Ethics, Tools and The Engineer

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ETHICS,
TOOLS, and the
ENGINEER
www.Ebook777.com
Titles in the Technology Management Series
Series Editor Richard C. Dorf
The Strategic Management of Technological Learning

Elias G. Carayannis
Ethics, Tools, and the Engineer

Raymond Spier
www.Ebook777.com
ETHICS,
TOOLS, and the
ENGINEER
By
Raymond Spier
CRC Press
Boca Raton London New York Washington, D.C.
www.Ebook777.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spier, R. (Raymond)
Ethics, tools, and the engineer / Raymond E. Spier.
p. cm.— (Technology management series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8493-3740-2 (alk. paper)
1. Ethics 2. Technology—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Engineering—Moral and ethical
aspects. I. Title. II. Technology management series (CRC Press)
BJ59 .S67 2000

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Preface
During my first television and radio interviews on ethics in relation to
biotechnology, the interviewer always inquired about the harm that could be
caused by new developments. I was led into using the analogy of the ham-
mer, which clearly could be used for pounding in nails or, on rare occasions,
skulls. In generalizing this, I realized that virtually everything we have
around us can be used to cause pain or damage. The question then becomes,
bearing in mind that all tools can cause damage as well as benefit, “How do
our societies come to terms with such instruments to the extent that they are
freely available in the marketplace?” One way this is done is via risk assess-
ment and management. A complementary approach based on the HAZOP
analysis technique has been used in this book. The next step is to apply this
kind of thinking to the new biotechnology tools. Having examined the issue
of the cloning of humans from this angle, it seemed appropriate to widen the
scope of this approach to other such developments.
This book stems from this background. In recognizing that tools can be
used for both benefit and harm, it is necessary to come to terms with these
concepts via a discussion of the basic nature of ethics and the kinds of ethical
systems we now use. In this discussion I am aided by my biological back-
ground. Hence, I briefly describe the origin of life and its evolution as it
relates to humans today. From this four-billion-year story I am able to see
ethics as a suite of words used to promote human survival in both an indi-
vidual and group sense. Working from this grounding, the application of sur-
vivalistic ethics to the particular problems we face when we gear up to use
new tools becomes practicable.
Putting ethics into the way engineers come to use new tools is the third
step. In this I explore the possible origins of the kind of person who did engi-
neering work in prehistoric times. This brought me into contact with the con-
jectured world of the spirits. As our reductive science has given a clear steer
as to how questions of origins (universe, Earth, life, etc.) might be answered,
the need to invoke spirits has diminished. I therefore explore the practicality
and implications of progressing the ethics of tool use in a spirit-free world.
R. E. Spier
Author
After studies at the University of Oxford and the
University of London, Dr. Raymond Spier was
qualified as a biochemical engineer in 1965. His
engineering career has taken him from industry
to government research to a position as professor
and head of the microbiology department at the
University of Surrey in Guildford.
He worked as an industrial engineer with the
intent of pursuing relief of the world’s food prob-
lem. He became disillusioned when India
decided to buy fighter jets rather than fund
the vegetable protein production plant he was
designing. He then joined Merck & Co., Inc. in the U.S., where his assignment
was to design large-scale production processes for virus vaccines, including
those intended to immunize humans against mumps, measles, and rubella.
Dr. Spier returned to the U.K. 4 years later and joined the Animal Virus
Research Institute. As principal scientific officer, he was in charge of a pilot
plant that made foot-and-mouth disease vaccines from baby hamster kidney
cells. The need to control the biological and physical components of the
vaccine production process led to his formation of the European Society for
Animal Cell Technology, and he co-edited the first 12 volumes of its meeting
proceedings.
After 10 years of applied research, Dr. Spier joined the University of
Surrey. In addition to teaching and heading the microbiology department, he
pursued a number of research, writing, and other activities. He has consulted
widely on animal cell technology and virus vaccine production technology
and has served on the boards of five start-up biotechnology companies.
Dr. Spier started and continues to edit Vaccine and was invited to co-edit
Enzyme and Microbial Technology. He co-edited a six-volume series on animal
cell biotechnology. He also had a role in starting Cytotechnology and edited
the two volumes of the Encyclopedia of Cell Technology published in 2000, in
addition to authoring or co-authoring about 200 research papers, reviews,
articles, and patents.
While studying biology, chemistry, and physics at school, Dr. Spier
realized that as evolution and development progressed, organisms acquired
increasing abilities to control themselves and their environments. Advances
in technology provided more ways for humans to control their environment
and other species. In 1993 Dr. Spier became interested in science and engi-
neering ethics in relation to the way humans seek to control the behaviors of
other humans in social situations and through the use of technology. He
wrote a number of papers on ethics and co-founded the Science and
Engineering Ethics journal. The University of Surrey appointed him to the first
chair in science and engineering ethics in the U.K. in 1997. As a result he was
invited to join the editorial board of and contribute to the Encyclopaedia of
Applied Ethics. He also edited a book titled Science and Technology Ethics (in
press). Ethics, Tools, and the Engineer is the result of Dr. Spier’s interest in the
social and technological aspects of control.
As a result of his work in ethics, Dr. Spier was recently elected to a
fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Spier’s current interests are the nature of science, engineering and
ethics, and ethical issues engendered by the application of new technology to
biology, biotechnology, vaccines, and prophylactic medicine.
Dedication
In dedicating this book to my wife, Merilyn, I delight in recognizing that my
efforts are but a part of a joint commitment with her to carry forward new
ideas and concepts that we believe will serve and benefit our communities.
Her encouragement, criticism, and creativity are inextricably woven into this
work. Let me be responsible for the errors and misjudgments, but let me also
pay tribute to the inspiration that I received from her.
Contents
Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 1 Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1 Tools in history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.1 The prehominid era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2 Making stone tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
1.2.1 Tools have downsides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.3 Humans turn to fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.4 One tool leads to another: the birth of language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.4.1 A view as to how language might have begun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.5 Tools at the dawn of history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.6 Putting it in writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.7 Money and metals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.8 Humans acquire power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1.9 Tools and intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
1.10 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Chapter 2 What is/are ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.1 Ethics: the word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.1.1 Ethics as hypotheses or “best guesses”
(absolute and relative ethics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.1.2 Ethics as the set point in a control system modulating
human behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.1.3 Ethics and values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.2 Ethics in history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3 Ethics in practice: normative and metaethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.3.1 Toward a well-founded metaethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.3.2 The issue of determinism and free will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.3.3 What about responsibility? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.3.4 The “is-ought” question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.3.5 Descriptive ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2.4 Ethical systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.4.1 Ethical systems compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
xii Ethics, tools, and the engineer
2.5 Resolving ethical conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

2.6 Teaching and learning ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2.6.1 The early years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2.6.2 Growing up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
2.6.3 Influential bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
2.6.4 Ethics and science and engineering courses at the
tertiary level of education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.7 Ethics experts? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
2.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter 3 Engineers as toolmakers and users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.1 Defining an engineer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
3.1.1 The fourfold way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
3.1.1.1 The need to use and acquire knowledge . . . . . . . . . . 109
3.1.1.2 Achieving the practical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3.1.1.3 Being a genius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
3.1.1.4 The ethics component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3.1.1.4.1 The process of doing science can
cause ethical concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
3.1.1.4.2 Fabrication and falsification of data . . . . 121
3.1.1.4.3 Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
3.1.1.4.4 Data selection, manipulation,
and management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
3.1.1.4.5 Conflict of interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
3.1.1.4.6 Authorship issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3.1.1.4.7 Mentoring issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3.1.1.4.8 Peer review: misconduct/theft . . . . . . . . . 125
3.1.1.4.9 Safety issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
3.1.1.4.10 Engineering processes can cause
ethical concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
3.1.1.4.11 Whistle-blowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
3.1.1.4.12 Conflicts of interest in engineering . . . . . 128
3.1.1.4.13 Durability and safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.1.1.4.14 Honesty and confidentiality . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.1.1.4.15 Codes of practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
3.1.1.4.16 Engineered products that generate
ethical issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
3.1.1.4.17 The nuclear industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
3.1.1.4.18 The chemical industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
3.1.1.4.19 The transportation industry . . . . . . . . . . . 139
3.1.1.4.20 Biotechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
3.1.1.4.21 Information technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.1.1.4.22 The environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
3.1.1.4.23 Domestic appliances and lifestyle
changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Contents xiii
3.2 Engineers make and use tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Chapter 4 Managing slippery slope arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

4.1. Slippery slope anatomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
4.2 Slide control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.3 Slopes and tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Chapter 5 Control of tool use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

5.1 On the different kinds of laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
5.1.1 Health and safety at work regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
5.1.1.1 Risk assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
5.1.1.2 Implementing preventive measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
5.1.1.3 Additional measures to protect health
and safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
5.1.2 Control of substances hazardous to health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
5.1.3 The animal (scientific procedures) act 1986 (U.K.) . . . . . . . . . . 207
5.1.4 Experiments on humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
5.1.5 Institutional codes of conduct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
5.2 Concerning the proper use of tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Chapter 6 Looking before leaping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

6.1 The ongoing ethical changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
6.2. Introduction to HAZOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
6.3 HAZOP in practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
6.4 Adapting HAZOP to developments outside chemical
engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Chapter 7 Tools in prospect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

7.1 The cloning of humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
7.1.1 The initial analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
7.1.2 A more detailed examination of the difficult areas . . . . . . . . . 247
7.1.2.1 Producing a cell fusate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
7.1.2.2 Genetically engineered humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
7.1.2.3 Cloned humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
7.1.2.3.1 Human clones evoke disgust . . . . . . . . . . 256
7.1.2.3.2 Dangers in cloned humans . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
7.1.2.3.3 The advent of human cloning may
usher in an era of eugenics . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
7.1.2.3.4 Would the dignity of a cloned
individual be impugned? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
7.1.2.3.5 The commodification of humans . . . . . . . 260
7.1.2.3.6 A utilitarian perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
xiv Ethics, tools, and the engineer
7.1.2.3.7 It’s all in the family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

7.1.2.3.8 Would a clone or the people raising
that clone be more likely to be
damaged psychologically? . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
7.1.2.3.9 Does limiting the genetic diversity
of a group of humans necessarily
cause harm? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.1.2.3.10 Cloned embryos as a source of stem
cells for human therapies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.1.2.3.11 On deciding who is to be cloned . . . . . . . 266
7.1.2.4 Application of the HAZOP method to the
cloning of genetically engineered humans . . . . . . . . . 269
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Chapter 8 Dealing with intent successfully . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Prologue
Some 13 billion years ago a blob of an extremely condensed form of energy

exploded. There was no sound; the particles that cause the compressions and
rarefactions of sound waves did not yet exist. In less than a second virtually
all the antimatter was consumed, and a few minutes later the nuclei of the
hydrogen and helium atoms—which make up 99% of the matter in our
universe—were formed.1 –2 After another million years the temperature had
cooled sufficiently that electrons could associate with these atomic nuclei to
form the atoms of today’s universe. The condensation of these atoms at the
centers of galactic stars to form some 114 elements took another billion years
to materialize.3 –4 Exploding stars then peppered matter in the form of a
coarse dust throughout space. About 4.6 billion years ago some of that
matter condensed to form a new stellar system, and planet Earth was born.
We know that cellular life-forms existed on Earth 3.465 billion years
ago.5 –6 It is also probable that the protoforms of modern cells predated the
emergence of “living” molecules of ribonucleic acid (RNA) that could
self-replicate while making reproducible errors in that replication process.7 –8
From the pioneering work of Urey and Miller beginning in 1953 and
continued by others thereafter,9 we now possess a possible outline as to how
this process took place during the roughly 1 billion years after the
consolidation of the dust cloud that formed our planet. Without calling upon
supernatural agencies, we can envisage how the simple molecules that
existed on the newly formed Earth (water, hydrogen cyanide, methane,
carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, and phosphates) transformed
naturally to become the chemical building blocks (monomers) of the
polymeric materials that make up living organisms. Processes for the
polymerization of these monomers may also be adduced without
compromising compatible conditions on the newly formed Earth.
Furthermore, the duty of passing on genetic information was largely
removed from the original living molecules of RNA and subsumed into a
more stable version of a similar polymer called deoxyribonucleic acid or
DNA. Whether this process occurred in some “warm pond” or in the
superheated salt solution of a hydrothermal deep sea volcanic vent is yet a
1
2 Ethics, tools, and the engineer
question of debate. The result was a widely diverse plethora of single-celled

organisms, all basing their reproductive behavior on the properties of the
DNA molecules that floated about in their cytoplasm.
At some point in time, one of these cellular life-forms evolved to absorb
sunlight and use the energy obtained to break down water molecules and lib-
erate the resulting oxygen in its gaseous form into the atmosphere. The key
molecule that could effect this capture is the tetrapyrole porphyrin, which
can be formed abiogenically and transformed into the chlorophylls. These
photosynthetic bacteria (now called the Cyanophyceae or blue-green algae)
were responsible for the production of all the oxygen that initially converted
the exposed ferrous rocks to the ferric form and then proceeded to pollute the
atmosphere, which was mainly nitrogen gas, with the unreacted oxygen. This
oxygenated environment probably led to the demise of over 90% of other
species of bacteria then extant, as these simple organisms would not have
been able to deal with the reactive chemicals that oxygen forms (mainly oxy-
gen radicals) when in contact with living matter. By about 1.8–1.5 billion
years ago, the oxygen in the atmosphere had built up to a concentration of
about 20%, which set the stage for the next major step in the evolutionary
transformation of life.
But first, I want to take advantage of this interlude to introduce some
concepts that pertain to the generally accepted mechanism—that of natural
selection—by which evolution occurs. These were envisaged and enunciated
via a process something like this:
1838: Charles Darwin (1808–1882) reads Thomas R.

Malthus’ (1766–1834) essay “On Population,”
which moves him to write “ . . . and being well
prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence
which everywhere goes on from long-continued
observation of the habits of animals and plants,
it at once struck me that under these cir-
cumstances favorable variations would tend to
be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be
destroyed. The result of this would be the for-
mation of new species. Here, then, I had at last
got a theory by which to work . . . ” 10
1844: Darwin sent to Joseph Dalton Hooker a 230-page
version of his ideas on the mechanism by which
evolution occurs, including the concepts of vari-
ation in offspring and selection.
1857: On the September 5, Darwin wrote a letter to Asa
Gray (professor of botany at Harvard) in which
he included an “abstract” of the book he was
writing on “natural selection.” In this abstract he
considered the way humans have effected breed-
Prologue 3
ing programs and have, by the means of judi-

cious selection procedures based on slight varia-
tions in the offspring, changed the nature of
particular animal groups. He then applies this
selection concept to all living organisms: “I think
it can be shown that there is such an unerring
power at work, of Natural Selection (the title of
my book), which selects exclusively for the good
of each organic being.” He goes on to say that
“I cannot doubt that during millions of genera-
tions individuals of a species will be born with
some slight variation profitable to some part of
its economy; such will have a better chance of
surviving, propagating this variation, which
again will be slowly increased by the accumula-
tive action of natural selection.”11
1858: (mid June): Darwin receives a request from
Alfred Russel Wallace, who was working in the
Malay Archipelago, to arrange for the publica-
tion of an essay he had written entitled “On the
tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from
the original type.” Darwin remarks that
“ . . . this essay contained exactly the same
theory as mine.”12
1858: (late June): Hooker and Charles Lyell are
appraised of the situation with Darwin and
Wallace and, having conferred, come to the
conclusion that Wallace’s essay should be read at
the next meeting of the Linnaean Society, but
that such a reading should be in conjunction
with a reading of an abstract (extract) of the book
on natural selection that Darwin was writing at
the time, plus the letter that Darwin had sent to
Gray the previous year (see above). This would
presumably establish the intellectual priority for
the originality of the idea of natural selection for
Darwin without detracting from the achieve-
ment of Wallace.
1858: (July 1): The Wallace and Darwin papers were
duly read to the Linnaean Society by its secretary
in the presence of Hooker and Lyell, who
commended the papers to the meeting for
serious consideration. There was no further dis-
cussion of the matters these papers propounded.
Indeed, the impact of these communications
may be likened to the ignition of a damp squib.

1859: (November 24): 1250 copies of Darwin’s “Origin
of species by means of natural selection” or the
“Preservation of favoured races in the struggle
for life” were published by John Murray of
Albemarle Street in London.
I do not apologize for including this “blow-by-blow” account of the

emergence of one of the most influential books of the Second Millennium. It
introduces the concept of natural selection, which is the process responsible
for the evolution of living organisms from the single anucleate cells of
bacteria to humans over a period of some 4 billion years. I would also hold it
responsible for the emergence of our current suite of most-favored devices
and ideas, which would include our tools and our ethics. This historic
episode also portrays the care, consideration, and respect that scientists,
engaged in making their novel ideas available to a wider public, have to
adopt when they publish and seek to accrue to themselves the accolade of
“having thought of it first.” As a footnote to this story, Darwin and Wallace
retained a mutual respect and friendship for the rest of their lives.
Return now to our world around 1.5 billion years ago, a world where
bacteria were in the ascendancy and where some bacteria had acquired the
ability to use oxygen for the controlled combustion of organic molecules at
ambient temperatures. Around this time a frenzy of “acquisitions and
mergers” took place between the different categories of bacteria. Via a
process called “symbiogenesis,” cells that had been living in free association
with one another developed more intimate relationships, such that most of
the genetic material of the incorporated cells was taken up by an organelle
(the nucleus) that specialized in the replication and expression of the cell’s
nucleic acid materials.13 –16 This resulted in the emergence of the three cell
types that make up most of the contemporary biosphere:
• Bacteria that do not contain a nucleus and whose genetic material

(DNA) is free to move about the cellular cytoplasm
• Animal and fungal cells that contain a nucleus that confines the
genetic material and whose cytoplasm contains from one to several
hundred descendants of oxygen-utilizing bacteria now known as
mitochondria
• Plant cells that in addition to the nucleus and mitochondria contain
from one to several hundred descendants of photosynthetic bacteria
now known as chloroplasts
(There are also the acellular viruses that reproduce their genetic material
[RNA or DNA] within the three cell types denoted above.)
Prologue 5
This history of the evolution of the animals and plants on Earth is not
without messages. Darwin and Wallace saw the variations on which the
process of natural selection could work as being relatively small or minute.
However, the process of symbiogenesis, which was not known to these
pioneers, produces variations that are relatively massive. Similar large-scale
changes may also be achieved by the delivery of whole packets of genes via
viruses or plasmids. These genetic vectors have probably been shifting genes
between cellular life-forms since the origin of living organisms. Between
these two mechanisms for generating new life-forms and major climatic
catastrophes attributable to collisions with comets and asteroids or to
volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, we have all the ingredients for an
explanation of the “punctuated equilibria” we observe in the geological
record of life’s progress.17 Therefore, the continual generation of variation is
not solely based on small changes, but also on many occasions when physi-
cal factors have interceded to effect step changes in the kinds of organisms
that inhabit this planet. One such change happened some 8 million years ago,
when the East African Rift formed. This cataclysm isolated a subset of
apelike primates on its eastern and more barren side, eventually leading to
the evolution of people.
Natural selection feeds on variation. As far as living organisms are con-
cerned, such variation results from the expression of a particular genetic con-
stitution in relation to a particular environment and the temporal changes in
that environment. It would be useful to survey the ways in which genetic
change occurs, as this will put in context the recently developed tools of the
genetic engineer (See Figure 1.1).
• Mutation in a gene can be in a single element of a multi-thousand–

element gene, or it can be an addition or deletion of a few or many
such elements; such events result from exposure to ionizing radiation
or chemical mutagens or from natural causes (exposure to sunlight,
cosmic radiation, or oxygen free radicals).
• Multiplication of the copies of a particular gene may occur at any posi-
tion on any chromosome.
• A reassortment of which genes are associated with which other genes
on what chromosome can also lead to variations.
• Reassortment of genes occurs through the sexual process, where two
sets of complementary genes come together and join themselves
together in a way different from that found in the original pregametic
cell (breeding programs base their selective matings on the variants
produced by such crosses).
• There are in bacteria genes that cause genetic variation via trans-
positions.
• Genes are added by the incorporation of a whole or partial viral
genome.
• Genes are added by the incorporation of a whole or partial cellular

genome.
• Genes are added or modified by using tools deployed by genetic engi-
neers.
Changes in the environment may be both controlled and uncontrolled by

humans. We may heat our homes and remove waste products via sewers, but
we cannot control climate, which before humans evolved varied between the
extremes of arctic cold to tropical heat at latitudes that today are regarded as
temperate.
Picking up the evolution story at the stage of the development of single
cells that contain mitochondria and possibly chloroplasts, we can proceed to
relate how such single nucleated (eukaryotic) cells, which are really a colony
of anucleated (prokaryotic) cells contained within a single envelope, became
the fauna and flora of our present biosphere. Those cells that contained
chloroplasts developed over the next billion or so years into multicellular
plants, and the cells lacking chloroplasts gave rise to the fungi and ani-
mals.19 –20 So by about 0.7 billion (700 million) years ago, the first traces of
multicellular animals and water-inhabiting plants were left as fossils in the
Precambrian rock strata.
Between 750 and 580 million years ago, Earth became a planetary snow-
ball at least four times. During such cold snaps most of its surface was cov-
ered with ice whose thickness varied from 1 km to many kilometers.
Temperatures could well have dropped to below 50°C. Living organisms
huddled around undersea volcanoes, whose hot magma and gases provided
warm environments for metabolism, growth, and reproduction. Such com-
munities probably existed and evolved independently in many places, which
led to the development of a variety of different types of unicellular and mul-
ticellular life-forms.21 Other photosynthetic organisms may have thrived on
the surface of the ice and snow. The cold periods were punctuated with hot
spells, caused by the atmospheric accumulation over several hundred years
of volcanically derived carbon dioxide, water and methane. Temperatures
during the hot spells could have reached 50°C.
With these extreme oscillations the proportion of the land area covered
by water varied considerably. While the present land area represents some
30% of the Earth’s surface area, during the ice ages this could have increased
by about 15% as water was immobilized in ice and glaciers. During the hot
periods the land area would have decreased by a similar amount, as the ice
melted to feed the oceans and seas. These fluctuations in environmental con-
ditions were clearly a driving force for selecting those living organisms that
could survive the harsh extremes of temperature to which they were
exposed. This kind of fluctuation in temperature has happened many times,
and the history of the last 250,000 years contains some 20 oscillations between
low and high temperature conditions (12.5°C). Again these became a more
recent driving force for the evolution of new and more robust organisms
Prologue 7
through the process of natural selection working on the inherent variation in

the genotypes of surviving organisms.
By 500 million years ago fish were roaming the oceans. Land was first
colonized by living organisms, vascular land plants, some 425 million years
ago. Yet it took another 225 million years before there were traces of
dinosaurs and the first mammals. Following the cataclysmic impact of a 6–14
km diameter asteroid some 65 million years ago in the area between northern
Mexico and the southern United States, between 40 and 60% of the genera of
animals living on the earth—including the successful and pervasive
dinosaurs—disappeared. The smaller and less demanding mammals sur-
vived. This set the stage for the transformation of primates (some species of
which, characterized by five digits, with flat[ish] nails on both hands and
feet—one of which is opposed to the other four digits and with forward-look-
ing eyes—had been around for 90 million years) to humans via a process that
may well have begun some 8 million years ago. At this time a concerted
tectonic motion caused the East African Rift to form. To the west of the rift the
climate supported a wet equatorial rainforest in which the ape, chimpanzee,
and bonobo families are found. By contrast, on the drier eastern side of the
rift, are found all of the fossil remains of the australopithecines, who are on
the evolutionary tree leading to humans. A second change in climate may be
traced to events beginning about 3 to 4 million years ago, at which time the
evidence seems to point to a divergence of the first hominids from the
australopithecines. This brings us to the story of stone tool–making
hominids, which begins in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago.
References
1. Hogan, C. J., Primordial deuterium and the Big Bang, Sci. Am., 275, 36, 1996.
2. Barrow, J. D. and Silk, J., The structure of the early universe, Sci. Am., 242, 98, 1980.
3. Germans discover yet another element, Science, 267, 29, 1995.
4. Organessian, Y. T., Utyonkov, V. K., and Moody, K. J., Voyage to superheavy
island, Sci. Am., 282, 45, 2000.
5. Hogan, C. J., In the beginning, Sci. Am., 264, 100, 1991.
6. Schopf, J. W., Microfossils of the early archean apex chert: new evidence of the
antiquity of life, Science, 260, 640, 1993.
7. Spier, R. E., History of animal cell technology, in The Encyclopedia of Cell
Technology, Volume 2, Spier, R. E., Ed., Wiley, New York, 2000, 853.
8. Brack, A., Ed., The Molecular Origins of Life, Camlen Age University Press,
Cambridge, 1998, 417.
9. Miller, S. L., A production of amino acids under possible primitive earth condi-
tions, Science, 117, 528, 1953.
10. Darwin, C., Autobiography of Charles Darwin, The Thinkers Library, No. 7,
London, 1929, 57.
11. Darwin, F., Ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2, 3rd ed., John
Murray, London, 1887, p. 120.
12. Darwin, C., Autobiography of Charles Darwin, The Thinkers Library, No. 7,
London, 1929, 10, 58.
13. Sagan, O. L., On the origin of mitosing cells, J. Theoret. Biol., 14, 225, 1967.
14. Schwartz, R. M. and Dayhoff, M. O., Origins of prokaryotes, eukaryotes, mito-
chondria, and chloroplasts: a perspective is derived from protein and nucleic
acid sequence data, Science, 199, 395, 1978.
15. Marguilis, L., Symbiosis in Cell Evolution. Life and Its Environment on the Early
Earth. W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1981, 419.
16. Khakhina, L. N., Margulis, L., and McMenamin, M., Eds., Concepts of
Symbiogenesis: A Historical and Critical Study of the Research of Russian Botanists
(transl.), Yale University Press, New Haven, 1992.
17. Eldredge, N., Gould, S. J., Coyne, J. A., and Charlesworth, B., On punctuated
equilibria, Science, 276, 337, 1997.
18. Arber, W., personal communication, 2000.
19. Schopf, W., The evolution of the earliest cells, Sci. Am., 239, 85, 1978.
20. Valentine, J. W., The evolution of multicellular plants and animals, Sci. Am.,
239, 105, 1978.
21. Hoffman, P. F. and Schrag, D. P., Snowball Earth, Sci. Am., 282, 50, 2000.
22. Alvarez, L. W., Alvarez, W., Asaro, F., and Michel, H. V., Extraterrestrial cause
for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, Science, 208, 1095, 1980.
23. Coppens, Y., The east side story: The origin of humankind, Sci. Am., 270, 62,
1994.
chapter one
Beginnings
1.1 Tools in history

Humans are not the only beings who discover, make, and use tools. So
where does tool use begin? That depends on what the word tool is taken to
mean. The Oxford Dictionary of Etymology and the Oxford English Dictionary
(OED) cite a number of sources of the word. The Old English tōl equates to
the Old Norse tól, which stands for any instrument of manual operation,
while the Old Teutonic tôwlo, tólo, and tôw mean to prepare or make. The
first suite of definitions in the OED leads us to think about “any instrument
of manual operation; a mechanical implement for working upon some-
thing,” while the second set of concepts includes the following definition:
“Anything used in the manner of a tool; a thing (concrete or abstract) with
which some operation is performed; a means of effecting something; an
instrument.” A definition that I have used and that prevents the things
which constitute the body of the animal or individual from being considered
as tools is the following: A tool is “any entity discovered or made (exclud-
ing those materials deployed to satisfy nutritional requirements) that is
used by an animal to make changes to the world. Such changes would nor-
mally promote the survival of that animal, related animals, or both.”
1.1.1 The prehominid era

When we look at spiders’ webs, beehives, ant termitaries, the shells of mol-
lusks and snails, and bird nests, we observe animals making and using
tools. Insects use stones to shut their nests, sand to push prey into pits, and
cocoons to provide shelter while they transform. Birds use stones against
which they hurl their prey or with which they break the eggs of other birds,
or they take twigs and bark in their beaks to obtain access to food insects.
Many other animals burrow into the ground to create simple or complex
sanctuaries where they may escape the predatory attentions of their ene-
mies. Sea otters crack open mussels using stone hammers, and chimpanzees
crack open nuts using a similar technique. The nonhuman higher primates
have a more versatile repertoire of tool use. E. O. Wilson reviews such activ-
ities in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.1 He quotes work showing that chim-
panzeeuse saplings and sticks as whips, clubs, and projectiles; specially
fashioned twigs and grasses for probing ant colonies for termites; sticks as
levers and, on a smaller scale, for dental grooming; and leaves for retrieving
water and for wiping off materials that cause discomfort to the body.
When we come to the use of tools by humans, we have a rich and
diverse legacy of models and precedents for immediate use, adaptation, and
enhancement. It is important to realize that although the first shaped stone
tools were first used about 2.5 million years ago, protohumans and their
predecessors used a wide variety of other materials as tools. Thus we may
imagine that in addition to woody and plant-sourced tools, they could well
have used bones, tortoise shells, horns, antlers, teeth, rocks, and skins. As
birds can knot grasses in their nest-building activities, so might humans
have used tendons, bulrushes, and hair. That we do not have evidence for
such uses in the Paleolithic record does not mean that such devices were not
used. (The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.) Rather we
have to think creatively about the relationship of resources and mental
capacities to arrive at some notion of what was going on some 2.5 million
years ago, when protohumans achieved a major technical breakthrough
(literally) and added shaped stone tools to their armamentarium.
Over the last 8 million years there emerged from apelike creatures
bipedal upright beings with brains two to three times larger than the mod-
ern apes and gorillas. These individuals became adept at communicating
with one another using sounds to represent things, actions, qualities, quan-
tities, and relationships. During the last century great progress has been
made in piecing together a story as to how this might have occurred.
Clearly, great emphasis was given to those elements of the picture that con-
stitute the most reliable evidence of past events. Thus bones, stones, and
geologic structures—the time of whose deposition may be ascertained by
measuring the ratio of 40argon to 40potassium or the ratio of 87rubidium to
87
strontium in sample rocks, paleomagnetism, or, more controversially, the
types of animal bones found in particular rock strata—have been used. This
focusing of attention on what could be “scientifically” supported or refuted
has distorted the picture of the way the transformation from apelike pri-
mates to modern humans occurred.
For example, it is not clear that bipedalism was an unmitigated advan-
tage. Standing up in the grassland savannas exposed one to the view of pos-
sible predators, while also seeking the advantage of obtaining warning of
such dangers or the availability and whereabouts of prey. Movement speeds
using two limbs are less than those that can be obtained from four. So
running away from life-threatening situations was not always the best
Chapter one: Beginnings 11
option. Furthermore, having one’s internal organs hanging off a vertically

oriented pillar (the backbone) creates its own suite of problems when com-
pared with the clothesline type of system that pertains to other nonavian
vertebrates. So how did bipedalism survive as a mode of existence in an oth-
erwise four-legged phylum of mammals?
An a priori examination of the bipedal state has to intuit (guess) that
using only two limbs for the purpose of locomotion affords opportunities
that could not otherwise be obtained. Furthermore, such facilities must be
crucial to the survival of the bipedal being. Three features are closely
coupled to survival: the first is obtaining sufficient nutrients; second, it is
necessary to reproduce; and third, one has to survive in a world where car-
nivorous animals abound.
Nonhuman primates are predominantly vegetarian, although chim-
panzees have developed complex social strategies for hunting, catching,
and eating monkeys. Animal-based foods generally do not provide for the
basic sustenance of nonhuman primates. It would appear that the introduc-
tion of a higher proportion of meat into the diet of human ancestors
increased their energy intake enough so that they could support the addi-
tional requirements caused by an extended development of the brain.
Nervous tissue in general is highly demanding of energy. Nerve cells are
continually having to create high concentration differences of sodium and
potassium ions between themselves and their surroundings. This requires
the services of proteinaceous pumps that sit in the cell membranes of the
nerve cells and are fueled by the prodigious use of the energy intermediate
of the cell known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). In a modern human, the
brain, which weighs some 1.5 kg, accounts for 25% of the energy consump-
tion of a 75-kg person at rest. The adoption of the bipedal mode of locomo-
tion may have then promoted or facilitated the improved nutrition of the
emerging humans by enabling them to acquire diets that had a higher pro-
portion of meat. This capability not only meant that more energy could be
ingested at one sitting, but also the size of the gut could be reduced and the
range of materials that could provide sustenance increased. This, in turn,
meant that when harsh weather prevailed (as it often did during the periods
of glaciation that occurred during the time when the transformation from
apelike beings to humans occurred), the human ancestors would have had
additional options for sources of food that would not have been available to
their vegetarian cousins. So there may well be a connection between the eat-
ing of meat and the emergence of bipedalism.
When apes and chimpanzees are angry or disturbed, they may resort to
throwing twigs, stones, or chunks of dead wood at the source of irritation or
fear. Their ability to grasp such objects was expedited by their ability to
oppose their thumbs to the other four fingers of the forelimb or hand.
However, to achieve any such efficacy, they would have had to stand on two
legs and use their upper limbs for propelling the projectiles. In watching
films of this type of behavior by chimpanzees, the accuracy and range of
such throwing actions were not great. It seemed equivalent to throwing

sand in the face of an adversary; it can be likened to a shotgun approach. But
chimpanzees are not naturally bipedal animals. The use of their
arms/forelegs for this activity would have been restrained by the prior
selection of these limbs for locomotion and tree climbing, rather than
throwing. But what if the forelimbs could become more specialized for
throwing? Would this significantly affect the survivability of that being?
Throwing things at other animals can have two effects. It can either
cause fear or injury, perhaps leading to death of the target animal. It
constitutes action at a distance and does not require bodily contact for
effectiveness. Predator animals may develop conditioned reflexes such that
when they see a potential prey looking as if it were going to pick up a
projectile for throwing, they would automatically back off. (I was advised
by my father to do just this after I, as a child of about ten, was bitten by a
dog; it worked.) On the stone-strewn territory of the East African Rift area,
which had been bombarded over many millennia with volcanic effluvia
(often containing rocks and pebbles) it would not have been difficult to turn
to such material for throwing rather than the woody materials that pre-
vailed in the rainforests to the west of the Rift. Such materials would have
been much more effective.
Skill and adeptness in throwing enable effects to be achieved at long
range. A stone or pebble may be thrown 50 or more meters, so grazing
animals may be hit without warning. The grasping hand of our human
ancestors could hold and project such a missile with accuracy and length,
and given the coordination of a number of such throwers, the chances of the
target animal’s ability to dodge a shower of lithic missiles decreases as the
numbers increase. To imagine the use of hand-thrown stone missiles as a
means of wounding or killing animals the size of deer, buffalo, or zebra is
not unrealistic. The throwing of larger rocks onto the slowly moving turtles
and tortoises would also provide a readily available food resource. The
remains of such prey have been shown in association with the Olduvai
hominids of 2 million years ago.2 A corollary to the use of the thrown stone
would be that such weapons could be used to keep predators at bay, or even
cause the more efficient and specialized carnivores to relinquish their kill.
In practicing the stone throwing art, targets of other stones may be
chosen (a primary way of passing vacation time on a pebbly beach). On hit-
ting such a target, a break might have occurred in either the thrown stone or
its butt. The sharp edge of the resulting rock would have quite other uses.
Such broken stone tools would enable the cutting of the hide of animals that
had died from natural causes or that had been stoned to death. Access to the
meat and fat within would have been considerably facilitated. The use of
stones with sharp edges would have enabled the bones of larger prey to be
broken, rendering the fatty marrow within available as food. Even such a
crude instrument would be adequate for the preliminary butchering, scrap-
ing, and cleaning of a skin that could then be used for other purposes.
However, stones were not the only tool. Bones, antlers, and lengths of
wood may have been used to club a prey animal to death or to protect the
group against a predator. Now we may appreciate the advantages of the
bipedal gait. Our human ancestors were able to obtain the advantages of
action at a distance via the thrown projectile. Also, their free hands were
available to carry a weapon (club) or a few stones. A gathered-up skin may
be used as a carried bag of weapons or tools. This would give some inde-
pendence from the constraints of the immediate locality and provide a
degree of instant readiness in the case of an opportunity to prey or to protect
against predation. Having made a kill, it would not have been uncommon
for a variety of other carnivores to take an interest in the source of fresh meat.
Modern hyenas, wolves, dogs, vultures, and large cats engage in scavenging
what others may have killed. To protect the food source for one’s own group,
the kill is broken up and transported back to a lair or safe haven. Surely a
bipedal creature would have a considerable advantage in such carrying
activities, as—in addition to the mouth—the hands could be used for trans-
portation. It also does not stretch the imagination too far to conceive of indi-
viduals cooperating so that even heavier loads may be moved. This in turn
means that whole carcasses may be taken to a safe place for a more leisurely
disposition. So throwing, clubbing, and carrying may be identified as the key
activities that transformed the disadvantages of the bipedal mode of loco-
motion into advantages, thus satisfying the requirement that bipedalism
must be a positive contributor to survival.
As throwers, clubbers, choppers, and scrapers, our humanoid ancestors
set out on the road of toolmakers and users. The tools became an insepara-
ble part of their existence. Without tools their survival would have been
imperiled. We can identify references to our throwing and clubbing past in
the way babies repeatedly throw their toys out of their carriages and
playpens and in the manner in which they bang their spoons on whatever
surface is set in front of them, or in the popular games of baseball and cricket,
where both the throwing of a missile and the clubbing of that missile are at
the epicenter of the activity. Of course, modern humans have to make things
difficult for themselves, so they find ways of projecting spherical and ovoid
missiles using their feet—as in soccer, football, and rugby—or by using clubs
to project the ball—as in golf, tennis, squash, and racquetball. In short, many
of us seem to spend much of our leisure time either watching or participat-
ing in some activity that harks back to our throwing and clubbing past. We
must not neglect to mention that the ways of manifesting warfare through-
out the written history of humans has involved projecting at enemies a wide
diversity of missile types using an equally broad range of propulsion sys-
tems.
Having garnered the advantages of throwing stones over a period of
some 5 million years, it is not inconceivable that stones with sharp edges
were encountered that could be put to other purposes, such as cutting and
dividing killed animals into easily transportable segments, as well as shap-
ing and scraping the skins of killed animals. Cutting vegetable materials
may also have figured in the repertoire of activities of stone-using hominids.
Alternatively, instead of relying on the happenstance of finding such a
shaped stone, the ability to make such tools at will became even more advan-
tageous.
1.2 Making stone tools

Finding a roundish stone the size of a grapefruit with one side showing some
chipped away material that leaves a sharpish but irregular edge is taken to
constitute fairly firm evidence for toolmaking abilities. These Oldowan and
Developed Oldowan tools represented the first and the finest surviving
manufactures of humanoids (Figure 1.1) (Homo habilis and Homo erectus) who
lived between 2.5 and 0.6 million years ago. They developed, although
slightly, during this period to larger stones chipped away on two sides to
form “bifaced” choppers or scrapers: the Acheulean hand-ax style. The
materials from which such tools were made can be found widely in the
eastern and southern regions of Africa. For the most part humanoids used
volcanically ejected stones that consist of a fine-grained igneous rock made
from sodium, calcium, and aluminum silicates with a general formula (Na,
Ca, Al) Si2O8. Other rocks used were quartz (SiO2), chert, and quartzite (sand
grains of quartz cemented together with silica) in addition to flint (micro-
crystalline quartz) and obsidian (a volcanic glass or an igneous granite,
made from roughly 60% feldspar (XZ4O8, where X Ba, Ca, K, Na, NH4, or
Sr and Z Al, B, or Si and 40% quartz), when this could be found.
Contemporary humans who have sought to replicate such tools3 have
been able to make the Oldowan/Acheulean tools after an extensive learning
process, by holding the raw stone in one hand and striking it with another
stone held in the other hand. The flakes that would have been removed
could also be used as tools and may have been further modified through a
further hammering process. The hand-ax type of tool required considerable
shaping and chipping to form the tear-shaped, sharp-edged stone of which
many examples are found, normally in association with the bones of Homo
erectus. That this technology held sway for some 1 million years without sig-
nificant change is remarkable. But the designation hand-ax for these bifaced
sharp-edged stones may be misplaced.
A priori considerations would lead one to think that if one were to make
a tool for hacking at bones or branches or digging the earth for a tuber, the
side of the tool facing the hand would be rounded to fit comfortably into the
palm, in the fashion of the Oldowan tools. To have a sharp edge at this posi-
tion courts disaster and wounding. In prehistoric times a wound would have
been a serious threat to life, as methods to prevent infection were dependent
on the immune system––antiseptics and antibiotics were not available, even
in the form of Penicillium-infected bread. However, were such shaped stones
Era Period Epoch

Precambrian 4,600 – 570
Paleozoic 570 – 225
Triassic 225–190
Jurassic 190–136
Mesozoic 225– 65 Cretaceous 136– 65
Paleocene 64 –54
Eocene 54 – 38
Oligocene 38 – 26
Miocene 26 –7
Tertiary 65 –2.5 Pliocene 7–2.5
Pleistocene 2.5 – 0.01
Lower Pleistocene 2.5 – 0.7
Middle Pleistocene 0.7 – 0.14
Upper Pleistocene 0.14 –0.01
Cenozoic 65 – 0 Quaternary 2.5 – 0 Holocene 0.01– 0
Lithic Periods
Lower Paleolithic 2.5 – 0.08
Middle Paleolithic 0.08 – 0.04
Upper Paleolithic 0.04– 0.01
Types of Tools
Oldowan 2.5/1.9 –0.6
Developed Oldowan (China) 1.5– 0.6
Acheulean (bifaced) 1.6– 0.6
Levallois (multiflake) 0.25– 0.15
Mousterian (Neanderthal) 0.15 – 0.03
Châtelperronian (Mediterranean Europe) 0.05 –0.04
Aurignacian 0.027–0.012
Magdalenian 0.017–0.012
Copper/Gold/Silver 0.008 –0
Bronze 0.004–0
Iron 0.003–0
Use of Fire
Zoukoudien 0.5??
Budapest 0.35
Terra Amata (France) 0.3
Eurasia (commonly) 0.04
Figure 1.1 Tool and fire use related to geologic eras (times shown in millions
of years ago).
incorporated into a composite structure with a wooden haft or shaft, then

given sophisticated techniques for securing the stone to the wood, it is possi-
ble to see how such a shaped stone might have been used as a heavy-duty,
short jabbing spear. A digging, chopping, or cutting tool could enable one to
Australopithecenes: Archaic Homo sapiens:

Height: 1 – 1.3 m Brain Volume: 1100– 1400 ml
Weight: 30 – 80 kg Distribution: Africa/Asia/Europe
Brain Volume: 400– 530 ml Dates: 0.4 –0.1
Distribution: East/South Africa
Dates: 4 – 1
Neanderthals:
Homo habilis: Brain Volume: 1200– 1700 ml
Brain Volume: 500–800 ml Distribution: Europe/W. Asia
Dates: 2.4 – 1.6 Dates: 0.2 –0.028
Homo erectus: Early Modern:

Brain Volume: 750– 1250 ml Brain Volume: 1200– 1700 ml
Distribution: Africa/Asia/Europe? Distribution: Africa/W. Asia
Dates: 1.8 – 0.3 Dates: 0.13 –0.06
Modern Humans:
Brain Volume: 1350– 1500 ml
Distribution: Global
Dates: 0.06 –0
Figure 1.2 Steps in the evolution of modern humans (dates shown in millions of
years ago).
take advantage of the wooden handle to bring the muscle power of both arms
to bear on one cutting zone. It should be noted, however, that the oldest sur-
viving compound spear, made from a stone tip and a hardwood shaft, was
found at Schöningen in Germany and was dated to about 0.4 million years
ago. However, this does not mean that such tools did not exist before this
time. Rather, the highly crafted Schöningen spear presaged the culmination
of a developmental process that may have gone on for hundreds of thou-
sands of years and that still had many years to run.
Developments of such techniques took place in the last half million years
(Figure 1.2). More modern types of humans (Homo neanderthalensis, Homo hei-
delbergensis, and Homo sapiens) were able to make many long, slender, and
sharp flakes from a central core stone from which many such slivers could be
harvested (Levallois and Mousterian types). Methods similar to this are used
today by the people who call themselves the Kim-Yal, living in the Langda
region of the New Guinea highlands.4 It is noteworthy that in passing from
generation to generation the highly developed techniques for making the
stone-tipped multifunctional adzes, there seems to be a need for something
more than the ability to imitate or copy. There are “tricks” to these developed
techniques that cannot be communicated by visualization and gesture alone.
The crucial additional component is that of a spoken language, a tool whose
development would lead to the learning and acquisition of abilities that
would transform our relationship with our fellow organisms as well as the
abiotic environment.
1.2.1 Tools have downsides

So far in this section on the use of tools by our hominid ancestors, the reader
will note that I have dwelt on the beneficial uses of tools, whatever the mate-
rial from which they were made. Tools were used to acquire food, protect
against predators, and devise new implements to improve the efficiency of
achieving these aims. But each and every such tool may also be used to
deprive our hominid ancestors of life. A thrown or a wielded stone can crush
the skull of a hominid, as can a swung club or shafted stone knife. A prick
from a poisoned needlepoint is as lethal as a garrotte made from a strip of ani-
mal skin. It would be unreasonable to imagine that these harmful uses of
tools were not realized. There would not only be “turf” conflicts between
groups of hominids; antagonisms would also exist within the loose bands of
individuals who roamed the permissive territories. Competition for mates,
for the choice portions of an animal kill, or for a particular or outstanding
piece of stone might set off a suite of actions whose result would have been
the harming of another hominid through the agency of a tool fashioned for
another purpose. Indeed it is difficult to escape the mind experiment where
each and every device we can conceive of as being used for benefit can also
be imagined as an agent deployed to cause damage and destruction.
Admittedly, the damage in a one-on-one conflict is limited. Therefore, the
survival of the group may be weakened by such damaging tool uses.
However, on the other hand, that which may have caused local harm may
result in an increase in the survivability of the group due to the emergence of
a more powerful and effective leader.
This seeming conundrum of the coexistence of beneficial and harmful
properties with regard to the use of any one tool seems to be universal. It
applies to both the tools we have used for millennia, as well as the tools that
were invented yesterday. It does not matter whether the exercise of the tool
in question may have minor consequences at the level of the individual or
major effects on many millions of people: there is always the possibility of a
harmful as well as an advantageous application. Sometimes, when faced
with a new tool, we are confident that its introduction will be predominantly
rewarding. On other occasions we may have reservations about the applica-
tion of an untried device. In differing circumstances we have been wrong-
fully confident and mistakenly reserved. For example, we were confident
that the introduction of nuclear energy generators would be a universal ben-
efit, until we discovered the downside of the need to dispose of radioactive
waste in large quantities and with secure containment that would last for
thousands of years. By contrast, we were reluctant to introduce heavier-than-
air machines for transportation. “If we were meant to fly, God would have
given us wings.” Yet today we think nothing of getting into an airplane with
hundreds of other passengers and spending 10 or so hours traveling at 550
miles an hour, 35,000 ft above the ground between places A and B.
This sets up my reasons for writing this book. Each and every tool can
clearly be used to achieve benefits and drawbacks. This poses the following
questions: how have we responded to this property of each tool so that it may
serve our progression rather than our regression? And how might we treat
the introduction of new tools so that we are more likely to be advantaged
rather than disadvantaged? I hold that this is a primary function of ethics.
Having acquired the ability to speak in words (see Section 1.4), it becomes
possible to use those words to affect the way humans behave. The words we
use to attempt to guide and control human (and, on occasion, animal)
behavior become our ethics. They thereby constitute the key elements
whereby we can modulate the use of our tools so that we can gain the
maximum advantage from their existence and restrict any collateral
disadvantages to a minimum.
To more effectively appreciate how ethics and tool uses come together,
we must further examine the way our contemporary tools have come into
being, and where, on this occasion, we may regard ethics as one such tool.
1.3 Humans turn to fire

