BIOTECHNOLOGY is becoming dangerously close to raging out of control. Scientists are engaging in ever increasingly macabre experiments that threaten to mutate nature and the human condition at the molecular level. Worse, many scientists have made it clear that society has no right to apply the brakes.

According to this view, scientists have a constitutional right under the First Amendment to conduct research. This means that only the most compelling state interest–such as preventing the release of a plague–justifies society placing any constraints on scientific inquiry. Moreover, only scientists have the right to judge whether a proposed area of scientific inquiry is moral. As for the rest of us, our job is to support research with our taxes, applaud when benefits are derived, and otherwise mind our own business. Indeed, many scientists literally believes that in science, virtually “anything goes.”