with dissecting the human body. But was it really so horrible that the Church slowed this just a bit? Shouldn't we at least consider the moral implications of scientific advances before we take a leap? Steven Spielberg's splendid but strangely unheralded movie "Artificial Intelligence," which is about robots in a world of the future, is really about what could happen if scientific advances outstrip our ability to deal with them morally.

This is--of course--an awfully prolix way of getting to the scientific questions of our day, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and the like. A new survey indicates that the public is far more willing to go slowly and think through the moral implications than the press and other segments of the opinion-establishment. Christianity Today reports:

If you read the mainstream press, you would be forgiven for believing that America is besotted with science, that only half-crazed, pro-life "extremists" have any doubts about the miracle cures that will spring any moment from embryonic stem-cell research, and that "therapeutic cloning" is the technology of the future.

According to a new opinion poll conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), you would be very wrong. Polling, of course, depends a lot on the questions you ask. So you may have seen polls quoted this way and that on these key issues. The VCU poll is generally fair. It does not bend over in either direction, and while we may wish some of the questions had been asked a little differently, its results are clear enough to turn upside down many of the assumptions of advocates for destroying embryos for research or for "therapy." Americans are much more level-headed than many editorial boards and certainly than many members of Congress.