As every other mobile being ran away from a spreading fire, one or more of our
human ancestors held their ground to explore the properties of fire that could
cause widespread devastation. No doubt many such curious beings were
caught and, surrounded by the flames, killed. But some survived. It is as a
result of their courage, luck, and skill that we, as humans, are the only living
beings who have acquired the knowledge and arts necessary to turn the energy
of fire to our benefit.
Our Australopithecine progenitors would have been familiar with fire.
Bush fires arise from the action of lightning striking dry vegetation or through
the action of the wind causing two dead branches of a tree to rub together and
produce sufficient friction and heat to initiate combustion.5 If they were living
in the vicinity of volcanoes, then periodic eruptions, ejecting streams of incan-
descent molten rocks and stones, would have caused fires over wide areas.
They would have seen how brush fires, driven by the wind, would consume
all the vegetation in their path; the animals who were insufficiently fleet of foot
would be caught and burned to death. Many hominids would have perished
in this way. Those who survived would have been able to feast on the dead and
charred remains of the animals (probably including the hominids) who were
caught. This flesh was softer and easier to eat, but quickly rotted away.
It is, of course, difficult to discover evidence of the use of fire by hominids,
which is sufficiently trustworthy that most archeologists and anthropologists
could agree on its provenance. There is disputed evidence that in a cave in
Zoukoudian, China (near Beijing), hominids were using fire in a hearth some
500,000 years ago. However, then there was a gap of 150,000 years before the
next evidence turns up at two places in Europe––Budapest and Terra Amata
(France). Even so, clear and unequivocal evidence of the widespread use of fire
can be dated to 40,000 years ago. From this we can assert with some confidence
that the hominids occupying Europe and Asia were familiar with and had
multiple uses of fire. How else could they have illuminated the deep caves
whose walls they covered with drawings and paintings of the animals and
action scenes of the life outside?
Fire is not difficult to produce, though ancient lore implied that the appli-
cation of deliberate methods to achieve this end was only achieved some
10,000 years ago. Clearly we could envisage a time, before the techniques for
generating fire at will became commonplace, when fire would have been
“captured” from nature—from lightning strikes or from the spontaneous
combustion of rotting organic matter. Nevertheless, it is also hard not to think
that the early hominids (habilis and erectus) would have rubbed two pieces of
wood together to the point where one of them glowed red hot and smoked
like spontaneously derived fires. Alternatively, during the process of stone
tool making and the exploration of the possible raw materials for such tools,
an individual might have struck a piece of iron pyrite with a flint stone and
noticed a shower of sparks that would have reminded him of the sparks that
erupted periodically from burning wood. So while the firm and testable
evidence for the use of fire by humans is, for the most part, relatively recent,
there are a priori reasons for at least imagining that our predecessors were
using fire for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years, before
those times for which we have examinable and analyzable evidence. Indeed,
reexamination of sites in Africa where “lenses” have been discovered on the
ground indicates that fire may well have been used in the times of habilis and
erectus.6
Fire is a crucial element in the construction of the modern world. Without
it we would be unable to avail ourselves of the metallic content of metal-
bearing rocks. We would be unable to fashion such metals into the tools and
machines that provide us with capabilities beyond those achievable by the
application of human strength (however many people one was able to get on
the end of a rope). We transform the energy inherent in burning materials
into steam at high temperatures and pressure in order to drive motors and
engines that enable wheels to turn and every form of motion to be
accomplished. Some such engines generate electricity (dynamos) and enable
the transport of energy to every nook and cranny of those countries
sufficiently endowed to support such a development. In the motion genera-
tors of oil-dependent airplanes, ships, cars, and trains, we can appreciate the
workings of the piston engine in transforming the explosive firing of an
air-oil mixture in a confined space, leading to the motion of a piston that via
a metal link causes a crankshaft to rotate. We have a chemical industry
dependent on heat, and our ability to defend ourselves against attack by our
enemies is based both on our ability to make explosive chemicals and also on
the numerous of ways we use metals and engines to make the vehicles and
munitions used for that protection.
The ancient premetallic world (before 8000 years ago) also could derive
benefits from the use of fire. Clearly, cooked meat and vegetables were easier
to eat and digest than their raw counterparts. Food materials that were
clearly rotting could be cooked sufficiently for pathogenic microorganisms

and parasites to be killed, leaving the resulting materials edible. Also many
toxins that render some vegetable materials poisonous can be made edible by
subjecting them to a heating process (the lectins in castor beans are rendered
harmless in this way, as is the gossypol in cottonseeds). This would extend
the range of edible materials available to our hominid ancestors and provide
survival capabilities in times of hardship. In addition, fires can be used to
ward off potential predators. Animals have learned by their exposure to peri-
odic brush fires to fear and dread the flames of fires. A hominid brandishing
a burning bough would scare away the hungriest of carnivores. Such fires
could also provide this quality of protection while the group slept. Again it
would have been hard not to notice that wood exposed to fire became hard
and less friable and as such could take a point that would not fail when used
as a spear in an animal hunt. Apart from physical warmth (a boon in the years
when glaciers dominated this planet’s surface, which was almost half of the
time during the last million years), fires provided light and comfort. They
provided a focal point about which a group could gather and swap commu-
nications. Whether the urge to communicate enhanced by the communality
inspired by the grouping around the fire became an element in the causal
chain that resulted in language abilities is a moot point, because it is yet
unclear as to whether the use of a syntactically based language preceded the
use of fire or vice versa—or even whether these two facilities were linked in
any functional way at all.
But fires are dangerous. In the twenty-first century hardly a week goes by
without a report of children and adults being burned to death from a fire that
consumed their home. There are many disasters on road, rail, and air
transport systems where fire claims the lives of tens to hundreds of human
victims yearly. While the boilers on the ferry boats plying the Mississippi
River in the mid nineteenth-century have ceased to explode regularly since
the introduction of engineering codes of practice (a form of ethics),7
we cannot assert that our present practices with regard to fire are without a
risk of causing damage. Notwithstanding this ongoing carnage due to fire,
the workings of our present societies would be bereft of energy and the
means to make tools and perform tasks were we to deny ourselves this facil-
ity.
Early hominids would have faced similar dilemmas. They were well
aware of the dangers implicit in fires through their experiences with natu-
rally produced bush conflagrations. In grasping burning branches or in
picking up hot stones, they would have received burns with the consequen-
tial bacterial infections that could kill. They might have used burning
branches as weapons in conflicts. Nevertheless, they persevered. In spite of
the pain and the danger, they must have found the benefits to have out-
weighed the dangers. In mastering this powerful tool (fire) they would have
had to acquire an ancillary collection of talents. There would have been the
need to collect and store fuel to assuage the hunger of the fire for burnable
materials. What were the most burnable materials? Where were they to be
found? How could they be transported efficiently? What would happen if the
fire went out? How might the fire be renewed? In the event that the fire was
captured from nature, how best might this be achieved? How may the fire be
transported? How might one handle burning materials without getting
burned? Then there is the problem of passing on acquired skills and knowl-
edge to the next generation and to colleagues.
As capabilities advance, life gets more complicated. The transmission of
information about the techniques of making stone and other tools as well as
the production and maintenance of fires become a necessity rather than a
luxury. A means of communication is required to go beyond the panoply of
squeaks, shrieks, howls, grunts, hoots, pants, and gestures of our primate
progenitors.
1.4 One tool leads to another: the birth of language

It is clear from experiments that have sought to teach language skills to chim-
panzees and bonobos,8 the mental apparatus for the assimilation of abstract
signs and sounds and associating such signs and sounds with actual objects
exists in primates with brain sizes of less than 500 ml. Indeed the African grey
parrot may acquire the ability to mimic a few hundred sounds and even
associate such sounds with particular things or actions.9 Again it is common-
place knowledge that dogs, cats, and horses are adept at responding to
human calls and words in a manner that indicates a basic understanding of
the expressions used. There may even be responses peculiar to the manner in
which the words are delivered: angrily, lovingly, sadly. Whales and dolphins
are able to communicate with one another by clicks, “songs,” and bellows;
when trained by humans, they respond to whistles whose pitch is beyond the
range of response of the human ear and verbal commands. With the excep-
tion of the parrot and certain other birds, no other species of animals can
enunciate words. With contemporary human children, there is a clear ability
to understand and respond to spoken language (irrespective of the language
used in the country of their upbringing), but they are unable to speak or ini-
tiate communications using words until they are over a year old.10 The first
words are spoken at about 14 months, while simple sentences are spoken
some 8 months later. Major language acquisitions are achieved during the
third year, but it is not until after the fourth year that full competency is pre-
sent. After this time the ability to learn new languages decreases.
About 2 million years ago Homo erectus, with a brain capacity over
1000 ml (which was double that of the ancestral australopithecines), emerged
from Africa.11 This hominid spread over the continents of Africa, Asia, and
Europe, and the most recent remains date to 300,000 years ago. It is not likely
that members of the erectus group could speak in extended sentences. This
contention is predicated on an examination of the size of the hole through
which the nervous tissue of the spinal cord passes. When compared to
modern humans, the size of the hole for the erectus’ spinal column was half
as large. This is held to mean that the supply of nerves to the chest muscles
of erectus was less well developed and could not support the control of the
discharge of air from the lungs, which is a necessary condition for the pro-
duction of extended sentences.12 However, they would have been at least as
adept as the animals referred to in the preceding paragraph at making
sounds and interpreting those sounds in a way that was meaningful to their
survival. They might also have invented a wider range of gestures than their
Australopithecine progenitors, if only because they traveled farther, made
more advanced tools, and had larger brains. The increasing complexity and
range of gestures,13 coupled with the richer range of experiences that needed
to be communicated, were clear pressures for an increased refinement of
vocal utterances and the emergence of language.
To make the kinds of sounds we use in verbal communications requires
highly specialized equipment. The size and shape of the tongue, the hard and
soft palate, the lips, and the upper region of the larynx—which houses the
vocal cords—have to be just so. It is clear the modern humans, who emerged
some 60,000 years ago, had the complete kit in the appropriate configuration.
It is also clear that the Neanderthals who lived between 200,000 and 28,000
years ago almost had a complete apparatus; but it is thought that because of
the shape of their tongues, they would have been unable to make the vowel
sounds “i” (pronounced EE), “a” (pronounced AH), and “u” (pronounced
OO).14 On the other hand, the early modern humans (130,000–
60,000 years ago) were probably fitted with a suitable anatomy and may well
have been fully engaged in language development.15 Filling the gap between
Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, there is the hominid Homo heidelbergensis
(with earliest traces 700,000 years ago and died out 100,000 years ago). It may
also have been named Archaic Homo sapiens. With a larger (1100 to
1400 ml) brain than erectus, heidelbergensis could have been a clear link
between the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens. Could heidel-
bergensis speak? Or, in what way did this human progenitor advance the arts
and sciences of communication?
1.4.1 A view as to how language might have begun

Nobody knows for sure how, when, or where language originated. The
Société Linguistique de Paris banned all papers on this subject in 1866.
However, we have amassed a growing corpus of information since then, and
I wish to “reopen the case” and take another look at what might have hap-
pened. The views proffered below are mine (though not necessarily unique)
and are presented so as to promote further thinking and investigations in this
vital area.
Let us take the view that language, as we know it, did not have a defin-
able beginning or origin. Yet we have to recognize that we have moved from
a state of nonlinguistic communication, as in primates and other animals, to
fully fledged, language-based information transfers in Homo sapiens sapiens

(originating 60,000 years ago and becoming us).
We know that primates communicate using sounds, gestures, acts (such
a grooming), body language, and smell. The various species that developed
from such primatelike origins added further features, more sounds, new ges-
tures, etc. to the communication system of the original primates. The system
was additive and cumulative. As life became more complex and challenging
(widely fluctuating climatic conditions, from glaciers to tropical tempera-
tures over a period of tens of thousands of years, with changes in the local
flora and fauna to suit), the need to exchange more information became more
acute. This called for more new sounds and gestures. Not only was the world
constantly changing around them, but our predecessors were changing their
habits and behaviors. As new tools came into being, it would have been
important to be capable of explaining how to make the new devices.
Additionally, the new tools had properties that were over and above those of
the previous generation of tools. This too required communication to the next
generation and to other members of the group. The communications became,
in themselves, tools to achieve an improvement in the survivability of the
communicators.
During this period the advantages of increases in group size may well
have become apparent. This could allow for social developments such as the
following:
• On the demise of individuals by accident or sickness, others in the

group could take over the responsibility for feeding and rearing the
children of the deceased or impaired.
• Specialization of function by stone knappers, hunters, vegetable pre-
parers, skin specialists, etc. allows for the emergence of “experts,”
which leads to more effective performance in the specialized areas.
• Less vulnerability to aggressive acts from other (smaller) groups of
hominids (negotiations for group mergers or cooperation as opposed
to competition?).
• Less vulnerability to predators.
• Through communication and story telling, it is possible to keep more
information available for the use of the group than could be achieved
by a single or a few individuals.
• Larger prey could be tackled as the power to recover and retain a
higher proportion of the meat would be available.
• In attacking a herd of animals, the group could decide prior to the
assault which animal should be the primary target; the coordinated
hail of missiles at the defined target would have a higher chance of
achieving a kill than a more random effort.
Once groups begin to grow in size, the need for, and the benefits of, more
communication become increasingly obvious. So the process iterates.
Improved communication occurs due to refining old sounds, adding

new ones, and making combinations of sounds as opposed to single sounds.
This in turn leads to the acquisition of new and better tools and may have
increased the facility with which a tool such as fire could be brought under
productive control. There is also an increase in group coherence and interde-
pendency. Once this happens, a welter of new possibilities opens up. Yet
more ways of making oneself understood through communications become
necessary.
What we have here is a process whereby developments in one area cause
new developments in another area. A spiral of events is thus generated, lead-
ing to improvements and increases in complexity, stimulating the need for
further improvements. The components of this spiral are tools (primarily
stone tools and fire, but others from skin, plants, horns, and bone cannot be
overlooked), brains, the anatomy of the mouth and throat, communication
elements, and group dynamics with the ever-present driving force of envi-
ronmental changes (either through migrations or the natural cycling of the
climate).
As the ability to make more refined and controlled sounds developed, so
the utility of such sounds would increase. They would be adopted by the
group, and other groups not possessing such facilities would be at a disad-
vantage. In this way the group becomes a selective medium, enhancing the
survivability of those individuals who could make the most useful sounds.
So there would be a survival advantage for those individuals who, through
developments of either their brains or the anatomy of their throats, were able
to make more explicit communication through throat- and mouth-generated
sounds. Such communication enhancements were used to upgrade the sur-
vival of the group by improving hunting practices, finding new territories,
designing and using more effective tools, and—probably most importantly—
increasing the cohesiveness of the group so that it could work better as a team
and achieve a level of performance that previously could only be imagined,
and was vastly in excess of the sum of the individual capabilities. The role of
the most effective communicator could become that of the leader or an
adjunct to the leader. He or she may obtain privileged breeding entitlements.
Enhanced ability to communicate would become a feature on which a breed-
ing program could be centered. As with any such suite of procedures, out-
standing characteristics become prominent and more extensively developed.
It seems likely that this kind of process began in the later stages of Homo
erectus’ sojourn on Earth and was carried forward relatively slowly in the
hands of Homo heidelbergensis. When the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons
emerged about 130,000 years ago, the process would have accelerated con-
siderably, as both of these species were more or less intellectually and
anatomically competent to speak in words and simple sentences, where
nouns, pronouns, and verbs were used with qualifying adjectives and prepo-
sitions. Although these developments presaged the kinds of languages and
grammars we now use, about 120 years ago each of the different tribes of
American Indians had its own language; such speech forms were unique to
each tribe, and people in neighboring tribes did not understand each other’s
language. Communication between these tribes was by sign language.16 So
while speech was in the full throes of its development, signing was also pro-
gressing in parallel with it. One could ask the question, why bother with
speech when communication by signs could do the job and universally? An
answer to this question would undoubtedly involve considerations as to the
faster speed of verbal communication and its ability to express nuances and
abstract ideas that, while clearly of serious import, could not be paralleled in
a signing system.
Some of these verbal expressions would have been guidelines used to
promote behaviors that would be advantageous to the group. They could be
used to control the interaction of the group with things in the local environ-
ment, or they may have modulated the way individuals in the group
behaved in relation to one another. With this additional and verbal level of
control came a marked elevation of the survivability of the group. So not only
was ethics a product of the emergence of verbal language, its role as a control
tool, modulating the activities of the individuals, led to an improved perfor-
mance of the group in its struggle for survival. As groups with developed
and extended ethics were more likely to flourish in contradistinction to those
who did not, the ethics users were more likely to survive and propagate the
use of ethics. This in turn would be a driving force for additional improve-
ments in language so that more ethical statements might be made with more
telling effects.
The flowering of language that probably occurred between 60,000 and
30,000 years ago may well have emerged in conjunction with a welter of other
innovative developments, which included the following:
• Sculpted figurines in the form of animals and sex goddesses

• Musical instruments and flutes
• Decoration through bracelets, necklaces, beads, shells, and threaded
teeth
• Decoration through the use of red ochre as skin coloring or for the col-
oring of sculptures and cave paintings
• Graves for burying the dead with decorations and flowers
• A new style of sophisticated tools made from ivory, bone, and wood
• New weapons, bows and arrows, spear launchers, bolasses, and slings
• Cave paintings of animals and humans in Europe and the rock paint-
ings of Australia
Just how these new departures interacted with one another or were indepen-
dently initiated and progressed is not known. However, during this period
something happened, and what was a slowly adapting society seemingly
fearful of change (the stone hand-ax was made the same way across Europe,
Asia, and Africa for over a million years!) became a community of innovators
and adventurers. And it was the same all over the inhabited Earth. We, 30,000
years later, have by and large maintained the open, adventurous approach
these particular ancestors first displayed and have, in virtually the twinkling
of an eye, transformed the nature of the way humans operate in relation to
the other living organisms and the abiotic environment. Within around
25,000 years of the onset of this “revolution,” we had established agricultural
settlements, the first of which dates to the end of the last ice age at about
13,000 years ago. Once we became able to do as the biblical Joseph advised
the pharaoh Amenemhat III (1682–1653 B.C.E.) and store food against a future
failed harvest,17 then instead of hanging onto life by their hunter-gatherer fin-
gernails, humans established themselves firmly as a people who, by control-
ling the parameters that affect their lives, could count on a long-term future
in the survival business.
We have not yet come to grips with the forces that brought on the multi-
ple ice ages and tropical interludes between them. What might these be?
Every hundred million years or so Earth has been hit by an asteroid/comet
with a diameter greater than 10 km. This could bring about an extended win-
ter and cloak the planet with an impenetrable dust that might not wash out
of the atmosphere for years. Alternatively, we could be plagued by the erup-
tion of a supermassive volcano—an event that seems to occur on a 600,000-
year cycle. If the calculations and theories of the geophysicists are correct, it
is likely that Yellowstone National Park, which seems to be the caldera of
such a volcano, is due to erupt in the not too distant future. So between aster-
oid collisions, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and the eccentricities of the
Earth’s orbit (its tilt and precession), coupled with the cycles that occur in the
sun (the 11-year sunspot cycle being one such), we have much to do before
we can consider our species as being “home and dry.” An insurance covering
us against Earth-bound catastrophes, which we do not think we can control,
would be the colonization of planets that we are now finding to revolve
around most, if not all, of the stars that we can see with telescopes (e.g., the
Hubble space telescope) that can peer at the “edge of the universe.”
The language tool and its specialized variant, the ethics tool, have
brought humans to the point where they can look backward and forward and
take stock of their position. What new tools will we need in the future? How
may they be introduced so that their effects will promote our survival rather
than impugn it? What verbal guidelines (ethics) do we have to construct and
use? How may they be propagated in the most effective way? The purpose of
this book is to highlight and promote the discussion whereby these questions
may be answered.
As a contribution to that discussion, we may benefit from an examination
of the origins and introductions of some tools that have occurred during the
era for which we have a written history (the last 5000 years or so). We shall
see how all these tools can be used to harm or to benefit people. To control the
use of tools so that the benefits can be made to outweigh the harms, it is nec-
essary to encourage humans to behave in a fitting manner. This in turn
requires that we examine the urges or desires that give rise to human actions.
Such drivers of our behavior may be further examined were we to consider
them under the umbrella term of our “intentions.”
1.5 Tools at the dawn of history

After an ice age of some 55,000 years, Earth emerged into the watery sun-
shine of the present era, around 13,000 years ago. Archeologists investigating
this time frame have discovered evidence of human settlements.
Such sedentary activity probably existed in parallel with the hunter-
gatherer mode of existence, which characterized the last 2.5 million years of
hominid life. Indeed, taking clues from some behavior patterns of modern
rainforest dwellers, the early agricultural humans may well have sown seeds
or plantlets in one season and then, having followed a hunter-gatherer regi-
men for six or so months, returned to the site of the planting to reap the
rewards of the harvest.
Along with settlement, which involved planting and harvesting of grains
and tubers, we can also discern the beginnings of the domestication of a vari-
ety of species of animals. It is clear from contemporary experiences that some
animals are more adaptable to domestication than others. Even today we find
the restrained rearing of ostriches, peccaries, and zebras to be difficult and
not worth the effort and risk of personal damage. On the other hand, species
of bovines, caprines, and ovines permitted themselves to be raised under
controllable conditions. Eventually, variants of the wild boars became tame
enough to raise in association with human settlements; human wastes then,
as now, must have provided a recyclable source of provender for the tamer
porcines.18 Alongside the domestication of these species, most agricultural
societies probably took advantage of the various members of the fowl family.
Chickens, geese, and ducks were well exploited for meat, feathers, and eggs.
Dogs, too, came in from the cold to be loyal companions to humans, serving
as warning sentinels and guards for the domesticated animals. Their value as
test animals for new and unusual foods would not have gone without some
degree of exploitation.
As each new species was brought under domestication, a bevy of new
tools and materials to which the tools could be applied became available: fur
and skins for clothing, excreta for fertilizer, and—when mixed with straw—
a new food for pigs. Milk, wool, and power to pull and transport heavy
objects, which included the humans themselves, could be acquired. Horses in
various garbs, onagers (wild asses), donkeys, and ponies were also taken in
and used in many ways. While the smaller varieties of these domesticatable
animals were probably the first to come under the influence of humans, as
skills and understandings improved, larger members of the species could be
handled. For each such animal the humans would be selected for a quiet tem-
perament, ability to breed, utility of by-products, and ease of feeding. All
these animals, with the exception of pigs and dogs, are natural vegetarians,
although they are willing and capable of eating animal-derived materials if

the situation is apposite.
Evidence of new tools dating to around 10,000 years ago has been dis-
covered. Spanish cave paintings of this period show humans using bows and
arrows to hunt antelope and deer. Sickles made from serrated stone and horn
shafts, which were grooved to hold obsidian or volcanic glass blades secured
in place by bitumen, have been found.19 Alongside the development of grains
for carbohydrate-rich foods would have come the means to separate the
grain from the seed cover (chaff) and stems. Baskets or mats woven from
reeds and grasses would have provided these tools, while there was a return
to stone to fabricate the milling machinery used to reduce the intact grain to
powdered flour. A mortar and pestle for the grinding of wheat found in
Jericho was dated to 8500 years ago. Although the earliest fired pottery based
on wet clay and bone was unearthed at Vestonice (Czechoslovakia) and
dated 25,000 years ago, the earliest widespread pottery use comes from Japan
(12,500 years ago), while the sunbaked clay pots of Mesopotamia date from
9500 years ago. It was not until 3000 B.C.E. that the temperatures of clay bak-
ing ovens achieved 1050°C, which was sufficiently high for the smelting of
copper, thus leading to the Bronze Age and to the extensive development of
the metallurgical arts. It seems that the plow was also developed in Babylon
at about this time. Drawn by oxen in the first instance, a wooden or wood-
stone combination tool was used to prepare the ground for the sowing of
seed.
Wheeled vehicles and the potter’s wheel appeared in Sumer about
3375 B.C.E. Drawn by four horses or onagers, the vehicle was attached to the
animals by straps that went through a double eye mounted on the horse’s
back to a collar around the neck. It is likely that in the first instance, heavy
loads were transported using horses to pull sleds (5000 B.C.E.). Yet the first
depicted wheels, clearly shown on a mosaic panel in the Sumerian city of Ur
4500 years ago, were made from two semicircular planks pinned together
about an axle. This is a far cry from a cross-section of a tree trunk that is
thought to have been the wheel’s predecessor. In this mosaic different vari-
eties of four-wheeled vehicles are shown, from carts used for bearing goods
to foreshortened versions with a space on the platform for a spear-wielding
soldier, clearly used as military chariots. Wheels with spokes date to around
1500 B.C.E. and appear on Egyptian bas reliefs.
Boats were of more ancient origin. Australia was populated about
50,000–60,000 years ago, and since this island continent was never connected
to the rest of the above sea-level land mass within the last 5 million years, the
people who crossed the sea to get there would have needed a floating con-
veyance of some sort. Harking back to the principle of maximum simplicity
(Ockham, 1285 –1394), a floating log may have provided some support for a
watery transportation system; but two or more logs lashed together would
clearly have been more expeditious, as this would have kept one side of the
logs out of the water. Some degree of control could have been exerted if the
early seafarers had used their hands or a flat paddle for propulsion and steer-
ing. Additional buoyancy might have been achieved by using inflated skin
bags. Thor Heyerdahl and five companions on an epic voyage in 1947
showed that the Pacific Ocean could be crossed by a raft made from balsa-
wood logs tied together. The dugout canoe is a more recent development, as
it had to await the development of an adze type of tool to hack away the
inside of a log. There is evidence for a stone blade held on the end of a right-
angled section of deer antler by a specially designed socket dating back some
8000 years. At this time reed boats were being built and waterproofed using
a mixture of heated bitumen (derived from seepages discovered at ground
level), sand, lime (heated or calcined chalk), and chopped reed fiber to make
an asphalt mastic, which after pasting onto the outside of the reed frame
made a one- or two-person coracle.
The domestication of animals was not without its attendant problems.
Animals harbor bacteria and viruses, with which they may live in relative
harmony. However, such microorganisms, when transferred to humans, turn
into disease-causing pathogens.20 It is well known that each year we are liable
to infection with a new variety of the influenza virus, which may have its ori-
gin in pigs or chickens that are raised for domestic consumption. All the
chickens in Hong Kong were slaughtered in 1998 to prevent a human-lethal
version of influenza infecting people around the world. Similarly, it is
thought that the tuberculosis bacterium had its origins in an avian or bovine
species and was transmitted to humans via the domestication of these ani-
mals. The measles virus, which historically is one of the most lethal organ-
isms for humans, has variants that live in dogs and cats as well as other
domesticated animals such as cows, goats, and chickens. So the domestica-
tion of animals would not have been a cost-free exercise, although the asso-
ciation between human disease and the proximity to animals may not have
been fully appreciated at that time. However, clearly the benefits heavily out-
weighed the dangers. It must make modern humans pause to think about the
courage of their ancestors who suffered the penalties from domesticating ani-
mals, because this was clearly far from a risk-free activity.
It would seem that tools and transportation systems were developed for
the benefit of the people who made them. Yet many stalwart adventurers
would have perished when their rafts were blown off course or came apart in
high seas. In bringing horses to provide motive power for wheeled vehicles,
restraining the animals would have almost terrorized some of the more sen-
sitive individuals and caused them to buck and rear, with consequential
damage to the local humans. Again, the adze, however skillfully fabricated,
is a lethal weapon when applied to the cranium of a fellow human, as would
be the bow and arrow and spear. Although the boat may be conceived of as a
mere means of transportation, the delivery of humans of one group to the ter-
ritory of another by such a conveyance constitutes a threat and challenge that
would lead to conflicts, strife, and deaths. Even though the seemingly
innocuous development of agriculture (both plant and animal) would seem
to be a universal boon, this development led inevitably to the sustainability

of ever larger groups of humans in one community. This in turn enabled
armies to be raised and walls and fortifications to be erected, and the machin-
ery used to till the land and husband the cattle could be directed toward the
death and destruction of neighboring settlements and wandering bands of
hunter-gatherers.
1.6 Putting it in writing

Our genes contain information that we can accurately pass to subsequent
generations, while the way we live our lives and the things we say provide a
less precise or reliable means of achieving the same effect. Some 5500 years
ago the gap between the relative reliability of genetic transfers of information
and the unreliability of verbal transfers was plugged by the invention of writ-
ing. This was a medium of information transfer that was stable, did not
depend on the memory of any one individual, and—under the appropriate
conditions of storage (generally burial)—could survive unchanged for sev-
eral thousand years. At last there emerged an agent that could serve as the
genetic material (a reliable, stable, readable, and copyable information car-
riage and transfer system) for the local group, society, or humanity as a
whole. How did it happen and what were the implications?
The storage of information in a physical form probably began as early as
30,000 years ago. Bones have been found with points or lines scraped on
them, indicative that someone was keeping a tally of something which was
considered important.21 Maybe it was a count of the days of a lunar cycle or
an attempt at a solar calendar. Or perhaps it was more domestic and related
to the number of kills of a particular animal in a certain place. Such “tally”
sticks or strings with knots have been used until recently to record a number
of interests. When they are delivered by a messenger, they would serve to
remind the receiver of the number of particular items that were to be pur-
chased or given. However, apart from number, little else could be communi-
cated. Clay tokens of various shapes with indented lines were used 8000
years ago to keep account of transactions. Such tokens were sealed into hol-
low balls of clay (bullae) to preserve their state free from tampering or inter-
ference.22
The next step ahead was to use pictographs to denote the items in ques-
tion. Such a clay tablet was recovered from the town of Kish, Mesopotamia,
and dated about 3300 B.C.E. Combinations of pictures (where the pictures
now become ideographs) could represent other concepts: examples given are
mountain woman slave (slave women came from the mountains);
mouth food eat; and mouth door inquire. Around 200 years later
the pictographs were used to denote the sounds of the objects they repre-
sented. The example given was the picture of an “eye” coupled with a “saw”
to represent the phrase “I saw.” This way of communication involves repre-
sentations or rebuses. In 1822 Jean-Francois Champollion (1790–1832,
France) broke the code of the hieroglyphs on Egyptian monuments. He was

helped by the Rosetta Stone, which presented a text in three character sets:
hieroglyphic Egyptian, demotic Egyptian (a cursive form of the Egyptian
hieroglyphics), and Greek. He was much aided by the prior work of Thomas
Young (1773 –1829, London), who—contrary to the prevailing opinions—
worked out that the pictographs in the stone’s cartouches (derived from the
French for gun cartridge because of their same general shape) represented
individual sounds rather than the character in the picture. It was also noted
that the form of the demotic characters did not bear any relationship to the
pictographs and that several pictographs were used to denote the same
sound.
One of the developments of the symbol to sound transformation
occurred in cuneiform, where in the Ugarit (the modern Ras Shamra in Syria)
around 1400 B.C.E., an alphabet of consonants was defined only in terms of
symbols that consisted of combinations of wedges. This may not have been
the first alphabet, but it was adopted and left behind traces of its utility. It
provided simple, nonrepresentational symbols for all the sounds used by
people in conversation, with the exception of the vowel sounds. These had to
be inferred or interpolated by a reference to the context. Some 400 years later,
about 1000 B.C.E., the Phoenicians put together a suite of consonantal symbols
that may have been derived from the primitive protosemitic-alphabet that
preceded the cuneiform effort. It had much in common with the Hebrew
alphabet, and the sounds of the consonants are virtually identical. We had to
wait for the Greeks of 900 B.C.E. to add in the five vowel sounds, made by the
vocal cords alone, to the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet, which only coded for
the consonantal sounds made by the vocal cords in conjunction with the
tongue, teeth, and lips. Further refinements and modifications occurred
when the Romans took over the Greek alphabet and discarded the double let-
ter sounds (theta [] and zeta []), and the English of the Middle Ages (1300
C.E.) added in the letters u and w to give us the complete 26-letter English
alphabet used today. The combination of written symbols now represented a
collective of sounds or a word of speech. Clearly, this system could be used
to transmit any number of words in sentences or otherwise.
When writing systems were under development, the methods used to
physically record words were arduous. Carving stone was not a facile process
and was unforgiving of mistakes, and the painting of hieroglyphs on the
walls of tombs required a skill that was not common, as the paint and the
limestone plaster had to be combined under carefully timed protocols.
Making indentations in wet clay may seem easier, but it must have been
tedious waiting for the baking operation and annoying when tablets broke.
The use of woven reeds pressed together to form papyrus was a clear
advance, as was the preparation of skins and hides in the form of parch-
ments. Inks of powdered carbon in aqueous-based solutions of eggs, blood,
gelatin, or other organic adhesives also required developing. Paper based on
platelets of compressed cellulosic fibers was invented in China in the second
century B.C.E., and 1000 years later they followed this up with the origination
of printing presses. This was progressed in the 1440s by Johannes Gutenberg
(c. 1390 –1468), who, while working in Strasbourg and Mainz, developed
movable metal type along with the appropriately formulated inks for use in
printing. This brought to the ordinary people the knowledge and information
that until then had been held under the custodianship of the individuals who
controlled the society: generally rulers, military leaders, lawyers, and their
theocratic associates. The typewriter was invented in 1867, and following
Alan Turing’s (1912–1954, U.K.) 1937 breakthrough concept that all charac-
ters could be coded for by a linear array of 0s and 1s, the way was open for
the emergence of electronically driven machines to manipulate the “on” or
“off” state of a valve or transistor to emulate the 0 or 1 and so process infor-
mation of a numeric or verbal nature under the control of a program that
could also be made to reside in the same machine. The first such device was
developed at the University of Manchester by F. C. Williams and Thomas
Kilburn in 1948. Over the last 50 years, advances in computer hardware and
software have been meteoric. Each 18 months the speed of computer proces-
sors increases by a factor of two, while the cost decreases by a similar factor.
I used a laptop computer and Word 97 to write this book.
As these developments were taking place, some voiced opinions that
written codification of language was not always a boon. People would
become lazy in the training of their memories, relying on written script to fill
gaps in recollections. Indeed, history depends on who writes it. Classically,
Rameses II claimed a famous victory against the Hittites at the battle of
Kadesh in 1285 B.C.E., but the Hittites claimed victory also. Thomas
Jefferson’s (1743–1826) memorial in Washington, D.C. has the following mes-
sage inscribed around the base of the cupola: “I have sworn upon the altar of
God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Thus Jefferson sought to warn his posterity against the possible evils of pro-
paganda. The use of writing to deceive and to wrongfully attribute deeds to
fellow citizens must also be recorded, and the manipulation of the written
word in the media and courts of law leaves much to be desired.
Nevertheless, writing, as we now have it, is one of the most powerful
tools of our times. Written laws and ethics are clear and sharp instruments
used to control and modulate human behavior. In written words we collect
and disseminate information about the nature of our world, the way it works,
and how we can do things (science) in quantities well beyond the imagina-
tion of the people of a couple of centuries ago. They provide the capital on
which we are building our tomorrow and also serve as the glue that holds
together a global society of six billion individuals. Apart from the ability to
manipulate data in the form of words, the uses of computers in the modern
world are multifarious. So the use of these tools therefore needs to be con-
sidered carefully, because in them are the seeds of both our success or failure
as a species.
1.7 Money and metals

Money (which comes from the Latin moneta, which translates to “mint” and
was part of the temple built to Juno) accelerates the rate at which business can
be done. The exchange of goods is not new. Preliterate, Stone-Age communi-
ties exchanged materials. The presence of obsidian in towns and cities distant
from the sources of such material attested to the existence of vigorous trade
long before metals were discovered. The swapping of goods and services has
ancient origins. Even in the primate communities there is a sense in which
there are reciprocal deals. “Join up with me to face up to a dominant male,
and I will compensate by helping you obtain a sex partner, or in a grooming
activity, or in increasing your status in the group when you have a con-
frontation.” Yet as with any such deal there must be two willing participants:
one who has something to sell and another who wishes to buy. To exchange
material goods requires that the properties on offer are desired by the
exchangers. If they are not, then a deal cannot occur. The discovery that there
may be a specific good that is readily transportable and which most individ-
uals with whom one comes in contact desire is the first step in developing a
monetary system.
Shells, teeth (particularly of ferocious, rare, or hard to capture animals),
feathers (those used by the Aztecs of Mexico faded and thus represented a
depleting asset), stones, beads, tobacco, bottles of liquor (bottles of beer were
used to buy a bride 4500 years ago in Mesopotamia), cigarettes, chocolate (in
World War II prisoner-of-war camps), slaves, and cattle have been used as a
medium of exchange. When the noble metals (copper, silver, and gold)
became available, their relative scarcity, novelty, malleability, resistance to
rusting and tarnishing, and aesthetic qualities (shine, reflectivity, color, and
heaviness) made them ideal materials to act as the medium of exchange, as
everybody could find some use for the metal, even if not for a further
exchange.
A wide range of tools could be made from copper, especially when it was
discovered that the admixture of tin with copper to make bronze resulted in
a harder product that could be fabricated into weapons; a 10% mixture of tin
with 90% copper is optimal for daggers, swords, shields, armor and spears.
Copper occurs as a metal (the Greek
o means mine) in nature and
may be shaped by hammering with stone implements.23 There was evidence
of its use as early as 7000 years ago. About 800 years later implements of cop-
per hardened by an annealing process were being made. (Annealing is a
process of repeated and extensive hammering and cooling followed by heat-
ing that led to the softening of the metal so that it could be hardened once
more by hammering.) However, in nature copper is generally found in com-
bination with other elements, such as oxygen, sulfur, and iron. In combina-
tions such as malachite [CuCO3•Cu(OH)2] and azurite [2CuCO3•Cu(OH)2] it
is highly colored, generally green or blue. One may imagine the use of
ground-up powders of these materials being applied to the decoration of clay
pots, which would then be exposed to temperatures approaching 1000°C.

Under these conditions and in the presence of charcoal or blasts of air (used
to increase the temperature of the burning wood), the copper compounds
would break down and release the metal. It would then be a short step to
infer that by treating the colored materials in ovens in which the ore was
loaded on top of a charcoal bed to high temperatures would result in the pro-
duction of the metal. The liquid metal so produced could then be poured into
a preshaped mold to make a tool, weapon, or figurine. This technology was
developed between 3000 and 4000 B.C.E. in Egypt. While the ores for copper
production were not in short supply in this part of the world, the wood that
was used to make the charcoal and to fuel the furnaces was not abundant, so
when crude copper made elsewhere became available, it was preferable to
acquire it by trade. Two thousand years later techniques were discovered for
the roasting and smelting of the sulfur-containing ores chalcocite (Cu2S), bor-
nite (Cu3FeS3), chalcopyrite (CuFeS2), and covellite (CuS). When these tech-
niques came on-stream about 3000 years ago, thousands of tons of copper
were manufactured annually in a quadrant of 700-km radius to the west and
south of the Caspian Sea.
From about 3000 B.C.E. copper was converted to bronze through its
admixture with tin. At first the tin, was found and used as cassiterite (SnO2).
This material, when heated in the appropriate proportions with copper and
charcoal, yielded a metal alloy mixture that had a lower melting point than
copper and improved handling properties. When cooled, it was harder and
had a higher tensile strength than unalloyed copper, so it could be shaped
into tools and weapons with improved properties. The reserves of cassiterite
in the Middle East were used up by 1500 B.C.E., so the material had to be
imported from elsewhere. The Spanish and Cornish mines in England were
important sources of this material for the Roman Empire.
Gold was also found in nature in the metallic form. Around 7000 years
ago, as today, it was panned from the beds of streams by washing away the
lighter lithic materials. (The density of gold is 19.3; the density of stone is
about 2.5.) Quartz rocks are found with flecks of gold embedded in their
matrix. The liberation of the gold is achieved by breaking the rocks down to
a fine powder and then using a stream of flowing water to effect the separa-
tion of the heavy metal from the lightweight stone. Passing a suspension of
gold particles and rock fragments over a sheep fleece will also separate the
gold, which will adhere to the oily wool and allowing the stony material to
flow away (a first or early example of separation by differential adsorption).
The gold particles are then fused into a mass in a crucible or cupola, where
the impurities are removed by combining with materials in the clay of the
cupola or with the stone contaminants that had not been removed in the
washing process. More sophisticated processes that could separate gold from
silver and that used mercury to form gold amalgams were not developed
until about 1000 B.C.E. The rate of gold production in Egypt over this 4000-
year period was some 30 kg per annum. A much higher production was
achieved in the area to the south and west of the Caspian Sea.
In modern Hebrew the word kesef translates to both money and silver.
Although silver may be found in its metallic state in nature, it is generally
produced from a common and plenteous ore called galena, which is a mix-
ture of lead and silver sulfides, where the latter is at a concentration of about
0.1%. By 2000 B.C.E. processes had been discovered that could produce lead
and silver from this ore. The roasting of the lead and silver sulfide ores with
blasts of air and in the presence of carbon in the form of charcoal produced
lead oxide and lead sulfate, which, on being subjected to a still higher tem-
peratures, were reduced to lead with silver as a contaminating metal. The
lead was separated from the silver by the process of cupellation. The lead-sil-
ver mixture was heated in a porous clay crucible and subjected to a blast of
air. The lead oxidized and was either blown off or fused with the clay of the
crucible. This left behind a button of molten silver that could be poured off.
The main production area for silver was the same quadrant as that for gold
and copper—the land of the Hittites.
The money used in the Middle East up until the time of Alexander the
Great’s Greek conquest was based on copper and lead weights, rings, or bars.
These were given value in that they could be exchanged for defined amounts
of silver and gold. The relative value of gold to silver depended on the sup-
ply of those metals. In the absence of unusual conditions, this ratio normally
settled to about 1:12 or 1:13.
The noble metals described above were the first to be made widely avail-
able and useful as tools, in both promoting the exchange of goods and ser-
vices as well as instruments used in their own right or as a means to make
other handy devices. It yet remained to transform “base” iron into a material
useful for tools. Although “meteoric” iron had been discovered and used
since 4000 B.C.E., its use was largely limited to figurines or objects of symbolic
value. The widespread production of this metal from its plentiful oxide ores
had to wait until 1300 B.C.E. before the amount of carbon in the metal could
be controlled at a level that resulted in a hard material of great tensile
strength. This was initially achieved by heating the soft metal while in con-
tact with charcoal. Some of the carbon in the charcoal diffused into the sur-
face of the hot iron and increased its hardness. After repeated cycles of this
exposure to carbon and hammering, with quenching in water being added
between cycles, a material approaching the properties of steel resulted. Iron
in various forms became of general use after about 800–500 B.C.E. Its use in
material for the production of swords, spears, daggers, shields, and armor
(helmets, breastplates, and the like) was particularly valued, for now the tool
was stronger than the human who wielded it, whereas up until this time the
user of the tool was stronger than the tool.
The use of metals for tools was also expanded. From the development of
the shafted stone-bladed ax or adze, copper, bronze, and iron axes were made
and used both domestically and as weapons of war. Chisels, augers, and
shaped drill bits were fashioned. Once iron became available, it was possible
to make effective saws and files, which led to the production of other tools.
Anvils that had grooves in them were used to make needles, fish hooks, and
wires. The addition of metal parts to clay vessels as spouts, handles, stands,
and decorations was also effected. Also, there was a satisfaction of a need,
which seems to have had a deep grounding in the human psyche, to make
figurines based on animals and humans. The use of models of gods and dev-
ils played an important role in the adjustment of people to their conditions,
and it also provided a foundation for the rules of behavior and conduct that
could keep the ever-growing society under some sort of control.
Fire was the precursor of both metals and the money based on them.
Once these materials had become part of the human condition, advances
were made rapidly. But at the same time the ability to cause harm, damage,
and mayhem also increased. Wars became more extensive, involving more
soldiers moving over larger territories and questing hoards of metal, as well
as the usual slaves, tithes, and obeisances. While historically it has been the
case that infectious diseases have caused more casualties in armies than have
the effects of weapons, the use of force backed up by the new weapons led to
the subjugation of many peoples as well as the genocide of others.
Money, too, may have damaging effects on individuals and societies. The
temptation to expand one’s own wealth by clipping coins or by “sweating”
them in a skin bag (the coins were shaken together and the small particles of
precious metal that abraded from them were collected in the bag as a fine
dust) led to a decrease in moral integrity. Similarly, the opportunities for
fraud increased. Not only may the purity of the metal be changed, similar
substances, which appeared to be metallic, may have been substituted; and,
of course, the distraction of a multitude of philosophers in attempting to
transmutate base metal into gold through alchemical means led both to our
modern chemistry as well as the perversion of the minds of erstwhile great
thinkers and savants. In our modern world the manipulation of the monetary
system can and does cause the widespread disruption of society through
unemployment and destitution.
It is salutary to muse as to what might have happened if we had recog-
nized, some 8000 years ago, the potential disadvantages and dangers inher-
ent in the use of metals and money. Would we have gone ahead with their
use? However, having gone ahead and made full use of them, what lessons
might we learn when faced with the same kind of question in contemporary
times, when we are also beset by the introduction of new tools whose impli-
cations may rank on the same scale as that of the genesis of metals and
money?
1.8 Humans acquire power

