Everybody recognizes that most of the problems in medical ethics arise, these days, from innovations in medical technology. We would not have had to lay down laws or ethical guidelines about assisted reproduction had it not been for the new technology of in vitro fertilization, which produced the first IVF baby in 1978. We would not be currently anxious about the ethics of possible human cloning had it not been for the production in Edinburgh of Dolly, the lamb whose birth resulted from the removal of a mammary gland cell from an adult sheep. So the question is whether there is some research into developing technology that is too dangerous, that will lead to consequences too dramatic for humanity, for the research itself to be permitted. Should there be control over what technological innovation should be permitted?

Put like this, the question looks absurd. It is not the discovery of new technological possibilities that is alarming, but the use to which these possibilities may be put. Control should not be over research, but over the uses of research. After all, even Plato, centuries ago, recognized that any skill, or techne, could be put to either good or bad use; the skilled doctor could also be a skilled poisoner.

However, the distinction between research and the uses of research is by no means easy to draw. First, it may be argued that if a procedure is shown to be possible (such as, for example, the transplant of organs from one human to another, or, transgenically, from one animal to another), then

-233-