A simple definition of power is the ability to do work. Our human ancestors
learned, millions of years ago, that one human can accomplish a particular
task, but a group working in concert could achieve other tasks. The larger the
group that could be made to operate together, the bigger the stone or tree that
could be moved. Using spun fibers or woven leather thongs, more humans
could be brought to bear on a particular job. The end of this process enables
us to imagine teams of hundreds of humans pulling, pushing, and levering

enormous stones (mounted on skids or rollers) weighing tens to hundreds of
tons over many miles of difficult country in the erection of such monuments
as the pyramids of the Egyptians, Mayans, and Cambodians; the temple of
Jerusalem; Stonehenge; and the Moai of Easter Island. Thus the lever may
have been one of the first machines that humans discovered that, given a
pivot point or fulcrum about which a strong pole could be rotated, a single
individual was able to translate the application of a small force over a large
distance to become a large force over a small distance. A simple application
of this principle that came into use in prehistoric times was the shaduf: a post
and beam device used to lift water out of a river and deliver it to an irrigation
canal at a higher level. The block and tackle working with bound and free
pulleys was invented in the fourth century B.C.E., this was also based on the
same principle as the lever.
The first recorded use of animals to augment human power dates from
as early as 3000 B.C.E.; when oxen were used to pull a primitive cone plow in
Babylon. At this time the ox was probably the most docile animal available
that was responsive to human direction and control. This sufficed in the
sandy soils of the Middle East, but was inappropriate in the heavy soils of
Northern and Middle Europe. At about 1000 B.C.E. the Hittites were defeated,
and the monopoly they held in the manufacture and use of products made
from iron was broken.
Plows made from iron were used. As these implements would cut and
turn over the deep and rich soils, a team of eight oxen harnessed together via
wooden yokes slung across their shoulders and secured around their necks
was needed to effect this task. However, it is likely that a wide variety of ani-
mal species (horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, asses, mules, yaks, llamas,
etc.) including the ox were used as pack animals carrying goods and provi-
sions for itinerant human bands or tribes, well before the ox was yoked to the
plow.
When horses were brought under control, their early application was in
the pulling of chariots and carts via a breastband that encircled their necks.
This practice originated in Sumer about 5500 years ago, but the horses had to
wait some 3500 years before, it is thought, the Romans clad the underside of
their feet with horseshoes made of iron so that the horse’s feet were protected
against the wear that occurred on the stone-surfaced roads favored and built
by the Romans. However, although horseshoes were in use in Eurasia in 200
B.C.E., their first evidential appearance in Europe was put at the fifth century
C.E. Spurs were in use from 400 B.C.E. The mouth bit and reins were invented
earlier than the shoes and were in use from 1500 B.C.E. When horses were
employed in this way, the harder they pulled, the more they compressed their
wind pipes and jugular veins, thus decreasing their efficiency. So, in the first
century B.C.E., a padded collar was invented in China that enabled the power
of the horse to be applied via the shoulders of the animal. This device was not
used in Europe until the tenth century C.E. To this collar was attached the
traces of the plow or cart, while the weight of the traces was taken up by
straps running across the back of the horse. In this mode the horse was four
times more efficient than the ox, while operating at higher speeds and for
longer times.
Further developments had their origins in the use of horses in war. For
this the horseman had to be securely seated on his mount, which in turn
required the development of a firmly fixed saddle and stirrups. The latter
originated in central Asia in the fourth century B.C.E. where decoration on a
vase of that date depicted a saddled horse with straps, looped at the lower
end, shown hanging down the side of the horse. Stirrups made their way to
the West via Iran and were used to great effect in the wars of Charlemagne in
the late eighth century C.E. Once the fighter became stabilized in the saddle,
the value of protective armor and shielding was apparent. This meant that
horses that could bear heavier weights were preferred and selected for in-
breeding programs. The heavier horse in turn proved to be most effective in
farm work and the long distance transport of goods and people by road and
canal. While a packhorse can carry about 120 kg, a horse pulling a cart can
move 1–8 metric tons, while a horse pulling a barge can shift weights of the
order of 50 metric tons. (By comparison a human can carry about 35 kg
[78.4 lb], which is the size of the talent of the ancient world.) About 21 million
horses were in use in the U.S. in 1919.24 This application of animal power sur-
vives in many human communities yet, and I still remember horse-drawn
carts. Some delivering coal and removing garbage from the homes of
Manchester until well into the 1950s. A team of horses was used to deliver
Whitbread beer to the public houses of central London until the 1990s.
The power in flowing water was first captured by the Greeks in the first
century B.C.E. through their use of a horizontal water wheel to drive the
uppermost stone of a corn-grinding mill. Suspending the wheel vertically
from a horizontal shaft, which was then connected to milling or hammering
equipment via a gear train from circular disks fitted with wooded pegs at the
periphery, was a Roman achievement. The Romans built water wheels that
were driven by water flowing below the wheel and also by feeding a stream
of water to bucket-shaped blades at the top of a wheel; the use of wheels
mounted on floating platforms anchored in swiftly moving rivers was an
invention of General Belisarius in the year 537. Using these devices coupled
with appropriate dams and reservoirs to control the water flows, it was pos-
sible to achieve round-the-clock work without the annoyance of feeding, rest-
ing, billeting, and rearing of animals for the same duties. Some 500,000 water
wheels were operating in Europe by 1800 for milling, hammering, pumping,
and driving machinery via cam shafts.
When the material of the wheel changed to metal and the bearings on the
wheel shaft were improved by inserting balls rotating against low friction
alloys in 1839, it was possible to construct turbines that could rotate at high
speeds (2000–3000 rpm). Using dams to hold back the flow of rivers and so
increasing the height of the water level, water at ever higher pressures could
be fed to turbines within the dam’s structure. When these turbines are linked
to a dynamo for the generation of electricity, a sustainable, low-cost, easy, and
widely distributable source of energy becomes available. There are addi-

tional supplies of electricity tapped from water-powered sources via the rise
and fall of coastal waters caused by the twice-daily tides. The power avail-
able in these diurnal flows has been used since about 1086,25 and mills have
been powered by such flows of the Thames River since 1582. Modern tidal
electricity generators were built at St. Malo in France in 1966. Much research
and development remains to be effected before the energy of the tides can be
converted into electricity on a large scale. Currently, about 20% of the world’s
electricity supply is sourced from hydroelectric schemes.
Wind was more difficult to harness. Variability of speed, direction, and
gustiness contributed to the delay in making use of this form of sustainable
energy. Thus it was not until 700 C.E. that the Persians were able to construct
a vertically shafted mill, while in Europe we had to wait until the twelfth cen-
tury for the building of horizontally shafted wind-driven wheels. The addi-
tion of an ancillary fantail to automatically bring the plane of the sail wheel
to face the wind was not added until 1745 by the Englishman, Edmund Lee.
It is thought that this was the first application of an automatic control system.
In recent years the two-bladed airplane propeller configuration has been
engineered with diameters of up to 50 m, with various controls to prevent it
reaching speeds at which it would disintegrate. This mode of energy capture
has led to the development of “wind farms,” in which hundreds of mills may
be seen jostling for position on the sides of windy canyons in the area near
Palm Springs, California. Farms in The Netherlands find it economical to
erect a single mill to generate enough electricity for individual use, with
excess electricity being filtered into the national grid.
Other sources of energy are also under intensive investigation. The direct
conversion of light to electricity, solar energy, is a technology that has recently
undergone extensive developments, in that methods have been found to
increase the efficiency of this process by a factor of three. This brings the cost
of this energy into a region where more and specialized applications become
cost-effective. However, we cannot also neglect the use of geothermal sources
of heat, nor through improved insulation practices can we overlook the use
of the metabolizing human body as a source of heat to keep individual
dwellings up to temperature in the winter.
The need to survive in conflict situations has been a major driving force
for inventions. Not only have projectile-based weapons been made more
deadly, but bombs and explosives have increased in power as they have
decreased in bulk and weight. During World War II (1939–1945), it was dis-
covered that it was possible to make a bomb from a combination of the 235
and 238 isotopes of uranium. In coming to this position it was also shown that
it is possible to build a heat-generating reactor based on the fission of the
same two atomic species (fission reactors), whose temperature can be con-
trolled by the admittance of materials that can absorb the excess neutrons
that would otherwise cause the chain reaction to increase in intensity.
Nuclear reactors whose heat could be harnessed to produce high pressure
steam were first built in the (then) USSR in 1954 and in Calder Hall, England
(1956). The ways in which this steam was produced varied in different man-
ifestations of the reactor design. Pressurized water seems to be the leading
contender, where the steam produced is used to drive a turbine that may be
linked to the shaft rotating a ship’s or submarine’s propeller as well as a
dynamo for the production of electricity. Such turbines had been in develop-
ment over the several years between 1880 and 1900, and by the time they
were used in coal, oil, gas, and nuclear fission–heated steam-generating boil-
ers, they were highly efficient. At present about 17% of the world’s and 78%
of the French electricity supply is produced by nuclear fission processes.
Although there are difficulties in dealing with the contaminated wastes from
such facilities, they are not insuperable. Nevertheless, the development of
nuclear reactors based on the heat liberated when atoms combine (fusion
reactors) would provide a low-pollution solution to the unlimited production
of energy. Here, the technical problems of achieving, maintaining, and con-
trolling a fusion reaction are, as yet, insufficiently advanced to be able to use
the full potential of this form of energy. The next century may prove of con-
siderable interest in this regard.
Although steam was shown to be capable of generating motion in about
100 C.E. by Hero in Alexandria, when he fed steam into a sphere that con-
tained two tangentially oriented exits (the aeolipile), it was not until the end
of the seventeenth century that the use of steam to do useful work was
achieved. In 1698 Thomas Savery (1650–1715) in England developed a pump
that was dependent on filling a cylinder with steam, shutting that chamber
off from its supply, and opening it to a pipe leading down to a pool of water
at the bottom of, say, a mine. As the steam was cooled by dousing the cylin-
der with cold water, a vacuum developed that pulled water up the pipe. By
closing a valve below this extracted water and then readmitting steam into
the cylinder, the water was blown out and the cylinder refilled with steam to
begin the cycle again. A similar single cylinder device, but using a piston, was
made in the same year by Denis Papin (1647–c.1712, France). A version of this
piston system was built by Thomas Newcomen (1663–1729, England) in
1712, where steam was used to push up a piston, and the admittance of water
below the raised piston created the vacuum that enabled the atmosphere to
push the piston down and expel the water. The rising and falling piston was
connected to a beam that was attached to a gearing system, enabling the up
and down motion of the beam to be translated into a rotating motion that
could drive other machines.
James Watt’s (1736 –1819, Scotland) contribution in 1782 was to replace
the single cylinder, which was considerably stressed by the oscillating heat-
ing and cooling cycles, by two cylinders, one of which dealt with the steam
side, while the other acted as the condenser and was kept cold. Steam was
alternately admitted to the top and bottom sides of the piston chamber, and
by using a system of opening and closing valves, the steam was discharged
from the piston chamber to a condensing chamber. The next step was to
increase the pressure of the steam to achieve higher speeds and efficiencies.
Richard Trevithick (1771–1833, England) did away with the condenser and
exhausted the spent steam to the atmosphere. This type of engine was used
to drive a road vehicle in 1803, and a year later he made an engine that would
run on rails. George Stephenson (1781–1848, England) improved the effi-
ciency of this engine by blowing the exhaust steam away from the cylinder
with air, so in 1825 his steam engine pulled 450 passengers from Darlington
to Stockton at 24 kph—the first transportation by railroad. By increasing the
heat transfer capacity of the steam-generating boiler through the insertion of
tubes to carry the water-steam mixture, Stephenson’s “Rocket” engine won
the Rainhill competition for an engine capable of negotiating a 1:100 slope
(1829). It also had the fastest speed (59 kph maximum) on the newly built
Manchester-to-Liverpool line.
Having used the steam-driven reciprocating piston to generate circular
motion for almost 50 years, in 1853 the Belgian, Étienne Lenoir (1822–1900)
provided motive power to the piston by exploding a mixture of coal gas and
air using a spark from an induction coil in the chamber above the piston. This
was the first internal combustion engine. He developed this two-stroke
engine further by providing a liquid fuel, and in 1862 he adapted it to power
the first automobile. The modern four-stroke engine was pioneered by the
German, Nikolaus Otto (1832–1891) in 1876. His engines were powered by
gas, so the next advance was to provide the fuel in liquid form. This was
effected by two Germans, Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900) and Karl Benz
(1844 –1929). In 1883 or 1884, using their newly invented carburetor, they fed
liquid petroleum through a vaporizer, where it was joined with a stream of
air before the air/petroleum mixture was admitted into the cylinder. Within
about 30 years petroleum engines challenged steam engines for supremacy in
most energy-requiring situations. Today, we operate on a “horses for
courses” basis, where the unique properties of each source of power are used
under those particular circumstances that render it the most cost-effective
solution. However, as we become more aware of the actual magnitude of the
costs and ethical issues that pertain to the way in which we choose to use the
available power of nonrenewable petrochemical deposits, our decision-
making processes are under review.
It has taken some 10,000 years to move from the use of oxen, pack ani-
mals, and levers to augment the muscle power of humans to a modern era,
when virtually unlimited amounts of power have been made available to us
via the pioneering work of the individuals mentioned above and many oth-
ers of a similar cast. Such power has been used to wage war and also to
improve the well-being of people at peace. Some wars may be regarded as
just wars, while others would be considered unjust. Wars are fought for the
resources that will enable the victor to add to the amount of power he can
control. Even in peaceful communities, energy may be used to cause harm or
danger. For example, in the U.K. in 1996, for every billion passenger miles
travelled, 100 motorcyclists, 50 pedal cyclists, and 3.1 motor car users were
killed. Other peacetime misadventures include electrocution, death through
a home-generated fire, or the misapplication of power tools. Other harms are

more insidious. The lead from some petroleum-based car fuels, the carbon
particles from diesel engines, the carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide gases
emitted from carbon-based fuels used by electricity power stations, and the
gases emitted at high altitude by passenger aircraft are contributing to
changes in the atmosphere whose consequences have yet to be fully realized,
but which, in any case, are unlikely to be beneficial. On the other hand, peo-
ple in developed countries are living handsomely on the back of an energy
expenditure per person that extends by many hundred-fold the resources
that would have been available to a person at the end of the last ice age. How
we deploy these additional powers for the benefit of the future generations is
based on the ethics we devise now—hence this book.
1.9 Tools and intentionality

The discovery, manufacture, and use of a tool are activities that connect the
tool with thoughts in the mind of the person designing, producing, or manip-
ulating the tool. There are two types of thinking that may be engendered. The
first is technical and asks, how by using a particular device, can I achieve a
particular objective? The second asks whether or not that particular objective
is the one that is to be sought or realized. The “how” question is one that need
not concern us greatly, as the development of tool-using skills, arts, crafts,
and techniques can be achieved by empirical practice informed by whatever
theories or general rules pertain to the use of equipment of that type.
However, questions about the end use to which tools may be put is of an alto-
gether different category.
As I have indicated in each of the tool categories dealt with in the pre-
ceding sections of this chapter, all tools can be used for ends that can at dif-
ferent times and situations both benefit and harm humans. The classical
example of a hammer can illustrate this point, as—for the most part—it is
used to drive nails into wood for the construction of useful objects; however,
on occasion it may also be used to break the cranium of a victim, or crush the
bones of the fingers of a person who is tortured. Does the person who
invented the hammer have a responsibility for the damaging uses to which
the hammer may be put? Once the hammer has left the place of manufacture,
it would be impossible to so control the uses to which the hammer could be
applied. So an organization that made the tool could not be held responsible
for its use, bearing in mind always that new uses for a hammer may emerge
that are, under particular circumstances, highly beneficial. An example of
this might be the use of a hammer to make a fine powder from some rock that
might then be used in a paint or medicine.
There are, however, circumstances when a toolmaker may seek to harm
people through the design and construction of a particular tool. A person
who kills innocent individuals under contract might devise a silenced gun to
achieve ends that are both unlawful and contrary to ethical principles. By
contrast, such a gun could be used in the service of the state by enabling spe-
cial forces to release hostages from a group of armed terrorists. In general, it
is impossible to imagine, in advance, all the uses to which a given tool may
be exercised. What is clear is that there will be times and circumstances when
the novel and unsuspected uses may be deemed to be beneficial and other sit-
uations when this judgment will be reversed. Does this then relieve the orig-
inator of a tool of the responsibility for the uses to which his or her invention
is turned?
If a tool inventor is motivated by the intention of making a tool that will
harm an individual or community, then surely that inventor has to take the
consequences of a wrongdoing. Similarly, if an individual uses a tool, which
was made to achieve benefits, with the intention of doing harm, then this
individual is also subject to punishment for a crime. On the other hand,
where the intention of the toolmaker is to achieve benefit either through the
production or use of a tool, and some harm happens consequent upon that
tool’s existence, then the inventor or maker of the tool cannot be held culpa-
ble.
So it is possible to conclude that a tool, in and of itself, is not an entity to
which blame or praise may be accorded. Rather, it is the intentionality of the
individual who made or wielded the tool that defines how one might make
a judgment as to the propriety or impropriety of the tool’s application.
This principle is well embedded in modern law. A person who murders
with planning and intent is given the full weight of retributive and corrective
action, while a person who kills unintentionally may be charged with reck-
lessness or carelessness or may even be regarded as guiltless. Yet when we
come to the use of a new tool whose properties we do not fully appreciate or
even understand, then we have to adopt another way of thinking. Clearly, a
scientist or engineer when faced with the prospects of using a new tool may
be excited and motivated by the novelty and power of the unprecedented
device to bring about large and substantial benefits. Without intending to
cause harm, he or she may create a situation that in the short term seems ben-
eficial, but that in the long term develops harmful attributes. Their intention
is beyond reproach, but the outcome of their endeavors is not as intended. In
a complex organizational situation pressures may be applied to inventors to
proceed with their work, even though what seemed to be a beneficial project
at the onset has become one that is more likely to cause harm. Such matters
are not unknown and will be dealt with in later chapters.
1.10 Summary
This chapter has sought to introduce the reader to the way tools originated
and the exigencies of the individuals who made them. Up until fairly recently
(the last 50 or so years), the threat to the survivability of humans and their
ancestors was a driving force for the capabilities and acts that they acquired.
Tools cannot be conceived of other than in the context of elements that were
and are devised to improve the chances of human survival. This would
include the development of words and grammar (language), writing, and
ethics. The harnessing of the use of fire coupled with the invention of money
based on a common medium of exchange in the form of metal set the scene
for the emergence of our modern societies. Now we can settle down and
acquire the power that is in the water, wind, and land around us. With this
power we can build the engines that enable us to travel anywhere on this
Earth and into space. Again we use power to provide environments in which
the written word can be accumulated and accessed. This in turn leads to our
being able to read and control the gene structure of the living organisms of
this planet. Such a capability or tool is new. How do we ensure that its use
will benefit humans both in the near term and in the long term? We cannot
adopt the notion that as a new tool may cause harm, it should be dispensed
with (see discussion of the precautionary principle in Chapter 3). Rather, we
have to be courageous and adopt or make our ethics fit in with the prospects
of accepting some downside costs in order to bring out the benefits. How we
do this and justify this position is the subject of the following chapters.
References
1. Wilson, E. O., Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1975, 172.
2. Wenke, R. Patterns in Prehistory: Mankind’s First Three Million Years, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1980, 135.
3. Schick, K. D., and Toth, N., Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the
Dawn of Technology, Wedenfied and Nicholson, London, 1993, 351.
4. Toth, N., Clark, D., and Ligabue, G., The last stone ax makers, Sci. Am., 267, 66,
1992.
5. Frazer, J. G., Myths of the Origin of Fire (1960 ed.), Barnes and Noble Books, New
York, 1930, 238.
6. McCrone, J., Fired up, New Scientist, 166, 30, 2000.
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Wiley, New York, 1994, 353.
8. Savage-Rumbaugh, S. and Lewin, R., Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human
Mind, Doubleday, London, 1994, 299.
9. Pepperberg, I. M., The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey
Parrots, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000, 434.
10. Jones, S., Martin, R., and Philbeam, D., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human
Evolution, 1994, 128.
11. Gabunia, L., Vekua, A., Lofdkipanidze, D., Swisher III, C. C., Ferring,
R., Justus, A., Mioradze, M., Tvalchrelidze, M., Anton, S. C., Bosinski,
G., Joris, O., de Lumley, M-A., Majsuradze, G., and Mouskhelishivili,
A., Earliest pleistocene hominid cranial remains from Dmanisi, Republic of
Georgia: taxonomy, geological setting, and age, Science, 288, 1019, 2000.
12. Mckie, R., Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution, BBC publications, 2000, 82.
13. Spinney, L., Bodytalk, New Scientist, 166, 30, 2000.
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15. Nichols, J., Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time, University of Chicago Press,
1992, 358.
16. Lubbock, J., The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man: Mental
and Social Condition of Savages. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1870, 275.
17. Rohl, D. M., A Test of Time, Century, London, 1995, 339.
18. A full discussion of these species and their domestication may be found in
Diamond, J., Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last
13,000 Years, Vintage, London, 1998, 480.
19. Birdsall, D. and Cipolla, C. M., The Technology of Man, Wildwood House,
London, 1980, 270.
20. Diamond loc. cit., ref 18.
21. Claiborne, R., The Birth of Writing, Time-Life Books, Netherlands BV, 1974, 160.
22. Robinson, A., The Story of Writing, Thames and Hudson, London, 1995, 224.
23. Forbes, R. J., Extracting, smelting and alloying, in A History of Technology, Vol. 1,
Singer, C., Holmyard, E. J., and Hall, A. R., Eds., Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1954, 572.
24. Smil, V., Horse power, Nature, 405, 125, 2000.
25. Domesday Book, 1086.
chapter two
What is/are ethics?
2.1 Ethics: the word

To appreciate the finer ramifications of the term ethics, it is useful to examine
what we mean when we invoke the word or its cognates. There are many con-
notations of the word ethics. On the one hand, we use the word in its “noun”
form to denote those statements that enunciate the guidelines or principles
used to define certain types of behavior. However, another noun form use of
the word is to describe the way a person actually behaves in the sense of “the
ethics of that person leave much to be desired.” In this latter case it is clear
that the person’s ethics are not to be followed by others and serve as a sign-
post of what not to do.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definitions of ethic may serve as
much to confuse as to elucidate. In section B (section A considers the adjecti-
val meanings of the word, which I will deal with under the term ethical), the
OED handles the word ethic in its “substantive” or noun form, when it has the
following meanings:
I. Singular (ethic)
1.a The science of morals;
1.b A scheme of moral science.
II. Plural (ethics)
(after the Greek o [ethikos]),
2.a the science of morals; the department of study concerned with
the principles of human duty
2.b A treatise on the science; specifically that of Aristotle.
2.c (as discrete plural). Ethical maxims or observations.
3.a In a narrower sense, with some qualifying word or phrase: The
moral principles or system of a particular leader or school of
thought.
3.b The moral principles by which a person is guided.

3.c The rules of conduct recognized in certain associations or
departments of human life.
4. In a wider sense: The whole field of moral science, including
besides Ethics properly so called, the science of law whether
civil, political, or international.
In its descriptive or adjectival form the following meanings are attributed to

the word ethical.
1.a Of or pertaining to morality or the science of ethics.

1.b Pertaining to “ethos” (meaning, character in the singular and
manners in the plural) as opposed to “pathos.”
2.a Of an author or literary work: Treating of the science of ethics or
of questions connected with it.
3.a Grammatical. Ethical dative. The dative when used to imply
that a person, other than the subject or object, has an indirect
interest in the fact stated.
4.a Medical. Of a medicine or drug: advertised only in the pro-
fessional press, not to the general public, and often available
only on a doctor’s prescription. Hence as substantive, such as a
medicine.
As an adverb we have the word ethically, which connotes in an ethical man-

ner; according to the principles or rules of ethics, from an ethical point of
view.
I have transcribed these meanings in full because it becomes clear that
the words ethic(s) or ethical do not immediately imply that which is good,
right, and beneficial. We tend in our casual conversation to praise a person
for being ethical and condemn an individual for not being ethical (sometimes
shortened to being unethical). But the word unethical does not appear in the
OED, although it can be found in Websters Third International Dictionary
(Unabridged) where it has the meaning “not conforming to approved stan-
dards of behavior, a socially accepted code, or professionally endorsed prin-
ciples and practices.” Insofar as ethics deal with matters of morality, it
concerns itself with matters of right and wrong, good and bad, benefit and
detriment. But it does not imply that a judgment has been made that is wor-
thy or not worthy of approval. In the definition below, which I find the most
useful,
Ethics are verbal guidelines that are used with the

intention of modulating or controlling human (socially
relevant) behavior . . . to courses of conduct that nor-
mally promote human well-being (or survival).
I have separated the judgmental aspects with an ellipsis and have also indi-
cated that there are behaviors that are beyond the remit of ethics: those that
Chapter two: What is/are ethics? 49
are socially irrelevant. We would generally not regard behaviors that are
involuntary as being included in ethics: coughing, sneezing, laughing when
tickled, sleeping when fatigued, etc. Others may exclude instinctive actions,
as these do not receive a fully conscious and rational mental examination
before becoming operational. Examples could be shrinking back from a
potentially harmful situation, raising one’s arms to prevent a hit in the face,
or picking up a crying baby.
In less detail the OED definition of “moral” is “of or pertaining to char-
acter or disposition, considered as good or bad, virtuous or vicious; of or per-
taining to the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil, in
relation to the actions, volitions or character of responsible beings; ethical.”
Its relationship to ethics may be determined from the etymology of the two
words. In the Oxford Dictionary of Etymology (ODE), 1966: L. moralis translates
to ethical. While some philosophers and writers seek to maintain a distinc-
tion in meaning between the two words (in general, “ethics” are taken to be
more abstract and theoretical, while “morals” pertain to a person’s actual
views of right and wrong or the teachings of one’s conscience), in this book I
am going to assert that the two words ethics and morals (and their derivatives)
may be used interchangeably and connote virtually identical meanings.
There are a suite of other words that hover about the periphery of ethics.
Clearly, “law” is that part of ethics in which the words used for the guidelines
are used to determine behavior that is required or prohibited by society. It is
implied that if prohibited behavior is discovered, its perpetrators will be pun-
ished after the due processes of the legal system have been applied (see
Figure 2.1).
Law is a verbal expression of what a social institution requires regarding
the behavior of its members with respect to other members of the community
and their respective properties. When behavior is in default of the law, sanc-
tions will result. The laws themselves may be subdivided into categories such
as international, constitutional, civil, ecclesiastical, and criminal, each with
further subdivisions. Other verbal guidelines for behavior emerge as rights,
rules, regulations, statutes, codes, injunctions, commandments, traditions, or
customs. It is clear, however, that there are ethical guidelines that exist in
areas not covered by laws. For example, we do not have laws denoting that
people should be totally honest with one another in their conversation, and
some might indeed be “economical with the truth” without breaking a law,
or that people should express good manners and be polite when meeting oth-
ers in public or private. Two aspects of social laws are of further interest to
people. The first is that most laws state the behaviors or activities that an indi-
vidual, corporation, or group must not do. This has the implication that
unless some act is specifically outlawed, all other unspecified and probably
unspecifiable actions are within what is permitted by the legal system.
The second is that when by one’s self and with regard to one’s own proper-
ties, one is unconstrained by the laws of the land as to one’s behavior. This
latter provision is not altogether correct, as the act of suicide (or, more
sensibly, attempted suicide) is, in some jurisdictions, illegal. Also, it is not
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS

AND OTHER FORMS OF GUIDANCE FOR
HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
ETHICS
LAW
PUBLIC: CRIMINAL , CONSTITUTIONAL
PRIVATE: TORT, FAMILY, CONTRACT,

INJUNCTION
RELIGIOUS REGULATIONS
RIGHTS COMMANDMENTS SAFETY
TRAFFIC
CODES OF CONDUCT (PROFESSIONAL +)

RULES OF AN ORGANISATION
TRADITIONS, CUSTOMS, GUIDELINES, RITUALS
Figure 2.1 The relationship between ethics and other forms of guidance
for human social behavior.
permissible to hold, use, or make various categories of drugs and porno-

graphic materials.
Nevertheless, it would seem that all that is denoted by the laws is also
contained within the framework of ethics as the interpretation of the OED
definition II4 (see above) would require. Notwithstanding that, one might
regard some of the laws to be “unethical” or wrong. So if ethical matters are
generally regarded as having our approval and as being correct, how can
we have, within ethics, laws that we disapprove? This conundrum is
removed as we realize the laws represent the will of the majority of the pop-
ulation or the will of the person (group) who has acquired the position of
leader of the society. If an individual disapproves of a law, there are two
methods of recourse. First, he or she can seek to remove or change that law
via the democratic process of majority voting or, by becoming a leader,

change the offending law. Second, the disgruntled individual may quit that
particular society and seek to join another.
It should also be noted that although some provision or regulation may
indeed be the will of a majority of a democratically elected assembly, and that
such expressions are necessarily classified as ethics and indeed ethical, this
does not automatically mean that such a provision is either right, good, cor-
rect, or valued highly. The general acceptability of a proposition or law may
ensure that a law is obeyed and observed, but it does not automatically make
it into a good law. For example, there have been many laws throughout his-
tory (and some still exist) that have prevented particular and identifiable sub-
groups within the society from having the full suite of rights enjoyed by all
the other members of the society. We have but to remember the repressive
laws vis-à-vis the Jews and Gypsies of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s or the
laws that permitted discriminatory procedures with regard to Black people
in the Southern states of the U.S. prior to 1968 or South Africa until 1994.
Much is made of situations where the letter of the law is overtaken
(trumped) by what is held to be “natural justice.” A man murders the rapist-
killer of his daughter as the latter has been discharged from a mental hospi-
tal; the law requires this “first-degree” self-confessed murderer to be so
convicted, but a jury listening to the evidence acquits the father in the cause
of natural justice. It surely has to be the case that the law should be upheld in
those situations where the circumstances are clear and unambivalent. Yet the
process of delivering the law to the people has incorporated within it certain
safeguards and protections. One such is the jury. This requirement, in impor-
tant cases, to refer to representatives of the people who are the peers of the
accused, brings the interpretation of the intention of the lawmakers to the
practical level of finding ways of protecting society against the excesses of
both criminals and legislators.
As can be deduced from an examination of Figure 2.1, the relationship of
an assortment of different types of guidelines to law is complex. For example,
some rights are part of our legal systems, while others are not. We have the
right to a fair trial, but we do not have the right to have a job. We have the
right to hold property, but we do not have the right to defend that property
by the use of unreasonable force (in some countries, shooting to kill is
regarded as reasonable). It is to be noted that the right to a job and the right
to defend one’s property, howsoever one chooses, may be rights in an ethical
sense, but they are not part of the legal system. Similarly we can see that reli-
gious commandments can be both within and without the scope of the law.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the commandment “You shall honor your
father and your mother . . . ” is not enshrined in law, whereas the command-
ment against stealing is. This also applies to traffic regulations. Going over a
speed limit is unlawful, but the repeated changing of traffic lanes is not
against the law; it is an ill-mannered and potentially unsafe practice. When
an organization such as the Institution for Chemical Engineers sets up a code

of conduct for its members, the provisions of that code do not have a bearing
in the law and apply only to the institution’s members. However, the trans-
gression of such codes can lead to the suspension of the engineer from the
institution, which in some countries will deny them the right to practice their
profession. We also have a whole panoply of traditions, customs, rituals, and
habits (social) that provide a loose framework within which we can choose
how to act. The penalties for disregarding these provisions are not the sanc-
tions that can be applied when a law is transgressed, but they can exclude an
individual from a social group or they can create a liability for someone who
is in line for the inheritance of property. This rich tapestry of rules and regu-
lations may seem to fix each and every action that is available to an individ-
ual. But the imagination of humans extends beyond that which exists at the
present time, for things are always changing, new situations develop, new
tools emerge with properties that are only partially explored. There are new
traditions, customs, and laws to forge; there are new ways of living in
response to the pervasive and powerful properties of the new tools in the
pipeline. The interactions between the tools and the guidelines is rapidly
becoming a crucial focal point for the definition of ourselves and our social
groupings.
There is yet another way of looking at ethics; this takes off from the point
of view of the control engineer and considers ethics as a set point in a feed-
forward plus feedback control loop system.
2.1.1 Ethics as hypotheses or “best guesses”

(absolute and relative ethics)
Although we may receive our ethics carved in stone (Hammurabi Code)
or calligraphed with almost superhuman care on parchment (the Old
Testament, Pentateuch, or Torah), we may yet engage in serious discussion as
to the status of the laws, guidelines, or commandments that have been
bequested to us by our ancestors. On the one hand we can consider the
received words as the unchangeable rock on which we must forge our future
behaviors. Alternatively we can recognize the times and circumstances in
which such words were written down and, by careful and considered modi-
fication, adapt them to be more suitable for our contemporary lives. The
former would constitute our absolute ethics, while the latter would be desig-
nated relative ethics, for they would be construed to be relative to local condi-
tions.
The case for regarding all ethics as absolute is made by authorities of the
various religious establishments. They would regard the words they have in
their holy texts as the words of the deity and, being sacrosanct, cannot in any
way be modified. In being the words of God, these pronouncements have a
level of authority that cannot be challenged by mere mortals. Of course, as
times change, it is possible for the same words to either mean different things
or to be used in different ways. The Old Testament would have us put adul-
terers to death;1 we do not do that today. The same source requires that we do
not seethe a child in the milk of its mother;2 the more extreme laws of
kashruth require the complete separation of all milk products from products
that are meaty (excluding fish), to set a fence round the original proscription
such that it cannot possibly be infringed.3 A special class of individuals
emerges whose function is to interpret the words that constitute absolute
ethics so that they can be applicable in a modern society. These hermeneuts,
be they priest, rabbi, mulla, or monk, are given the task of doing the adapta-
tion. While these individuals may be highly trained and erudite in the
extreme, they cannot fail to encourage those meanings that enhance and sup-
port the material well-being of the organization of which they are a part.
There is therefore a sense in which absolute ethics become relative ethics,
even though the original texts do not change in one iota; the meaning and
interpretation run with the times and circumstances.
A second problem with the adoption of the absolute ethics approach is
the determination of which words were the ones spoken by God and written
down by Moses. As we will see below, the Old Testament text has a checkered
history. At the time of Moses and the Exodus, dated to 1447 B.C.E., Proto-
Semitic and cuneiform alphabets were new and under development. So in
what script did Moses, brought up as an Egyptian prince, write? And do the
interpretations of what he wrote faithfully represent the original scripture, or
did some editor decide to “improve” on the original—as editors do?
Relative ethics are often held to be impoverished, in that they are unable
to call upon an unquestionable authority for their authentication. Never-
theless, should that be taken as a serious criticism? In being flexible and
responding to the circumstances, they can grow and change as the conditions
of society develop. We know that over the last million or so years there have
been more than seven ice ages in which the temperature of the world plum-
meted downward. If the small groups and tribes of humans struggling for
survival had not changed the way they lived, and the rules they lived by, to
meet the changing conditions, they would have perished. The stasis of
absolute ethics may be likened to the exoskeleton of an insect; it can only be
pushed so far before running out of interpretation space. An adaptable inter-
nal skeleton can respond to changes and keep growing and developing as cir-
cumstances require.
Furthermore, it is possible to put the statements or formulation of rela-
tive ethics into the same category as we place scientific hypotheses (see
Section 2.3.5). In this way we can operate with rules and regulations that are
our present “best guess” and only substitute or change such guesses when
they have been shown to be inappropriate or inadequate. In this way we can
have a fully adaptable system without fear of breaking with sanctified tradi-
tions when each new development or tool comes along. Such ethics are
accorded their authority because people respect the process that brought
them into being: a careful, continuous, and pragmatic examination of each
edict from the time of its formulation to the time of its demise. It is this con-
stant surveillance to make sure that we have the best and most suitable ethics
at all times that gives power to relative ethics. It is not surprising that this
way of coming to ethics seems to be the most prevalent system of ethics in
operation today. Indeed, with a welter of new and powerful tools
in the offing, our ethics have to be adaptable to take full advantage of the
opportunities that are both with us already and those that are just over the
horizon.
2.1.2 Ethics as the set point in a control system modulating

human behavior
The behavior of living organisms is controlled by a variety of mechanisms. At
the microscopic level, bacteria and protozoa control the directions in which
they move, the way they feed and grow, and how they reproduce. Much is
known about the way genes are switched on and off. Additional chemical ele-
ments (e.g., hormones) enter into the control arena of multicellular organ-
isms. In addition to these ostensibly molecular or chemical methods of
controlling behavior, an explanation for the complex behavior of animals is
to assert that they are responding to their instincts. These constitute “an
innate propensity in organized beings (esp. in the lower animals), varying
with the species, and manifesting itself in acts which appear to be rational,
but are performed without conscious adaptation of means to ends.”4 The
building of a hive by bees or an anthill by ants, the nesting/mating activities
of birds, and the hunting stratagems of wild hyenas and lions may be said to
be based on instinctive behaviors. “Conscious adaptation of means to ends”
may be identified in the higher mammals, in particular the primates. Hence
we now have another source of stimuli for action that is based on the coordi-
nated activity of brain neurons. Humans are unique in that they are able to
communicate with one another via the use of words. Words used in this way
constitute our ethics and ethical systems.
The verbal formulation of an ethical guideline serves as a set point in
both the feed-forward (quality assurance) and feedback (quality control)
systems that operate in contemporary societies.5 These set points are derived
from answers to metaethical programs of discovery (see below). We can see
how this system works in Figure 2.2. Guidelines are fed into the system as
one would establish the set point in a control loop. The controller then
obtains information as to the nature of the system that is to be controlled. Two
kinds of data can be acquired. The first is a retroactive examination of the
parameter under control after the system to be controlled proceeds to do
other things. This may be compared to measuring the length of a shirt sleeve
on the finished item and before it goes into its packing case. If the sleeve is
not according to the specification (the set point or guideline), then the item is
either remade or rejected. This is a feedback or quality control (QC) type of
operation. Alternatively, it is possible to examine the pieces of cut material,
which are designated to become sleeves, before they are assembled into a
shirt to check if any adjustments need to be made prior to the material’s entry
into the shirt assembly process. At this level we are using feed-forward con-
trol or a quality assurance (QA) mechanism. In both of these cases (QC and
QA) a parameter of the system is measured and compared with what the set
point or guideline requires. In the event that there is a difference between
these two data points, the controller will act on the system so as to minimize
the difference.
In translating this shirt factory analogy to an ethical system, we can
adopt an ethic such as “the speed limit between A and B shall be 30 mph.” It
would be possible to take feed-forward corrective action by flashing a light at
cars going above a certain speed just before they were about to enter the zone.
Feedback corrective action would be to fine people who actually speed. As
the figure indicates, there are many ways of establishing the control of ethi-
cal parameters, and these may be used either singly or in combination and at
different levels of intensity.
HUMAN SOCIAL
I NPUTS BEHAVIOR OUTPUTS
The System
PROACTIVE REACTIVE
CONTROLLERS
Police, Army, Media, Judiciary,

Public Opinion, Education, Peer
Pressure, Parents and Family,
Work mates, Social group,
ETHICS
(SET POINT)
Laws, Regulations, Rules,
Ordinances, Orders, Statues,
Guidelines, Codes, Ethos,
Example, Manners, Etiquette,
Notions of what is good and right

- meta-ethics
Figure 2.2 Ethics as the set point for a control system modulating human
social behavior.
2.1.3 Ethics and values

It is also useful at this point to examine the concept of value. Some individu-
als regard ethics as being dependent on values, whereas the reverse is a more
sustainable position. The word value comes from the Latin verb valere, which
means to be strong, healthy, effective, worth(y). This leaves open the question
of how values are assigned. When as infants we begin to perceive the world,
the objects and actions we encounter have preassigned values. Those with a
high positive value are encouraged and vice versa. Clearly, values are
assigned by adults to objects and actions on the basis of what it is that they
wish to encourage and promote. This then reverts to the ethics by which peo-
ple run their lives. When a child’s behavior complies with a parent’s notion of
a guideline or prescription for action with which they agree, then they accord
it a high value; such actions are consonant with their selected ethics.
Later in life, a child recognizes that different values are attributed to each
of a variety of objects. The basis for the assignment of a particular magnitude
of value to an object rests on a multitude of factors. In the first place it may be
determined by the extent to which that object is necessary for the survivabil-
ity of the individual. A starving person would relinquish a high proportion
of their total wealth for food. At a certain age the urge to reproduce is high,
so the value that may be attributable to a suitably mature mate is corre-
spondingly increased. The magnitude of the desire to acquire an object may
be conditioned by its scarcity. In this regard the seemingly ridiculous values
placed on rare works of art or jewelry do not signify the value of the item per
se; rather, they act as a signal to society of the wealth (status) of the possessor
of such items. Hence they are instruments in establishing a dominance hier-
archy which seems to be akin to the behavior patterns of our primate fore-
bears. It is in this way that they acquire their value, but it is the ethics of
hierarchy formation that enables the worth of the items to be scaled.
Having surveyed the various meanings and implications of the word
ethics, it is now time to move on and examine the actual guidelines them-
selves, particularly the way(s) by which such verbal expressions originated
and can be formulated.
2.2 Ethics in history

Without words we would not have ethics. Gestures and the use of physical
constraints to control behavior are not generally accorded the distinction of
being ethics. We do not regard as ethical the behavior of chimpanzees that
restrict the access to food of a young member of the group that has been
greedy on a previous occasion. As the OED asserts, ethics are a science, and
a science cannot be progressed without the critical testing of those hypothe-
ses we use to account the nature of the world outside ourselves. That testing,
when operating at the level of the society, is generally effected via the
medium of words. This does not exclude the testing and evaluation of the
“real” world by animals and humans on their own account by methods that
may be subconscious, conscious verbal, or nonverbal. But ethics are a social
phenomenon, and therefore words are appropriate for its presentation and
progression.
As I have indicated in Section 1.4 in Chapter 1, words are a relatively
recent invention and are coupled with the emergence of the modern human
around 60,000 years ago. It is not unlikely that the ability to express guide-
lines for behavior was one of the parameters that promoted the development
of wordy communication, because through such directives people were
encouraged or required to behave in ways that were more likely to result in
their “benefit” than otherwise. (I take “benefit” to relate to the improvement
in the prospects for the survivability of the individual as well as an increase
in the chances of survival of the group of people of which he or she is a mem-
ber.)
It is not known when humans first began to think about the nature of liv-
ing organisms as different from dead organisms. Higher primates have been
filmed ostensibly grieving over the death of a member of their troupe. Dogs,
too, are known express attitudes akin to grief at the death of their human
companion. The most noticeable feature in the transition from life to death in
animals was that dead beings did not move themselves even when poked or
prodded; they grew cold and were eventually taken over by noxious fluids
and worms (larvae of flies). They were no longer animated. Therefore, dead
people lacked the cause of this animation; something had gone, or been had
removed, from them. Having given this absent principle the label “spirit,”
the attribution to spirits of the property of providing the animating principle
of all things that moved was but a short leap. Thus spirits would inhabit the
being of anything that moved: a tree wafting in the breeze, a rock tumbling
down an incline, the ground when shaken by an earthquake, the air as it
moved on the wind, and the celestial bodies as they wended their way
around the daytime and nighttime skys. After this conceptual jump the con-
struction of a spirit world was virtually inevitable. What followed next does
not seem so necessary. Recognizing that the spirits seemed to be capable of
both helpful and destructive acts, people began to appeal to these spirits to
help them achieve an improvement in their well-being.6 Noticing that the
culling of one animal from a herd protected the rest of the herd against fur-
ther attack, the concept of sacrifice was engendered. What could one sacrifice
to the spirits of the spirit world to placate their appetites, put them in a good
mood, or make them do worthwhile deeds? Obviously, a gift of something
of value would be appropriate. Such thinking led the Aztecs to sacrifice
over 100,000 slaves/captives/virgins per year in the early centuries of
the last millennium.7 It did not help them to survive over the long term.
Notwithstanding the lack of success of much of what was offered sacrificially,
the imputed power of the entities of the spirit world was not diminished; it
was more likely enhanced.
This belief system is well recognized under the designation “animism”

which, according to Encyclopædia Britannica (1975), is defined as “belief in
spiritual beings concerned with human affairs and capable of helping or
harming men’s interests—a belief pervasive among most tribal or primitive
peoples.”
So we have reached a situation where it was possible to combine atti-
tudes to the spirit world with guidelines for behavior. It was conjectured that
“good” behavior was rewarded by the spirits in this world or in the spirit
world after death, and bad behavior was punished correspondingly. Now we
have a carrot and stick approach for the reinforcement of inducements to
behave in a manner that would be of benefit. This worked, and works yet. We
learned to elaborate more anthropomorphic characters such as gods, angels,
devils, demons, jinni, or a mixture of the same and more. The spirits of the
netherworld were believed to take on the form of chimeras of various parts
of the anatomy of different animals often coupled with portions of the bod-
ies of humans. Furthermore, whole animals or humans were accorded spiri-
tual qualities, as were idols made from golden calves or present and past
rulers of major territories. Also, the spirit that resided in the human was
renamed the soul. The outcome of this line of thinking was that particular
people (shamans, prophets, priests) in a group, tribe, or society took it upon
themselves to find out what the spirits of the spirit world were thinking and,
in particular, what instructions they had for the behavior of humans. Thus we
have an origin for some of our ethics from such human-spirit interactions.
It is likely that the first recording of a suite of such injunctions occurred
some 6500 years ago when the Egyptians, using pictograms to represent
sounds, composed a work called The Book of the Dead. This work probably
contains material that had been in development and use for thousands of
years prior to the time of its recording, so we can be assured that the use of
words to formulate ethical guidelines for behavior antedates the era of writ-
ing by some time. As most modern writers on the history of ethics begin with
the works of the Greeks some 2900 years ago, I will present this earlier mate-
rial so that the reader may acquire the flavor of what a subset of the people
living around 6000 years ago held to be important rules for the conduct of
their lives. In quoting from the Egyptian The Book of the Dead it is important
to realize that the person making the statements is dead; when alive, this per-
son had caused his or her final resting place to be built with walls adorned by
hieroglyphics selected to placate the gods in order to enhance the chances of
success in making the complete journey to the land of eternal life.
For thy sake I have rejected wickedness. I have done no

hurt unto man, nor have I wrought harm unto beasts. I
have committed no crime in the place of Right and
Truth. I have had no knowledge of evil; nor have I
acted wickedly. Each day I have labored more than was
required of me. My name hath not come forth to the

boat of the Prince. I have not despised God. I have not
caused misery; nor have I worked affliction. I have
done not that which God doth abominate. I have
caused no wrong to be done to the servant by his mas-
ter. I have caused none to feel pain. I have made no
man to weep. I have not committed murder. Nor have
I ever bidden any man to slay on my behalf. I have not
wronged the people, I have not filched that which hath
been offered in the temples; nor have I purloined the
cakes of the gods. I have not carried away the offerings
made unto the blessed dead. I have not committed for-
nication, nor have I defiled my body. I have not added
unto nor have I minished the offerings which are due.
I have not stolen from the orchards. Nor have I tram-
pled down the fields. I have not added to the weight of
the balance; nor have I made light the weight in the
scales. I have not snatched the milk from the mouth of
the babe. I have not driven the cattle from their pas-
tures, I have not snared the water-fowl of the gods. I
have not caught fishes with bait of their own bodies. I
have not turned back water at its spring-tide. I have not
broken the channel of running water. I have not
quenched the flame in its fullness. I have not dis-
regarded the seasons for the offerings which are
appointed; I have not turned away the cattle set apart
for sacrifice. I have not thwarted the processions of
the god.8
Meanwhile, in Babylon, ethics were purveyed as a series of laws

regulating and codifying the transfers of property between people and the
monetary, or otherwise, compensations for damages caused. One such is the
collection of the 61 laws of Eshnunna, a town to the east of Baghdad, written
between 2000 B.C.E. and about 1750 B.C.E. More famously, we have the “Code
of Hammurabi” written in the second year of his reign (1726 B.C.E.) but mod-
ified thereafter, so that the cuneiform-carved diorite stela, which is presently
in The Louvre, Paris, was probably made shortly after 1686 B.C.E. It consists
of 282 laws, some of which are reflected in the Old Testament, but, like the
previous set of laws, it is mostly concerned with property transfers and
compensation for damage to property and persons.9
There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament or Five Books of
Moses. Of these, 365 are in the negative “you shall not . . ., ” while 248 are
positive. Ten of these are highlighted (twice) as “The Decalogue” or Ten
Commandments, of which three deal with the relationship between man and
God and seven deal with how people should relate to one another. This suite
of prescriptions for living was committed to writing following the Exodus of

the Hebrews from Egypt in 1447 B.C.E. One such writing was completed in
550 B.C.E. before the Jews left Babylon to return to their homes in Judah in
538 B.C.E. The present form of this document derives from the Masoretic texts,
which were compiled from a number of codices in the tenth century C.E.
when the Old Testament was canonized. The origins of the texts that were
used in this canonization are obscure. Many of the texts of the individual
books, written in Hebrew or Aramaic and dating to between 200 B.C.E. and
100 C.E. were found at Qumran. Some of these texts appear in
the Masoretic version almost unchanged. Other texts found at Masada and
in other places in the Judean Desert also appear in the tenth century com-
pilation without significant change. In addition, a conjoint rendition of the
Hebrew and Greek versions of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, was
11
made in the year 240 C.E. by Origen, then living in Alexandria, Egypt. What
emerges from this story is that the redactors of the Masoretic text seem to
have used material that had its origin in the deep history of the Jewish peo-
ple some 1000 to 1500 years previously. That there were differences in these
texts and the faithfulness of their transliterations and editing is undoubted.
Nevertheless, the result of all this endeavor was a history of a people with an
embedded code of laws, backed by the authority of a deity, coupled to a col-
lection of parables whose influence and power still motivates and controls
the ethical thinking of many people in our modern world.
In parallel with these developments, the codes of ethics of the Christians
were committed to writing, and the Greeks became active in delineating the
virtues to which people should aspire in their daily lives and dealings. Many
societies adopted versions of the “Golden Rule” as a keystone ethic. This
required people “to do to others what you would have others do to you.” An
alternative formulation in the negative holds that “you should not do to oth-
ers what you would not have others do to you.” I have certainly found this
first-order ethical principle to be of use when traveling in countries whose
customs and traditions are not based on the Judeo-Christian-Moslem
(Abrahamic) texts.
It is certainly not my purpose here to delve into all those authors who
have written about the history of matters ethical. There are excellent books on
this subject already to which I can refer the reader.12 –13 My reason for taking
this short digression was to consolidate an important relationship between
ethics and our biology. As speech and words became tools that enhanced our
capability to survive, some words took on the form of guidelines for behav-
ior, thus becoming our ethics.
2.3 Ethics in practice: normative and metaethics

It is both customary and confusing to recognize at least three different uses of
the word ethics. On a day-to-day basis we use verbal expressions urging oth-
ers, as well as ourselves, to behave in a particular way. Such expressions are
termed normative ethics. Examples of this type of ethics may be gleaned from
statements such as do not steal, do not murder, help the less well-off, keep
your promises, do not lie, be polite, do your duty etc. Most people would
agree to being directed by such guidelines. However, as we have seen above,
approval by a majority does not make things right. So can we adduce a firmer
base for promoting these guidelines other than that everybody (or most
people) are happy to accept them? You could, of course, argue, why go any
further? As we all agree, let’s quit and celebrate. But what happens when a
set of circumstances occurs that renders it inconceivable that the simple nor-
mative ethics delineated above are considered appropriate? Or when it is not
clear as to what your duty is? Or when two or more societies differ in the way
they think the gods or spirits should be placated?
For example, if, in a repressive and violent regime, a person in authority
asked you to report on the direction taken by some people who were work-
ing for the overthrow of that regime, would it not be justified to mislead the
authorities and knowingly give an incorrect reply? If a relative were in urgent
need of a particular drug late on a Sunday night when the pharmacies were
closed, would it be justified to break into the pharmacy to steal the drug and
apply the treatment? (One could clear one’s conscience to some extent by hav-
ing the intention to recompense the pharmacy on the following day when the
shop opened.) Or would you feel comfortable in making a promise, which
you had not the slightest intention of fulfilling, to repay a loan to a person
whom you were quite sure had cheated you out of some money or property
on another occasion? When faced with an aged relative on the verge of dying,
does one have a duty to prolong life at any cost to both the relative and the
health system? Or rather, is it one’s duty to prepare for the death of that per-
son with the minimum of pain and the maximum of comfort and dignity? Are
there circumstances when it would be appropriate to kill an innocent person
in the interest of saving the lives of others? Answers to these questions can be
found only if we can delineate the principles or rules for the determination of
the simple normative ethics that are applicable at any particular time and sit-
uation (seemingly identical situations at different times may be radically dif-
ferent, for example, whether one’s society is in a state of war or peace). A
system that enables us to do this is described as metaethics. It is a set of con-
siderations “beyond” ethics that enables us to formulate guidelines for
behavior from a grounding or with a justification that can command the
respect and recognition of all who have a mind to delve into such areas. I shall
attempt to provide a way into this area by a route that is not commonly used
by the majority of philosophers who venture into such seas.
2.3.1 Toward a well-founded metaethics

If one begins with the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato, then the
way into metaethics is via concepts of either doing what is “good” or what
makes a person “happy.” However, the reader will immediately ask the next
questions: What is good? And what makes a person happy? To answer these
questions, a variety of devices are used. One such device is to appeal to
the feelings or conscience of an individual. What is it that feels good or right?

Can we appeal to instincts or mental senses for what is good? Other philoso-
phers raise the issue of duty. How do we get to know what our duties are? If
we are constrained by physical or empirical forces, then the product of such
influences distorts what might be our “true” or real “duty.” Is it possible to
arrive at a sense of what our duties are in a manner that is not influenced by
our prehistory or by the present state of our brain chemistry and neurophys-
iology? This and other questions brings into clear view the basic question
that needs to be answered before we can return to answer the issues raised in
this paragraph. This problem is as old as philosophy and yet is as keenly
debated now as it was at the time of its inception. Do humans have free will? Is
it possible for a human to act in a way that is not determined by the present
and previous state of the universe? Is there something about the mind that
renders it different from all other states of matter in that there can be thought
processes that are wholly divorced from the influence of the material state of
the universe? A corollary to these considerations is the supplementary ques-
tion as to the implications of an answer to these questions that either asserts
or denies the existence of free will.
As we have seen in Section 2.2, humans introduced the concept of spirits
to explain the difference between living and dead animals. Animation, move-
ment, and change could be attributed to the activity of these spirits.
As changes occurred to mental states during the process of thinking, then
spirits are clearly implicated in the workings of the mind. This view was rein-
forced by people wondering how the mind could work as it generated the
thoughts (often in the form of words), mind-pictures, and dream scenarios.
However, the hypothesis of the existence of an animating spirit to provide a
plausible reason for the movement of animate beings is not necessarily cor-
rect, neither as an explanation of animation nor as a hypothesis that can
account for the mind and the way it works.
The last 25 years have seen enormous advances in the determination of
the nature of the components of the brain and the way they interact to pro-
vide us with an operating system that enables us to move around in the
world outside ourselves with a low probability of incurring damage or dan-
ger. Our conscious mental states originate in the part of the brain known as
the cerebral cortex. We know this because the new methods we use to exam-
ine the state of activity of different parts of the brain as it performs defined
tasks can be observed by the techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance cou-
pled with tomographic techniques based on the emission of heat or the con-
centration of a radioactive probe. A second line of reasoning is that the
cerebral cortex is most developed in human beings, who, it is thought, are
among the few animals to experience self-consciousness.
It is salutary to refresh our thinking about the cellular anatomy of the
cerebral cortex of the human brain. This is because I am going to uphold
the view that this is the seat of our consciousness and the location of those
thought processes we use when deciding to behave in a particular way.
The human male brain has a median weight of some 1450 ± 220 g, while
the female counterpart weighs 1350 ± 180 g. The area of the cerebral cortex is
some 2200 cm2 in humans, and its outer layer of cells is between 1.5 and 4.5
mm deep (say, on average, 3.0 mm). In humans there are about 10,500 cells
per cubic millimeter (in the mouse this figure is 142,000, and in the macaque
monkey it is 21,500). This means that the total number of cells that provide us
with our thinking apparatus is about 6,930,000,000 or 6.93 billion cells. (If we
assume that the average diameter of these cells is 15 m [15 thousandths of a
millimeter] and that they are spherical, then the volume occupied by the 6.93
billion cells is about 12 ml or 0.85% of the weight or volume of the brain.)
However, if each of these cells is capable of connecting to any of 1000 other
cells, then the number of connections that is possible is about
5 1016or 5 with 16 zeros after it. The largest of our modern computers does
not come up to 1% of this capability—yet.
In addition to cells there are chemicals. At present we are aware of tens
of different molecules that can cause nerve cells to generate a nerve impulse.
These tend to be active in specific areas of the brain and have unique func-
tions. This plexus of interconnected cells interacting via the medium of small
molecules (like acetylcholine or somatostatin) has, in computing terms, more
than enough power to generate the memories, images, and sensations of con-
sciousness that we experience. So instead of explaining our conscious
thoughts via the concept of a spirit, we can dispense with this additional and
arbitrary element and assert that the material elements that make up the
brain are both necessary and sufficient to account for the properties of the
brain as we experience them.
If, then, the brain and all its workings are dependent on the materials of
which it is made, is there any way in which we can conceive of a mechanism
that can account for free will? We can imagine the universe to be an entity that
is composed of matter and energy only. And, as Einstein had it, energy and
matter are interconvertable: E m c2 or energy is equal to mass times the
speed of light squared. So we may account for the totality of our present uni-
verse in terms of its energy only.
Let me now go back to the point at which I introduced the hypothesis of
a “spirit” to account for the animation of animals (see Section 2.2). Were this
to have been an incorrect hypothesis—and the animation was really due to
the interaction of actin and myosin molecules in our muscles that, when fed
with a source of energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), are able
to contract and expand and cause the observed movements—movement
would cease were the supply of ATP to dry up. On death, when the heart
stops beating and the lungs stop breathing, the supply of oxygen to the
energy-producing systems of the body ceases. ATP no longer forms, and the
muscles stop working; the body becomes inanimate.
This then becomes the new hypothesis to account for the transition from
the animate condition to the inanimate state on death. Now, as needs must,
the spirit hypothesis that once successfully accounted for the animate state
has to be relegated to the ranks of the also-ran. This hypothesis also has to be
rejected as an explanation for those activities that occur in the brain and that
constitute our minds. Bereft of the spirit concept, we now have to rely on the
further development of science to provide, in more excruciating detail than I
have done above, a model that can fully account for all we observe, feel,
sense, and experience. We may also have to reject the concept of the possibil-
ity of a will that is totally independent of the material and energy that con-
stitutes this universe. The implications of such a rejection are not without
sequellae.
2.3.2 The issue of determinism and free will

In his recent book Consilience,14 E. O. Wilson makes two assertions that seem
to contradict one another. The initial assertion is presented in the first two
quotations, where he makes the point that the world and the mind operate as
mechanical or computer-like systems. However, the second two quotations
let in elements of freedom that are apart from the physical constraints of a
substantive world. Moreover, the reasons given for this about-turn are not
persuasive, as I shall seek to demonstrate below.
Let’s take the following quotation from page 291: “The central idea of the
consilience world view is that all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars
to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are
ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws
of physics.” Now I go back to page 130, where we have:
The self, an actor in a perpetually changing drama,

lacks full command of its own actions. It does not make
decisions solely by conscious rational choice. Much of
the computation in decision making is unconscious—
strings dancing the puppet ego. Circuits and deter-
mining molecular processes exist outside conscious
thought. They consolidate certain memories and delete
others, bias connections and analogies, and reinforce
the neurohormonal loops that regulate subsequent
emotional response.
He goes on to write on page 131 that “free will as a side product of illu-
sion would seem to be free will enough to drive human progress and offer
happiness.” But then we have the final quotation, also from page 131:
So there can be no simple determinism of human

thought, at least not in obedience to causation in the
way physical laws describe the motion of bodies and
the atomic assembly of molecules. Because the individ-
ual mind cannot be fully known and predicted
(author’s emphasis), the self can go on passionately
believing in its own free will. And that is a fortunate

circumstance. Confidence in free will is biologically
adaptive. Without it the mind, imprisoned by fatalism,
would slow and deteriorate. Thus in organismic time
and space, in every operational sense that applies to
the knowable self, the mind does (author’s emphasis)
have free will.
That we cannot fully know and predict the workings of an individual

human brain is not a sustainable argument for the assertions that, therefore,
the brain has free will, or even that we can believe (or kid ourselves) that the
brain has free will. Whether we can know and predict is a function of our
state of knowledge and how we think that knowledge will develop into the
future. It says nothing about whether or not a materially based causal system
is or is not at work at any particular place. Indeed, we know full well that we
cannot know everything about the nature of the universe. The adage “injury
attends observation” is a rule that all biologists learn early in their education
and is a message which receives copious reinforcement at every stage along
the way of their subsequent learning. Even the “exact” science of physics has
come to realize that it, too, cannot claim to have total knowledge of any phys-
ical system since Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901–1976) enunciated his famous
“Uncertainty Principle” in 1927. “The uncertainty principle requires that if x
is the uncertainty in determining the position of an electron and p is the
uncertainty in measuring momentum then
x *
p h; where h is the Planck
constant,”15 whose value is 6.63 1034 J-s. This principle is applicable to a
number of tightly coupled variables, such as mass and momentum.
So we have to banish the thought that we will ever be able to predict the
future exactly because we cannot know the details of the present with an exac-
titude that enables the precise projection of current conditions to a calculated
future state. But that does not mean that if we were not constrained by the
condition of “injury attending observation,” the future is not predictable. The
materialistic determination of the future is not in any way compromised
because we humans cannot make observations with sufficient accuracy to
make exact predictions. The failing is with us and not with the system we are
trying to observe, describe, and understand. So I have to conclude that we are
operating in a materialistic and (pre)determined world (by the present state
of the universe). A necessary corollary of this is that we do not have free will.
What we think and the mechanisms by which we make our decisions are
totally determined by the state of matter in the universe: its history and its
future, as was first pointed out by Pierre Simon, and Marquis de Laplace,
(1749–1827). Does that matter?
Clearly, Wilson thinks that it does matter. He fears that if we actually
believe that all we think is predetermined by the previous states of the
universe, we will give up the will to live and take responsibility for our
actions, or as he puts it, “The mind, imprisoned by fatalism, would slow and
deteriorate.” He does not offer evidence to back up this assertion. If such a

belief were to cause such universal decrepitude, then what am I, a disbeliever
in free will, doing in writing this book?
Omniscience is a property attributed to the God of the Old Testament as
a result of his ability to tell what is going to happen in the future.16 If God can
predict the future, then the future is already determined; whether as a result
of the expression of God’s will or otherwise is not a matter of importance. So
while many Jewish philosophers have struggled with might and main to pro-
vide their people with free will so that their actions may be judged good or
bad and that they may be rewarded and punished accordingly in this world,
they may have fought in vain. And, of course, any reading of history must
lead to a refutation that living a good life is necessarily rewarded on this
Earth and vice versa. Of the six million Jews who were murdered in the holo-
caust, there must have been a significant proportion (at least the babies and
children) whose previous lives were sufficiently righteous that their fate can
never have been considered as a proportionate treatment for the quality of
the lives they led. Other Jewish philosophers (Philo, Bahya ibn Paquda, and
Hasdai Crescas17) have recognized the deterministic implications of God’s
omniscience and have justly concluded that our actions are predetermined
by the state of nature prior to that action. I would not think that anybody
who is aware of the history of the Jews and their contributions to the progress
of humanity would assert that they have been dilatory or inhibited in striv-
ing to make their contributions because of the thought that all might be
predetermined.
From pronouncements in the Koran (e.g., from The Merciful: “Let him
that will, take the right path to his Lord. Yet you cannot will, except by
the will of Allah”) and the philosophies of Avicenna (980–1037), it is often
held that belief in the teachings of Islam, where it is recognized that all is the
will of the God, Allah (including the gift to man of free will and the setting
up of an opposition in Satan), should predispose the people who espouse that
religion to a lack of an appetite to grow and thrive. On the contrary, people
with Islamic backgrounds gave us many new insights into mathematics,
astronomy, medicine, art and architecture, poetry, and literature. When fol-
lowing the path that was given to them to pursue, they expanded from their
territory in Arabia and conquered a swathe of land that ran around the
Mediterranean Sea, from the Dinaric Alps in the North to China in the East.
To the South, the subcontinent India and island kingdom of Indonesia were
drawn in and were included, along with all the countries along the southern
shore of the Mediterranean, finishing up at the Pyrenees, separating Spain
from France.
For the most part, individuals act as if they believe they are free to choose
how they live their lives. This is probably the case even if they do not believe
in the existence of free will, having been persuaded that their minds are a part
of a material universe and that the changes that occur in this material are
fully determined. Even as I think about the words I select to present my view
on ethics and tools to you, the reader, I am well aware of just how much of
my background has been involved in preparing me for this day. I am com-
fortable in carrying forward a program (that which makes me be what I am
and do what I do) that I believe will provide benefit for my fellow humans,
even if it requires them to think in new ways. By taking this path, I hope to
ease into being the new tools that seem to strike many people with fear and
loathing from the onset. We always have to recognize that the more powerful
the tool, the more it can produce great benefits and the more it can produce
great harms. Our job, having duly noted these two potential outcomes, is to
devise sets of rules, conditions, and guidelines to prevent the emergence of
the harmful effects, while taking full advantage of the beneficial properties.
We did it for fire and the hammer; we can, and must, do it for the welter of
new biotechnological, informatic, and life-changing tools with which we are
about to be deluged.
I have quoted Wilson at length because he illustrates the way many
eminent thinkers have construed their thoughts to both embrace the materi-
alism of the physical, law-abiding, world without losing a connectivity to
God or a deistic entity. Descartes (1596–1650) and Newton (1643–1727), two
key philosophers of the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century, believed
that the world and the rest of the universe obeyed the laws and was as defin-
able as any “mechanical” system. But for them there was a God who operated
at the level of their minds and that they clearly regarded as being part of an
immaterial world. Also, this God was, in Aristotle’s terms, the “prime-
mover.” Once the universe was set on its path, God removed himself from the
workings of His creation and let the laws of physics control what happened
henceforth. This way of thinking was defined as “Deism” and was a position
commonly held by the later philosophers of the Enlightenment movement.
Today, Wilson espouses a virtually identical view. On page 261 we have:
That said, I will of course try to be plain about my own

position: I am an empiricist. On religion I lean toward
deism but consider its proof largely a problem in astro-
physics. The existence of a cosmological God who cre-
ated the universe (as envisioned by deism) is possible,
and may eventually be settled, perhaps by forms of
material evidence not yet imagined.
Perhaps this explains what is behind Wilson’s espousal of free will. Once
God has been introduced into the thinking, then some immaterial properties
can pop up in any situation. It could also be argued in the converse sense, in
that the postulation that free will exists predisposes us to a situation in which
there is something else to consider in addition to the material and energy that
could be held to be the only components from which the universe is
constructed. As I will maintain below, it is possible to divide people into
those who believe, as I do, that a complete explanation of all the observable
phenomena of the universe can be provided and understood through the
interactions of matter and energy, whereas there are other people, who hold
that there is something else in addition to energy and matter that is necessary
for a complete explanation. These two categories of people I label the energy
only (EO) people and the energy plus (EP) people, respectively. (The need to
include the concept of matter can be dropped since matter can be converted
into its energy equivalent.)
2.3.3 What about responsibility?

If we do not have free will, and all is determined by the past and present
states of nature, how then can a person be held responsible for his or her
actions? The short answer is that they cannot. What are the implications of
this answer when dealing with people who have either broken laws or acted
in a way that endangered the society? Persons who have been tried accord-
ing to the due processes of the law and have been found guilty for their
offenses are either punished (society gains some vengeful satisfaction along
the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” model of justice meted out by the
ancient world of Hammurabi and Moses) or removed from society so that
their propensity to commit offenses is physically curtailed. Sometimes, an
attempt is made at their rehabilitation but, for the most part, each of these
approaches for dealing with convicted individuals does not work. The rates
of recidivism are high, and, in young offenders, over 80% reoffend within
2 years of having been discharged from prison.
Punishment has three facets: It replaces revenge, it may act to prevent
the offender from repeating the crime (rarely), or it may deter somebody who
is thinking of offending from doing the illegal act. In the latter two facets there
is a knowing attempt to effect an act that will be part of a system intended to
decrease future crime. So we may arrive at a position where we can accept that
people are not responsible for what they do, but they may be imbued with
concepts of responsible action (responsibility) that, as part of the determin-
ing system, promote them to behave in a responsible way. It is the
concept of good behavior and the education of people to behave well that pre-
disposes them for that kind of behavior. This does not always work, and the
temptations to cut corners and “get rich quick” can be insuperable and move
minds to unlawful acts. So there is a need for the concept of responsibility and
responsible action. These concepts are used in a deterministic way to predis-
pose people to act in a manner that would be considered responsible.
Where people have been exposed to the concepts of responsible action
and then turn to crime, there is an obvious remedy to apply. The process
of rehabilitation requires methods that change the way the erstwhile criminal
thinks about illegal behavior. Operant conditioning is not a new idea.
Taken to extremes, we have the evocative A Clockwork Orange, 1962 novel by
Anthony Burgess18, which describes an imaginary reconditioning process
and the consequences of overdoing the aversion to violence treatment.

However, in attempting to use new and untried techniques to change the
way people think, we are developing a tool whose use extends beyond that
of reforming criminals. It creates a capability that would enable Thomas
Jefferson’s (1743–1826) greatest fear to be realized. The following quotation
comes from the base of the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington,
D.C.: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form
of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Here again we are faced with the prospects of a tool with far-reaching
powers, which on the one hand can bring erstwhile criminals back into the
mainstream of social life as effectively reformed characters, while on the
other hand it provides propagandists, terrorists, and secret services with the
means of manipulating the minds of citizens that the people of the society
come under the effective control of the person or cabal who controls the con-
ditioning process. The challenge before us is to take advantage of the benefits
while preventing the harms. How we might go about doing this is a matter
for later chapters.
2.3.4 The “is-ought” question

We have seen how one way into metaethics is what we think the active prin-
ciple of the spirit world would want us to do. On rejecting the spirit world
and its gods as a source of such information, we have to contemplate a world
where all events are as a result of the states of matter and energy both
throughout the history of the universe and in the present. How then might
we come to ethics? Can the world of existence, or the “is-world,” provide the
means whereby we can come to those verbal formulations that we use to
guide our behavior?
Let us examine David Hume’s (1711–1776) 1739 contention, which
asserts that an “ought” statement cannot be derived from an “is” statement.
The argument holds that the world of existence is not in any way connected
to the world of obligation: They are two noncontiguous worlds. How can one
move in a logical manner from statements about the actual world to state-
ments about duty? Logic is about connectivity and relationship. If, in logic,
there is no way of making such a connection then, ergo, there cannot be a con-
nection. The following is a quotation from David Hume’s book:19
I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an obser-

vation, which may, perhaps, be found of some impor-
tance. In every system of morality, which I have
hitherto met with, I have always remark’d that the
author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of
reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes
observations concerning human affairs; when of a sud-
den I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual
copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with
no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or

an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is how-
ever, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or
ought not, expresses some new relation of affirmation,
‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d;
and at the same time that a reason should be given, for
what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new
relation can be a deduction from others, which are
entirely different from it.
Notwithstanding Hume’s inability to conceive a way out of the dilemma,

there are modern linguistic philosophers who have courageously sought to
derive “ought” statements from “is” statements.20 –21 They begin with a state-
ment such as “I promise,” etc. or “I do X for purpose E.” The analysis then
seeks to show that implicit in the words promise or purpose is the concept of
duty and obligation. A similar case can be made using the word injury, where
implicit in the concept of injury is the duty to help.22 As this seems achievable,
these authors rest comfortably having reached their objectives. But have
they?
My view is that the connection between “ought” and “is” stems from the
nature of life and living organisms. We have seen in the first chapter of this
book that life is a process that seeks (or works in such a way to promote) its
own survival (see also Section 2.4 for a more extended discussion of the topic
of survival). Life can be achieved without words; nonhuman life-forms are
ample testimony to this. However, with words we become fitter in the strug-
gle to survive. Words then become bound with our success as survival-seek-
ing entities. What words enable us to do this? Words that describe the world
and then words that promote particular behaviors enhance our chances of
survival. It is in this latter sense that we begin to see where the word ought
comes from. Thus from the world of the “is” statement, which delineates
mankind as survival-seeking organisms, we discern a mechanism that can be
used to achieve that survival using words that promote certain survival-
enhancing behavior traits, such words being prefaced with the introductory
words ought, duty, or obligation. It is in this way that “is” statements and
“ought” statements are connected.
The connection between the words describing the exterior world and the
words used to denote obligation or duty may be presented as follows:
1. The world of being has in it humans who use words as tools to

improve their survivability.
2. Such words are used to describe the world and to promote behavior
that would enhance the chances of survival (both personal and social).
3. The words that are used to promote survival behaviors are often (but
not always, as in the instruction “Run away from the fire”) prefaced
with such words as “You ought to,” “It is your duty to,” and “You are
obliged to.”
4. Thus to promote survival in the “is” world, people use the words of
duty and obligation from the “ought” world to preface the required
behavior. It is in this way that we relate “is” world and “ought” world
statements.
The reader can see that I have not used a formal “logic” to create a con-
nection between being and obligation. Rather I am asking the reader to accept
that by virtue of the association of words of existence and words of obliga-
tion, through the objective of the promotion of survival, we have made the
essential relationship plain, unambiguous, and usable. For we can now ask,
“How shall I behave?” in the sense of, “How ought I to behave?” or “How
should I behave?” and obtain an answer by asking, “What behavior will
enhance my survivability?” Always bear in mind that survival as an individ-
ual and as a member of a group is what is in question.
It could be argued that like the linguistic philosophers referred to above,
I am begging the question by making the implicit assumption that survival is
an activity that we ought to be pursuing. But as I have made clear, survival
(as an individual or a member of a group) is the objective to which all the
processes that are effected by living organisms are directed. This is indepen-
dent of the species in question; it is independent of time over the roughly 4
billion years of life’s existence on Earth. It is not just that survival is an activ-
ity we ought to achieve; rather, we have introduced the word ought as a tool
to improve our chances in that survival struggle. The word ought can be
likened to a stone ax or an iron plowshare. Therefore, the word ought is a
word of the “is” world rather than some off-planet dialect. This has the corol-
lary that we do not need to create transcendental or other immaterial states
for advice on how we construe our guidelines for behavior (our ethics); we
have but to examine the state of our being in relation to the factors that are
intrinsic to our survival, and to work out the most likely way of achieving the
maximum return for our efforts.
From a metaethics based on the premise that as individuals and/or
groups, humans are engaged in constantly seeking to improve the prospects
for their survival, we have a clear steer for the construction of the verbal for-
mulas (ethics) that can guide us into the future.
2.3.5 Descriptive ethics

How do others go about the business of behaving? A collection of material
gathered with the intention of answering this question can form the basis of
a study from which we can glean a distinctively different sort of ethics:
descriptive ethics. When we select an ethic to guide our behavior, we are in a
similar position as a scientist who sets up a hypothesis to account for what he

or she has observed. For the scientist, the next step is to test that hypothesis
by some critical experimentation. If the hypothesis survives the stringent
examination, then it is adopted with a greater degree of confidence than
when it was initially enunciated. The tougher the examination or testing that
a hypothesis can survive, the greater degree of confidence and reliability we
may place in it, either for its immediate use or in its application to the forma-
tion of new hypotheses set up to account for new observations. The reader
will note that I have deliberately kept away from the use of the words proof,
truth, and fact. The scientific method as depicted above does not deliver con-
cepts one can grasp with the absolute conviction that they are correct, right,
and the way the “real” world works. All the scientific method, or the appli-
cation of science, can deliver is an altered state of confidence in what we
guess is in the world outside ourselves and the way it works. If the hypothe-
sis does not stand up to critical questioning and testing, then we would be
justified in having less confidence in it, to the point where we might scrap it
altogether or make those modifications to it that will bring it back into line
with the test data.
Most philosophers would agree that we cannot possibly obtain a world
view that is truthful and factual. Our senses are only so competent. Each
sense distorts the signals it receives in some, for the most part, inconsequen-
tial way. Our eyes do not see objects as they are; we are all astigmatic to some
small degree, and the colors we perceive are dependent on just how well the
cone cells in the retina of the eye are functioning on that occasion. We also do
not “see” what is out there, because we are limited in the range of wave-
lengths of light to those in which we are sensitive. For instance, each and
every object emits light at wavelengths that are in the infrared region of the
spectrum. We do not see these emissions naturally; but they are there and are
as characteristic of that external world as are the light signals that we can
“see.” The existence of this infrared world is made all the more apparent
when we see through “night-glasses,” which amplify signals in the infrared
region of the spectrum and transform them into images we can see on a
screen or via special ocular devices. So we have to recognize that we are inad-
equate in the infrared, ultraviolet, high- and low-frequency wavelengths; our
touch sensitivities depend on which part of the body is experiencing the sen-
sation. There are animals that are sensitive in areas in which we are not. Is
their view of the “real” world less valid than ours? We have to conclude that
all living organisms acquire a view of an external world that is less than com-
prehensive, but which at the same time is usually sufficient for their survival
needs.
When we come to observe societies and the way they behave in response
to the ethics they have espoused, we have to be mindful of the “injury
being in attendance on observation” dictum. An anthropologist of renown,
Margaret Mead, was seriously misled by some young ladies of Samoa who
duped her into believing that their lives of sexual promiscuity were both
natural and wholly delightful.23 People do modify their behavior when

observed; so in seeking to determine the relationship between rules and the
performance, great care has to be taken.
This brings me back to descriptive ethics. Because different societies at
different times have taken on diverse ethical guidelines, each such adoption
constitutes a test of a unique suite of ethics. We can gain much information
about the ways in which distinctive ethical guidelines have contributed to the
success or failure of selected societies. Each combination of society plus rules
for behavior constitute a test of the ethics that in the first instance were the
“best guess” that selected society could make, bearing in mind the times and
circumstances in which society found itself to be. Using this information and
projecting from it to one’s own society, its times and its circumstances, we can
acquire understandings, which if used carefully and pragmatically, can
inform and improve the way we choose to regulate our social behavior.
Descriptive ethics thrive on our voyeuristic tendencies. Our curiosity to
know what other people do and how they came to behave that way, and not
another way, is matter for which we have an insatiable appetite. Our news-
papers, 24-h news broadcasts, history, anthropology, ethnography, archeol-
ogy, even the fictional characters of novels and a host of other disciplines, are
used to relate and play out scenarios from which we can learn the conse-
quences of putting selected ethical causes into effect.
2.4 Ethical systems

Philosophers who have focused on ethical issues have approached this sub-
ject area from a number of contrasting standpoints. (These views are well
recorded in the fulsome literature on this subject to which I refer the
reader.24 –26) My purpose here is to provide an “executive summary” so that
we will be able to appreciate some of the issues that are inherent in the con-
tinuing promulgation of this diverse and sometimes contradictory array of
possibilities. Some of the leading contenders for the provision of the princi-
ples whereby we decide how to behave are summarized below:
• Golden Rulers, among whom one can include Confucius, Moses,

Christ, Rabbi Akiba, Hillel, Philo, Plato, Aristotle, and others, assert
that you should do unto others as you would have others do to you. This is a
similar position to that taken by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), whose
“categorical imperative” requires that you should only do that which you
would wish to become a general practice for the society at large. Alternative
expressions such as you should not do unto others what you would not wish
others to do to you also hold considerable sway. It may be that the latter
formulation is the more prevalent statement. Following ethics based
on Golden Rule–type statements will not get practitioners into much
harm. The problem comes in when one either is exceptional or is pre-
sented with extraordinary circumstances. For example, as a writer, I
would not wish it that the rule that governs my spending, vis spend
your spare money on books, should be generalized so that all people
should spend their spare money on a collection of books. Similarly,
while I present others with written copies of my works, I do not expect
all the people to whom I present such copies to present to me copies of
their works; it would be embarrassing to have such an expectation of
one’s friends and family. Or, when exploring the possibilities for a new
technology to make a vaccine, and I am called to mop up a spill of a
virus vaccine on the laboratory floor, I might choose to use a sponge
and a bucket, knowing that it is a vaccine with which I am dealing and
that I am already vaccinated with that vaccine. I would not wish
another person who is not so protected or so well informed to have to
do such a mopping-up operation.
• Virtue ethicists hold that one should behave according to the dictates
of one’s conscience, emotions, desires, or instincts. One should seek to
acquire a sense of empathy or sympathy with one’s fellow citizen and
act to protect whatever harmony is engendered by such feelings. It
would be easy to confuse this view of virtue ethics with that of a more
classical origin. This maintains that one should behave in a manner as
defined by the cardinal virtues set out by Greek philosophers
(allegedly Socrates) during the classical period. The prime virtues
are those of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. To these
the apostle Paul added the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and
love/charity, where charity has the sense of “love of fellow human.”
Virtue ethics, sometimes referred to as principle ethics, has taken the
form of the adoption by a substantial proportion of the medical ethics
community of the four-principles approach based on the virtues of
autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice.27 This approach
to ethicality in medicine is most often manifested by the copious liter-
ature on “informed consent.” It is tacitly assumed that if a patient
signs an informed consent document, then the principle of the auton-
omy of that patient has been upheld. But has it? Many patients are
bewildered by the advice they are given; the surroundings are forbid-
ding; and their sensations of pain, discomfort, and disease makes
them willing signatories to any document you may want to lay before
them. Clearly, babies, infants, the infirm, and the unsound of mind are
not in any position to enter into an informed consent contract. Neither
are people from countries where the level of education is so rudimen-
tary that when testing a drug or a vaccine, they cannot possibly have
understood the implications of the risks to which they are about to
expose themselves or even the gain that may accrue. Also, the princi-
ple of justice often crumbles before the pressure of wealth. The
resources of a health service may be stretched to the breaking point,
yet a person whose wealth can purchase influence with doctors or
bureaucrats will be in a privileged position when it comes to schedul-
ing an operation or obtaining the attention of the most gifted surgeon.

This, of course, says nothing about the immense disparity in the qual-
ity and quantity of health care meted out to people in the developed
world compared to their counterparts in the developing world.
With regard to the principle of beneficence, it is difficult to reconcile
actions that could have ended an elderly patient’s life with dignity
and pride with a regulation that requires doctors to save life at all
costs. Or would one be acting beneficently were one to deny a contra-
ceptive advice to a young teenage female or the facilities of abortion to
a victim of rape? Such questions put the principles approach to med-
ical ethics under severe tests, from which they do not emerge easily if
at all.
• Utilitarians who assert that you should do what is most useful or
makes you happiest. This is often paraphrased as “the greatest good
or greatest happiness for the greatest number,” and—as it seems that
this is ascertainable by objective means—it becomes a way to solve
ethical problems, which is particularly useful to engineers. It is also
referred to as consequentialism, as one looks to the consequences of a
proposed act before committing oneself to that act. This ethic some-
times changes into a cost-benefit analysis. Here it is important to real-
ize that the cost term is a product of two parameters: the risk of
incurring that cost and the magnitude of the cost should it be incurred.
It is also not always easy or obvious as to how to evaluate the benefit
side of the relationship, which also has a risk of not happening associ-
ated with it. For example, it may seem a simple task to work out the
cost-benefit relationship for a vaccination campaign. But what are the
benefits? Freedom from disease surely, but what is this worth in mon-
etary terms? Doctor and hospital bills are clear costs that are saved,
but when an individual is diseased, other members of the family are
engaged to provide support, food, and entertainment. Workdays are
lost, yet, what is more important, there develops a defensive frame of
mind that precludes getting involved in new projects and ideas. It is
also clear that the benefits of not becoming infected may be realized
some years after the vaccine is given. At present it is common practice
to discount future benefits by the expected rate of inflation between
the time the vaccine was administered and the time when the benefit
is expected. This is rather like the depreciation on a car that at time 0
is worth 100 units, but in 10 years’ time is worth only 20 units.
However, with a vaccine the benefit is more valuable in the years after
it has been given by the same rate of inflation. So as current practice
has it, the benefits of vaccines are grossly underestimated, and so the
cost-benefit relationship is not necessarily providing the most worth-
while guidance.
• Eudaemonists assert that you should do what makes you and/or the
community happiest. This derives from Aristotle’s dictum that the
basis of all behavior is the goal of personal happiness. It may be that the
improvement of one’s personal or communal chance of survival is a
route where one can obtain happiness; and this may be seen as fulfill-
ing one’s duties. But it would seem that a variety of alternative ends,
such as the acquisition of power, money, or sexual profligacy, are ways
in which some individuals allege that they find happiness. In this lat-
ter case, the survival value of these excesses is more dependent on the
determination of the position of that individual in a dominance hierar-
chy than the actual possession of the goods that the power or money
can achieve. Our modern world is beset with opportunities to obtain
happiness via the application of chemicals; it is also possible to feed
electrical signals into specific parts of the brain to achieve the same
effects. Heroin, cocaine, ecstasy (based on amphetamines), marijuana,
nicotine, and alcohol are in more or less common use by a substantial
subset of our society. Reports of the use of these chemical routes to
“happiness” are replete with warnings of the dire harm these chemi-
cals can cause. Yet people persist in using them. Apparently, rats, when
given the opportunity to provide themselves with both cocaine and
food, ignore the food and dose themselves with cocaine only. So we
cannot assert that happiness is a goal to which ethics should direct us.
It is too easily and damagingly acquired by chemical routes.
• Communitarians assert that actions should be determined by what
most benefits the community. A subprinciple of this ethic would be that
the power to determine how the community acts should be held at the
level of the community that is the most suitable, for example, the
European Union principle of subsidiarity (cf. Chapter 7). Such power
would only be devolved to larger groupings of people in such cases as
communal defense or policing or the establishment of a communica-
tion system that would unite people over a wide and diversified area.
In principle this is a “from the bottom, upward” transference of power;
as it seems to work out, it is the collective that determines what pow-
ers the local people can assert: a “top-down” derogation of power. An
example of such a system is the U.S. The U.S. has laws that apply only
at the level of the federation, the state, the county, and the township.
One problem with this ethical system is that those communities that are
in privileged locations (natural harbors, access to ores, good agricul-
tural land, jewels, precious metals, oil, etc.) can thrive, whereas the
backwoods areas—without the resources or the strategic geography—
toil with poor prospects of prosperity. The gross disparities of well-
being that exist between the different peoples of this world make those
who are well-off defensive against the inroads that the poorer peoples
may make into their resources. Nevertheless, as communications
shrink the size of the world in our minds, we have to come into closer
contact with societies that have fared less well than those in developed
countries. The urge and the need for redistributive efforts is made more
apparent; in particular, help in the control of disease, support in pro-

viding contraceptive facilities, as well as education in general are the
kinds of help that may reasonably be expected to flow in the required
amounts between developed and developing worlds. What is difficult
to condone is the trade in military arms and the abuse of monetary aid
by people in high positions in government.
• Survivalists might assert that you should do that which most pro-
motes survival of yourself and/or your family or tribe, other commu-
nities, other biotic entities. The determination of how this system
works is dependent on the variables of wealth (in terms of multiples
of the amount of wealth required for survival) and age. Circumstances
determine the size, composition, and cohesiveness of the groups,
which can be both overlapping and multifarious.
It would seem after the Darwinistic and simplistic survivalism of the late
nineteenth century, where “survival of the fittest” was a much-quoted motto
that applied to either the individual or a commercial company, that the whole
concept of survival as being part of an ethical system was rejected. For this
reason it is useful to reexamine what is meant by the term survival so that it
might regain its position on the menu of available ethical systems. This will
show that survival is a complex concept and can at different times involve
single individuals, communities, or groups; the whole biosphere; or even the
whole universe. It can also operate at different levels, in that while one passes
down a subset of one’s genetic makeup to later generations, this also applies
to one’s written works and spoken words. There is even a sense in which
being present at a particular place and time constitutes a sufficient distortion
of the material of the universe that it may count toward the immortalization
of the individual (at least as long as this universe lasts in a similar state to the
one it is in and does not collapse in on itself as it may have done before the
“Big Bang” occurred). One approach to examining the wider implications of
the concept of survival is to begin with oneself and examine the implications
of the survival ethic from that perspective.
In seeking “my” survival, am I not also seeking the survival of other
organisms who are my cohabitants in this biosphere? Clearly some organ-
isms could operate in a manner that could curtail my survival. In such cases
I would seek their elimination. Examples are the smallpox virus, the polio
virus, the plague bacterium, the mosquito, etc. My survival is clearly con-
nected to the survival of my wife, children, selected relatives, the people of
my society, and the other nonhuman organisms that are part of the food chain
and effluent recycle system. So, in answering “What behavior enhances my
chances of survival?,” I have to take into account the survival imperatives
motivating the other beings in my vicinity. How well I effect this assessment
determines my success as a survival machine. The more factors I can take into
account and the more accurately I can compute the probabilities, the more I
am likely to achieve my objective.
To a baby, one’s own survival is paramount; this continues until the child
is ready to leave the home. At this time thoughts about the survivability of
parents and future children begin to obtrude in what has previously been
almost totally selfish thinking. Marriage provides an opportunity to think
about the survival of one’s mate. Then the children arrive, and while pro-
tecting oneself and one’s partner as well as possible, there is the requirement
to look after the survival of the children. When they have left home, one can
begin to increase one’s considerations about how to create a society fit for
one’s children and future grandchildren. This does not preclude one from
engaging in socially beneficial activities at earlier stages of life, but it is after
the children have left home that a more concerted activity can be sustained.
This path through life sees changes in the focus of the efforts one might
deploy to improve one’s survivability and the survivability of the groups and
communities with which one is associated.
The previous paragraph related the stage of life of an individual to the
relative importance of the level at which the survival concept is applied. A
similar dimension can be adduced: that of wealth. Were one so poor as not to
know where one’s next meal was coming from, then it would be difficult to
take the survival of one’s community into account when making behavioral
decisions; finding a source for that next meal is the all-important driving
force for action. As one’s wealth increases, one can begin to commit one’s
own resources to the well-being of the group, even if only through the pay-
ment of taxes—obligatory payments. With sufficient money one can be
beneficent to other communities, to animal communities, and eventually to
all the members of the biosphere. I have attempted to illustrate this in Figure
2.3. Readers should note that the values I have taken for the parameters are
but guesses, and I am sure that different societies under different circum-
stances than the one I had in my mind would generate a completely different
picture.
Figure 2.3 is based on individuals who raise children in either a nuclear,
single-parent, or extended family. However, there are those who seem to
have opted out of the survival imperative. Hermits, the Jain sect of the
Hindus, and people such as Mother Teresa are people who are poor in terms
of possessing only just sufficient resources to keep themselves alive, yet they
provide charity and sustenance for those in even less fortunate circumstances
than themselves. They seek to set an example to be followed by the more
wealthy members of the society of a high degree of commitment to the more
unfortunate members of group. Others, whose immediate survival needs for
food, clothes, and shelter are taken care of by an institution (the church or fri-
ary), can also devote themselves to the society at large, having secured the
survival of their institution in the first place through the saving of souls and
in forming a valued and profitable connection or bridge between individuals
and the world of the spirits. Society often provides funds to maintain those
who are themselves dedicated as a first objective to provide services for the
survival of the less fortunate members of society.
Humanity
Community
Family
Self 10
5
3
2 Relative
Baby/Infant/Child
Adolescent
Wealth
Learner
Child Rearing
Interregnum
1
Grandparent
Figure 2.3 Focus for survival.
My intent here is to demonstrate to the reader that even though we have

a simple and clear objective as the basis of our behavior—survival—it is
far from simple to arrive at answers to specific situations that maximize
our chances of making the greatest contribution to achieving that goal. When
we move into areas involving other members of our society, then the com-
plexities mount and with them the uncertainties. So, we are left making
guesses at the behavior most likely to achieve our survivalistic ends, testing
that behavior in a benign situation and then assigning a level of confidence
to the guess that delineates the contribution that such an act can have to sur-
vivability.
How is it then we have not used this view of our behavior to a greater
extent? And how is it that philosophers rarely use this concept in their con-
siderations of morality?28 Before 1859 the issues of survival, fitness, and nat-
ural selection did not impinge to any great extent on the community of
scholars who philosophized. B. Russell,29 who picked up the words of the
philosopher Empedocles (490–430 B.C.E.) of Acragas, or the modern
Agrigento in Sicily, described a process of evolution that is clearly equivalent
to the survival of the fittest:
Originally countless tribes of mortal creatures were

scattered abroad endowed with all manner of forms, a
wonder to behold. There were heads without necks,
arms without shoulders, eyes without foreheads, soli-
tary limbs seeking for union. These things joined
together as each might chance; there were shambling
creatures with countless hands, creatures with faces
and breasts looking in different directions, creatures
with the bodies of oxen and the faces of men, and
others with the faces of oxen and the bodies of men.
There were hermaphrodites combing the natures of
men and women but sterile. In the end only certain
forms survived.
The concept of the survival of the fittest has been taken to mean that all
organisms on all occasions compete to determine the survivor. This has led to
economic theories that emphasize the competition to succeed between com-
panies; if they fail in that competition, they should be allowed to dissolve. It
is only within the last year or two that the intellectual tide has begun to turn
to reveal that we need societies where cooperation and collaboration are just
as important modes of coexistence as is competition. It requires considerable
skill to formulate ethical guidelines that encourage both the competitive
process as well as the cooperative process; for from both modes of operation
can come great benefits. Collaboration as a survival strategy is now receiving
more attention by academics interested in the processes of evolution.30 –32 A
quotation from a recent speech of Ernst Mayr32 will serve to illustrate this
point:
One can then perhaps encapsulate the relation between

ethics and evolution by saying that a propensity for
altruism and harmonious cooperation in social groups
is favored by natural selection. The old thesis of social
Darwinism—strict selfishness—was based on an
incomplete understandings of animals. Particularly
social species.
But Charles Darwin clearly anticipated this in his book, Descent of Man (1874,
2nd ed., p. 121):
We have now seen that actions are regarded by sav-

ages, and were probably so regarded by primeval man,
as good or bad, solely as they obviously affect the wel-
fare of the tribe, not that of the species, nor that of an
individual member of the tribe. This conclusion agrees
well with the belief that the so-called moral sense is
aboriginally derived from the social instincts, for both
relate at first exclusively to the community.
A further area that has exposed the crude application of considerations

of survival ethics to a failed social experiment has been attempts at eugenics.
The practice of selective breeding of individuals to enhance those character-
istics that will improve survivability happens when we select a mate or have
one selected for us. When we, as a society, operate coercive measures to pre-
vent particular individuals from mating, then the practice comes into disre-
pute. Were we to follow H. G. Wells’ prescription in his 1902 book
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human
Life and Thought, we would exterminate sections of our society that did not
comply with some notion of what makes the fit society. Indeed this doctrine
received its tragic test when millions of people were exterminated by the
Third Reich in Europe during World War II.33 Again eugenic activities in the
U.S. in the period from 1900 to 1924, inspired by Charles Davenport, showed
that even (relatively) gentle coercive techniques, when applied to people who
were deemed to have difficulties in fending for themselves and who were
institutionalized and sterilized, were not continued into the 1930s. (A special
office was set up in Washington, D.C., the Eugenics Record Office
(1911–1924), to keep account of the family genealogies that supposedly were
predictive of an incapability of self-sufficiency).34 –35
Such ideas die hard. In recent times China sees fit to continue this grand
experiment, which follows on from its one family–one child policy. Again it
is not so much what is done, but how it is done that will determine the out-
come.36 Sweden too has received some adverse publicity recently for its
efforts in eugenics.37
As we have come to expect of a powerful tool, the downside can be as
devastating as the upside is elevating. The use of survival as a concept in
ethics is such a tool. As some of our less well-educated uses of the tool have
clearly been harmful, we should not preclude future uses under conditions
that prevent the deleterious effects.
• Concordance (majoritarian, acceptability, democratic, consensus, ref-

erendal, precedential) ethics requires you to find out what is accept-
able to all/the most/a majority and put that agreement into practice.
The determination of acceptability may be achieved through ques-
tionnaires (referenda), or a group of individuals may take a view of
what is, or what is likely to become, acceptable. Another way into the
question of acceptability is to examine the stock of current behaviors.
From the precedents that can be gleaned from this panoply of activi-
ties, it is also possible to infer that because we already do it, it is
thereby acceptable. It should be noted that people are generally resis-
tant to changes in the status quo or of things or situations that are
foreign (xenophobia). This can lead to a tyranny of the majority.
Democracies everywhere are faced with the problem of the way in
which self-appointed pressure groups, sometimes referred to as
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), by a judicious use of the
media and the courts, can move public opinion in ways that are not
necessarily in the best interests of the society.38 These groups are par-
ticularly potent when there are new tools to be introduced into the
society. It is all too easy to arouse public opinion against a major
change of technology, such as the development of genetically engi-
neered food and fiber plants or the use of human embryos to form
human clones. On the other hand many senior governmental commit-
tees given the task of making recommendations as to what ethical
guidelines should be adopted as law or as a regulation are made up of
people of diverse religious backgrounds and ethical educations. To
come to some conclusion or closure, the documents that are put for-
ward by such committees generally reflect a consensus view to which
all the members can commit themselves, but which may not meet with
each and every one of their deeply held moral or ethical principles.39
• Many contemporary compendia of ethics offer chapters on a new area
of ethics, that of feminism. The thrust of these ethics is to accord equal
status to the women and men of our societies. That present practice is
discriminatory and is evident from the lower salaries paid to women
doing the same jobs as men, as well as the lower promotion prospects
of women compared to men. Other differential treatments that disad-
vantage women are seen in the paucity of provision of loans to buy
properties, the unwillingness of some insurance and pension compa-
nies to make contracts with females as opposed to males, and the
unwillingness of employers to hire women who may well quit their
jobs to raise families after an expensive training. The armed services
also differentiate in the kinds of jobs they find suitable for women as
opposed to men; in this more mechanized age, where brute strength is
no longer a matter of great consequence in battle, females may well be
just as adept in fighting as males. There are issues that pertain to
mixed sex fighting units, in that dealing with the wounded and the
dead in a battle situation may generate circumstances that could jeop-
ardize the survival of those remaining.
In some cases feminist ethicists urge the adoption of an ethic in
which females and males are to be regarded as equals in all spheres of
life. Such a view necessarily ignores the anatomical, physiological,
emotional, and mental differences that self-evidently exist between
the sexes. Nevertheless, it behooves the members of a society, which
strives to achieve a just relationship between all its constituents, to rec-
ognize the equal rights of females so they would be considered, as
appropriate, for any task they would wish to undertake; provision
should be made for them to resume their chosen vocation when they
decide that their responsibilities to their children and families have
been discharged.
As in any situation in which two people with different talents
come together, such as a heterosexual partnership committed to the
raising of the next generation, it is of greatest value to the pair to make

sure that the diverse abilities of the two individuals are used to maxi-
mum advantage. This means that each party to the union will do dif-
ferent things on the same occasion or the same things on different
occasions. It should not be an ethic of feminism that both males and
females do the same things on all occasions; they can’t. But that they
should engage together to deploy, as a couple, the diverse qualities
they possess in the interests of their commonly held purposes cannot
be a formula that is ignored. Who does what and when can then be
determined by reference to the common goals, the diverse talents
available, and a sense of justice: of an equality of effort in making a
contribution, of an equality of commitment to the union.
In raising the issue of feminism, one must also take care of the
ethical concerns that are raised in a variety of other social situations
where fairness and respect have yet to be fully applied. In this we
have ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation, cultural, and other
sources of differences. While it is clear that we are not called upon to
agree that everything that everybody does to or with other people is
just as we would like, we nevertheless have to tolerate differences
insofar as they do not seriously detract from the life one wants to live
for oneself. Such acts of tolerance imply that the ethics by which one
lives one’s life are relative to the circumstances in which one finds one-
self; they are relative ethics. Such ethics do not lay down the law and
explicitly state what is good and what is bad—that one has an obliga-
tion to prevent people from behaving badly, providing laws are not
impugned. Rather, we have to find ways to live together as a society,
maintaining those differences that do not cause harm to others, and
reserving for the law (a defined system of ethics with sanctions) those
common areas where diverse people and cultures meet. If these ideas
were expressed in survivalistic terms, then the concept of tolerance
applies to actions that do not impugn one’s own survival in the first
instance and then the survival of others in the second. Clearly, were
one to see another person about to put his or her life at risk by an act
that could be prevented, it could be contrary to the survival needs of
the wider society to do nothing. Even so, there will be circumstances
in which suicide or euthanasia has to be an option that could be made
available to particular individuals under unusual conditions.
• Rights-based ethics. Recently we have seen the promulgation of a
series of declarations of human rights, so it is useful to examine the
basis of rights, what they are, and how they might be used. The Shorter
OED definition of rights (in the substantive or noun form) is as follows:
1. Justifiable claim on legal or moral grounds, to have or obtain something,

or to act in a certain way.
2. (By rights) denoting justifiable title or claim to something.

3. A legal, equitable or moral claim to the possession of property or author-
ity, the enjoyment of privileges or immunities.
In history, rights go back to the time of the Romans where, in Roman law,
a father or master of a household had the right to do what he wanted with the
people in his charge (sons, daughters, wives, servants, and slaves). In
Edward Gibbon’s (1737–1794) Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776–1788) he states,40
In the forum, the senate or the camp the adult son of a

Roman citizen enjoyed the public and private rights of
a person: in his father’s house he was a mere thing,
confounded by the laws with the movables, the cattle,
and the slaves, whom the capricious master might
alienate or destroy without being responsible to any
earthly tribunal.
And on page 707 we have “The original right of property can only be justi-
fied by the accident or merit of prior occupancy.”
Angry barons and church leaders forced King John I of England to sign a
document (The Magna Carta) that defined the extent to which the king and
others could go in acquiring land, money, service, or other benefits from the
people. Provisions 39 and 40 read:
No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or dis-

seised [dispossessed] or outlawed or exiled or in any
way victimized, neither will we attack him or send
anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of
his peers or by the law of the land. . . . To no one will
we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay right or
justice.
This charter, delivered on June 15, 1215 at Runnymede, is seen as a new

departure in the relationship between a sovereign and the ruled people. It
presages a clear limitation of the “divine” rights of the king, and as a result it
provides the subjects with rights of their own. It was not until we have the
second of the great English charters, that of 1689, where we can see that these
documents represent a “deal” that is struck between the monarchy and the
people such that rights are granted, to the people, in exchange for the monar-
chy. This second charter is called a Bill of Rights. It includes the following
provisions:
That the pretended power of suspending of (“or dis-

pensing with” [from the next provision]) laws or the
execution of laws by regal authority without consent of
Parliament is illegal. . . . That the subjects which are
Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to

their conditions and as allowed by law . . . . That elec-
tion of members of Parliament ought to be free; that
the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in
Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned
in any court or place out of Parliament . . . . That
excessive bail ought not to be required nor excessive
fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
inflicted. . .
So we have to balance the contract with:
Having therefore an entire confidence that his said

Highness the prince of Orange will perfect the deliver-
ance so far advanced by him, and will still preserve
them from the violation of their rights which they have
here asserted, and from all other attempts on their reli-
gion rights and liberties, the said Lords Spiritual and
Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster do
resolve that William and Mary, prince and princess of
Orange, be and be declared king and queen of
England, France and Ireland and the dominions there-
unto belonging. . . .
Following the French Revolution in 1789, the people won some more
rights from their rulers:
Men are born free and remain free and equal in

rights. . . . The aim of every political association is the
preservation of the natural and imprescriptible right of
man. These rights are Liberty, Property, Safety and
Resistance to Oppression. . . . Liberty consists in being
able to do anything that does not harm others. . . . The
Law has the right to forbid only those actions that are
injurious to society.
Building on these rights, the addition in 1791 of the American “Bill of Rights”
to the constitution of 1787 adds among other provisions:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establish-

ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances. . . . The right of the people to be secure in
their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be vio-

lated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describ-
ing the place to be searched and the persons or things
to be seized.
Two other important compendia of rights have followed. The first was
endorsed by the United Nations in 1948, and the second was adopted by the
Council of Europe (which consists of about 40 European countries, including
the 15 in the European Union) in 1966. This latter document has become part
of the law of each of the members of the European Union. In this latter docu-
ment Article 10 provides for freedom of speech, as above, but goes one step
further, as in Art. 10.2:
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it

duties and responsibilities, [author’s emphasis] may
be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions
or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary
in a democratic society, in the interests of national secu-
rity, territorial integrity or public safety, for the preven-
tion of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or
morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights
of others, for the preventing the disclosure of informa-
tion received in confidence, or for maintaining the
authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Readers will note that in the caveats that follow the statements of rights,
it would appear that society has sufficient latitude to do as it wishes. The thin
line between the authority of the society and the maintenance of the rights of
the individual rests on the shoulders of “the authority and impartiality of the
judiciary.”
I have described the evolution of rights in some detail because it throws
into clear relief the nature of the rights themselves. In the first place they are
a component of a contract and as such have to be balanced by some compen-
sating consideration. In the Magna Carta we have the church leaders and
barons coming to an accommodation with the king where allegiance is
pledged in exchange for rights; in the bill that brought William and Mary
from Holland to the throne of England, we have the monarchy itself held in
consideration for rights to due legal and parliamentary process; with the
French Revolution, we have the ruling cabal setting up a state that is in direct
contradistinction to the all-powerful monarch who had just been over-
thrown; in the American Constitution, rights are accorded so that the society
can achieve the objectives of
a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domes-

tic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, pro-
mote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of

Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . .
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights has in Article 29 that
Everyone has duties to the community in which alone

the free and full development of his personality is pos-
sible. . . . In the exercise of his rights and freedoms,
everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are
determined by law solely for the purpose of securing
due recognition and respect for the rights and free-
doms of others and of meeting the just requirements of
morality, public order and the general welfare in a
democratic society.
Furthermore, we have seen that there is a direct balancing of rights and

responsibilities in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Indeed, it is now commonly agreed that the exercise of rights automati-
cally and necessarily implies the acceptance of duties, obligations, and
responsibilities. This provision is crucial in the determination of the social
status of a baby or infant who cannot possibly and knowingly discharge such
obligations any more than can a person who is not in control of his mind or a
person who is too senile to either understand or discharge duties. In each of
these latter cases, the law makes provision for a person to stand as the respon-
sible individual or guardian for those who are incapable of discharging the
requirement to effect duties.
Attempts to bring animals into the scope of rights legislation are, there-
fore, incompatible with the basic nature of rights. Over the centuries rights
have come to us via a process of negotiation with those who wielded power.
Animals do not enter the lists for this purpose, nor can they negotiate for their
rights by their commitment to discharge responsibilities. Nevertheless,
humans, in defining their relationships to the animals they eat or use for
transport or sport must be mindful of how such relationships affect the way
they think of themselves and the example they provide for others as to how
they treat entities in the world outside themselves. In respecting all facets of
the natural realm with which we come in contact, we simultaneously put our-
selves in a position that maximizes our chances of survival.
Another way of looking at rights is to view them as verbal contracts that
associate individuals and communities in such a way that the survival of
both the individual and the community is thereby enhanced.
2.4.1 Ethical systems compared

In section 2.3.2 I examined whether humans have free will. In taking this
issue further I set out two world concepts: the first asserted that we can pro-
vide (in principle only, for the uncertainty principle prevents us from know-
ing everything) a complete explanation of all phenomena we observe in
terms of the energy and material of which they are composed, while the sec-
ond required the addition of “something else” for that full explanation. I
termed these the EO way of looking at the world versus the EP mode.41 In the
EO world free will does not exist, and all we do, say, or think is dependent on
the preexisting states of the universe; in the EP world it is possible to have
free will as a result of “something in addition to energy” that is not influenced
by the physical forces that otherwise control and determine the movement of
all the entities in the universe. Table 2.1 lists the various ethical systems as
either EO or EP. Some systems require minor modifications so that they may
fit under both headings, and I have indicated this where appropriate.
It is clear from Table 2.1 that people can ostensibly talk about the same
subject, such as virtue ethics or rights ethics; while agreeing superficially,
they may have deep disagreements when pressed. Similarly it is possible to
hold a deterministic position as a result of the EO concept as well as the EP
concept. In the latter case it is held that a god is involved in making the deter-
minations as opposed to some unmeasurable states of energy and matter in
the EO case. One must recognize the difficulty of reconciling the differences
people may have on the basis of their adherence to either the EO or EP modes
of thinking. While it is clear that EO people should eventually agree with one
another once they have decided on the basic nature of their differences and
the evidence they require to resolve that difference, agreement between EP
people is in a separate category. In the first place they may well differ on the
nature of that “something else” that separates them from the EO set. The
Abrahamic God sends out different messages than does the pantheon of gods
that inhabit the spirit world of the Hindus. The spirits of the ancestors have
different ways of being assuaged than do the spirits of the trees. In either
event there will be an equivalent gap in the thinking between EP people and
their EO counterparts.
This difference between the EO and EP modes of thought has particular
relevance when it comes to the implementation of new tools. An EO
approach will look to the survival value of the new tool and seek ways to
implement it that minimize the possibilities of harm while maximizing the
advantages and benefits. By contrast, for example, the EP approach could
well be that their concept of the spirit world is such that new tools are
expressly forbidden; we have to get on with what we have. We cannot chal-
lenge the power of the spirits to control our lives by using tools that make us
more powerful in that regard. We should not interfere with the processes of
nature; we might incur the wrath of the gods and bring down on our heads
natural disasters.
As the reader will quickly realize, there are an infinite number of ways of
construing the EP version of the world, but only one way of portraying the
EO variation. So in essence we have two debates: (1) Which single version of
the EP world is the one by which we should conduct our lives? (2) Does this
EP approach to living have advantages or disadvantages when compared
with the EO approach?
Table 2.1 Ethical systems categorized by their bias toward an

energy only or an energy plus outlook on nature
Energy Only (EO) Energy Plus (EP)
Materialism Immaterialism
Reductionism and Holism (some) Holism (others)
Rationalism
Empiricism
Determinism Indeterminism
Predictable (in principle; but we cannot Unpredictable
know all we need to know to make Random
infallible predictions because of the Chance
Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg Chaos
1927)
Determinism Free will
Cause and Effect Choice
Means and ends inseparable For its own sake (i.e., not being
Humans just another animal species dependent on a preceding cause)
You can derive an “ought” from an “is” Humans are a special animal species
statement (The Naturalistic Fallacy) (different in kind)
Cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”
statement
Determinism (Materialistic) Determinism (Theistic)

Determinism Vitalism, Animism, Theism, Deism
(includes solids, liquids, gases, atoms, (could involve one or more of: souls,
molecules, polymers, ions, electrons, spirits, ghosts, afterlives, hell,
protons, neutrons, mesons, leptons, netherworld, poltergeists, paradise,
baryons, photons, quarks, strings, fairies, ogres, angels, devils, satan,
antiparticles, etc.) demons, jinni, sprites, trolls, gods,
imps, incubi, elves, pixies, goblins, fays,
leprechauns, vampires, enchantresses,
bogies, satyrs, cherubs, etc.)
Survivalism Deontology (duty for duty’s sake)
Utilitarianism, Consequentionalism (Duty defined by Categorical
Cost-benefit/-efficiency/-utility Imperatives: Behave in a way that
Precautionary Principle you would wish all others to behave
Happiness and where all such determinations
Pleasure are completely independent of the
Survival (Individual Social) material circumstances of the perpe-
Acceptability (Pragmatic) trator who is to be treated as a com-
(Precedential) pletely autonomous agent—Kant)
Majoritarian Sanctity of life (animal and/or human)
Communitarian
Consensus, Plebescite, Referendal
Contractarian
Golden Rule
Table 2.1 (continued)

Energy Only (EO) Energy Plus (EP)
EP system concepts (mental
[cognitive] states based only on the
material and energy of the system)
Virtue ethics (Prudence, Temperance, Virtue ethics (Prudence, Temperance,
Courage, Justice, Faith, Hope, Courage, Justice, Faith, Hope,
Charity plus many more) where Charity plus many more) where
virtues are held to provide utility virtues are effected for their own
as in Utilitarianism or Survivalism sake or as per the command of a
deity, or as communicated by an
inner voice or conscience
Rights Rights
As acquired by struggle and Taken as inalienable; God-given
negotiation and implying Derived from human dignity,
corresponding responsibilities integrity, respect
Divine rights of kings/lords/priests,
etc.
I believe that the greatest challenge we have in the years ahead is to come
to some resolution of this situation and the friction it engenders between the
different parts of our communities. Some techniques to provide us with pro
tem solutions to these differences are presented in the next section.
2.5 Resolving ethical conflicts

Where protagonists seem to adopt irreconcilable positions, a series of prac-
tices can be put in place to aid the resolution of ethical (and other) issues.
These reduce to a set of actions that can include one or more of the following:
• Clearly define the issue over which there is a dispute so that both
parties have the same view of the difference between them; this means
using common definitions and making plain the basis on which
further discussions can occur. It is often necessary to specify one’s
position with regard to the EO–EP dichotomy so that improved under-
standings can occur as to the relative grounding of the positions taken.
• Make sure that what are stated to be the “facts,” of the case are indeed
those concepts in which people have the greatest sense of confidence;
in the event that there are different levels of confidence in the pur-
ported “facts,” then it may be necessary to provide original evidence
or data to substantiate a position; new additional information would
also be useful.
• By the presentation of the maximum requirements of each protago-

nist, it may be possible to move to some compromise position in the
middle where neither protagonist obtains all that they originally
desired. It should be pointed out that it would be grossly unfair if one
of the protagonists obtains all things desired, while the other yields on
all points. Readers should note that this may not provide the correct
outcome, because one of the protagonists could be correct, while the
other either made a miscalculation or misinterpretation or was not in
possession of all of the relevant data; therefore, to have examined the
data on which the cases are made is a very important first step.
• The method of casuistry involves the examination of related cases and
of the solutions that were applied to them; for example, where it might
be debated as to whether an underage, unmarried girl should be
offered an abortion for the fetus she contracted through a forced inter-
course, comparative cases could be brought to bear where the out-
come of the abortion was damaging or where it was beneficial to the
girl; in a community that is overwhelmingly antiabortion, the pro-
curement of an abortion may not be a beneficial solution, while hav-
ing the baby could provide a focus for the girl or an adopted child for
a childless member of the group. Alternatively, where the community
is comfortable with abortion, then the alternative solution may be the
most appropriate.
• Find a technical solution that solves the ethical dilemma;42 for exam-
ple, if it were possible to provide a vaccine that would protect people
against infection with the virus that causes AIDS, then this would be a
solution to a behavioral problem that would otherwise require people
to modify their behavior and use condoms and safe sex in order to pre-
vent infection. Another example would be the use of a “governor” on
the accelerator of trucks and cars to physically prevent them going
over the speed limit on roads that have the maximum speed limit.
• Agree to share the burden that could result from a compromise reso-
lution to the conflict, so that others accept their share of any costs that
are incurred as a result of say, a newly perceived need to improve per-
formance specifications; here it may be difficult to find a sharing part-
ner, as one or the other of the parties to the conflict will deny that it is
their problem.
• In the event that there are a number of ethical issues, it is useful to
come to some agreement as to which of these issues might be consid-
ered the most important. The resolution of that concern often opens
the door to the elimination of the other differences; but can ethical
issues be ranked in importance? Is it more important to put away a
criminal for his or her crime than for a priest to keep the confidential-
ity of the confessional? Should reporters retain the confidentiality of
their sources when they make contact with people in the underworld
of criminals?
• Calculate the consequences of the outcomes of the alternative solu-

tions in a common medium (e.g, money, lives, or dignity) and agree on
a way to maximize the level of this parameter. The problem here is that
a human life has different values depending on where it is lost: A road
death may be compensated differently from a death incurred while
walking. Compensation for suspected vaccine-induced damage is
paid at different levels in different countries.
• Require each protagonist to stand outside the system and view it as if
each were a member of an independent arbitration tribunal; compare
results and move from this position rather than the ab initio situation.
It may be that the commitment of individuals to their point of view
would preclude this detached approach; the introduction of an arbi-
trator with the agreement of the parties to abide by the decision of that
arbitrator beforehand is a useful way of solving many disputes, even
if they are ethical in origin.
• Obtain the agreement of the disputants that the resolution of the dif-
ference will provide mutual benefits that could not otherwise be
obtained. Once this has been ascertained, the examination of the issues
may begin afresh. When we examine many of the conflicts that occur
on the world scene, such as those in Northern Ireland and the Middle
East, it is clear that both disputants would have a clear benefit to a res-
olution of their differences.
• Enclose the disputants in a confined space and coerce them to resolve
their differences (decrease the temperature, quality of the food and
beverages, or the amount of space available—as with the procedures
used for the selection of a new Pope). In some ways the situation that
was described by Mary Warnock55 applying to committees of diverse
people set up to advise governments on how to proceed in matters
that are teeming with ethical issues is relevant; here people agree to
put aside their ethical grounding (EO or EP) and try to come to some
decision as to the way ahead that would be in the best interest of the
country at that time.
• Matters may always be taken to court on the basis of a civil suit; for
this to be a real way to solve what is an ethical difference, however,
one or the other party would have to claim to have suffered materially
compensatable damages.
A group of worthy senior citizens of diverse ethical (religious) back-

grounds was presented with the question as to what ethical principles of a
normative nature should be included in the syllabus of schoolchildren. There
was a remarkable concurrence on most of what passes for ethical guidelines.
In general it was only in areas of dispute that serious differences occured, and
these tended to be in specialist areas or in areas where new tools were about
to be introduced.
In medicine, for example, millions of people experience the ministrations

of the deliverers of health care treatments daily without a single query of
an ethical position. On the other hand it is clear that in certain specialized
areas there is an abundance of ethically contentious issues to be discussed.
Some such areas have been listed by lecturers in ethics and law in the U.K. for
a core curriculum in medical ethics. These include abortion, new
reproductive technologies, genetics and disease, resource allocation, organ
donation, experiments with human subjects (informed consent and confi-
dentiality) and animal experimentation, the role and operation of ethics com-
mittees, ethics and the treatment of young children, psychiatric ethics,
conflicts between human rights, and medical practices. It is clearly for these
more contentious areas that the techniques and ethical systems that have
been described and discussed above apply.
2.6 Teaching and learning ethics

Language learning abilities seem to peak at about age four; the learning of
morals, and the modification of one’s behavior as a result, is a lifelong exercise.
2.6.1 The early years

Babies behave autonomically. Instinct and preprogrammed responses to
stimuli are what a newborn baby is endowed with after exiting its mother’s
womb. In addition to the feeding, excreting, and complaining if uncomfort-
able (hurt/irritation) facilities, a further two responses are important to its
ethical development. The first is that of imitation, and the second is empathy.
It is noted that the mood of a mother or another baby is rapidly commu-
nicated and emulated. Simple behaviors—hand waving and smiling—are
imitated. Such aspects of a baby’s development have nothing to do with the
learning of ethics. This comes later when the child is capable of under-
standing language and responding verbally to questions about action and
motivation.
There are three aspects of ethical education that need to be considered.
The first is coming to a determination in one’s thinking about the course of
action that should be followed. The second involves the actual course of
action taken, which may or may not be the same as the one thought out. And
thirdly there is an “affective” mental response that is engendered by either
the thought of action, the course of action, or both. This latter is a condition
of mind or self-judgment of one’s behavior. In this category we may consider
ourselves as we might think that others might judge us or we may evaluate
our own behavior by our own criteria. The result of such introspection can be
guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, delight, amusement, or admiration.44 It
is to be noted that the affective response resulting from how we think and act
feeds back on that thinking and action. So the memory of how we felt about
our previous activities is a determinant in the choice of how we think we

ought to behave and in the way we actually behave. Then depending on the
outcome of that behavior, we revise the affective response and store the revi-
sion in memory for next time. It is also possible to modify the stored memo-
ries of the affective responses by observing the way others act and how they
are judged by those around them. Descriptive ethics (cf. Section 2.3.5) is used
in this way. So, by educating the memories of the affective part of the think-
ing-acting-affective response loop, we have an opportunity to effect improve-
ments in the ethical standards of a person.
2.6.2 Growing up
As cognitive development occurs, so does ethical development. Gross45
reviews the various theories that have been adduced to account for the moral
development of children, and Damon has presented a modern synthesis.46
Both stress the value to this field of the work of Lawrence Kohlberg, who in
the late 1950s defined six stages of ethical development, where the later
stages are reached in older persons or (for stage six) not even at all.
1. The thought of punishment determines the act.
2. The thought of reward determines the act.
3. The thought of how others would perceive one’s deeds determines
the behavior.
4. Social laws and regulations coupled with a concept of duty become
the determining causes of acts.
5. Society’s laws are regarded as part of a social contract and may be bro-
ken to serve a higher good.
6. The adoption of a personal universal principle for the basis of all
ethics provides guidelines for behavior that may supercede all other
laws and rules. (It is held that, in practice, only a handful of people
achieve this level, and for most purposes it does not apply as a normal
stage of the ethical development of an individual.)
However, when investigators seek to map particular children exposed to

defined situations to the above developmental program, difficulties are expe-
rienced. Nevertheless, it is possible to make some generalizations as to how
most children develop in their ethical thinking, acting, and their personal
assessment of those deeds.
• Children up to about age nine believe that the rules for behavior
are set by others outside themselves (heteronomous), whereas after
that age they run by the rules that they adopt as their own
(autonomous) (Jean Piaget [1896–1980] 1935). This reflects the transi-
tion between a child imitating other people’s behavior and in later
development identifying oneself on the basis of the way he or she
behaves.
• Younger children are more impressed with the magnitude of the dam-
age than the intention to do damage when assessing moral culpability.
• Younger children are more likely to cheat than older children or ado-
lescents.
• Rewards and punishments do affect behavior (operant conditioning),
but the ways in which this works depends on the children themselves,
the conditioning stimulus, and the manner and timing of its delivery.
The most effective positive responses result when children appreciate
the intrinsic value of what they are doing either for themselves or others.
• Parents who are permissive are not effective ethics educators, while
those who are heavy-handed and do not brook argument are similarly
ineffective. A firm hand, while giving clear reasons for judgments
made, has been shown to be the most efficacious way of inculcating
socially compatible ways of behavior.
• The first judgments on moral activities are made on the basis of prac-
ticalities, whereas later development turns the attention of the youth
to more theoretical considerations; practical morality precedes theo-
retical morality.
• There is little difference between the sexes in the discernment and
response to moral questions. Girls are not more inclined to a “caring”
attitude any more than boys lean to a sense of morality based on fair-
ness and justice.
• For the most part there is a great deal of transcultural agreement as to
how to behave, but different cultures may have provisions that are
either not present or that do not constitute a major issue in other tra-
ditions. Thus the eating of beef in India is rejected, while in the U.S. it
is not a matter of importance; respect for one’s parents in India is a
well-kept rule, while in the U.S. it is something that has to be earned
(by the parents).
• That young people are able to make sensible moral judgments does
not mean that they will behave in sensible ways:47 “A stage of judg-
ments of justice is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for moral
action.”
• The connection between thinking is made by the application of disci-
pline and punishment.
• The encouragement of a particular suite of ethics can only occur when
all the formative influences in a child’s life concur. Thus when parents,
religious institutions, school (classroom teachers and coaches), police,
mass media, and friends are delivering the same moral messages, a
child has a high probability of acting in accordance with those rules.
When two sources of instruction are contradictory, then the “moral
contract” breaks down and is thereby weakened. For example, the
efforts of teachers extolling the ethic of not cheating is considerably
weakened when the coach urges team members to cheat without get-
ting caught by the referee.
2.6.3 Influential bodies

It used to be the case that religious institutions, dangling the twin carrots of
paradise and blessings or wielding the stick of hell and damnation, could
influence the way most people behaved. However, in the U.K. in 2000 C.E.,
some 40% of people do not believe in the existence of heaven or hell, although
49
some 69% think that they have souls. (These figures are higher in the U.S.)
At one time church attendance was nigh on obligatory, whereas today rela-
tively few people attend church services regularly. Many years ago the Bible
was generally regarded as a book dictated by God for the edification and
direction of the actions of the people; today many believe that what is in the
Old and New Testaments is a man-made history and set of rules for behav-
ior. This is not to assert that the work of the clergy of any persuasion is not of
great value to the people to whom they provide their ministrations. But in
terms of the source of the normative ethics by which we live our lives, the
church has become a lesser influence than in the past.
When the church and state are divorced as in the U.S. and France, the
teaching of ethics in schools is necessarily secular. In the U.K. the leaders of
the church and the state are united in the monarch. Ethical education in the
schools is predominantly that of the Church of England, although in recent
times, due to the large influx of immigrants from the subcontinent of India,
ethical education in schools has become more ecumenical; and the customs
and stories of the Hindus are traded for the traditions and myths of Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity. Nevertheless, the teacher stands out as an example of
“good” behavior, and many pupils live their lives by reference to how their
teachers may or may not behave on particular occasions.
Parents, too, stand as role models for behavior. Daughters tend to find in
their mothers models on which they can build their own ethics, while sons
look to their fathers in this respect. When parents are abusive or are incon-
sistent and unreasoning in their treatment of their children, then the value of
these role models is considerably decreased. Some children are able to use the
behavior of their parents as reverse models, in that they make conscious deci-
sions to behave in a way that is the opposite to that which they have observed
in their parents. Children who have been beaten, abused, and shouted at may,
with great personal resolve, achieve families in which they present to their
progeny the opposite demeanor; however, it is more often the case that such
children abuse their own offspring, as case studies of many criminals have
demonstrated.
To fit in with one’s peers, one has to behave in a like manner. Notions of
justice and fairness are raised with regard to the distribution of provender. It
is in such groupings that individuals are encouraged (dared) to explore the
envelope of the possible. Tricks, pranks, and acts that border on the lawless
are entertained. Chastening experiences are digested and behaviors modified
accordingly in socially healthy youths. However, and tragically often, some
youngsters are led astray and do not return. The crime, drug, and alcohol cul-
ture flourishes and spreads unabated through the sinews of our societies.
The avidity of children, and adults too, for the soap operas of television
indicates that some transfer of customs for living occurs as a result of such
viewing. This material is also part of the descriptive ethics referred to in
Section 2.3.5. As with the rest of the media, the need to attract the public’s
attention is paramount. This pandering leads to the exposure of that which is
sensational, unusual, and sometimes perverted. National censorship laws
curtail the wilder excesses, but the rights to free speech operate in the reverse
direction. In seeking a story that will provide enticing headlines, reporters
and editors emphasize the unusual, especially in those cases where damages
to an individual occur in association with a vaccination or a new food. Here
again the first uses of new tools are portrayed. As such devices have not yet
been fully assayed, it is usual for the media to pick up on any dangers these
tools may have to the obliteration of messages about the potential for bene-
fit, which is also extant. However, if the invention is both worthy and highly
desired, such shortcomings are overlooked. For when the first rail service
between Liverpool and Manchester pulled by Stephenson’s Rocket locomo-
tive was introduced in 1830, an accident happened. On that auspicious jour-
ney, when the train was loaded with members of the press, one of the
traveling party was killed by an engine going in the opposite direction. They
pressed on to their destination, and the development of the railway was not
put out of joint.
The common lesson that can be culled from these descriptions is that no
single influence can be held responsible for what happens to an individual.
When all the influential figures and institutions are “on message,” then the
likelihood of children becoming ethical in a way that will not run them into
trouble with the law or their personal affective systems is much higher. There
is today, however, a tendency for the acceptance of something less than a high
ethical standard of behavior. This becomes the easy option. This opens the
way to a society in which formal ethical education becomes both an issue and
a necessity. Whether or not this will lead to improved behavior is not yet
determined; what should be certain, however, is that we continue to research
and develop the methods that can be used both to teach ethics and to process
the learning of ethics, so that we become more effective in providing for our
people the ethics tools that will enable them to fulfill their lives and make
their unique contributions to our societies.
2.6.4 Ethics and science and engineering courses at the tertiary

level of education
As economists have argued for a cash-limits approach to controlling public
expenditures, the position of scientists and engineers has come under
increasing pressure. Universities around the globe have been gradually
squeezed of the financial resources they once had (as measured in staff:stu-
dent ratios or in the amount of money they could devote to nonpeer reviewed
research in a “well-funded” laboratory). At the same time the call to educate
a larger proportion of the population to a higher level has been raised. And
this is to be achieved while the budget of universities is decreased in real

(inflation-corrected) terms (at least in the U.K.). It has been imagined that the
imposition of these pressures on scientists and engineers would drive them
into cutting corners and into actions that may, at the margin, move them over
to that which is not acceptable ethically. As much publicity has been
prompted by particular cases of scientific misconduct, and that scientists and
engineers are developing tools of such enormous power that major changes
in the way we live our lives would be in the offing, the National Institutes of
Health and the National Science Foundation of the U.S. (whose total scientific
budgets exceed $25 billion annually) have established a rule that the scien-
tists and engineers who are awarded contracts by these two agencies must
take a formal course in science and engineering ethics before they can be eli-
gible to receive their funding. This has led to a plethora of courses and inves-
tigations as to how such an education might be most effectively achieved. It
is also encouraging that many other countries have adopted a similar
approach to the education of their scientists and engineers, among which
may be included Denmark, Germany, France, and The Netherlands.
To comply with the need to behave ethically, scientists and engineers in
universities and industry have been offered courses covering many of the
points discussed in this chapter. It is generally held in this field that the most
effective way of purveying this information is by a variegated and structured
approach to the subject area. This will include special classes dealing with
ethical issues in their historical, operational, and case-study aspects. The use
of role-playing scenarios engages the involvement of the participants and
onlookers, while the formats of seminars, discussions, and debates also serve
to instruct. The fundamental problem faced in such interactions is that the
proliferation of ethical systems (cf. Section 2.3) means that some course lead-
ers regard their function as merely showing the students (a) that there are
problems, and (b) that there are a variety of ways of approaching a solution.
Instructors generally do not draw out the relationship between the thought
of an action and the implementation of that action. Nor do they dwell on the
mental states to which a person may be prone as a result of thinking and act-
ing in a certain way (affective aspects of ethical development). It is also diffi-
cult for people who are not versed in ethics to explain to students the
metaethical bases for their normative ethics. They may wish to keep such
information private, or—in the present climate of political correctness—they
may think that they would arouse anger, antipathy, or anxiety from their stu-
dents if they were to “come clean” about the basis for their ethics. It should
also be realized that in exposing such grounding, an instructor is exposing
him/herself to criticism that may challenge beliefs that have been long and
lovingly held and that integrate an individual into a community of like-
minded people.
Often, the ability to “close out” a problematic issue is not taken as an
objective of the exercise. This causes student dissatisfaction. It therefore
becomes of increasing importance to emphasize and portray and exemplify
methods of conflict resolution, as indicated in Section 2.5. In addition, it is

important that ethical issues relevant to subjects that are being discussed at
that time are brought up during that teaching period. This requires that
teachers in all subject areas be familiar with the ethical implications, prob-
lems, and pitfalls in their area of specialization, and that they are willing and
capable of handling them in the didactic situation. The provision of the ethi-
cal tools, coupled with a demonstration of the relevance of such considera-
tions for each area, is pivotal in the promotion of ethical thinking and
behavior in students, teachers, and practitioners.50 –52 A further handle to the
didactic situation is slowly coming to the fore. This deals with the efficacy of
ethics courses in the subsequent thinking and behaviors of those who have
been exposed to such experiences. In the work of Deni Elliot et al.,53 it is clear
that the change in the way some people operate in areas they perceive as vital
to their self-interest after having been subjected to a course in ethics is mini-
mal, but measurable.
Plato in the Meno comes to the conclusion that virtue cannot be taught.
He bases his conclusion on his observations that virtuous fathers would
always want to see their sons as equally if not more virtuous than themselves
and would both set an example and provide the necessary urgings to achieve
this. However, in spite of such “home education,” it is clear that virtuous
fathers sometimes produce sons who are lacking in virtue, and by contrast
fathers who are not particularly virtuous sometimes produce sons who are
shining examples of virtue; therefore, Plato concludes that, in spite of the
home teaching of the sons by the fathers, the outcomes of those teachings is
not in accordance with the teachings, and so ethics cannot be taught. Kenneth
D. Pimple and his colleagues at Indiana University do not go along with
Plato’s pessimism. They have used definitions of the various stages of ethical
development to determine the efficacy of ethics teaching practice. Such
stages may be depicted as follows:
1. Being able to discern the possible actions and their implications when
presented with an issue requiring a judgment.
2. The determination of the morally right (fair, just, or good) course of
action.
3. Such a determination should be above personal values if these mili-
tate against the course judged right.
4. The person should be able to implement the morally correct decision
in the face of forces militating against such an implementation.54
This may become the paradigm for the future, as more effective and
relevant ethics courses become available, and perhaps what is more impor-
tant is that more people in the institution become conscious of ethics and pro-
vide examples of ethically appropriate behavior that become accepted as
the norm, while the ethically suspect behaviors receive general and public
disapprobation. It will be of continuing interest to work out ways in which
we can measure the efficacy of such courses by the way the participants live
their lives subsequent to their exposure to such courses.
2.7 Ethics experts?

One would expect that when experts are called to solve a problem, they
would, in most cases, agree on a mutually acceptable solution. Not so in
ethics. The differences that exist at the metaethics level preclude this possi-
bility. One has merely to disclose that one’s “expert” is an adherent of the EO
approach to ethics to generate dissention from all those who espouse the EP
approach. This is not to say that there are not many people who are well
versed in the history and nature of ethics, both in theory and practice.
Notwithstanding this seemingly dire situation, decisions about which ethics
should be adopted in particular circumstances are made. It may be, therefore,
that somebody who is not highly knowledgeable in ethics can become an
ethics expert. The person who is able to conciliate a group of people who start
off with diverse and contradictory ideas so that they arrive at an eventual
outcome is the person who may claim the title of “ethics expert.” Such peo-
ple are often plucked out of their normal existences and chosen to chair the
committee that has to advise the government, community, or corporation on
ethical matters. Theirs is a “people” ability. Recognizing that the ability to
apply the methods for reconciling differences in ethical systems (cf. Section
2.5) can lead to closure and progress, the chair of the committee will lead the
group into one of the available procedures. The deftness with which this can
be done could be a criterion that one can use to delineate an “ethics expert.”
2.8 Summary
In this chapter I have covered an extensive territory. From definitions of ethics
to types of ethics has necessitated a fullsome discussion of the kinds of con-
siderations that go into the determination of what kind of metaethics one
adopts. This requires that difficult choices have to be made between the EO
and EP approaches or between a deterministic and a free will designation of
the affairs of nature. From this runs the issue of responsibility and whether or
not we can derive our statements of ethics from considerations of the world of
being. I believe that we can and I have provided my thoughts as to how this
might be achieved. A description of the major ethical systems emphasized
those based on survivalism and rights laws. The reason I have chosen to write
at length on these issues is that I believe that they have been widely misun-
derstood or ignored in much of the literature. That survival is a parameter that
is operable at the individual and social levels is a key point, particularly when
it is accepted that the group at which the surviving takes place may change
with time and that any one individual is a member of many such groups at
any one time. When dealing with rights, it is necessary to realize that for each
right there is a duty or obligation; if the latter cannot be discharged, then
those who have granted the rights would be justified in questioning the situ-
ation. Recognizing always that honest differences of opinion occur as to which
system one may choose to live by, I have outlined some methods whereby
people wishing to proceed with life and living can achieve closure on such dif-
ferences. In the final sections I have lifted a corner of the veil on the way ethics
might be taught and learned and how the development of babies into adults
is paralleled by the increasing sophistication of the way they deal with ethical
issues. My final remarks are devoted to the teaching and learning of ethics by
scientists and engineers who, in today’s and tomorrow’s world, are going to
be in the driving seat for the introduction of the new and powerful tools that
are deemed to transform the way we live our lives.
My goal in the remaining chapters of this book is to provide the material
that can be used by such people to present themselves and their inventions
to the members of our societies in such a way that the mutual advantages can
be sustained and any harms minimized or eliminated.
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27. Beauchamp and Childress, loc. cit.
28. In P. Singer’s A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, 1991, 565, in an 18-page index
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Development, University Press of New England, Hanover, 1997, 116.
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9, 1999. Sci. and Eng. Ethics, Vol. 6, 147–156, 2000.
chapter three
Engineers as toolmakers
and users
The rocket lifts off, a new drug is proclaimed, even more transistors are
etched onto a silicon chip, and it is the scientist who is acclaimed. Somehow,
the engineers who really achieved these advances are set aside. Again, scien-
tists seem to be in the driving seat when it comes to the discussion of the envi-
ronment and the effect human actions have on that domain. Yet the data are
conflicting, inadequate, and in many instances biased by computer models
that better reflect the assumptions inherent in the programs than the world
they purport to represent. A sterile debate ensues as scientists exchange their
hypotheses. Against this background, engineers have to deal with actual
problems thrown up by increases in population and the needs of such people
for food, clean water, and the removal of wastes. Environmental issues are
woven into this tapestry of contingency requirements. Decisions are made on
the best available (most reliable) data coupled to policies that can be modu-
lated to take account of changing circumstances. The need to respond to soci-
ety’s requirements means that decisions have to be made rather than
debating points scored. As engineers are charged with these responsibilities,
it is necessary to examine the makeup and modes of action of these individ-
uals in more detail.
There is clearly a problem in the conception of both the scientist and engi-
neer by the public as led by the media. I now seek to address that miscon-
ception and to put the origin of the engineer into its prehistoric context.
Although science and engineering have gone hand in hand since the first liv-
ing beings sought to alter their given surroundings to enhance their surviv-
ability, it may be useful to focus for a while on what engineers are and what
they do. Inevitably, the word engineer comes to us wreathed in baggage that,
I believe, goes back to the era before writing began. This is because of the
association of the engineer with the work of the genius. When we delve into
the origins of that word, we open up issues in the realm of the spirits and the
netherworld. In what follows I have attempted to trace some of these con-
nections. What emerges is that engineers, djinni, and spirits (cf. Section 2.2)
have in common the ability to effect feats that may be categorized as good or
evil, beneficial or harmful. Whereas it is usual for people to attempt to pla-
cate and propitiate the djinni and spirits for fear of the harms they might
cause, their attitude to engineers is less fearful and more ready to “let them
have a go.” Nevertheless, there is some underlying sense that the wonderful
achievements of engineers are effected at some expense, and indeed many of
the radical changes that characterize the way we live today in comparison to
the conditions of 200 years ago are sometimes seen as “mixed blessings.” So,
in teasing out the many undercurrents that members of the public associate
with the engineer, we may come closer to an appreciation of the position
of the engineer in modern societies and how engineers might best com-
port themselves as they go about their business of seeking to deliver social
benefits.
3.1 Defining an engineer

There is more to the word engineer than meets the eye. When I started on the
etymology of the word, I was directed to engine via the French word ingenium,
meaning “engine.” When this is unpicked, we run into words like contrivance,
artifice (thirteenth century), or ingenuity and genius in the fourteenth century;
or in the B category of meanings we see words like machine of war, mechanical
contrivance, complex machine (later, especially the steam engine). Also this
word has Latin origins from the same word, ingenium, where this means “nat-
ural quality,” “disposition,” “temper,” “talents,” “genius,” “clever device.”
The common root running through the core of the concept of the word
engineer is that of gin or gen. In terms of meaning, we have to recognize that
when we talk of “genius” or “the ingenious,” we are dealing with exceptional
ability, something clever. It would, therefore, not be improper to delve further
into the meaning of the word genius.
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) definition gives us the fol-
lowing clues:
Adjective, Latin, feminine, gen, root of gignere or Greek ’:

1. The tutelary god or attendant spirit allotted to every person at his birth,
to preside over his destiny in life; also, the tutelary spirit of a place,
institution, etc.
1.b After Latin use; this spirit as propitiated by festivities; hence,
one’s own appetite—1693.
1.c The personification of something immaterial; e.g., of a virtue, a
custom, etc.
Chapter three: Engineers as toolmakers and users 107
2. A demon or spirit in general. Now chiefly in plural genii as translated

by the Arabic jinni.
3. Characteristic disposition, inclination, bent—1804.
3.b Prevailing character or spirit (of a nation, age, language, law,
etc.)—1639.
3.c The associations or suggestions (of a place)—1823.
3.d Of material things, diseases, etc.: The natural character, inher-
ent tendency—1747.
4. Natural ability; quality of mind—1649; natural aptitude (and inclina-
tion) to, for—1643.
5. Native intellectual power of an exalted type; extraordinary capacity for
imaginative creation, original thought, invention or discovery. Often
contrasted with talent—1749.
6. One who has great, little, etc. genius (sense 4); one who has a “genius”
(sense 3); one endowed with “genius” (sense 5)—1647.
In this definition we can see both the past and the present usages of the
word. It is of interest that an associated word stems from the Arabic jinni
(sense 2). In the chapter of the Koran (written during the years 644–656)
called “The Merciful,” we have “He created man from potter’s clay and the
jinn from smokeless fire.” Most of the 33 references to the jinni in the Koran
place them alongside men and threaten them jointly with hell’s fires for mis-
behavior and require them to be open to the teachings of the Koran. But it is
in the Tales from the 1001 Nights (earliest Arabic version dates back to 850 C.E.)
that the jinni come into their own. Here we have the jinni as the shifters or
movers of matter in the fantasy world of fables. They can be confined by
humans to bottles or lamps and can escape only by human action. Once freed
from their confinement, their powers are partly under the control of the indi-
vidual who released them, but they may also interpret those requirements in
ways that are not wholly foreseen by the unsuspecting human. They do not
seem to have an agenda that is sui generis, as they come to serve either man
or the angels. As with all spirits, they are accredited with the power of doing
both harmful and beneficial acts.
There are earlier manifestations of the jinni. During the Babylonian exile
of the Jews (587–538 B.C.E.), a demonic element entered into the sacred litera-
ture.1 The book of Tobit, which was written at about that time, reports on the
demon Asmodeus (Ashmedai, Ashmadai, Aeshma) who was prevented from
killing the new bride of Tobit’s son by exposure to the smoke of the liver and
gall of a fish. It is also part of the folklore that King Solomon’s servant
Benaiah captures Asmodeus, having previously, and with great cunning,
made him drunk on wine. From the captured demon, Solomon extracts the
information as to the whereabouts of a worm, “the Shamir.” This was used
to create the stones needed to build the Temple (completed in 950 B.C.E.),
because it was held that iron tools could not be used as they created sparks;
and as demons lived in the sparks (cf. “the jinni he made from smokeless fire”),
the new Temple could not be held to be contaminated by unknown demons

from its onset. Nevertheless, other demons were involved in the construction
of the Temple. It is noteworthy that in the tale “The Fisherman and the
Jinnee” of the 1001 Nights, a jinni is found in a bottle whose mouth was closed
with a lead cover bearing the Seal of Solomon. This would have been the
imprint of Solomon’s ring, which was a device that Solomon used to regain
control of Asmodeus when he, by a trick, was released from his bonds.
To the people of the Biblical world, demons were everywhere and in and
of everything. They had to be assuaged. This is reminiscent of the spirits of
the animism world (cf. section 2.2). These spirits and the world they inhab-
ited would be the most basic formulation of the spirit concept. It would arise
naturally to account for the difference between the living and the dead—the
former being animate and mobile of their own volition, while the dead lacked
the animating principle (the insubstantial, weightless factor that gave things
the ability to move) or spirit. When the animistic beliefs of contemporary
people who are still living the life of a Stone-Age hunter-gatherer are dis-
closed, they report that the spirits are capable of both helpful and harmful
acts. It is only if the spirits are treated with respect (however that is envisaged
to be contrived locally) that humans have a chance of promoting the helpful
side of the spirit world.
For me, one message emerges from this protracted history of the concept
of “gin” in the word en“gin”eer. It is that such individuals have, and are
treated as having, the ability to do work that can both benefit and harm
humanity. Whether or not the engineers of today are envisaged as demons,
jinn, or spirits, it is clear that they have to be treated with the respect that
should be accorded to individuals who can, through their works, radically
change the way we live. It therefore behooves us to look more closely at the
characteristics of the modern engineer.
3.1.1 The fourfold way

There are four components to the suite of characteristics that make up the
contemporary engineer.
1. The requirement to be knowledgeable and to be able to acquire new

and relevant knowledge.
2. The ability to do and make things work in practice.
3. The intention to express “genius” through the search for novel and
unprecedented solutions to given or self-initiated problems.
4. The will to act ethically for the benefit of the host society and
humankind.
I will examine each of these facets in turn.

3.1.1.1 The need to use and acquire knowledge

In the rigorous training of the engineer, a large body of existing knowledge
needs to be learned and experienced in practice. The history of engineering
provides lessons that support and put into context present-day methods and
procedures. With this formal training comes the stimulation to produce orig-
inal and trailblazing designs, to break the logjams that occur in the stultified
and perhaps complacent thinking that derives from doing what works with-
out further reflection and criticism. This means that engineers should be
encouraged to adopt a faultfinding attitude to presented material, if only to
realize that “everything can be improved” (i.e., nothing is perfect). Even our
appreciation and understanding of what appear to be, or are presented as,
“facts” need to be rigorously examined, for modern readings of the nature of
science (knowledge) and the nature of the scientific method (that which
brings knowledge into being, tagged by a level of confidence with which one
can hold that piece of information) require us to put aside words like truth,
proof, fact, and certainty and replace them with degrees of confidence, assurance,
and reliability. As this way of regarding science and the scientific method has
not yet penetrated deeply into academic and commonplace thinking, it is
useful to provide some background by way of justification for this revision.
Science, a word that has its origin in the Latin word scientia, translates
directly into “knowledge.” This then requires us to look into the nature of
knowledge. When we translate the nature of the “world outside our minds”
into thoughts, ideas, concepts, images, models, metaphors, guesses, verbal
statements, or notions, we are creating or generating new knowledge. (Here,
I take the mind and its thinking capability to be an activity of the 12 cm3 of
nerve cells plus the extracellular chemicals of the cerebral cortex, while the
exterior world includes the brain and the rest of our body.) This knowledge
has a virtual existence independent of the exterior world. It can be used with-
out further reference to that external world, as in situations when we reflect,
think, imagine, or dream. There are two additional qualifying features of
knowledge held in the confines of our minds. The first is a tag or earmark that
reflects the degree of confidence we have in a new or old mental construct or
idea. The second tag concerns the importance we assign to that knowledge,
or the value we assign to it as an element in our survival kit. Hence we have
stored somewhere and somehow in our minds or brains:
(Item of knowledge) + (associated reliability factor) +
(associated value factor)
It would seem from this definition that all knowledge is science and all
science is knowledge. Is it possible to argue that the concepts of spirits and
the spirit world are outside the world of science or knowledge? Some might
assert that a stone or a tree does not have a spirit. How do they know that?
What tests might one do to convince oneself of the reliability of the statement
that a stone is a stone and that is that? One can ask, if the stone is ground to
a powder or dissolved in an acid, where does the spirit go? As spirits are
invisible and weightless, we would not expect to “see” them take on another
form. So, as we may have a mental concept or idea that the animating princi-
ple of a stone or tree exists, the particular configuration of cells and chemicals
in a brain may actually constitute knowledge of the spirit of the tree or stone.
You may rejoin yes, but that knowledge is not “scientific.” Yet the concept
that a stone has a spirit was tested when the stone was reduced to a powder
or dissolved. So the concept is testable even though the results of the test are
less than wholly reliable; in spite of that, the value of the concept of the spirit
of a stone may be considerable if you rely on stones for tools, weapons, and
ritual devices.
A second difficult question presents itself. Are the pictures, actions, and
words we experience in dreams part of our knowledge system? If we were
to consider a dream in which the dreamer imagined jumping from the top of
a cliff onto a rowing boat hundreds of feet below in complete safety, would
the remembered and recounted images of such a dream constitute knowl-
edge? In being able to relate the dream to others using words, a happening
has been experienced. The dreamer will have stored in his or her mind ele-
ments that were acquired during the dream sequence. If they are not
recounted or written down, they tend to be lost. However, once they have
been externalized vis-à-vis the mind, then we cannot discount them as being
something other than knowledge. So any concept, idea, thought, or imagin-
ing may constitute knowledge. But the ways in which such knowledge may
be used with confidence and with a positive value limit its applications
severely.
When we come to individuals whom we label “scientists,” the con-
vention is that we restrict ourselves, as did Whewell in 1840,2 to that class of
people who apply the scientific method to the physical and material uni-
verse. Such individuals do not generally regard the images, conceptualiza-
tions, or constructs that exist as mental phenomena as knowledge. It was
only those self-same images, conceptualizations, or constructs that survived
a rigorous system of experimentation and testing that could legitimately be
lodged in the mind as knowledge; such knowledge was called science. The
method by which sense data became knowledge became known as the
scientific method, and the people who practiced the scientific method were sci-
entists. The practice of the scientific method may then summarized as
follows:
• Make repeated observations of some particular aspect of the exterior

world.
• Construct or guess a hypothesis as to the relationship between these
observations.
• Test that relationship by further observations, manipulations, and
experiments.
• If additional observations do not require a change in the hypothesis,

then either continue with the testing or allow the hypothesis to
become knowledge.
• If after exhaustive, rigorous, and stringent testing the hypothesis is not
found wanting, then it may be considered a theory.
• Theories describing particular relationships that have been exten-
sively tested over long periods by many people may be said to become
laws.
This apparently seamless rendition of the way observations become

knowledge was shaken by K. Popper, who in 1934 asserted that it is impossi-
ble to prove that a hypothesis is true, because there is always the possibility
that someday an experiment will be effected which will require the modifi-
cation of that hypothesis. However, he went on to declare, it is possible to
prove that a hypothesis is wrong; for any experiment or test that refutes the
hypothesis eliminates it for all time from what can be considered true.
But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or sci-

entific only if it is capable of being tested by experience.
These considerations suggest that not the verifiability
but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a crite-
rion of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require
of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being
singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but I
shall require that its logical form shall be such that it
can be singled out by means of empirical tests, in neg-
ative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific
system to be refuted by experience.3
I would differ from Popper in that I contend that it is also not possible to
prove a hypothesis to be wrong. Because even an experiment that would seem
to indicate that our hypothesis is wrong may itself be a flawed experiment.
So if we cannot either prove that the hypothesis is right or that the hypothe-
sis is wrong, what can we say about it?
What we can attribute to a hypothesis is not the property of rightness or
wrongness, but rather a level of confidence in knowledge that is in the form
of a hypothesis or guess. Clearly, hypotheses that withstand the most strin-
gent and exhaustive tests will be accorded a high level of confidence, while
those that fail will be assigned a low or even a vanishingly small level of con-
fidence. As we proceed, we continually test all our hypotheses and adjust the
associated levels of confidence accordingly. (A similar process may be said to
occur when we assign levels of value to each item of knowledge we lodge in
our minds [Thomas Bayes, 1702–1761].) In enunciating these concepts I have
been influenced by the notion that in a computer each bit of information has
an address assigned to it. In the human mind we assign levels of confidence

and value to the pieces of knowledge we acquire and store. Somehow, we
also seem to know where they are and how they may accessed, even though
they may sometimes be difficult to recover.
A hypothesis such as “the moon is made of green cheese” would not
command a great deal of confidence, particularly since we have had the
chance to examine moon rocks returned to Earth, but we can argue that such
rocks are unrepresentative or are forgeries or trick substitutions for “real”
moon materials, which means that we still have to allow a vanishingly small
possibility for the original hypothesis to have some validity: a weighting that
becomes even smaller when the mechanodynamics of the moon are consid-
ered and its density comes out stonelike (about 3.45 g/cm3) as opposed to
green cheese–like (less than 1 g/cm3).
As we can neither prove the truth or falsity of a hypothesis, the knowl-
edge or science that we store in our minds can only approximate some exter-
nal reality. Not only are we limited by what the application of the scientific
method can deliver, the words that we use to attempt to describe the outside
world are, in themselves, limited. However we qualify our basic expressions,
we cannot be sure that in using a word to communicate the concept of a thing
that our communication has created in the mind of the recipient an exact
replica of the concept in the mind of the sender. Our words, however mar-
velous we might think them, serve in a practical sense to inform us of that
external world, but cannot be a substitute for it in the inculcation of its real-
ity. What we use as knowledge are but guesses (a less prosaic word than the
equivalent word, hypotheses) of an external reality that we can believe to
exist in truth or reality; we cannot know its nature exactly or with absolute
reliability. So the words truth, proof, fact, certainty, reality, exact, correct, right,
and their synonyms cannot be used as qualifiers for the ideas and concepts
we acquire, store, and manipulate in our minds.
In unpicking the association between the words knowledge and informa-
tion, it is useful to realize that all the objects of the world outside ourselves
are replete with information. That is, if we take a stone, there are many fea-
tures of the stone we might want to classify as information—shape, size,
color, feel, smell, the number of sharp points, round valleys, shiny bits, and
so forth. Some of these features we may want to store as our knowledge; the
rest we leave unused. So we may regard our selection of a subset of the infor-
mation available in the world outside ourselves as our knowledge and leave
the rest for another day, or as something we know is there but for which we
will have to refer back. We can store information in computers, filing systems,
or genes; our knowledge tells us where these stores of information exist and
how we might access them should we wish it. When we do so avail ourselves,
we “cherry pick” from that subset those items of information for which we
were seeking, and leave the rest in situ for another day.
In developing this section on the definition of science, it is interesting to
note that it is possible to discern a number of different types of science and
hence five different kinds of scientists; any one individual may operate as any
one of these different kinds of scientists at different times. The different types
of scientists I have identified may be designated as
• Laboratory
• Library
• Street
• Conscious
• Subconscious
For example, it is clear that those who test hypotheses in laboratories or

by experiments on or with the wider world of people, earthly phenomena,
and space do so in ways that are markedly different from individuals who
test hypotheses using the published literature deposited in libraries. The for-
mer type of scientist may be categorized as a laboratory scientist, while the sec-
ond can be termed a library scientist. We can also identify another area where
knowledge, guesses, or hypotheses are tested, and that is on the street.
Conversations are probably the most common way of “doing science.” When
we converse with others, we test our ideas. Gossip may be one way of testing
ideas about the particular status of one’s relatives, neighbors, and colleagues.
I would call this street science. Additionally, we test our ideas by relating them
to other ideas we already have stored in our minds; surely this may be called
conscious science. And we even test ideas subconsciously: subconscious science.
When we drive or play ball games, we do not consciously register the posi-
tion of the road and other cars or the ball before we call upon our muscles to
act in a way that we may drive the car safely or hit the ball to some position
on the court or field. To achieve these effects, we take in a mass of data or
information subconsciously, and as we move to achieve our objectives, we
measure what we are doing against the relevant features of the external
world. While this is going on, we pose ourselves for our response, and as the
moment presents itself, we unleash it, again in relation to what we have
learned of our surroundings in the meantime. All of this goes on in our sub-
conscious, which thereby does science.
If we all use the scientific method in its variety of modes to evaluate the
guesses we have about the nature of the world around us, then how is it that
we identify a special category of individual whom we refer to as a scientist?
Here I would contend that the people we designate as scientists specialize in
particular areas of knowledge. These are the difficult areas. They would
range from the extremely large, on the scale of the universe, to the extremely
small, where the items under investigation cannot be seen by the naked
eye, even when aided by the most powerful of microscopes. At the scale lev-
els with which we are generally familiar, scientists would examine those
systems whose complexity makes them inaccessible to ordinary, untrained
people. For example, while most people make observations about the
other people in their society, it would be up to the social scientists to apply
statistical techniques to enable particular phenomena to become apparent

and approachable.
There really is nothing special about science. The close observation of
animals shows that they are clearly capable of testing the nature of their sur-
roundings and, on the basis of those tests, take action. Surely, they too are
generating guesses as to the nature of the world around themselves in effect-
ing such procedures. Also, it would not stretch the imagination too far to
attribute to animals the ability to change their guesses as to the nature of their
world in accordance with their sense experiences. After all, a dog can learn to
stay away from a person who beats it; and a chimpanzee can hold out its
hand in expectation of food from a familiar zookeeper.
At the beginning of the 1990s, there was a bitter controversy between
scientists who held that they delivered objective knowledge and some soci-
ologists who said that the knowledge that science generated was not objec-
tive, but was socially constructed via a process of negotiation between the
interested parties (the Constructivists). It is clear from the above that science
does not deliver objective truth; rather it enables us to determine, sub-
jectively, the level of dependency we may place on a particular hypothesis or
concept. It is also possible to assert that the questions that scientists ask are in
some way conditioned by the social environment in which they find
themselves.
For example, when I perceive the chemical sodium chloride in the labo-
ratory, I think of a balanced salt solution whose osmotic pressure equals that
inside the animal cells I am seeking to grow. The same material in my kitchen
typifies saltiness (and high blood pressure); in the garage it may be used
to the lower the freezing point of water and deice the drive; or in a battery
it can be used to carry charged ions between electrodes and be used for
the production of hydrogen and oxygen from water. Its formula has not
changed; what does change is its social context, and it is the latter we use to
give it meaning. While some have used this movement to denigrate science
to “just another construction of reality,” it actually extends our concept
of what we perceive as it integrates with aspects of the contemporary
society.
Another way in which science is influenced by society is the need of sci-
entists to maintain their laboratories by competing successfully for grant
funds that are provided by the government, charities, industry, or local orga-
nizations. These funds are often in highly defined areas. This bias in the
nature of research that is effected is influenced by the perceived needs of the
wider society. When the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was identi-
fied as the cause of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), much
research money became available to work on this virus. These funds and oth-
ers are being directed toward a vaccine or improved therapy, because in
March 2000 the U.S. government decided that the battle against AIDS was a
matter of strategic importance.
Ideas do not originate de novo, but derive from causal elements in the
mind of the thinker. (This is an application of the EO view of the nature of
existence [see also Section 2.4.1]. A different view might be taken by some-
body who adheres to the EP view of the universe, for this stance enables the
involvement of immaterial and invisible entities in the determination of out-
comes.) This implies that there are outside influences at work in setting sci-
entific priorities and goals. What it does not assert is that science is a “social
construct” with the same force and status as any other such construct. There
are many constructs that individuals in a “free” society may create, but the
reliability of such emanations would not reach the levels of those critically
tested through application of the scientific method.
The Constructivist philosophical movement adds a social dimension to
the first-order hypotheses we generate from our excited sense organs. It
should be noted that such social interpretations are themselves derived by a
guess-test method and may therefore be considered as part of the knowledge
(science) derived by the scientific method. In this sense such considerations
might be regarded as a facet of societal biology, where the other biological
areas are molecular, cellular, and organismal.
Whatever knowledge we have is only as valuable as its application pro-
vides. We clearly spend more time testing the knowledge elements that go
into the construction of a passenger-carrying airplane than we do in the con-
struction of a work of art.
In summary, I have identified five kinds of science: laboratory, library,
street, conscious, and subconscious. The social construction of our knowl-
edge is a special part of this activity, where meanings are affected by their
associated societal aspects. So, as everybody, including most animals, effect
the scientific method—that is, “do science”—I have to return to Whewell and
define scientists as those individuals who, generally, in exchange for a
stipend, initiate and test guesses in areas that are too specialized for most
people. These areas may involve either microscopic or galactic scales, more
detailed or more complex analyses, or relating the phenomena of the external
world to numerical descriptors.
3.1.1.2 Achieving the practical

It is insufficient for an engineer to know and to generate new knowledge in
which one can have confidence; the engineer has to be able to put this knowl-
edge to practical effect. This requires that design solutions, which are the first
stage in the translation of an idea as to how something might be done to its
practical realization, have to be buildable in a manner that is both safe to the
builder and safe for the user. Other considerations obtrude.
Is the design energy efficient? Does it use the least material? Are the
materials chosen the most appropriate from a cost-and-wear point of view?
Can the materials be fabricated in the way envisaged by the present genera-
tion of readily available tools, or do new tools have to be made to manufac-
ture the parts needed? Is it possible to fully automate the production line?
Can the design be protected through copyright, secrecy, or patent? Can the
product be maintained and serviced by the user, as opposed to specialists?
Where is the most cost-effective location to build the product? Are there stan-
dards to be met? What kind of test procedures should the product be subject
to before full-scale production and marketing?
When these technical questions are answered, more questions are
derived from the marketing and sales departments. How should the design
be marketed? To whom should it appeal? Via what outlets might it be sold?
What level of sales can be maintained in the short, medium, and long terms?
What is the expected product life? What plans might be available for variants
such as deluxe editions with additional features? Would variations be cos-
metic or fundamental? What is the competition doing? What kind of price
structure is sustainable? How does this fit in with other products made by the
company? Is the product ethical? Is there an export potential? Does the prod-
uct have to be licensed?
The engineer who designed the product may or may not be engaged in
answering all these questions. Much depends on the size of the company
and the nature of the product. In small companies a single engineer may be
responsible for achieving at many levels. Other operations are larger, so
engineers specialize in one part of the production process. Some engineers
spend most of their time at the design phase. Others (such as myself when
I was so engaged) spend a good deal of time translating ideas and designs
into equipment that is then tested at the pilot-plant scale of operation.
There are engineers whose primary concern is at the level of large-scale con-
tinuous production, while others are deployed to examine product quality
and control of process to yield a minimum standard. There are control engi-
neers and computer engineers who could be involved in one or many pro-
jects at once.
Each of the functions set out above makes a practical contribution to the
emergence of a product into the throes of the marketplace. Kevin Walton4
defines a series of tasks undertaken by the engineer, among which (with
some modifications) are the following:
• Asking questions: getting advice (nothing is ever as it appears to be and

never as they tell you it is—find out for yourself )
• Designing: considering all the options and new undreamed of possi-
bilities; seeing a need and acting on it—differently
• Improving and enhancing existing systems
• Knowing when further development is a spent option and that a com-
pletely new departure or a move to new materials is needed; going
back to first principles
• Using components whose workings you don’t fully understand
• Making things that nearly work into ones that really work
• Making, deploying, and getting the most of our instruments
• Making things control themselves
• Controlling the previously uncontrollable; knowing when to intro-
duce computers to take over the production operation
• Moving big things safely
• Balancing costs (risk magnitude of damage) with benefits

• Communicating with the public and helping them understand the
properties of the manufactured products
• Managing and directing others
When in practice as a microbial engineer, we were engaged with most of the

activities in the above list. Whatever else, part of the fun and joy of being an
engineer is making things work.
We tend to think about products as entities that are tangible; things pop
off the end of a production line, are put in boxes, and are sold. I would con-
tend that particular verbal formulations are also products. We are well aware
that particular slogans have moved masses of people to acts they did not
think themselves capable of achieving; the addresses of leaders before battles
seek to inspire their troops; advertisers trade slogans in election campaigns;
clerics deliver the intentions of God; sales of cigarettes, cars, and cosmetics
owe much to verbally generated images; and ethicists propound ethics with
a view to changing the way people behave. Indeed, it is possible to go further
and contend that verbally expressed ideas that seek to change the nature of a
system, be it in business, government, a family, or any organization of more
than one individual, may be seen as a product that has the potential to bene-
fit that group or collective, including the perpetrator of the idea. It will be dif-
ficult to get philosophers to agree that their philosophies constitute products.
But I ask the reader to take that step and thereby become enabled to evaluate
the functionality of philosophers within our body politic. In this sense they
too become engineers, and the four characteristics of the engineer pertain to
them as they do to those who comply with the characterization as it is more
commonly understood.
3.1.1.3 Being a genius

Going back to the dictionary definition of genius, we find at meaning #5
“Native intellectual power of an exalted type; extraordinary capacity for
imaginative creation, original thought, invention, or discovery.” It is these
characteristics that separate the engineer from the technician.
On a day-to-day basis it is not possible for the engineer to be engaged in
imaginative creation and invention; it takes time and effort to translate
thought into reality and then to convince somebody that you have discovered
or invented something new that works and has advantages over conven-
tional technology. People in general are reluctant to adopt radically new
ways of thinking and doing things. We have already seen how it took some 1
million years to develop the so-called Acheulian “hand-axe” further. The oft-
repeated story of engineers who design and build a radically new device is
that of rejection and disbelief. An example of this attitude at, perhaps, its
zenith was in 1978 when the Xerox Corporation sold permission for Apple
Computers to use aspects of the Windows/Icons/Mouse-drag-and-drop sys-
tem of interfacing computers that Apple did not then own. It would seem
that the in-house Xerox team did not appreciate just how powerful and useful
a system their engineers had pioneered; it was too novel for them to acknowl-
edge its virtues, so they let it go.5
As it would seem that most of the work of the engineer differs little from
that of a technician, it is useful to examine the distinction between these two
categories of worker in more detail. Technicians do different things each time
they effect a process. In running a pilot plant, one of the most difficult things
for the engineer to do is to get the operating technicians to do precisely the
same thing each time they run the process. There are always reasons for dif-
ferences: a change in the batch number of a chemical; the temperature of a
feed liquid may be different; the cell innoculum grew for 3 days and not
4 days; the sterilization process took 45 minutes, not 30 minutes as called for
in the protocol, because a valve was leaking and had to be fixed; the setting
of a pump speed changed due to the pump vibrating the last time it was used,
so the transfer of liquid was more rapid than expected; and so on. But what
is new is based on circumstances; technicians do not generally have the
authority or permission to deliberately deviate from standard operating pro-
tocols. Their response to new situations, to which they are exposed regularly,
is to attempt to convert them to the canonized system. This is in contrast to
the engineer, who begins with the remit to innovate and at all opportunities
seeks to improve—do things more efficiently, faster, or more accurately. The
engineer will try with might and main to eliminate the need to deal with
novel circumstances during a defined process and will deploy much talent in
so defining conditions that the protocols can be adhered to with as little devi-
ation as possible. This in itself often requires new ways of proceeding,
because in response to the general thrust of the work in achieving standard-
ization, the engineer will ask, “What is the cause of the variances?” This will
lead to either a tighter control of the upstream materials and their handling
or a radically different approach through, say, initiating a process of prepar-
ing subassemblies that can in themselves be quality controlled before being
introduced into the main product stream.
Another way of thinking about the engineer as an innovator is to require
that such individuals should, in the course of their work, seek opportunities
of designing and making materials or products that can either be patented
in themselves or via the way they are made—a process patent. To obtain a
patent there has to be an invention; patents are not given for the discoverers
of facets of nature that had not been heretofore disclosed. An invention may
be discovered, but it is not a discovery in the sense that stumbling over a new
kind of rock is a discovery. The engineer’s invention is discovered as a result
of the bringing together of existing elements in a novel way or by transform-
ing existing elements to do jobs that would have been inconceivable without
the invention. Again, to qualify for a patent, there has to be significant novelty
to the invention. A change of shape or color that does not materially affect
performance may not be enough to qualify under this heading. (There are
conceivable circumstances when just such changes are sufficient to justify the
issuance of a patent, e.g., there has been a radical change of style that trans-
forms an invention from a piece of laboratory or home equipment into

something that is worn or used as a fashion accessory; the Sony Walkman
radio may be regarded as an example of a common or garden radio that was
vamped up to become a fashion item as a result of changing the shape and
color of its outer extremities.) A further criterion for novelty is if a person well
versed in the field would be surprised by the new invention. “I did not think
that it could be done, or that it would work, or that the system could be used
to produce X” are the kinds of expressions that denote the novelty of a
process or product. Whether or not the additions to existing novel and previ-
ously patented processes constitute a patentable invention is a moot (debat-
able) point. Adding rockers to a patented chair may provide a new invention,
but it may also be just a possible variant of the primary invention—the chair.
Such issues are decided in a court specializing in patent law.
3.1.1.4 The ethics component

It is not enough that engineers should be knowledgeable, practical, and inno-
vative; they also have to use their best efforts to bring benefits to the societies
in which they are members. To do this they need to have a definition of what
is beneficial. This is not a trivial matter because, although there may be many
“rules of thumb” as to what a benefit is, the reader who has read the section
on metaethics (see figure 2.3) will appreciate the complexities of the choices
that face the engineer in this regard. There are other complications. Whether
the engineer is a sole practitioner or a member of a larger organization
employing many such engineers presents issues and concerns of a different
order. In the former manner of working, it is clear where the responsibilities
of the engineer begin and end. There is much more onus placed on single
practitioners for the outcomes of their actions. To compensate for this ethical
load, the individual engineer working alone does not have to comply with
the working practices of a larger organization and the vicissitudes of middle
management, whose views and exigencies may run counter to what the engi-
neer may consider to be the most ethically appropriate way of proceeding.
Engineers working in academia or in a government-financed research
institute face different conditions. They may not be directly responsible for
the design of a process or the manufacture of a product. Their work in theory
or in research and development does not immediately impinge on the gen-
eral public. It is the case that they have a responsibility to use the resources
put at their disposal to the greatest advantage of the society who made those
resources available. However, the ethical waters soon become muddy when
industry or other private organizations contract work from an engineer
whose primary employer is the state or an institution supported by charita-
ble funds or private fees. This is happening to greater and greater extents
today, as public funds for research in academic establishments and govern-
ment research institutes become more scarce. Conflicts of interest ensue, as
well as the selected use of information in either the selling or the reporting of
a project. These matters will be dealt with in some detail later.
At this stage it is important to recognize that ethical problems for engi-

neers come in two guises. The first is met when the engineer is engaged in
doing work for whoever is footing the bill for that work, while the second is
met as a result of the products of that engineered process making their mark
on the communities who are prepared to pay for them. I call the two areas
that generate ethical problems process areas and product areas, respectively.
On the process side the engineer is heir to all the ethical problems that face
scientists as well as the unique problems that apply specifically to engineers,
while on the product side the concerns are generally unique to engineers.
3.1.1.4.1 The process of doing science can cause ethical concerns. The inten-
tion of those engaged in the progression of science and those who are seek-
ing to achieve a particular product and are prevented from doing so by the
inadequacy of the existing data is to effect research that will “extend human
knowledge of the physical, biological, or social world beyond what is already
known.”
In pursuing this goal, mistakes are sometimes made; due care may not
always be applied, or there could be deliberate attempts to obtain personal
advancement by the manipulation of observations and people. Some of the
more common forms of misconduct are delineated below.7 –10
The Institution of Professionals, Managers, and Specialists bulletin of
February 1, 2000, page 8, reported the results of a questionnaire that, among
other questions, asked the members of the institution,
Have your ever been asked to tailor your research con-

clusions or resulting advice to:
Suit the customer’s preferred 17% answered yes

outcome
Obtain further contracts 10% answered yes
Discourage publication 3% answered yes
Never been asked 70% answered yes
Over 500 scientists, engineers, and specialists sent in completed question-

naires to provide the above answers.
The depiction of these misdeeds should not, however, blind the reader to
the hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers who strive diligently
to discover new knowledge of the world. For the scientist whose end prod-
uct is knowledge that is reported, the consequences of fraud or misrepresen-
tation of that data mislead the rest of the scientific community engaged in
building hypotheses and models based on data in the scientific literature. It
is part of the ethos of the scientist to check the data in the literature. Indeed,
the start point for most investigators is to repeat an experiment that has been
reported. In my experience it is rare for such experiments to work the first
time. There are often details of the procedure that are not reported; batches of
chemicals differ, as do washing up procedures; in biochemistry, the way solu-

tions are brought together and mixed may be a factor in the reactions that
ensue. For the engineer the consequences of misrepresented data can be dis-
astrous—a bridge may fail, a building may collapse, and much time and
resources wasted.
The main types of misconduct in effecting the scientific method are delin-
eated below.
3.1.1.4.2 Fabrication and falsification of data. An individual fabricates

data de novo so as to propound with greater conviction a particular hypothe-
sis. Such data, made up or fabricated, were not derived from any empirical
observations. Others may choose to falsify existing data so that it fits in with
some preconceived notion of what should be happening. This was called
cooking by Charles Babbage (1792–1871) in 1830.11 He reserved the term trim-
ming for situations where the data were slightly altered so that the graphs
produced looked more convincing.
The medical and clinical trial literature is particularly prone to such mis-
information. The pressures applied to doctors to obtain particular kinds of
information from clinical trials are acute. Not only are these doctors paid sig-
nificant amounts for getting people signed up for the trials, but the fees paid
per treatment or measurement are also high. So we find doctors engaged in
clinical trials signing dummy informed consent forms, creating mythical sub-
jects, using people whose disease syndromes are inappropriate for that trial,
and then putting in results that are not observed. This behavior has been sub-
ject to special reviews.12 –13
3.1.1.4.3 Plagiarism. This involves passing off as one’s own the work
or ideas of others. Such events are used to acquire prestige or to win a grant
application. Examples are the theft of authorship of the Bernoulli equation by
the father from the work of his son in 1738; the about 60 papers copied by
Alsabati between 1977 and 1980; and the case of Heidi Weismann, whose
supervisor used part of a review authored by Weismann verbatim without
giving due acknowledgement. This form of theft, or passing off, is increasing
in universities around the globe as the Internet permeates undergraduate
education. Standard answers to commonly set project tasks are available on
the Internet, where the simple copy and paste commands can enable students
to download the material that could satisfy their teachers. Some care has to
be taken, for if all the students of a class download the same Internet
resource, then the teachers will be able to detect the plagiarism.
3.1.1.4.4 Data selection, manipulation, and management. Data from obser-

vations are generated in copious quantities by experimenters. Some of these
data are acquired before the experimenter has learned how to do the experi-
ment in the most reproducible manner. It is clear that data derived from such
“learning” experiments are not required in a final publication, although they
may be presented in a report to a supervisor or granting agency. Similarly,

some data that are generated in a fully established experimental system may
just appear to be so wildly at variance with the general run of the data that
the experimenter may choose not to include them in any report. For example,
data taken from a culture that harbored a suspected contaminant might be
wholly discarded. Or a suspect test tube might have been used in a sensitive
enzyme action, which as a result of an unknown contaminant was completely
inhibited. Or a dirty pipette may carry over a contaminant to the next tube
(less common these days, when a new tip is fixed to the pipette for each addi-
tion). Or more commonly still, an ingredient of the reaction was inadver-
tently missed in one of a series of test tubes, while the next tube in line may
have received a double dose. These are common occurrences, and experi-
menters are familiar with handling the suspicious data that result.
There are other ways of manipulating data that rely more on presentation
techniques than making up new numbers. The choice of a statistical tech-
nique can be all important in the determination of the significance of an
observation, or a graphical presentation can be designed to magnify or
diminish a particular message. In such cases fraud is not an issue, but the
principle of “caveat emptor” might also apply to one’s adoption of data from
the scientific literature. On the other hand, it is often quite important to get a
particular message across to an audience, so techniques that embellish the
data and make them interesting, clear, and unambivalent may be justified.
Data management or control is a major factor in the dealings of scientists.
Sometimes the withholding of data from competing scientists may be
justified on the basis of its preliminary nature and the belief that such data,
without a number of repeat experiments, would be more misleading than
helpful. (The provision of “preliminary” data may also be used as a device to
put a competitor off the scent of an important hypothesis that is under inves-
tigation.) Sometimes a research contract requires the sequestering of data, so
the potential commercial application of some piece of information may con-
sign a piece of research to the part of the library that holds the undisclosable
material. In most libraries material that requires special permission for its
examination is held under such conditions for a limited period of, say, 5 years
only.
But when a scientist knows something that would have materially
helped a fellow scientist, albeit a competitor, it could be considered unethical
for that individual to retain the information and not divulge it. An even
worse situation results when deliberately misleading data are issued. In short
the control and use of data are often the only way an individual scientist may
think it possible to preserve his/her position in a particular subject area. But
in today’s world, with so many young scientists clutching at the straws that
are supporting their careers, it is to be expected that some practices as out-
lined above will occur.
3.1.1.4.5 Conflict of interest. This applies in both science and engineer-

ing and happens when an individual is driven by motives other than those
that have been overtly declared, but which influence the way a project is
effected, and in a manner that was not intended and could be antithetical to
the requirements of the organization that financed the work originally. An
engineer in industry might have a conflict between his/her employers and
the benefit of society. A classical example of this is the Challenger incident. The
company (Morton Thiokol) that made the rubber O-ring seals used between
the stages of the rocket provided incomplete data to the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) with regard to the efficacy of those seals
at low temperatures. The result was a seal failure and the explosion of the
rocket 73 seconds after takeoff, with the loss of the lives of seven crew mem-
bers.14 Diane Vaughan makes it clear in her book that Morton Thiokol was
under some commercial pressure to hold onto its contracts with NASA, and
that any suggestion that the O-ring would not serve under the low tempera-
tures then prevailing at the launch site was, in their minds, a threat to the con-
tinuation of that contract. The conflict between commercial pressures and the
safety of the mission created a situation where they would lose if the mission
was called off; if they let it go and it succeeded, they won; only in the (to
them) improbable event of a failure would they lose. The gamble to go was
taken; they lost.
A second common example of a conflict of interest is when an engineer
in a chemical company is aware that the waste materials from the production
plant are polluting the area outside the plant. This could be happening from
groundwater seepage problems or via incomplete combustion or dispersion
of waste off-gases. The engineer might also be aware that the toxicology tests
on the waste materials show that not only are they poisonous but also have
long-term carcinogenic problems. Reports are produced that are “economical
with the data” and omit details of the oncogenic effects.15 When the engineer
complains internally that damage may be done to the environment outside
the plant, which could include wildlife and people, he or she is put off with
statements like “The concentrations are too low to cause harm,” “We have not
had any reports of injury to the local people,” or “We have been doing this for
decades with no problems, so why stir up a hornet’s nest now?” The present-
day codes require that the interests of the community supersede those of
the profitability of the company and the level of dividends to shareholders.
So it now behooves all concerned to work together for a comprehensive
solution to both the objectives of the company and the benefits of the local
community.
In the paper by Michael McDonald,16 there is a listing of the possible
ways in which a conflict of interest may occur. These include the following
• Self-dealing: letting contracts to your own firm or a family firm when

employed by, for example, the government
• Accepting benefits
• Influence peddling
• Using your employer’s property for private advantage
• Using confidential information
• Outside employment or moonlighting

• Postemployment exploitation of information or standing of previous
employment
In essence there are many ways in which a conflict of interest might

occur. The disclosure of the possibility of such conflicts to those who may
need to know is becoming a modus operandi of the world of work, politics, and
publication.
3.1.1.4.6 Authorship issues. There are two kinds of authorship issues

regarding academic publication. The first is when people put their name to a
paper with which they have not had any prior contact. There are many exam-
ples of this in the ethics literature, and the people who are caught are thor-
oughly discredited. This act is also dealt with under the heading of
plagiarism (see Section 3.1.1.4.3).
A second issue relates to whether it is appropriate for a head of a labora-
tory to put his or her name on a paper as a matter of courtesy or because he
or she was instrumental in providing the environment, money, or facilities in
which the research could be done. This latter issue is often made more diffi-
cult, as the head may attend seminars and discussion meetings in which a
contribution to the project may have been made. At what point does a person
merit authorship? Some hold that each person who is accredited with author-
ship should be able to read the paper in the presence of workers in the same
area and handle the ensuing questioning in a knowledgeable and profes-
sional manner. Others require hands-on contribution to the experimentation;
others a contribution to the writing of the work; others the working out,
understanding, and presentation of the statistics; others a contribution from
a specialist assay laboratory for particular data that can only be obtained by
that individual who knows how to make a particular piece of equipment
work. Again, the ordering of the authors on the paper is crucial to the allot-
ment of credit. The first author gains the most, while it is a more or less gen-
erally recognized convention that the last author may be the head of the
group or department. Some people put the authors in alphabetical order, but
this is not helpful. A more adequate way of handling these ongoing issues is
to list the authors and to indicate, for each of them, just what their contribu-
tion was. This too is fraught. The person who had the idea for the research
may not be the person who actually thought out how that research might be
done in a practical sense. The researcher who understood what the data
meant in the light of the hypotheses under investigation may be different
from both of the previous people. Sometimes it is people at conferences or
seminars who ask pertinent questions who set the research along its most
productive path; it is rare for such individuals to be acknowledged at all.
3.1.1.4.7 Mentoring issues. When supervising students for undergrad-

uate or research degrees, or even when managing the work of a postdoctoral
fellow, it is both improper and unlawful to treat such individuals without
due care and attention to their rights and aspirations. There are laws in most
countries that make both the selection and the management of people such
that discrimination or differential treatment on the basis of color, religion,
nationality, age, sex, sexual preferences, or irrelevant personal disabilities are
prohibited. These rules and regulations apply when judgments are made in
the hiring and firing of people, in their promotion, and in the way they are
treated in general.
In the necessarily close relationship between student and teacher in a
research environment, it is unethical for a teacher to take advantage of such
a situation and, for example, to make sexual advances or improper propos-
als. Such advances may constitute the harassment of employees and are ille-
gal. Cases in which people feel compelled to resign their position as a result
of the way they are treated can sue in civil courts for forced termination of
contract and can expect compensation if this is accepted by the court.
Examples were presented by Louise Fitzgerald and Myra Strober in a sym-
posium organized by Stephannie J. Bird and Catherine J. Didion for the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (Washington, D.C.) in
1994.
While accepting that discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color is
illegal, it is obviously not possible to treat everybody in an identical manner.
Nevertheless, it is clear that to deliberately disadvantage an individual on the
basis of some nonrelevant criterion should not be permitted. The magnitude
of this problem is different in different parts of the world, and there are even
major differences in the different states in the U.S. Examples include the
activities of the National Research Council of Canada in allocating jobs and
contracts.17
Resulting from the intense pressure for research funds, senior
researchers—which include mentors—may actively repress their juniors
whom they see as potential competitors for research funds. This situation
was recently highlighted by Julian Jack, a deputy chairman of a major grant-
dispensing agency (The Wellcome Trust).18
Julian Jack, Deputy Chairman of the Wellcome Trust,

the largest nongovernmental supporter of biomedical
research, said shrinking government support for
research has generated conflict between senior scien-
tists and younger researchers. Many professors are no
longer willing to advise or supervise young scientists
because they see them as rivals for increasingly scarce
financial support. Senior Scientists “tend to exploit
them rather than further their careers,” said Jack.
3.1.1.4.8 Peer review: misconduct/theft. Grants are given and papers

are accepted for publication on the basis of peer reviews of the applicant
or author. When the competition for grants and recognition is fierce, the
temptation to reject a grant application or steal the idea in such an applica-

tion is a powerful temptation. It is also possible for a referee of a publication
to delay issuing the review until that referee has had a chance to either sub-
mit the material him/herself or do extra work to maintain leadership in the
field. All such cases are difficult to prove and generally do not receive a pub-
lic airing; yet most scientists and engineers who are engaged in the grant
application/journal publication process have a war chest of stories to justify
such suspicions.
In reviewing grant applications there are possibilities for serious conflicts
of interest. The reviewers may have close or distant connections with the
applicants; even in the absence of a personal relationship, there could be a
shared or competitive interest in the subject area.19 In the U.K. and in
European review groups, where industrialists are present, there are ever-
present dangers that commercial, competitive considerations are operative
when academic grant applications are reviewed.20 While in the U.S. both the
National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health require
grant holders to undertake specified courses in science and engineering
ethics to attempt to prevent the malpractice engendered in undisclosed con-
flicts of interest, in most other countries the education of future researchers
and industrialists does not require a definable exposure to ethical issues. A
consequence of such conflicts of interest is that during the peer review
process, research—which is likely to yield innovative data, methods, or prod-
ucts and which might result in an increase of the fame of the investigators—
tends to be downgraded. Reasons for the rejection tend to allege that the
research proposed is impracticable, unlikely to succeed, or is at an institution
that has no reputation in the area (this would be expected if the research
really sought to break new ground, as there would not be any institution that
would have a track record in the new area).
3.1.1.4.9 Safety issues. Scientists working at the laboratory bench find

the practices imposed by safety committees, while obligatory, are irksome
and are not seen as preventing probable harm to research workers.
Nevertheless, a significant industry has come into being to provide scientists
and engineers the specialized equipment to dispense fluids in defined vol-
umes that does not involve mouth pipetting. Centrifuges are fitted with inter-
locking lids, and radioactive materials are controlled with great assiduity.
The use of masks, eye protectors, gloves, and containment cabinets are and
were de rigeur before the imposition of the current suite of regulations under
the banner of Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regula-
tions in the U.K.
3.1.1.4.10 Engineering processes can cause ethical concerns. The behavior

of engineers on the shop floor and in the design room may also be the cause
of ethical concerns.
3.1.1.4.11 Whistle-blowing. Drawing the attention of the authorities to

the practices of others that one regards as suspicious or fraudulent is both
worthy and dangerous. All of the parties involved tend to be harmed by the
process: the whistle-blower, the person who is alleged to have committed a
misconduct, and the company or organization in which these activities occur.
These issues and pitfalls are fully discussed in a recent issue of Science and
Engineering Ethics.21 What emerges from this discussion is that there are ways
in which whistle-blowing can be done without damaging the innocent. Great
care has to be taken in the preparation and documentation of the case before
senior authorities are approached. It is also advisable to consult, in confi-
dence, with colleagues and to explore whether or not the matter can be dealt
with at the local level without making major representations to ethics com-
mittees. Institutions, too, need to prepare themselves to handle cases of
reported misconduct. Many such bodies have overcomplicated procedures
that are implemented in the heat of the moment. This results in a breakdown
of confidentiality and an extension of the process needed to deal with the sit-
uation. If the institutes were well prepared with appropriate machinery that
was sufficiently well publicized, then all the parties involved would know
their rights and what was expected of them and their advisors. However, in
the majority of cases that have proceeded and received public notice, all the
parties involved have been damaged.
Some examples of whistle-blowing are in a recent paper by Stephen
Unger.22 His anonymous and unidentifiable examples, some of which are still
in undecided litigation, include most of the following:
• An engineer who noted an inappropriate valve design in a respirator

brought this to the attention of his supervisor, who did nothing. There-
upon he reported it to the regulatory agency, resulting in the appropri-
ate modification and the firing of the engineer who blew the whistle.
• A software expert was asked to use unlicensed software for his com-
pany. When brought to the attention of the management, no action
was taken. When the expert threatened to notify the software com-
pany, he was fired.
• An electrical engineer was asked to wire a renovation project on an
unrealistic budget that did not permit the installation of the obligatory
emergency lighting and fire detection equipment. He adamantly
refused to comply. He was dismissed for being a disruptive influence.
• The engineer who checked the quality of a purchased component was
asked by his management to tell the supplier that the material sup-
plied was of a lower quality than was actually the case. He refused and
was discharged.
• An engineer noted that the test specified for the quality control of a
product was not the one specified in the contract with the customer.
He complained about this, but nothing was done, so he left the com-
pany. Later another engineer noting the same situation did blow the
whistle on the company and advised the customer of the use of a dif-
ferent test (actually an improvement on the one specified). The cus-
tomer sued the company and also the engineer who left the company
3 years previously without blowing the whistle. After much anguish

to the engineer who left, the case against him was dropped. The com-
pany in breach of contract was fined.
• A senior scientist in a biotechnology company was unhappy in the
way his company was overoptimistically interpreting and reporting
interim results of clinical trials. He complained internally and then
externally. He was impelled to leave the company.
When compared to the science process issues discussed above, the

emphasis in engineering changes because the products of engineering
appear in the marketplace. So the issue of whistle-blowing exists in a more
potent and tangible form, because the financial condition of a company and
its personnel may depend on running a particular contract.
3.1.1.4.12 Conflicts of interest in engineering. Companies exist in a

quagmire of conflicting interests. The shareholders who “own” the company
may be said to hold the primary and principal interests. But the customers
too are stakeholders, as are the people who run and operate the companies.
The component suppliers are involved, and the local communities seek to
provide adequate services and accommodations in exchange for the employ-
ment of local people and the payment of local taxes. Large companies have
interests in national policies and economies, which include the way exchange
rates between currencies vary as well as laws that permit or prevent immi-
grants competing with local labor for jobs. In the U.K. the government has
sold licenses for various services (rail transport, water supplies, electricity,
and gas supplies) on conditions that certain performance and safety stan-
dards are met. Unfortunately, making profits for shareholders, providing
continually improved performance, and decreasing deaths and injuries to
members of the public are difficult requirements to reconcile and necessarily
lead to conflicts of interest among the various stakeholders.
These conflicts find their counterparts on the shop floor of the companies.
Engineers who design plants that make chemicals have a variety of concerns
as to how they manage their solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes. What infor-
mation and in what quantity do they provide to the local authorities about
their activities in such areas? Telecommunication company engineers want to
provide their customers with the best possible reception for their mobile
phone, but they come into conflict with nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), which object to the siting of masts on the crowns of local hills. The
use of data by companies can be both obtrusive and helpful to consumers. The
design and building of waste incinerators has to be a compromise between
making as sure as is practicable that particles and dangerous chemicals such
as dioxins do not emerge from the waste stack, while at the same time keep-
ing the capital and operating cost of the incinerator (which involves consid-
erable expenditure on instrumentation and control systems with fail-safe and
backup overrides) at a level that the sponsors can make some profits.
3.1.1.4.13 Durability and safety. How long should a consumer expect a

product to last? If engineers were to give the impression that a product will last
a lifetime knowing that it is likely to fail after 10 years, they would be acting
contrary to accepted ethics. In many instances the failure of a product after a
defined usage is built into its design. While it may be possible to extend that
product life by appropriate maintenance or even the replacement of worn
parts, it is crucial to the consumer to be informed at the time of purchase just
what to expect in this regard and how to care for the product. Regrettably this
is not always the case. On the other hand, some products have been known to
last long after several generations of new models (generally sporting minor
cosmetic or inconsequential differences) have been developed and manufac-
tured. Responsible governments set standards for products and specify tests to
ensure that such standards are met. Engineers are engaged in all such devel-
opments, and their ethicality is put to the test when they have to adjudicate
between setting a test system that their products can meet, while at the same
time making provision to satisfy the consumer that the product purchased has
a reasonable longevity.
Engineers tend to work at larger and faster scales of operation and with
systems that have yet to be fully tested than do less qualified individuals.
Therefore, issues of safety in the workplace are more pressing than at the rela-
tively benign environment of the laboratory bench. Also, issues of product
safety are a matter of concern for all engineers, for it is clear that there will be a
legal liability as well as ethical opprobrium if a product resulting from a design
that is inherently unsafe is delivered to the marketplace. Nevertheless, the
temptation to cut corners is strong. It is fortified by pressures to get into the
market quickly and cheaply. Although safety is a parameter that cannot be
compromised, it is not possible to make a product that is 100% safe. All that can
be required of the engineer, therefore, is to make products whose safety can
meet acceptable and definable standards. It remains for the purchaser to take
products out of circulation when they have met the date or the performance for
which they have a safe specification. It would be difficult and unreasonable to
maintain that the engineer has a responsibility for what happens following the
use of those products after they have been officially “set aside.”
3.1.1.4.14 Honesty and confidentiality. Scientists adopt the view that the
communication of research in a manner in which one skilled in the arts can
reproduce the experiments is a priority, whereas engineers working in indus-
try, commerce, or a political institution may be required to keep much of
what they know and do in confidence. The breaching of such a confidence
can have financial implications on the share price of a company. The divul-
gence of information outside the preordained channels can constitute an act
that may be actionable in the courts in the case of the breach of a civil con-
tract, but could be part of criminal law if the breach damages the govern-
ment. Such lapses put the perpetrator and the company into an ethically
reprehensible light.
The whole of the scientific and engineering edifice is built on trust. This
cannot be achieved in the absence of honesty and full disclosure. Trust needs
to be inculcated between the practitioners themselves, and between the prac-
titioners and the public in general. As the latter are normally not informed
about the technical details of developments in science and engineering, it is
necessary to find ways to communicate the important issues so that they can
be understood by this laity. While this may involve simplifications and analo-
gies, it need not conceal the necessary reality that every development of a
new tool will have its “teething troubles” at the time when its properties have
not yet been fully explored; even after that it will take experience to frame the
rules, regulations, and ethics so that any harmful uses are penalized, while
encouraging the beneficial uses.
Scientists and engineers are making increasingly large numbers of con-
tacts with individuals who provide research grants that enable them to get on
with their researches and establish their positions and promotions in their
host organizations. To achieve this effectively, they have to “sell” themselves
and their wares to the grant providers. During this selling process it is tempt-
ing to emphasize the attractive points, while at the same time eliminating the
downside features of a project. Indeed, one has to present an optimistic view
of the research or development; when dealing with a final product, one
speaks of the virtues that it expresses rather than its vices.
Confidentiality is a requisite of all scientists and engineers engaged in
realizing a society’s wealth. We have already seen how a scientist might go
about data selection, manipulation, and management (cf. Section 3.1.1.4.4). In
engineering this extends to the information that an engineer might have of a
company’s products, plans, and people. While it is important for the com-
pany to require a new engineer to sign a contract that has clauses in it deal-
ing with the handling of confidential information, it may also be necessary
from time to time to require amendments to contracts that define the partic-
ular and new issues that are to be held in confidence. The restricted use of this
information often pertains for 1 or 2 years after the engineer has left the
employ of the company; but any such confidentiality agreement cannot pre-
vent employed engineers from using their abilities and the new generic skills
and understandings that have been acquired during the course of their work.
3.1.1.4.15 Codes of practice. Finally, engineers accept that their actions

and behavior will be governed by the code of practice set out by their quali-
fying institution or professional body (Figure 3.1). These codes can be advi-
sory, missionary, or mandatory. The policing of compliance with such codes
is an issue that requires more attention. While in the medical, legal, and archi-
tectural areas there have been disciplinary actions brought by professional
bodies against individuals based on their noncompliance with codes, in some
areas of engineering and virtually all areas of science, the codes are more
statements of intent than prescriptions backed by disciplinary actions.
Nevertheless, some engineering institutions do have extensive proce-
dures established that define the steps that have to be taken if a member of
THE SOCIETY
SUPPLICANT FOR THE PROFESSIONAL
PROFESSIONAL STATUS
THE INSTITUTION
THEORY
PRACTICE
THE CODE OF CONDUCT
MEMBERSHIP BOARD
REGISTER OF MEMBERS
Figure 3.1 Steps necessary to become a professional.
the institution is thought to be in breach of the code. These procedures

involve the right of appeal and may eventually involve a member of the high
court of the country. This situation pertains in the published Code of Ethics
of the Engineering Institute of Ireland, which has a wise and fulsome mech-
anism for dealing with breaches of its code. It may be necessary to provide
professional institutions with immunity from prosecution for effecting their
duties by applying the codes in a legitimate fashion with appropriate sanc-
tions. This would protect societies from litigation resulting from actions
taken against a member of the society who felt aggrieved at the treatment
received. On the other hand, when an engineer applies to join a professional
institution, one of the conditions of joining is that he or she has to abide by

the provisions of the code of conduct, which might include, after due process,
permanent expulsion from the institution if found to be seriously in breach of
that code. This may not be a matter of consequence in those situations where
membership in a professional institution is not an obligatory condition for
practice. However, in the ancient professions of law, medicine, and the
church, the withdrawal of membership of the professional body is an auto-
matic withdrawal of the right to practice. Under these circumstances adher-
ence to the code of practice is a well-established modus operandi.
The codes of practice operate as an open contract between the profes-
sional and the society. In exchange for the right to practice, the professional
commits to abide by the provisions of the code. Whereas in previous decades,
the first clause of the engineering code might contain the requirement that
the engineer will do his or her utmost for the well-being of his or her practice
or company, in more recent times that stipulation takes the form of looking
after the health, safety, and well-being of the society. A second important pro-
vision is that when a matter of concern is not dealt with at the level of the
immediate supervisor, then the engineer is enjoined to take the matter to
higher levels within the company and to go outside the company only when
every other possibility of dealing with the matter in-house has been
exhausted. Under such a regimen, conflicts of interest and whistle-blowing
have become more prominent in the thinking and working lives of engineers.
Nevertheless, these provisions are in place to reassure the public of the good
intentions of the employed engineer. The community should also be assured
that, in cases of malpractice, there are severe sanctions that can be applied to
those engineers who are engaged in designing and making the tools and
products that will radically affect the way all members of the society live their
lives.
3.1.1.4.16 Engineered products that generate ethical issues. The results of

the activity of engineers are products. Some of these products are tools that
alongside other goods have the property of changing the way we live our
lives. This means that we have changed our ethics to meet the opportunities
afforded by the new merchandise. For the most part such changes to our
ethics go unchallenged. The cordless telephone provides a freedom to speak
to a caller while moving from room to room within our homes; television sets
relay views of the outside world with a profusion that is mesmerizing; com-
puters used as word processors make many of us competent at doing our
own typing; vaccines that protect us against tropical diseases enable us to
visit countries without fear of becoming ill; and the airplane whisks us about
the globe generally without ruffling our composure. These inventions have
changed our lives, yet most of us do not agonize about their ethicality.
But these revolutionary inventions as well as other developments do raise
ethical issues and generate ongoing concerns. I will examine some of these
below.
It will not be my purpose in the following expositions to resolve all the

ethical disputes that may be engendered. Rather, I intend to point out where
many of the ethical issues emerge and some of the relevant considerations
that affect how we have chosen to behave in relation to these situations. In
this I seek to add some new, and perhaps surprising, approaches to the ongo-
ing debates that rage across our societies. Since closure on most of these
issues is not imminent, I hope that readers will be inspired to add their views
to the melee. We can all gain by the recruitment of more of our talents to the
resolution of these vast issues.
3.1.1.4.17 The nuclear industry. In the era just after World War II, we
were told that the destructive power unleashed by the nuclear bombs
released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be harnessed for the public
good. Through controlled nuclear reactions we would have energy to pro-
vide electricity virtually cost-free. Power stations based on nuclear fission
reactions were duly built, and the power from them was added to that avail-
able from the burning of fossil fuels. The safety record of such stations was
high and compared favorably with the conventional electricity-generating
stations (it still does). But there was an unease that related to the use of
nuclear power, which was possibly based on the association of that power
with the destructive power of the new hydrogen bombs that were under test
and whose destructive power was hundreds to thousands of times greater
than the bombs that had been released over Japan. Furthermore, the nuclear
power stations that were providing electricity to the grid were also making
plutonium, 10 kg of which was sufficient to make a nuclear bomb. The super-
powers and their allies used this material to make arsenals of nuclear bombs
deliverable by rocket, airplane, submarine, and cannon. Sufficient destruc-
tive power was amassed that all the cities of the world could be annihilated
many times over. A stalemate was reached of “mutually assured destruction”
(MAD), a situation that pertains to this day. Has this standoff led to a world-
wide freedom from a major conflict for some 55 years? Wars using conven-
tional, nonnuclear weapons abound; some 80
conflagrations of this type
have occurred since the end of World War II; but there has not been a world-
wide war seen twice in the last century. Is this attributable to the nuclear
standoff? It is impossible to answer this with a definitive “yes,” but a reason-
able person may well conclude that it is not unlikely.
There always was a populist movement to “ban the bomb.” The
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was an active part of the politi-
cal scene in the U.K. during the 1960s and 1970s. The political philosophy
implicit in the MAD standoff was frightening. To acquire additional support
for the goals of CND, all facets of nuclear technology became targets of sus-
picion, including power stations. By this time some well-publicized accidents
had occurred, such as the one at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania, in which
a reactor core went critical, its base melted into the earth, and two technicians
died. Other releases of radioactive material were made public, including
some from factories that were established to recover the materials from the
spent fuel rods of nuclear power reactors. The protestors began to look for
damage to the people who lived in close proximity to the power stations
and reprocessing plants. Childhood leukemia was held to be more prevalent
in families living in the vicinity of the plants than elsewhere. Was this a case
of coincidence or causation? Subsequent epidemiological studies tended to
favor the coincidence hypothesis, as it was found that leukemia was more
associated with the leakage of naturally occurring radioactive radon gas,
which prevailed in particular parts of the country, than it was with families
living nearby a nuclear facility. Then, on April 26, 1986 a nuclear reactor
located at Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded. About 30 people died, several
hundred developed cancer, and an area of over 200 km2 was evacuated and
declared off-limits due to its contamination by radioactive material.
At this juncture the ethicality of the nuclear industry came under close
scrutiny. It is clear that the industry provides a welter of diverse tools. Some
are for use in war (defense); others provide power to make and do things,
such as the small reactors that are used to power orbiting satellites or inter-
planetary rocket motors or the powering of both warships and commercial
boats. Yet others may be used in medical applications for diagnosis and cur-
ing cancer. Radioactive chemicals are commonly used as probes in biochem-
ical investigations and have enabled the discovery of many of the basic
metabolic pathways. A further complication devolved from the need to
decommission nuclear reactors and dispose of their highly radioactive spent
fuel elements; the half-life of this radioactivity is estimated to be in the region
of thousands of years. Tens to hundreds of tons (imperial) of this material has
to be dealt with annually. At present the spent fuel is allowed to cool in tanks
of liquid. It is later made into a more stable glasslike compound for long-term
storage. The ideal conditions for this storage are deep underground in a geo-
graphical area that is in the center of a tectonic plate and is therefore geolog-
ically stable. Still, people do not readily approve of this radioactive material
being stored “in their backyard,” however deep and stable the underground
caverns might be. A portion of this type of material is stored at ground
level at desert locations on some Indian reservations in the U.S., but this too
has to be a temporary solution. The safe, long-term storage of waste radio-
active materials remains an urgent research topic; its solution is in process of
elucidation.
In spite of the problems that the nuclear industry throws up, it is one way
of producing electricity economically without using up fossil fuels. It does
not require the unsustainable destruction of these materials and does not
pump the equivalent quantities of carbon dioxide and water vapor into the
atmosphere. The prospects for a minimally polluting fusion reactor that is
capable of generating a net output of energy are encouraging, but commer-
cially viable fusion reactors are some decades away. Each prospect for the use
of a nuclear reaction–based application has to be vetted with regard to its
ethical implications. As with all powerful tools, we have opportunities and
threats. It is inconceivable that we will be able to obtain the advantages if we

are not prepared to incur some costs; we must learn from our efforts that have
caused harm so that we can prevent similar occurrences in the future. We
must also learn from our successes and build tools and products that will
enhance our well-being.
3.1.1.4.18 The chemical industry. Making changes to the molecular

composition of matter is an activity whose origins slip into prehistory. The
partial predigestion of food fed to siblings by parents who regurgitate gut
contents is a way of chemically processing a raw material to make it fitter for
its purpose. While the advent of fire would provide many ways of treating
and preserving food and wooden tools, the then unknown chemical reactions
involved in the transformation of a fresh animal hide to a wearable leather
garment via a tanning process must have been used early in the history of
humans.
In the over 2 million years since the first unambiguously manufactured
stone tools were fashioned, there have been over 20 periods when the earth-
wide average ambient temperatures were many degrees Celsius lower than
those we presently experience. To cope with 10–20°C colder climates, often
lasting tens of thousands of years at a stretch, humans who were not overly
endowed with subcutaneous fat, or particularly furry or feathery, may well
have turned to the skins of dead or killed animals for the protection and the
warmth they needed to enable them to survive. But wet fleshy skins provide
a home for bacteria and insect larvae, which degrade the structure of the skin.
So the scraping of the skin free from adherent meat and flesh became the first
stage in the process of skin preservation. Other steps were to follow. Drying
in the sun helped, but the product was stiff, unyielding, and shrunken.
Rubbing fat into a scraped skin improved flexibility. Subarctic American
Indian cultures, as well as Kalahari Bushman societies, treat skins by clean-
ing them, pegging them out, and then exposing them to urine and/or decom-
posing brain matter. Longer-term processes, sometimes taking many months,
are based on the use of plant juices. “Tannins,” such as extracts of the bark
of oak trees, can also achieve tanning effects. The resulting complex
chemical processes based on the way the proteins of the skin break down and
reassociate with one another enable the skin to be dried, thus preventing
bacterial and insect attack while gaining a pliable suppleness. Once tech-
niques for the preservation of skins had been developed, then the cutting of
those skins into strips for ropes and nets and threads for sewing could only
be a short step away. A skin-clothed human could face conditions of cold that
would be lethal to a naked counterpart. This would lead to more oppor-
tunities for survival, which would lead to further enhancements of the
technology.
While the preparation of skins might have accompanied the advent of the
use of stone tools, the rest of the chemical industry had to wait till the last
60,000 or so years before it began to show its paces. Pigments for painting
emerged early in this period, and the use of heated iron oxides to give differ-
ent colors may have been the beginning of the paint pigment industry. The
coloring of baked clay pottery and clay beads with glazes made from the
powdered paint pigments mixed with sand and lime followed. The need for
a heat source to make the clay pots led to the development of furnaces, which
enabled the use of metal ores for the production of metals. A second conse-
quence of the clay pot technology would be that of making fermented bever-
ages, an event that is at least as old as the development of pictographs of 5500
years ago. As these pots could be closed with an airtight seal, the amount of
oxygen admitted to the fermentation could be limited so that alcohol would
be the primary product of the fermentation. If air were introduced, then the
alcohol would be oxidized to vinegar (acetic or ethanoic acid). This acid was
the strongest acid available for some 4000 years following the discovery of its
production process. The substrates for this process had to possess high con-
centrations of sugar, such as honey (for the production of mead) or dates; the
grapes at that time were not as sweet as they can be now. Once it was
observed that malted (germinated) barley had an increased sugar content
(sweetness), its fermentation became a principal method for the production
of beer.
The use of alcohol for the preservation of high-calorie fluids became a
method to protect communities against a possible loss of a harvest. It has also
found use as a valued solvent in the perfume industry (also ancient and prob-
ably prehistoric), as well as a contemporary general chemical/biochemical
laboratory reagent and reactant. But as with all technologies, there is a down-
side to the use of alcohol as a preservative, in that it is also an intoxicant and
poison. In the U.K. 20% of deaths on the road involve intoxicated drivers; pre-
mature deaths from cirrhosis of the liver could be prevented, as could the bat-
tering of spouses and others in drunken brawls. Yet this ancient preservation
tool prevails. We therefore have a case that the chemical technology industry
(brewing) that produces alcoholic beverages should examine the ethics on
which it bases its activities. Are we doing enough to enhance the advantages
of the tool use (the making of alcohol-containing drinks), while also taking all
the necessary measures to reduce the negative aspects of the use of that same
tool? Steps to be discussed in later chapters can be taken to ameliorate the
situation.
Moving from perfumes and paints, we arrive at the middle of the seven-
teenth century, when after 2500 or so years of effort the primary driving force
for investigating chemical reactions was still derived largely from alchemy.
Its bifurcate goals were (and are) the changing of base metal (lead) into gold
(via the production of the “philosopher’s stone”) and in discovering an elixir
that would provide immortal life. I suspect there was a third goal to discover,
disclose, and control the spirit(s) that existed in all of nature’s manifestations.
Isaac Newton (1643–1727) spent much of his time in alchemical research. He
was mindful that there was something else other than base matter with
which he had to deal:23
There is . . . a more subtle secret and noble way of work-

ing in all vegetation which makes its products distinct
from all others and the immediate seat of these opera-
tions is not the whole bulk of matter, but rather an
exceeding subtle and unimaginably small portion of
matter diffused through the mass which, if it were sep-
arate, there would remain but a dead and inactive
earth.
The use of flames in alchemical work is heavy with a connectivity to the

flames that make up the jinn. However, in this work many of the unit opera-
tions of the chemical industry were invented and developed; these included
distillation, condensation, precipitation, and crystallization.
Reaching back into the history of China in the tenth century, we have
reports of the manufacture and use of an explosive material for fireworks.
Black powder (gunpowder) made from a finely ground mixture of saltpeter
(KNO3), sulfur, and charcoal explodes when ignited, and the explosive power
may be controlled by the relative quantities of the components. Arabs in 1304
were the first to use this material to propel a missile (an arrow). And for the
next 350 or so years guns and black powder wreaked havoc across the known
world. The seventeenth century saw the renewal of the peaceful uses of the
powder. This explosive was not superseded until the discovery of the nitro-
glycerine and nitrocellulose explosives in the mid-nineteenth century.
While I am sure there were people of a pacific temperament who might
have had ethical objections to war, the manufacture and use of gunpowder
did not raise ethical eyebrows during this period. Apart from dangers in the
manufacturing process, there was but one agreed use for the material—the
killing of humans and animals. With this went naval power and the ability to
acquire colonies, trade routes, and world domination. The wealth that was
generated in Britain, as well as other countries such as The Netherlands, was
redeployed to provide the capital that financed the emergence of the
Industrial Revolution, beginning some time in the middle of the eighteenth
century; this in due course led to an overall increase in standards of living
and longevity for almost everybody born in later years.
So was this fruit of the chemical industry a good or bad product? Even
the invention of gunpowder for the production of pleasurable and thrilling
fireworks has to be tempered with the new knowledge that when a firework-
producing factory in The Netherlands town of Enschede exploded on May
13, 2000, some 20 people were killed, 300 were missing, and the whole town
was devastated. Reviewing the use of gunpowder in war, we have to realize
that its primary purpose was to project missiles to kill other people; but on
the other hand it led to an increase in the quality of life for almost all. Does
this mean that we have to accept temporary downside consequences during
the introduction of all powerful tools to be able to reap the rewards and ben-
efits at the end of a painful and distressing interlude? It may be easier with
hindsight to formulate such questions, but at the time this issue could not
have been raised. But, now, when compared to our ancestors of 1000 years
ago, we are in a much-improved position to learn how we might construe our
guidelines for behavior for the future when faced with the imminent emer-
gence of tools of equivalent power.
Apart from explosives, the chemical industry expanded rapidly in the
late nineteenth century, and when Fritz Haber (1868–1934) learned during
the period 1903 to 1913 how to transform the nitrogen of the air into ammo-
nia, the route to industrially produced agricultural fertilizers was opened.
Pesticides followed, and pharmaceuticals were produced in large amounts.
Two ethically sensitive corollaries ensued. The first stemmed from the indus-
trial production of agricultural chemicals. This led to a farming revolution. In
the U.K. at the beginning of the twentieth century, about 70% of the labor
force worked in the farm industry; by the end of that century it had dropped
to less than 3% of the labor force. Industrialized farming meant larger fields,
monoculture, and a runoff of excess chemicals into waterways, changing the
traditional fauna and flora of the countryside. A debate still rages as to
whether this is or is not the way in which people want their foods to be pro-
duced. The second sequel is that, in addition to the therapeutic effects of such
chemicals for a wide range of disease situations, it is now possible to manu-
facture a wide range of psychoactive chemicals to which people can become
addicted or afflicted. The emergence of putative “vaccines” that can
sequester active molecules and thus prevent them from engendering their
effects has led to further controversy; to what extent do we have the right to
deprive people of their methods of achieving the states of mind they seek?24
Polymers for fabrics, glues and adhesives, nonstick coatings, structural
plastics, carpets, wallpapers, carrying electronic imprints, insulators and
conductors, bulletproof vests, and car windows—the list goes on: at every
turn of our modern lives we use or come in contact with polymers made by
the chemical industry. They have changed the way we live. They have
changed how we eat and the nature of the waste we generate. The plants and
factories that make and use these polymers, while providing employment,
may also generate pollutants. Solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes exiting these
factories are, for the most part, treated and monitored so that they may be dis-
posed of safely without damage to humans or wildlife. Recently enhanced
safety standards and inspections have prevented many accidents, but occa-
sionally a tank or a reactor explodes, liberating toxic chemicals. Two
such events are noteworthy: the one at Bhopal, India released 40 tons of the
poisonous methyl isocyanate gas (an intermediate used in pesticide synthe-
sis) at midnight of December 2–3, 1984. Since that date some 10,000–20,000
people have died from poisoning, and several hundred thousand have been
injured.
Dioxins are volatile soluble chemicals that are formed from the combus-
tion of organic materials and fuels. Of some 420 chlorinated phenolic materi-
als (dioxins), about 30 have toxic effects, which include retardation of normal
postnatal development, decreased reproductive functions, cognitive defects,
and decreased immune function; there is also a dose-response relationship

between exposure to dioxins and cancer induction.24 –25 In 1976, some 37,000
people in the town of Seveso, Italy were exposed to dioxins. Measurements
found that people were contaminated with 56 ppm of dioxin—the highest
ever recorded in humans. Knowing the effects of dioxin on children, most of
the pregnant mothers opted to have an abortion. Epidemiological studies on
the incidence of cancer did not indicate a higher level when people examined
in 1997.26
These incidents have increased the awareness of the public to the poten-
tial hazards of the operations of the chemical industry. The industry has
responded by enhancing safety standards, the quality and controllability of
equipment, and the training of technicians and engineers. The disasters
related above are taken as iconic, in that such situations must be prevented.
As expenditure on preventive measures increases, the probability of an acci-
dent decreases. However, it is only when you have infinite expenditure that
you can get down to zero accidents. Operating under less stringent circum-
stances, we have to accept some costs when we enjoy the benefits of the
chemical industry. How and where we draw this balance is a changing pic-
ture that depends on the history of accidents and the level of the desire for
cheap and cheerful products.
3.1.1.4.19 The transportation industry. Hardly a day goes by when

newspaper banner headlines do not proclaim some disaster caused by peo-
ple traveling to near or far destinations. In developed countries since 1945,
more people have been killed by motor vehicle accidents than war. Travel by
air and water is over ten times less destructive of life per passenger mile trav-
eled, while walking, cycling, and motorbiking are ten times more destructive
(Table 3.1).
As wealth has increased in the U.K., more people have more cars. The
roads are becoming congested, and people are unwilling to pay through the
Table 3.1 Fatalities as a function of mode of

transport between 1981 and 1996 in the U.K.
Fatalities per
109 passenger km
Mode of Transport (average 1981–1996)a
Motorcycle 102
Walking 67
Bicycle 50
Car 5.5
Bus 1.8
Rail 0.7
Boat 0.2
Air 0.2
a
Calculated from Social Trends 29, The Stationary
Office, 1999.
taxation system for more and bigger roads. Traffic jams are commonplace
and cause rising tempers, while at the same time polluting the atmosphere
with carbon particles; carbon monoxide and dioxide; and the oxides of nitro-
gen, sulfur, and lead. In many towns the money available for road improve-
ment is allocated on the condition that increased provision is made for
bicyclists and bus-only lanes. Here we can see an immediate ethical issue as
the death rate (deaths/distance traveled) for bicyclists is almost ten times
greater than that for people who travel in cars. Should this form of trans-
portation be encouraged at all? An increase in bus transport would have a
threefold decrease in death rates; should not the money spent on cycling
paths be allocated as a subsidy for busses?
To cap these crude death rate statistics, we are increasing the means
whereby people can work productively in their homes, thus decreasing the
necessity for the daily commute. But while information technology enables
working at home, it also serves to deprive such individuals of the social expe-
riences of the workplace. Another factor that operates to affect car usage is
the perceived need to drive children to and from their schools. This arises
from an unease at the safety of pedestrian routes, which, in part, derives from
the higher number of cars in use (ferrying children to school). As readers will
note, we are witnessing a series of transformations in the way we go about
our lives, dependent on the availability and properties of the new tools of
information technology and personal transportation systems (cars). These
transitions have not yet been consolidated into a more stable modus vivendi.
The emergence of such a mode will be influenced by the stance we take on
the ethical issues raised, such as the following:
• What proportion of our wealth are we prepared to spend on a cleaner

atmosphere?
• Is working at home to be preferred to working at the office?
• To what extent should we go to the goods and services, or have those
goods and services come to us?
• What proportion of our entertainment should we sustain at home?
• Can education of children be effected using informatic means as
opposed to the school systems in place? If this is the case, then how
might children be “socialized” effectively?
• What proportion of our transportation should be public vis-à-vis
private?
Whichever way we go, we will have to proceed with care and consideration
for those whose livelihoods are dependent on the building and servicing of
the components of the transportation systems.
3.1.1.4.20 Biotechnology. The 1973 experiments of Cohen, Chang,

Boyer, and Helling released to the world the tools needed to deliberately and
specifically change the genetic composition of each and every kind of living
organism on this planet.27 It is noteworthy that the first publication of the
deliberate genetic alteration of the somatic cells of some human babies by

genetic engineering techniques was reported by a team of French researchers
in Science on April 28, 2000, and the first experiment that combines the inser-
tion of a new gene into a specific site of the genome of a large and cloned
mammal (a sheep) was announced in June 2000 in Nature.28 –29 It is also wor-
thy of report that the complete sequence of the human genome was pub-
lished on June 26, 2000—a day that is likely to become a focal point in time in
the history of life on Earth. The potential capabilities that will emerge from
the suite of tools used for genetic engineering include the following:
• To predict future disease states

• To eliminate genetically caused diseases
• To predict the potential for exceptional characteristics in particular
humans
• To enhance the human genome
• To determine the paternity of children
• To increase human (and other animal) life spans
• To produce biopharmaceuticals to cure diseases and new vaccines to
prevent infectious and noninfectious diseases (present success in this
area now accounts for about 5% of the sales [some $15 billion] of all
pharmaceuticals and vaccines in the U.S.)
• To produce plants with enhanced nutritional properties, which can
grow in less hospitable environments under conditions where the use
of chemical fertilizers and pesticides can be markedly reduced (cf. bio-
diversity below)
• To identify criminals
• To improve the productivity of processes dependent on the use of bio-
logical agents
• To acquire a knowledge of the human condition and its history to put
into a realistic framework the continuous development of guidelines
for behavior
Yet, from the time when journalists and members of the public realized
that the implications of this pioneering work were actually in the making,
there has been a concerted, vociferous, and, at times, passionate attack on the
field of genetic engineering. Whether the engineered organisms are microbes,
plants, animals, or humans, it seems that there are four common arguments
that are used in various guises. These may be summarized as follows:
1. The unpredictable disaster

2. Unnatural
3. Usurping God’s work
4. Commercial exploitation of life
(i) The disaster scenario. In 1818 Mary Shelley, in her fictional horror
story, invented the creature that was made and deserted by the character
Victor Frankenstein. This beast was a conglomeration of oversized

human parts, which, from a lack of courage and understanding on the
part of its creator, caused a number of deaths before remorse set in,
which led to its demise. The genetic modification of microbes is often
alleged to give rise to a doomsday bug that, through an all-pervasive
plague, causes the end of humanity (a fictional representation of this
was portrayed in M. Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.) Such fears
were generated when the genetically modified ice-minus bacterium
Pseudomonas syringae was sprayed onto a field of strawberries to protect
them against the physical damage caused by ice crystals formed in
sharp frosts. The unforgettable images of the researchers bedecked in
full biological protection suits spraying the genetically modified bac-
terium onto strawberries did conjure up latent fears in the laity—fears
that reached a peak in 1987, at the time of the first full-scale field trials,
but which seem to have fizzled out by the year 2000.
Asteroids, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, tsunamis, and

sunspot cycles all provide unpredictable elements of major consequence to
life on Earth. By contrast, we have, more or less, been able to cope with the
translocation of various biological species to new habitats.30 This includes the
introduction of the rabbit to Australia, the potato to the Eastern world, the
water hyacinth into Papua and Aswan, Africanized killer bees into the
Americas, and the gray squirrel into England. In each of these cases the newly
introduced organism became a pest; our response has been to find another
biological organism that can limit the growth of the pest without itself
becoming a nuisance.
As we have had to contend with the oftentimes disastrous consequences
of translocating an infectious disease-causing virus, we fear the introduc-
tion of new kinds of microbes into our world. But viruses such as measles
and smallpox were well-known agents of death before they were intro-
duced (deliberately?) into naïve populations, such as the American Indians
(in the eighteenth century) or the Aborigines of Australia (in the nine-
teenth century). The deliberate use of such viruses today would not be coun-
tenanced.
But there is a threat that a disease-causing agent may be engineered and
used as part of the armamentarium of a militarily ambitious state. It is widely
believed that before the Soviet Union disaggregated, hundreds or thousands
of tons of smallpox virus and anthrax bacilli were made and stored.31 The use
of such organisms for the spread of disease is not unknown.
Dumping an infected human down the well of an enemy, catapulting a
plague-infected corpse into a fortified town under siege, or soaking blankets
in smallpox pustular juices before providing them to Indians about to jour-
ney to their newly delineated reservations are all methods that have been
used historically to achieve, by spreading a lethal infection, the objectives of
people at war or in a colonization mode.32 Genetic engineering tools may
enable us to make microbes, which are already damaging to humans, more

effective as biological weapons. While this remains as a prospect, readers
should be aware that the disease-causing microbes we presently experience
are finely honed to execute what they do. To improve on nature in this area
may well be beyond the currently deployed resources.
However, it is not just humans that are the targets of biological warfare.
Crop plants, particularly monocultures, are especially susceptible to destruc-
tion by a biological agent. (Genetically engineered fungi toxic to the opium
poppy have been made and may well be spread over such crop plants in
countries that have failed to take action against the production of heroin and
opium.33) While we may regard the production of such biological warfare
agents with disapproval, we cannot guarantee that one of our potential
adversaries or a group of terrorists would be equivalently inhibited from
seeking to gain an advantage through the use of such agents. (This is notwith-
standing the many conventions that seek to limit and control the production
and use of biological and toxic weapons.) So, to achieve our own survival, we
have to be knowledgeable about the organisms and their variants that might
pose a biological hazard.
Additionally, it is incumbent on us to develop the means to combat such
threats and have the mechanisms to deploy the appropriate vaccines and
antidotes on short notice. To what extent does the society as a whole have to
be involved in this move-countermove activity? It is to nobody’s advantage
to cause unnecessary alarm and to disclose to a potential enemy the state of
one’s knowledge and capability. The crucial factor in whatever is done is that
there are representatives of the society who can act as overseers of the work,
and who may appeal to the wider society, if they hold that the resources of
the society are misused or, alternatively, if they consider that insufficient
resources are deployed to counter such threats.
So, the genetic engineering tool may be designed and used deliberately
to cause both benefits and harms; but then this is also the case for gunpow-
der, fire, and rockets. Having recognized this, it is now up to us to find the
ways we maximize the benefits and minimize the harms—material for the
later chapters of this book.
(ii) Naturalness. Naturalness has, for some, become a guiding princi-

ple. Such individuals criticize genetically engineered organisms as
being “unnatural.” But is this the case? I would assert that “nature” has
been doing genetic engineering for as long as living organisms have
existed. Viruses and bacteria act as transportation systems, shuttling
whole genes and suites of genes from one organism to another. (This
process may account for rates of evolution vastly in excess of what could
be achieved by a series of single base mutations, which are held to pro-
vide the variations called for in Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural
selection.)
A new philosophy based on seeking out and applying “nature’s wis-

dom” is emerging. This assumes that what nature does is indicative of what
should be done. But what does nature do? In an expanding universe all the
reactions that occur in nature occur with a net increase in the disorder of the
universe (Second Law of Thermodynamics). Does this mean that we should
proceed with creating as much disorder as we can? Surely not. All living
organisms are discontinuities of order held in this state by the expenditure of
energy, which leads to a net increase of universal disorder. When we die, we
stop spending energy on keeping ourselves together, and therefore we
“return to the disorder of dust.” So, as it is natural for living organisms, at
least, to increase local states of order while creating more dispersed states of
disorder, is this what we should be seeking to do if we are to obey “nature’s
wisdom”? One translation of this is that we should seek to be even more
ordered than we are now: more people in towns and cities, higher concentra-
tions of people per unit surface area of Earth, higher degrees of organization
among the people, more rules, etc. This seems to be happening of its own
accord already. But if we are more ordered, then this will have been achieved
at the cost of creating more disorder; this will put us directly in line with the
Second Law with a vengeance—onward with nature.
A second translation may focus on what all life-forms do. In high school
we learn that the characteristics of living creatures are to
• Reproduce
• Eat (metabolize, i.e., transform materials; acquire sources of energy
and material)
• Grow
• Excrete wastes
• Move
• Respond sensitively to their environment
• Die
The theme that all these activities address is that of the survival of the organ-
ism. Whether this is considered at the stage of the gene (nucleic acid) level or
at the whole organism or even societal levels, the thrust of the “natural”
activity of living beings is to achieve their community, personal, and genetic
survival. Richard Dawkins would have us characterized as survival
machines for the genes that are entrusted to us at our inception.34 It is the self-
ishness of genes that carries life forward. On this definition of what is
“nature’s wisdom,” we may deploy every tool and technique that enables us
to drive down that survival pathway, including the new tools of the genetic
engineer.
The key difference that delineates the genetic engineering done by
humans from genetic engineering done by natural processes is that in the
case of the former there is an attempt at achieving a deliberately designed
end, whereas in the latter case, nature does not have a particular end in view.
However, the insertion of a particular gene into a cell is fraught with uncer-
tainties as to where that gene will become incorporated in the genome and
how such an insertion may or may not affect the expression of the resident
genes. Such position effects are crucial to the timing and efficacy of the
expression of the exogenous gene. So, engineers resort to the selection—from
a number of engineered cells—of the particular cell that gives the result clos-
est to the objectives sought. This increases the rate of production of novel
organisms that have desirable (at least to human propensities) properties. But
it can hardly be called an unnatural process, relying, as it does, on the same
kinds of biochemical components and reactions that have been changing and
evolving for the last 4 billion years.
(iii) Usurping God. Genesis tells us that God created man in His
image, a woman (cloned? from the man), and the animals and plants.
Are we not usurping a function of the Deity by deliberately making
changes to that which was “created in His image”?35 –36 But many men
shave their beards, cut their hair, bodybuild and are circumcised (as a
consideration from when God set up a covenant with Abraham);37
women have used makeup and pared their fingernails since recorded
history. The dogs, cows, horses, camels, and turkeys we have today are
not like their historical progenitors of 10,000 years ago and would not be
able to set up fertile unions with their predecessors. Indeed, if we accept
that humans emerged as a result of the process of natural selection oper-
ating on genetic and phenotypic variation, we have to envisage that
some 4–8 million years ago the ancestors of the modern human would
have looked and acted like a member of the ape/chimpanzee/bonobo
assemblage. Some 750 to 1500 mutations and about 6 million years later,
Homo sapiens sapiens emerged. It would be difficult not to envisage a
similar, if not greater, change taking place over the next 4 or so million
years. The origination of a new species of hominid is not inconceivable,
given our ability to use genetic vectors (based on modified viruses) to
alter the genome of contemporary humans. (The first reports of the suc-
cessful modifications of human genomes by such techniques were
reported during this writing.)
A new suite of ethics is needed to handle such an event. It would be the

most challenging task that has ever been presented to the human species.
Perhaps this is what God intended. There is little doubt that the creation of a
being with the properties of humanness would result in those abilities lead-
ing to the development of the next stage of evolutionary progress.
There are two further reasons that enable us to allay the worry that as we
have decided to do God’s job, we have thereby made ourselves into “gods.”
The first is that based on the deistic view of God. This posits a God who set
up the universe according to certain rules or laws and then stood back to let
the preestablished mechanism unfold all subsequent events—the hands-off
approach. Many of the philosophers of the Enlightenment (beginning in the
mid-eighteenth century) took this stance, as both Newton and Descartes
regarded the universe as a clockwork mechanism set in motion with laws
given by God, a view that is maintained by many scientists to this day (cf. E.
O. Wilson loc. cit.). If we applied this world view to the issue of whether or
not humans were, in providing themselves with the tools that alter the nature
of the life-forms of this planet, usurping the functions of the Deity, then we
would have to conclude that we were merely working through the implica-
tions of the system set up by God when He established the rules and laws by
which all material entities interacted. Far from usurping the rules of God, we
are playing to them, straight down the line.
The second view is that of a theistic God. This is a God that works with
us and through us. We are His agents, and although we may have enough
freedom of will to reject Him and His ways, if we do not, then we become His
willing servants. The Koran sets up the relationship between God and
humans in this way. When we apply this kind of thinking to the issue of
whether by using the tools of the genetic engineer we are usurping the will
of God, we have to conclude that if we are willingly effecting the intentions
of God, then we cannot at the same time be usurping him. If we take the other
view, that we reject the will of God and assert our freedom to act the way we
think is in our best interests, then again we are not doing the job of God,
because we can maintain that God does not have a job. That we choose to use
tools in the way we do could not be otherwise anyway, if we take the view
that all is predetermined by all the previous and present states of the uni-
verse. In which case we can hardly be said to be acting as God when we are
merely the effectors of those states of matter and energy that prevail at a par-
ticular time and place.
(iv) Playing to commercial interests. When all other arguments fail, it

would seem that those who disapprove of genetic engineering in prin-
ciple adopt the argument that the main beneficiary of the existence of
genetically engineered organisms is the company that is producing
them. Is this something whose ethics need examination? Industry’s
functions include the need to survive, which includes providing a work-
place for its employees, profits for the shareholders, and suppliers and
products for its customers. Should this be objectionable, then there
would be dissension against all industrial activity, not just at the subset
that deals with genetically engineered organisms. That industry seeks to
obtain monopoly positions should also not be surprising. The patent
system was established to achieve just that objective. It deliberately pro-
vides limited-period monopolies for inventions in exchange for suffi-
cient information and “reduction to practice” that will enable anybody
“skilled in the art” to replicate the invention for profit when the period
of patent protection has been spent. Any transformation of this system

requires a radical overhaul of the basic political structure of our soci-
eties, a task that is beyond the scope of this book.
There is much room for improvement in the way we presently run

economies based on capitalistic principles. At one time we regarded it as fair
if an individual puts capital at risk of its complete loss in exchange for a risk
of being able to make both capital gains and a profit. But today most capital
is raised through shareholdings, so the people who operate the companies do
not have to put their capital at risk at all. (They may own shares, but this
holding does not generally represent a proportion of their wealth, which, if
lost, would render them destitute.) These leaders of “big business” are paid
in wages, bonuses, shares, benefits, and status symbols. The ratio of the total
worth of these payments to the pay given to the least well-remunerated indi-
vidual in the company may, in some extreme cases, reach 500:1. As the sys-
tem can work well when this ratio is more like 15:1 (as in Japan and Sweden),
there may be generated a sense that the system is less than fair in allowing
the extreme degrees of remuneration without a compensating progressive
taxation.
A second area where large multinational companies invoke criticism is in
their dealings with the developing countries. They are accused of paying
low-wage rates and uneconomic prices for goods and services. The profits
that result are distributed to shareholders or to enhance the wages of the
company’s employees in the developed world sector of the company empire.
They are not fed back for the educational and healthcare developments of the
people who have done the work, making the inexpensive products on which
the company profits are based. A similar scenario pertains in the case where
a multinational company obtains the rights to the mineral or forest wealth of
the developing country, in exchange for a consideration that is paltry by
developed country standards, but which is attractive by developing country
standards. As biotechnology feeds on genetic resources, it is often held that
large companies acquire genetic materials from which they derive the expen-
sive medicines that yield them large profits (sometimes referred to as
“genetic piracy”). Again the sources of this genetic wealth are not adequately
compensated. In recent years some of the large pharmaceutical companies
have made serious contributions to campaigns to vaccinate children in the
developing world with polio, measles, and other vaccines. More—much
more—can and should be done along these lines.
So, when companies like Monsanto or Novartis seek to sell their geneti-
cally engineered plant materials into the developed and undeveloped world,
the opprobrium of being large multinational corporations prevents their life-
saving products from reaching the marketplace. The suspicion engendered
by the way large companies work enables NGOs to make the point that such
organizations, interested more in their profitability, are not concerned for the
safety of their products as foodstuffs or in the environmental damage that
could ensue from their use. This is notwithstanding the extensive trials to
which such materials have been subjected before they get into the fields, and
the obvious rejoinder that it is not in the interests of larger companies to
acquire a reputation for delivering products to the customer that cause dam-
age to individuals, either personally or through a deterioration in the quality
of their environment.
I shall come back to some specific product issues in biotechnology after I
have developed concepts of how we can deal with new tool use appropri-
ately. In the meantime I have listed in this chapter’s Appendix some basic
questions posed by the introduction of new tools in this area and many of the
ethical issues that ensue when biotechnology products are put to use.
3.1.1.4.21 Information technology. We have seen in Section 1.4 how

human speech developed over some 200,000 years, a process that is still
ongoing, as evidenced by the requirements for dictionaries to be updated
regularly to record and clarify the invention and use of new words. Making
enduring records of agreements, tallies, and history (the genealogy of kings
confirmed their succession) is around 5500 years old. Alphabetical symbols
to represent the sounds of words were first used more or less 3500 years ago,
and the symbol system used in this writing reached the apogee of its devel-
opment in the fourteenth century. About 100 years later we had movable
metal type printing. Then, in the final decade of the nineteenth century, there
was an eruption. Out spewed radio communication, magnetic recording of
sound, disk record players, dry plate film for photography, and cinematog-
raphy. The next half-century was no less revolutionary with the emergence of
the microphone, broadcasting, television, and xerography; combinations of
the symbols 0 and 1 were shown to be able to encode any word, number, or
command (Alan Turing [1912–1954] did this in 1937 when he was at
Princeton University); and the invention of holography, the transistor, and
first valve-based computer, which operated with an onboard program (both
in 1948). Fifty years later we have the fax, videotape, the Internet, communi-
cation satellites, mobile phones (telephones were invented in the 1870s), lap-
top and pocket computers, E-mail, and digital television. The culmination of
these developments is that we are now poised on the edge of a revolution
based on the nature of the information we transfer, how we do it, and the way
we modify our lives to take full advantage of these powerful technologies.
The five areas where these technologies will impinge most emphatically
on our day-to-day activities are
1. Entertainment
2. Surveillance
3. Computation
4. Robotics
5. The Internet
Each of them has both benefits and harms to offer.

(i) Entertainment. Given the wide-screen, high-definition digital tele-

vision as the user interface, the feeds to this system can be many and
varied. They would include material from “masted” signals, optical
cable, and satellite dishes. Images from digital cameras, videotapes, dig-
ital videodiscs, and the linkage via the computer or keyboard (soon to
be replaced by vocal interactions) to the Internet will add additional
dimensions to what we can do with our televisions.
At any one time thousands of channels of television will provide enter-

tainment: news, sports, films, soap operas, game shows, history, discovery,
talk shows, erotica, and so on. There will not be a need to visit the sports
arena, cinema, opera house, theater, or art gallery. All such material will be
available at the touch of some buttons or the exercise of a vocal command.
Will this change us into proverbial “couch potatoes,” or, as Orson Wells res-
onatingly said at the Oxford Union about 1960, “like so many featureless
blobs splattered on the front of their television screens”? By contrast to this
isolationist tendency, when especially important sporting events are sched-
uled, it is not unusual for people to congregate at their favorite grill room or
lounge so they can drink and verbally cavort in response to events on the
screen. But then going to the opera and the local philharmonic is as much
about seeing and being seen (by others) as it has to do with listening to music
that seems to be similarly conveyed via digital recordings. Those of ultra-
orthodox persuasion would assert that the only way to hear music is in hall
XX with orchestra YY and conductor ZZ. But such live events have to contend
with audience noise and restlessness, off-nights for the players and conduc-
tor, “unreal” acoustics (what you hear depends on where you are sitting), and
inordinate expense to afford the “best” performers—all for a onetime perfor-
mance.
Being entertained is physically passive although mentally exciting. It can
be educative, but to what effect or purpose? When meeting others in public,
there is an opportunity for conversation or for putting forward ideas for test-
ing. Yet there is regret that a more active approach to entertainment could be
on the wane. Sewing, playing an instrument, gardening, cooking, and look-
ing after pets or robots may either be foregone or enhanced by what is
brought into the home via the television. Perhaps we may look for an anal-
ogy in the situation with regard to the supply of food. Prior to the agricultural
age, which began some 13,000 years ago, most people would eat as much as
they could. Food was in short supply, and body reserves needed to be built
up against a time of hardship and famine. (It is not without reason that in
some societies, at least, the plumpest person is the most desirable; by con-
trast, making the almost “sticklike,” anorexic, or fat-free individuals into
icons says clearly that we do not have to think about future famines.)
Nowadays, in many Western countries there is food in abundance, yet for the
most part people do not gorge themselves on it with a view to a future
famine. Restraint is exercised, and although there is a tendency toward
increasing levels of obesity, moves to encourage more sparing use of food
resources are ongoing. This becomes increasingly germane as we learn that

decreasing the amount of carbohydrate we take in increases our longevity.38
As our television set becomes an all-inclusive interface between ourselves
and the wider society, the needs we once satisfied by going to the places
where we were entertained or provisioned disappear. To remain healthy we
have to turn to a regimen of disciplined exercises; in many cases our lifestyle
is now more influenced by our relationship to the television screen than our
interactions with real people.
Computer games are big business. Children may spend some 20% of
their income on such purchases. Whether it is piloting an aircraft, driving a
racing car, guiding a fighting tank, or sailing a boat, the virtual computer-
generated images can be created to convince the player that they are in
charge of their conveyance and can achieve the ends that the game-maker has
provided. There is a more sinister side to this though. Many such games are
bloody, brutal, and vicious. The bodies of the dead and dying litter the screen.
Guns, munitions, and more devious modes of killing abound. Here and now,
on a screen near you, are the manifestations of the spirit world in virtual real-
ity. Demons, dragons, witches, ogres, and such strut, maim, and kill with
abandon. Secrets, magic, keys, and spells are the lingua franca of this nether-
world. Does the entanglement with such entertainments affect the minds of
(mainly) children who engage in them? When do computer games become
inducements to malpractice? When do they become pornographic? When do
they become obscene? To balance these downside effects, children learn a
canniness, an ability to adapt and think on their feet; they increase the speed
of their reactions and achieve concentration spans that are the envy of the
music teacher of ten-year-olds.
American submariners did not acquire an Enigma code machine from a
damaged German U-boat in World War II (U-571); English soldiers did not
burn down a church into which they had previously confined the women
and children of a local village in the American War for Independence of
1776 to 1783 (The Patriot); American prisoners did not escape from Colditz
prison (they were not incarcerated there) (Colditz). The three films I have
referred to were made recently, and they clearly misrepresent historically
well-characterized events that happened. The ethical issue of producing and
distributing such material under the guise of entertainment does not militate
against the need to present versions of history as near to the truth as we can
get them. To do otherwise is to sow the seeds of disrespect for the power of
the media to move minds and influence people. While accepting the right to
free speech of those who want to present a distorted view of our history, those
who are aware of a more accurate version of past events are obliged to criti-
cize those who take liberties with the stories that represent our past. For not
to take such actions would consign generations of our youth to a hodgepodge
of concepts that would prevent them from obtaining a secure foothold on
those concepts of reality that would serve them and their societies to better
effect.
While the provision of “wall-to-wall,” enticing, and virtually cost-free

entertainment is likely to become a reality in the near future, the dangers of
turning all members of the society into slaves to the television screen is likely
to be tempered by the added stimuli to engage in one’s own hobbies and
recreations as well as to work with one’s fellow citizens in building more effi-
cient and wholesome communities.
(ii) Surveillance. No, we do not have a “Ministry of Truth,” nor, I

believe, have we actually developed video screens that “see” us and
provide the two-way interface between the state and its people (pace
George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair, 1903–1950], 1984). But we do have
closed-circuit televisions (CCTVs), whose cameras have become so tiny
that they are hardly detectable because they are secreted into back-
ground furnishings. These cameras relay to the monitoring personnel
the activities of people as they proceed with their day-to-day affairs. In
my hometown of Guildford, U.K. (population about 60,000), there are
some 80 such cameras in the town streets, and nearly all the centrally
placed shops have their own cameras and recorders. My university, sit-
uated in the heart of Guildford, the University of Surrey with about 4000
undergraduates, has 50 cameras on the campus. Several thousand indi-
viduals have been apprehended and successfully charged with crimes
as a result of evidence derived from the CCTV cameras. Overall, crime
in the surveyed areas has decreased. While these may seem legitimate
and reasonable uses of such surveillance procedures, there is a sense
that personal or civil liberties have been reduced. But have they? Is it
really a matter of concern whether somebody watching a remote TV
screen observes myself and my wife walking hand in hand down
Guildford High Street? There are, after all, dozens of people on the High
Street who can already see what we are up to; do a few more eyes mat-
ter? So what if that person can make a recording of the event for poster-
ity? Any other person present can make such a recording, especially
when armed with a video recorder (now pocket-sized and with a 100x
zoom). Judging by the rate at which new CCTV cameras are being
installed, it would seem that most people are prepared to accede to the
additional surveillance if the benefit of a reduction in the amount of
crime is achieved. It is also ironic that publicly available TV programs
based on the use of such cameras in people’s homes are exceedingly
popular, both with those observed and the voyeurs.
The “bugging” of telephones and radio communications between indi-

viduals is as old as the technology and probably occurred in the days when
signals were sent in Morse code, as devised in 1840 by Samuel Morse
(1791–1872). The ability to listen in surreptitiously to other people’s conver-
sations has increased in recent years through the invention of highly sensitive
microphones that can pick up changes in the shape of glass windows in
a room caused by conversations occurring in that room. Again, with the

miniaturization of the equipment, the placement of microphones and radio
relay gadgets is facilitated. The control of this activity is defined by laws that
permit its use if it is clear that there is some likely wrongdoing in process.
With the advent of the e-mail communication system and the Internet, it
is possible for those who provide the computers that service these systems to
access all such messages. Encryption of messages using 30- or 40-digit fac-
tors, to keep them private and unintelligible to prying authorities, may be
held to be illegal if legislation requires that the government must have access
to the encryption codes to prevent communications that lead to, or are
involved in, illegal activities. As with credit cards (vide infra), it is possible to
provide a history of what sites on the Internet have been accessed, by whom
and when. According to the Bill of Rights (Section 2.4) people have a right to
privacy in their communications, but only when such communications do
not disrupt the proper workings of the state. The use of such media for pur-
poses that are proscribed by law would also have to be forbidden; and if not
actually prevented, it should be possible to arrest the perpetrators and charge
them with crimes.
Each and every time we use a credit card, it is possible to trace back and
find out where, when, and for what purpose it was used. Some smart mar-
keting people are putting together the purchasing profiles of individuals
based on such data so that targeted marketing may be achieved more effec-
tively. In the novels of John Grisham,39 credit card transactions were used to
locate individuals who were seeking to evade their pursuers. The construc-
tion of a personal profile based on these data could be coupled to equiva-
lently characterizing data that could be compiled from medical records,
traffic offenses, insurance claims, employment records, tax payments, travel
tickets, subscriptions, and charity contributions. Many countries have a data
protection act that prevents the abuse of data stored electronically. Although
the laws seek to protect people by making sure that the data are used
lawfully,
• Data should be processed fairly and lawfully.

• It should be collected for a specific and legitimate use only.
• It should not be processed beyond its intended purpose.
• It should not be in excessive detail.
• It should be available for inspection.
• It should be held securely.
However, the policing of what the data collectors actually do with their data
is difficult.
So, while we have not yet arrived at the situation in which the state
knows everything about everybody, it is obvious that with larger and more
powerful computers, the data that can be entered into them from surveillance
systems are unbounded. The legitimate use of genuine data should not pose
a problem for the law-abiding citizen; but the illegitimate use of valid data
and the seemingly legitimate use of tainted data are facets of this issue that
are far from being resolved. Recognizing this as a prospective problem, it
behooves us to provide the necessary resources, structures, and operating
protocols to protect the citizen. We have to be able to demonstrate to all com-
munity members that these preventive measures are in place and working
effectively. The community member with a clear conscience must be allowed
to be at ease with the knowledge that it is highly unlikely that data will be
fabricated to implicate him or her in wrongdoing.
(iii) Computation. Imagine doing 1,000,000,000,000 arithmetic opera-

tions in 1 s. Computers do not imagine this; they do it. Apart from their
ability to crunch masses of data for surveillance functions, they can at
more modest levels provide the operating systems and memory to run
bench-top, laptop, and pocket machines. For comparative purposes it
may interest readers to know that in 1979 an IBM 1800 machine with an
8-kb core memory cost the company I worked for at that time some
$250,000 a year to rent. In 2000 I can buy a computer with 32 Mb of mem-
ory and 20 Gb of storage capacity for about $1500. Whereas at one time
academics handed in stacks of badly written material to secretaries/
typists to translate into legible text, today academics have their own
computers and do this transliteration for themselves (or type their
material into the computer directly). All aspects of number crunching,
as occurs in banks and insurance companies, are now processed by
computer. More data are available; fewer people are employed repeti-
tively manipulating figures; there is improved immediacy and feed-
back of information; there is greater use and control of data; and
people are becoming increasingly proficient in the use of a wide suite
of programs that enable them to handle databases, spreadsheets, graphs,
word processing, drawing and drafting, generating artworks, and
statistics. Computers can simulate the real world and provide
insights into how molecules work (which is supposed to be the new
way into making drugs), as well as virtual reality simulation for the
training of people who are seeking to pilot a helicopter or manage
a nuclear power station.
The emphasis in publicly funded educational systems to make children

computer-literate is forward-looking. But active post-55-year-old retirees are
also taking on the challenge of finding out just what the computer can do for
them. Thus the computer industry and those who provide the software (pro-
grams), hardware (the machines, scanner, and printers), and firmware (the
equipment moved by computers) have grown by leaps and bounds in the last
couple of decades. Microsoft and Apple are not just company names; they
represent the interface to the silicon world that millions of people worldwide
have to experience as they engage in their daily tasks.
The implications of the involvement of computers in the workplace are
extensive. They have changed job specifications so that those who did not
retrain find that their labors are now not required. Employers find that they
can “downsize” and increase their productivity commensurately. Each tech-
nological revolution has caused a shift in the pattern of work. The mass-
production techniques of the Industrial Revolution of the mid-1800s
displaced workers engaged in the cottage spinning and weaving industry;
the introduction of tractors, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and farm equip-
ment meant that agricultural production could increase, while the labor force
decreased by a factor of 20 or more during the course of the last century; at
present we are in the throes of another upheaval in the way people make their
contributions to society. From a manufacturing industry that in the 1950s
required some 50% of the labor force, we have now reduced the labor com-
ponent of manufacturing so that 25% of the workforce can produce more
than was produced previously. The service industries have expanded com-
mensurately, and so have the computer and information technology indus-
tries. The destabilization of the workforce and its redeployment has been a
feature of the last several decades. Yet all the while, standards of living have
increased.
An announcement in the Guardian newspaper of August 18, 2000 (p. 5)
places computers at the center of the criminal justice system of the U.K. For
the first time computers would be used in the determination of the treatment
that convicted criminals would receive. Instead of the sentence meeting the
crime, the new system would treat the criminal as a person. This would take
in the individual’s home life, reading ability, associates, attitudes, and other
lifestyle circumstances. This switch in sentencing based on the criminal
rather than the crime engenders a raft of ethical issues. Human rights and the
dignity of individuals are involved. However, using survival ethics, it is clear
that society will benefit considerably if criminals can be treated as people,
with their sentences tailored so that the probability of reoffending is decreased.
Through the establishment of the computer world, we have also made
the real world a smaller place. People all over the globe are now connected.
It may well be that in the 12 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD), some 30% of their people have access
to the Internet, while in the remaining 200 or so countries the exposure to the
Internet is less than 5%.40 But the computed word does get around, and when
this is combined with television and films, it is no longer possible to exist in
ignorance of how other people live. This gives rise to the ethical question of
the fairness of the distribution of wealth, a concern that is going to become
more acute as we move into a way of living that juxtaposes contrasting living
standards with increasing frequency and poignancy. One effect of the com-
puter revolution has been the increasing involvement of the people of the
Indian subcontinent in both the generation and handling of massive com-
mercial databases as well as the processing and editing of copy for the pub-
lishing houses of developed countries.
Working from home denotes a form of paradisiacal existence. In Arabic
literature the word paradise is used to denote an enclosed garden or park
associated with a dwelling. The computer makes this paradise possible

because it enables a first-rate connectivity with one’s place of work via the
E-mail system. It contains the programs and software packages that provide
access to the Internet and makes practical the operations of individuals
whose daily grind consists of generating, manipulating, transforming and
creating words, sentences, equations, sums, statistics, and creating visual
depictions of the emanating messages.
However, it isolates the person working at home from workplace col-
leagues and decreases the in-corridor/coffee room/washroom casual
unscheduled meetings that provide the essential lubrication to make things
happen (much more difficult in committee when others are present and
“face” must be maintained). However, when the computer is augmented
with the telephone (and the videophone to come!), some of this ability to win
friends and influence people returns to the work at home person. Obvious
benefits of working at home will also include the decrease in traveling time,
the lack of a need to park one’s vehicle, a decreased burden on public trans-
port, and a decrease on the overhead required to provide physical accommo-
dation and associated benefits at a communal workplace. One also has an
ability to choose the time when one ventures forth to effect the necessary
chores needed to maintain effective operating conditions.
The “but” is that many people do not work well under such conditions.
A substantial proportion of people need personal interactions with others to
affirm their contribution to the system, and those with less personal confi-
dence benefit from the support and guidance of those they choose to lead
them. The daily interactions of people at the workplace is the stuff of soap
operas both on and off the television. Other issues devolve around features
such as the appropriateness of the home as a workplace. Does one need to be
able to get away from boisterous children (when not catered for elsewhere),
a demanding partner (if there), and the inevitable maintenance jobs and
home-improvement schemes? The further development of this mode of
working may take the form of setting up community work areas where each
person has a space set aside his or her computer, telephone, videophone, and
work-related objects, while common facilities include washrooms, coffee
shops, and rest areas. Such a setup provides the freedom from interruption
and eliminates the damaging, dangerous, and costly commute. Here we may
envisage a technical fix for what could be an ethical problem. Nevertheless,
it is clear that what work we do and where and how we do it is in flux at this
time. The computer is responsible for that, and we need to establish the
appropriate guidelines for behavior that will enable us to make our contri-
bution to society, yet preserve our sanity while so engaged.
(iv) Robotics. Automata have been with us for at least 300 years.
Clockwork, spring-driven devices that moved and cavorted to some
mysterious force were a source of attraction and attention at fairs and
the salons of the rich. Put a computer into the loop and the robot of
today may not only do programmed tasks but also make decisions for
itself about what course of action to take. The well-rehearsed general-
izations about robots are that they do repetitive jobs 24 hours a day
(except downtime for maintenance and reprogramming), do not get
involved in labor disputes or the décor of the cafeteria, do not require
holidays or benefits programs with pension rights (although their
depreciation may be analogized to this), call out a heavy investment of
up-front capital, and require a more educated human labor force for
their implementation.
Robots and other automatic tools enable the mass production of goods
with high throughputs and efficiencies. They are sparing of labor, and many
people who once found a job in the manufacturing industry have had to
adapt themselves to productive activities in the service sector. Mobile robots
that can mow a lawn, clean a carpet, guide people around an exhibit, or
deliver internal mail or (in the hospital) pills, are in use. These are able to take
in signals from their surroundings and respond to them according to a pro-
gram that defines their functionality. As such units are developed, they can
be made to be more adaptable to their circumstances. Part of this additional
capability is dependent on the development of optical recognition of relevant
features that can be “seen” by the robot. The interpretation of this input infor-
mation is then processed by the robot’s onboard computer, resulting in the
dispatch of instructions to the effector parts of the machine. This latter
description of a robotic being can be analogized to a description of a human
as he or she goes about doing a job.
This brings the subject of robotics into the realm of ethics. An automaton
that is programmed to effect a task defers to the human programmer the eth-
icality of its actions. But as computing power per unit volume and per unit
energy increases, it becomes practical for the onboard programs to be struc-
tured so that the robot not only “perceives” the relevant features of its envi-
ronment but also makes “decisions” as to what to do next in the light of those
perceptions. So what is a decision-making robot like? Although a human may
provide a dominant directive to the robot at time 0, the robot, “being
aware” of its energy resources and the tasks it has to do, will make decisions
based on the “if-then” statements in its program, so that it can achieve its
objectives with, say, the least expenditure of energy, or, alternatively, com-
plete one set of tasks before starting a different set of jobs (where the most
energy-efficient solution is to do both jobs as is called for by the distribution
of raw materials for the different jobs). Under this latter regimen the human
programmer is responsible for the way the system is set up, although that
individual will not know ahead of time just what course of action the robot
will take; only the outcome will have been predetermined.
But what if the human programmer provides the robot with the oppor-
tunity to learn from its experiences and then to change its program according
to what it has learned? What directives would be given to the robot to
determine in what way it should change its program? Could it experiment

with its “master” directive to determine what is the “best” directive for the
robot or for the human programmers? How may such a “best” directive be
defined? Clearly such a “best” directive is an ethic or a master guideline for
the activities of the robot. It is a debatable point as to whether the master prin-
ciple for the guidance of humans, vis that of survival (at some level of indi-
vidual or group), would apply directly to robots. Robots that do not have a
survival motive will have a higher chance of meeting their demise, while
those that finesse the survival stakes more effectively will continue in exis-
tence. How might a robot learn survival skills? It would certainly have to be
able to observe the behavior of other robots and to learn from them what con-
stitutes a behavior pattern that would promote its survival. It would then
need to implement that pattern or a modification of it. Could it pass on a suc-
cessful program to new robots? Why not? After all, communication and pro-
gram file transfers between computers is not unusual. Indeed, what I have
just set out is neither more nor less than the way living organisms have main-
tained their survivability over the last 4 billion years. The question that this
now poses is, “Are human beings acting ethically in producing and main-
taining a robotic system with the ability to operate by what seems to be an
identical ethical system to humans?”
We will spend much time and effort in seeking an answer to the above
question. For what it is worth, I would argue that we should put ourselves in
the position of making this into a real question by inventing robots that could
act in this way and then responding to the consequences of that act. It would
be likely that a synergism could be generated whereby both entities—the
human and the robotic—would benefit and have their mutual survivability
enhanced. However, as the fictional literature has warned us, it may not be as
simple as that, and the robots may acquire propensities that are antithetical
to the well-being of humans. Bearing this in mind, we may proceed by using
some of the techniques that deal with the ethical approach to situations,
which can lead to great gains, but which may also generate problems. This
issue I will examine further in subsequent chapters.
(v) The Internet. What was set up in 1969 as a way for American uni-
versities’ departments engaged in defense research to communicate
with defense research establishments via computers connected to each
other by telephone wires has become a major player in the information
transfer exercise. It was also noticed that a system with a series of redun-
dant nodes (nodes that are not actually necessary, but contain all the
information nevertheless) was also more difficult to destroy in the event
of a nuclear war. However, not only is it difficult to destroy, but it is also
difficult to block. So if the state wishes to prevent person X from getting
a certain class of information from source Y, it has to block or filter every
node in the system, for if there was yet one node that was unblocked,
access to the information could be made through it. As the number of
nodes increases and the system goes international, it becomes even less
amenable to such control. At present the Chinese would wish to control
the information that their people can receive and have to resort to laws
that forbid access to, and the use of, particular types of data by the user.
This structure also makes tracing the origins of the information difficult.
The music industry is damaged by the piracy of music in digital form
that can be relayed over, and downloaded from, the Internet in an
uncontrollable manner. Computer programs and game software can be
similarly distributed. As the Internet is unbounded (any number of
computers can serve as nodes if they can be connected to the system via
a modem and telephone line), its definition as a system is necessarily
lacking, and so is its control. This may be viewed as a benefit by those
who are wary of having the state control what information can and can-
not be promulgated; from the state’s point of reference it is a hole
through which people may be damagingly (to them? to the state?)
informed.
Nobody would deny the right of the state to control what might be said
in public. In recent history the use of printed tracts to deny the prevailing reli-
gion, monarch, or government was regarded as a traitorous act and could
result in a death penalty. Crying “fire” in a crowded theater in the absence of
a fire is illegal. Inciting racial, ethnic, religious, or sectarian violence is illegal
in most countries that value civil rights. The right to portray visual images or
express verbal descriptions that may pervert or subvert young minds to ille-
gal behavior may in some circumstances be forbidden. Advertising drugs
that are addictive (this includes alcohol in some countries and excludes ciga-
rettes, also in particular countries) is not allowed. While the depiction of such
images as photographs, videos, or films may not be allowed, their represen-
tation as cartoons is often permitted. The Internet does not take much notice
of such niceties. It seems to operate on an “anything goes” policy. Nazi pro-
paganda, holocaust denial tracts, methods to make bombs in your kitchen,
and other salacious material may be acquired from the Internet. But the free-
dom to publish and be damned is yet reserved for each and every writer.
A brief summary of some of the different types of information available
on the Internet would not be amiss. Such information would include the
following:
Information Electronic goods Travel ticket booking
Laws Medicines Theater tickets
Official documents DIY kit News
People information Clothes Newsletters
Things to buy Stocks and shares Weather
Books Things to sell Sports data
Cars Auctions E-mail; E-video
Houses Maps Jokes
Computers Hotel booking Group chat boards
Software Holiday booking Group games
Society information Healthcare Encyclopedias

Conference information information Dictionaries
Advertisements Genealogical Catalogs
Personal views/essays information Academic papers
Links to other pages Erotica Facilitating
Encryption Computer programs companies
techniques Etc.
But there is a host of areas through which less than salubrious information is
imparted. These would include the following:
Viruses (digital) Racial hatred Incorrect data

Pornography DIY bombs Drug information
Inducements to buy Sexual abuse of minors Vaccine
False descriptions Unwanted insertions misinformation
Propaganda False accusations Etc.
Abuse of lonely Defamatory comments
hearts Antisocial inducements
Nazi war memorabilia
The use of the Internet for the theft of property has become a major con-
cern to the music industry. The tools (technology) to make a digital recording
of a piece of music are readily available. Once this has been impressed on a
compact disc (CD), the digital information can be recovered by a computer.
In this latter form it can be put on the Internet. Anybody who is allowed
access to the site of that imprint can download the exact copy of what was
originally transferred from the “bought” CD into his or her own computer,
from which it can either be played or imprinted on another CD. The music
industry believes that it loses some $2.5 billion as a result of such transfers.
The theft of software is more complicated, as programmers are able to
structure their programs so that the loading codes can be turned off where
the sources of the program are other than those approved of by the copyright
holder.
Many of the texts resident in the Library of Congress or the British
Library have been processed so that they may be accessed via the Internet.
Most systems in the year 2000 are not provided with the fast optical cables
necessary to download megabytes of data within a reasonable time frame. (It
normally takes some 5–15 minutes to download a megabyte via the wire.) It
is expected that in the decades ahead this tiresome inconvenience will have
been obviated. It is estimated that several million pages of text are put on the
Internet each day.
For each individual to have access to what is amounting to the sum total
of publicly available human recorded knowledge is awesome. Consider that
until 1440 (the year of Gutenberg’s invention of movable metal type), knowl-
edge could be held as a monopoly by the people who possessed the hand-
copied books. A few thousand such people in the church or court would have
access to this knowledge. Some 560 years later billions of people have avail-
able to them the knowledge of the millions of authors who have striven to
make a progressive and advantageous contribution to the human intellectual
heritage.
Perhaps the Internet is the gossamer web that can link all people, what-
ever their background and persuasion, into a common body with an accepted
purpose of making progress. If this opportunity is not grasped, then the
darker side uses of the Internet may dominate, and the incitements to sedi-
tion and disorder may hold sway. So the Internet becomes another tool that,
as a product of the engineer, needs to be dealt with in a way that protects
humanity from its abuses. But as it is so diffuse, and its boundaries are ill-
defined, it may prove to be the greatest challenge yet to the new generation
of inventors who are seeking challenges worthy of their skills and intellects.
3.1.1.4.22 The environment. Things were going well; the Anopheles

mosquito was on the ropes; malaria in the developing world was on the
wane, and people were thinking about its eradication. Then, in 1962, Rachel
Carson (1907–1964) published her book called Silent Spring. DDT
(dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was fingered as Public Enemy Number
One. No matter that this chemical was, almost single-handedly, the chief
cause of the impending demise of the mosquito. No matter that this chemical
killed the insect ticks that transmitted the Rickettsial bacterium responsible
for typhus (the major killer of military personnel in most wars before the
advent of DDT as an insecticide in 1939). DDT’s main problem was that it
unfortunately led to the death of those animals that devoured the killed
insects, so that people were finding DDT residues in fish, birds, and—to a
lesser extent—in humans. A second problem was that DDT-resistant varieties
of some insects were emerging, although this concern could be dealt with by
the use of new insecticides. But the die was already cast, and the opprobrium
of insecticide use was so firmly established that the mosquito is now on the
rise, and malaria has returned to the developing world with a vengeance,
killing around 1 million children every year. It also, recently and famously,
killed the renowned Oxford biologist William Hamilton (1936–2000).
Most towns are built on the banks of rivers. Upstream, drinking water is
taken; downstream, waste and sewage are discharged. If the towns are far
enough apart and the year-round flow of water is sufficient, the people of the
downstream towns are not affected by the upstream discharges. Given a high
dilution effect and an oxygenation effect by a sufficiently rapid flow of water,
the organic materials in the stream are degraded to carbon dioxide and water
by bacteria and other oxygen-dependent microbes. The biological oxygen
demand (BOD) is reduced to levels where the water becomes potable once
more. If well water is used, then the discharge of waste into cesspits becomes
a method that allows the local microbes to deal with the wastes before that
water seeps back into the underground streams that feed the wells. Water
stored in reservoirs and cisterns can be used as an upstream supply for drink-
ing or irrigation. Biological wastes can be returned to the land as agricultural
fertilizer. When the discharge of sewage is greater than can be biologically

processed at all times of the year in local rivers, the infection of people with
waterborne disease-causing agents becomes likely. In 1856 John Snow
(1813–1858) was celebrated for his demonstration that the people who were
infected with cholera in a certain area of London all drew water from a par-
ticular pump; when this pump was closed down, the increase in cases
stopped. Since then water-treatment engineers design and build sewage
treatment plants that can return soil water back into the drinking water sup-
ply. This account describes how we dealt with a subset of environmental
issues until we reached the era of chemical fertilizers and pesticides begin-
ning sometime after 1910.
Until recent times we imagined that the ground we stood on and the
other things that it bore were there to be used in our struggle to survive. It
was a resource cupboard that could be raided at will. During the course of
the last couple of million years, there were some 20 or so periods when the
Earth was much colder than at present, and so much of the water of the
oceans was held up in ice sheets, making accessible an extra 15% of land.
Human populations (habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and sapi-
ens) probably did not exceed a few million in number at the best of times. At
other times they struggled to survive. Whatever they did with their stone
tools and with fire hardly scratched the surface of the environment they
occupied. That was until about 4600 years ago. From that time on we had,
and still have, the pyramids and the sphinx. They made an indelible impres-
sion on a small corner of the inhabited landmass. Since that time humans
have made major changes to the planet’s surface and to the animals and
plants that inhabit it.
Consider the marble mountain outside the town of Ferrara, Italy, half of
which has been removed to make decorative marble facings for local and dis-
tant buildings. Or take The Netherlands, where walls have kept the sea at bay
to increase the land area available for farming and residences. Quarries, slag
heaps, reservoirs, harbors, airports, canals, roads, railways, buildings, towns,
farms, and landscaping for aesthetic reasons (gardening) have shaped and
dramatically changed the nature of our physical environment. When massive
boats were made of wood, England’s natural flora, the oak tree, was deci-
mated to provide timbers for warships. The shortage of wood was so acute
that a hundred years later, during World War I, the need to make acetone by
a process that did not involve the heating of masses of wood chips led to the
development of the anaerobic fermentation of any soluble carbohydrate by
the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum. The invention of this process
at Manchester University between 1904 and 1913 by Chaim Weizmann
(1874–1952) led, indirectly, to the foundation of the State of Israel.
Since we have learned how to breed different kinds of plants, the most
successful varieties are grown as monocultures over vast swathes of land;
agricultural processes, now dependent on machines, require large fields of
single homogeneous crop plants for the most efficient operations. So fields
are amalgamated, hedges are removed, and the local hedge-inhabiting wildlife
is radically decreased. As supplies of land in climatically desirable areas

become scarce, people move up the hillsides, terracing them as they go. Peru
and Southeast Asia owe much of their production to these human-derived
modifications to the environment. Irrigation too makes its demands for a
restructured field system with canals, embankments, and careful control of
levels. The drainage of the swamps of Florida and the Hula Valley have led
to productive land being reclaimed.
People have shifted animals and plants around the Earth with abandon.
In many cases the animals and plants could not tolerate either the new cli-
matic conditions or the changed soil system. A few thrived and humans ben-
efited greatly, but a small coterie became pests—either as weeds, infectious
agents, or vermin. Many of the problematic transfers have been documented
(cf. Mark Williamson).41 Among these transfers can be included the introduc-
tion of
• The rabbit into Australia

• The gray squirrel into England
• African killer bees into America
• The water hyacinth into Aswan
• Goats into the Middle East, the Galapagos, and Guadelope Island
• The brown tree snake into Guam
• An American snail (Euglandinia) into the Pacific Islands
• Cats and rats in New Zealand and Ascension Island
• Ants into Hawaii
• Dutch Elm disease into England
We have adapted to these transfers and the extinctions they have caused.
New species emerge, and the ecosystem adjusts.
The Rachel Carson event of 1962 has sensitized us to the chemical nature
of our environment. Oil pollution caused by the occasional shipwreck of
oceangoing tankers causes great concern, especially when this occurs close to
a shore rich in wildlife. The discharge of gases from chemical plants has been
severely restricted, and the lead that improved the power of gasoline has
been removed. Buildings and sections of restaurants have become smoke-
free zones, where the puffing of cigarettes is proscribed. Beaches around
Europe have had to comply with high environmental standards before they
could be graded as acceptable. But the three issues that have inflamed the
environmentally sensitive community are those of global warming allegedly
caused (in part) by an increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide,
purported decreases in biodiversity caused by human activity, and the set of
rules that have been enunciated to deal with present and future environ-
mental changes. I shall examine these three issues next.
(i) Global warming. Having spent much of my youth in the soft gray
Manchester drizzle, one part of me responds to the signs of global
warming with the cry, “Rejoice!” But I have to recognize that the conse-
quences of unbridled warming can be catastrophic. Sea level rises alone

will make millions of people homeless and migratory, while extreme
weather systems will increase the number of tornadoes, hurricanes, and
flooding of river basins. So, as a chemical engineer, I ask:
• How does the temperature at the surface of the Earth vary as a func-
tion of time?
(a) Over the last 1000 years
(b) As far back as we can obtain indicative data
• What are the causes of such variation?
(a) The effects of geo- and astrophysical changes
(b) The effects of human activities
• What would be an ideal Earth surface temperature?
• How might the temperature at the surface of the Earth be controlled at
its ideal temperature?
In my role as a professor of science and engineering ethics and as a biol-

ogist, I ask the following questions:
How should we proceed in the face of data that on balance indicates that
the temperature at the surface of Earth is increasing?
• Do nothing?
• Try to prevent further rises?
• Try to instigate cooling measures?
I shall try to answer some of these questions, but the reader must bear in
mind that the data on which the contention of global warming is based are
not without their variances, and these variances are large in relation to the
size of the effect under discussion.
Let’s start with the cycles. Over the last 2 million years there have been
something like 20 periods of glaciation in which the temperature of the Earth
has cycled with an amplitude of roughly 11°C. This gives a rough cycle time
of 100,000 years; this also is the period of the change in the eccentricity (the
amount the orbit of Earth deviates from a perfect circular path) of Earth’s
orbit around the sun. A second series of cycles can also be detected with a
period of 41,000 years. This correlates to the period of the change in obliquity
of Earth’s axis (where this is defined as the angle between the plane of Earth’s
orbit around the sun and the plane of its equator). There is a third cycle—pre-
cessional cycle of 26,000 years that is caused by the rotation of the axis of rota-
tion of Earth, which is held at an angle of 23 1/2° to the plane of Earth’s orbit
around the sun.42 A quotation from the “Vostok” papers will put the situation
in clear focus.
It is remarkable that without any radiometric dates or

orbital tuning the Vostok temperature record shows
concentrations of variance near the obliquity and
precession frequency bands, which strongly supports

the climatic role of orbital forcing.43
That it is orbital geometry that has forced the climate changes observed in the
ice-core record is further emphasized by another quotation taken from a
paper written by the same group some 12 years later.
The CO2 decrease lags the temperature decrease by

several kyr and may be either steep (as at the end of
interglacials 5.5 and 7.5) or more regular (at the end of
interglacials 9.3 and 11.3) [where a kyr is 1000 years].
Now, as carbon dioxide (CO2) has been targeted as the main cause of
the “greenhouse effect,” a phenomenon that causes our planet to retain
more of the sun’s radiant heat than would otherwise have been the case, it is
important to determine if the present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are
responsible for the experienced temperature increases. Or, do the observed
heightened temperatures result from the Earth’s orbital behavior with or
without some other phenomenon that is just as, if not more, potent in pre-
venting heat loss from Earth?
In this regard the papers referred to above note that at the coldest periods
of the ice ages, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was about
180 10 parts per million by volume (ppmv). By contrast, in the hottest
periods of the interglacials, the CO2 concentration increased to about 280
15 ppmv. Our present atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about 370 ppmv.45
If a difference of 280 – 180 ppmv CO2 relates to a temperature change of about
11°C, then it would be expected that, by this time, if CO2 were the only forcing
determinator of temperature, then our temperature should be at least
(11 [370 – 280]/100 ) 9.9°C hotter than the temperature at the hottest point
of the last interglacial. It is not; so we must look elsewhere to more fully
understand what is happening to us with regard to climate change.
My house in Guildford, England is perched on the side of a hilly spur
made from chalk or calcium carbonate (CaCO3 or CaO [calcium oxide or
lime]
CO2). The Coccolithophores whose mineral skeletons make up this
chalk mass were once free-living microscopic algae growing in the sea. The
Downs in Southern and Eastern England are some 500 m high in relation to
their rocky base under some 250 m of sea, and they stretch for hundreds of
kilometers. There is probably 20,000 times more CO2 locked up in chalk than
in all the other CO2 sinks (including the trees and plants) added together.46
When these figures are taken in conjunction with the data that some 79% of
the surface of Earth is covered by water and that the habitable and farmable
land only represents some 17% of its total surface, it is clear that what hap-
pens to the microscopic algae in the deep oceans and shallow seas is crucial
to the CO2 economy, and in particular the amount of CO2 that appears in the
atmosphere.
Water is also a greenhouse gas. It seems that water droplets in high

clouds are more effective in keeping heat from leaving Earth’s atmosphere
than are low clouds, which permit Earth to cool.47 The effect of this on the
temperature of Earth is not generally determined, because the calculations of
the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and its distribution are para-
meters that are difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, this does not mean that it
is not important or even considerably more important than the CO2 concen-
tration in the atmosphere.48
When burning fossil fuels, humans, engaged in the processes of living, of
augmenting their capabilities, and in just keeping warm, increase the amount
of CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere. They also add heat directly into the
air, which would result in an increased capacity for that air to hold water vapor,
thus adding to whatever greenhouse effect is attributable to the water vapor
and CO2 combination. (Methane, CH4, is also a greenhouse gas, but is thought
to be active to about one fifth the level of the CO2.) This may be taken to mean
that whereas the CO2 in itself may not be a particularly important determinant
of the human-derived portion of the heating effect, its atmospheric concentration
may serve as a marker for that effect, and measurements of its concentration in the
atmosphere may yet be interpretable in some useful manner.
Thus, there are three routes by which the burning of fossil fuels may lead
to a warmer planet. What, if anything, should we do about it?
In 1989 just over 50% of the world’s energy consumption was effected by
about 17% of the world’s population. At some point of time in the next cou-
ple of hundred or so years, the supply of fossil fuel for burning will be used
up. The continued consumption of a nonrenewable resource is not sustain-
able. Although the Internet and developments in information technology will
decrease the need to move humans about, either to do their business or to col-
lect the things they need in order to live in comfort and be well entertained,
the need for energy expenditure will be reduced.
This energy may come from renewable and sustainable sources such as
wind power, tidal flows, dammed rivers, and solar cells that convert sunlight
into either heat or electricity; and we may derive energy from our organic
waste materials. We will also need to be able to store energy more efficiently;
the electrolysis of water to hydrogen and oxygen is one route to this end, but
the difficulty of handling these highly reactive and explosive gases will tax
our understandings and capabilities to the limit. When it becomes possible to
handle the waste materials generated by nuclear power reactors, we may wit-
ness a renaissance in this industry. The prospects for generating power in the
same way that the sun does (by thermonuclear fusion) is still a long way off,
but the day when this becomes feasible will approach much faster if more
funds are put into the necessary research and development. Indeed, all the
methods of generating energy sustainably will require a considerable input
of public monies to effect the necessary research and development so that
systems whose feasibility can be demonstrated may prove attractive for the
commercial sector to purchase for further development and sale.
But the energy problem need not be approached from the supply side
only; the demand side also needs attention. This latter facet is made up of two
components. The first is based on the number of individuals who wish to do
things, and the second is controlled by what they want to do.
Energy-demanding travel will clearly expand as the globe contracts, as
people find their families and business partners encompassing the planet.
The manufacturing industry will also be energy-rich and people-poor, so
demand for energy might be expected to increase here also. People will want
to live in warm homes, so energy will have to be expended either on more
elaborate designs or on the production of insulating materials. We can rea-
sonably expect the use of hot water for cleaning and personal hygiene to
expand.
So if the energy demand by individuals and businesses is unlikely to be
rolled back significantly, and with increases in the standards of living in less
developed countries moving ahead rapidly, then the alternative approach, of
population control, needs to be brought to the table. The logic is simple. If the
number of people in the developed world halved from 1 billion to 0.5 billion,
then the energy demand of the world would drop by 25%. To achieve the
same effect in the developing world, its population of some 5 billion would
have to become 2.5 billion. The other parameter that is worthy of note is that
the population of the world has doubled in the last 35 years, and most of that
increase has been in the developing world. There is little doubt that educa-
tion (especially of young women) is particularly effective in decreasing birth
rates, and the provision of free contraceptive devices (condoms) is also
proficient. A further advantage of the latter technology is that it prevents
the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as the HIV, which causes
AIDS.
To change the ethical systems that are important in determining the
reproductive behavior of individuals is not a trivial matter. Until the last 50
years, the survival ethic was construed to increase the number of people in
the population. Those nation-states who feel that their survival is still under
threat by the warlike attitudes of the surrounding people still hold to this
reproductive ethic. Now that the destructive power of weapons (particularly
those with nuclear warheads) is so great, it is not necessary to put millions of
citizens into the army to defend one’s territory. Rockets, automated planes,
undetectable submarines, and the like decrease the need for military person-
nel, but increase the need for energy-dependent technologies. Similarly the
mechanization of agriculture has decreased the need for people to “work the
land” by a factor of over 20-fold. Improved sanitation and water supplies
coupled with vaccines protective against life-threatening diseases and
antibiotics have reduced death rates in young people in the developing
world to less than 1/100 the rates of the nineteenth century. Now we may be
experiencing the downside consequence of what was once an upside effect:
that of building a large and growing population. How we meet this challenge
in the future will be up to population-control engineers, whose primary
armamentarium will be ethical guidelines.
I hope the reader will forgive this rather extensive digression into what
is both a controversial topic as well as a subject where the basic parameters
are neither universally agreed nor defined. In coming to the ethical aspects of
the work of an engineer, it is clearly crucial to come to some determination as
to the nature of the phenomenon under examination. In the above discussion
of global warming, I have taken the view that, yes, there has been an increase
in average temperatures since the beginning of the last century, but I doubt
that the main cause of that increase can be put at the door of the atmospheric
concentration of CO2. Rather, the consumption of energy has plurifaceted
effects, the combination of which, coupled with changes in the astronomical
parameters that control Earth’s relationship to the sun, have led us to our pre-
sent position. Our response to these changes has to include changes in the
way we behave. I have suggested that we look at one of the most powerful
parameters that affects energy consumption—the reproductive rate of
humans. There are lots of other things we can do, such as introduce a carbon
tax, encourage public transport, and use waste heat more efficiently; but to
my mind they resemble Nero playing his violin while half of Rome burned to
the ground in 64 B.C.E.
(ii) Biodiversity. When for the first time in the history of this planet
every branch of humanity came together to win a famous victory, it was
against the smallpox virus. The eradication of this microbe was attested
to by a document signed by the members of the WHO Global
Commission on December 9, 1979. The same international ethos has
been evoked for the ongoing campaign for the eradication of the polio
virus, where we are now down to 7000 cases of the disease in only 30 of
the 200 or so countries of this globe. And the virus that causes measles
is due for a similar treatment thereafter. I bring these cases to the
reader’s attention to illustrate that in promoting biodiversity, we do not
necessarily have to accede to the principles of either resisting all changes
or even the principle of not eradicating a species nor type of organism,
especially when that organism can cause us much disease, damage, and
distress.
The work of Gregor Mendel (1782–1884), published in 1866 and recog-

nized 34 years later, showed that “genes” were hypothetical entities that
existed within organisms that controlled the nature of some of the pheno-
typic characteristics of that organism. In 1953 Francis Crick and James
Watson published their famous paper in Nature proposing a physical three-
dimensional structure for the chemical material of genes that could be used
to model the way they replicate and transmit their messages to the next gen-
eration of message carriers. The message, normally thousands of bases long,
was conveyed as a specific sequence of the four bases, adenine, guanine,
thymidine, and cytosine (A, G, T, C).49 The aim in preserving biodiversity is
to maintain in existence genes with unique sequences of the four bases; this
is called our genetic heritage. These gene base sequences may be resident in
the chromosomes of organisms, but we have to recognize that as we now

have an ability to synthesize genes “to order,” we can at any time increase the
amount of unique genetic material available, hence increasing the “amount”
of biodiversity. We would also have the ability to re-create the genome of an
extinct species, if we had acquired a set of that organism’s genes before its
demise.
From a human perspective the extinction of one or more species may
not be a wholly harmful event. It was fortuitous for humans that the once-
dominant dinosaur species could not survive the conditions of the aftermath
of the collision of an asteroid with Earth some 65 million years ago. The
marauding, reptilian, and carnivorous dinosaurs, who had held sway for
about 150 million years, kept the emerging mammals in check. Under these
circumstances the mammals really did not stand a chance of becoming a
dominant species. Once the dinosaurs were gone, the mammals flourished,
the result of which was the emergence of the primates and, eventually, us.
Such extinctions are a feature of the history of life on Earth. While life has
a roughly 4-billion-year history, there are data that indicate that during the
last 600 million years, many major extinction events have occurred.50 Around
560 million years ago it was estimated that some 66% 2% of all the existing
species became extinct. A similar extinction occurred about 250 million years
ago, when about 42 10% of the then-extant species died out. At the
Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary of 65 million years ago, 13 2% of species
became extinct. During this 600-million-year period there have also been
three occasions when some 20% of the species died, and some six occasions
when the loss was about 13% of the species. In the data of Benton,51 there are
three sets of extinctions that are about 40–45 million years apart, and five sets
that are 60–75 million years apart. Could it be that we are looking at the
effects of the obliquity and precessional cycles of Earth’s movements in
space, as these are about 40 million years and 26 million years respectively?
The 60–75-million-year cycle could be made up of a combination of 40
26-
million-year cycles. Other forcing factors could be volcanic eruptions or
asteroid collisions with Earth.
When discussing extinctions, we must not forget the extinction event that
probably took place some 1.5 billion years ago, when the atmosphere was
transformed from a mildly reducing form to one in which oxygen gas at con-
centrations of up to 21% by volume gave the atmosphere an oxidizing aspect.
Those single-celled prokaryotic microbes that did not possess the enzyme
superoxidedismutase (SOD) (an enzyme that could detoxify the chemically
reactive species that gaseous oxygen can produce) would be wiped out.
Apart from the blue-green algae (the prokaryotic Myxophaeceae) whose
photosynthetic activities were making all the oxygen in the atmosphere, few
of the other prokaryotes would have been able to survive. Those that
did were probably clustered near deep-sea volcanic vents, where the
concentration of the reducing agent hydrogen sulfide provided an oxygen-
free environment.
In the book Extinction52 Paul and Anne Ehrlich refer to the extinctions
cause by humans in prehistory and history. They note the demise of the
wooly rhinoceros, saber-toothed tiger, aurochs, and members of the mam-
moth class in the prehistoric period, while we have evidence in history that
humans eradicated:
• The flightless moa in New Zealand and Tasmania

• The flightless dodo from Mauritius
• The dwarf hippopotamus from Madagascar
• The passenger pigeon from North America
• Several species of whales (maybe)
• The bison from North America (the last 500 provided breeding stock
for a renaissance)
Accounts of predator-prey relationships abound in the zoology texts. The

predatory organisms engaged in this type of relationship do not have inhibi-
tions in seeking to eat the prey. But as their eating efficacy increases with
increases in the size of their population, the concentration of prey organisms
decreases. This proceeds until the prey is almost wiped out. As we get into
this region, the predator has to either change food sources or die of starva-
tion. When the latter occurs, the prey, no longer limited by an overabundance
of predators, flourishes (probably sustained by the decomposing bodies of
their erstwhile predators!). Now it is the turn of the remaining predators to
feast on the burgeoning prey. So a cyclical oscillation of predator and prey is
established. It may well have been the case that humans as predators
exhausted their prey and were therefore diminished in number until the prey
were able to revive. We may be observing such a cycling with regard to fish-
ing in the offshore waters in the North Sea with regard to herring and cod
fish. Similar situations pertained to the blue fin, seis, and sperm whales, leav-
ing the minke whale behind for conservation.
The reader will note that most of the above discussion of extinction and
its obverse biodiversity has been confined to the vertebrates (Chordates). Yet
these organisms account for only 0.4% of all the known and suspected species
of organisms.53 Perhaps this is the reason we regard them as especially pre-
cious. Of the 5–50 million species it is held that insects account for some 60%
of the total. However, only a small proportion of the viruses and bacteria are
known, so estimates of their species numbers (however that might be defined,
and there are problems with such definitions) have to be viewed with caution.
Plants that constitute about 2% of the projected number of species54
not only provide food, but are the basis for over 80% of the therapeutic mate-
rials (drugs) used by pharmacists to treat disease. They also provide the
chemicals of the “drug culture,” which are psychotropic, hallucinatory,
mind-extending, and toxic. Within the last 100 years, plant-breeding experi-
ments have resulted in the production of varieties of plants that are high
yielding and that may resist attack by commonly occurring plant pathogens
of a fungal or viral nature. Most plants are yet sensitive to insect invasion.
Nevertheless, we have seen the success of these varieties through the vast
swathes of countryside that have been allocated for their growth. It is well
understood that these genetically homogeneous cultivations—monocul-
tures—are susceptible to attack by predators against which they do not have
protection. Nonetheless, we are reminded of the potato famine in Ireland of
1845 to 1846 caused by the fungus Phytophthora infestans, when this organism
wiped out most of the crop for two consecutive years, leaving the Irish desti-
tute for food. Many perished; but some immigrated to America.
So we need to have available a multiplicity of varieties of plants of any
one food type. Here the requirement for biodiversity would not be ques-
tioned. We also have to be mindful that the primary source of our therapeu-
tic drugs is plant life. Therefore, the variety of plant life cannot be allowed to
decrease, for fear that we might miss the drug that cures cancer or heart dis-
ease, for example. (That the new biotechnology tools are providing routes to
cancer and heart disease cures that do not depend on plants is not of conse-
quence to those committed to retaining biodiversity.) Also, we enjoy the vari-
ety of plant and animal life found in parks and arboretums, because it
provokes our curiosity as to the nature of the envelope of possibilities for liv-
ing forms and provides an intellectual challenge for our abilities to identify,
catalog, and understand the workings of nature. So while our zoos and zoo-
logical gardens acquire, nurture, and breed a wide variety of vertebrate and
invertebrate species for our examination and delight, the recent efflorescence
of garden centers has encouraged the producers of plant varieties to redou-
ble their efforts to provide us with, for example, new types of tulips (The
Netherlands) and roses (England).
Corn, rice, and wheat provide some 60% of the human food supply. As
the population of humans continues to increase, the demand for a commen-
surate increase in food will be heard. So either a higher portion of arable land
is dedicated to food production or more food is produced per unit area
already under cultivation. If the former option was actioned, then more
“wild” land would be subjected to the routines of the farm. This will decrease
the biodiversity of the areas that are brought into regular cultivation. An
increase in the amount of food produced per unit area is a way ahead, and as
a principal method to achieve such yield increases, as well as other potential
benefits, the genetic engineering of food-yielding crops has to be considered
as one of the ways ahead.
The genetic modification of food and commodity plants (soya, oilseed
rape, cotton, potato, tomato, etc.) provides for an increase in the amount of
biodiversity. This increase is compounded when it is multiplied by the types
of genes that can be transfected to yield plants that have beneficial potential,
but whose negative side effects, if any, have yet to be observed. These intro-
duced genes may provide new plants that
• Have herbicide resistance

• Have insect pest resistance
• Have fungal resistance

• Have viral resistance
• Have bacterial resistance
• Have the ability to grow in adverse soils (high salt content, extreme
acidities, low nitrogen, low available phosphorus)
• Produce orally deliverable vaccines (e.g., canine parvovirus produced
in cow pea plants)
• Supply vitamin A to people with a deficiency of that vitamin (e.g.,
rice)
• Are engineered to be rich in iron
• Are nutritionally improved proteins for humans, with raised propor-
tions of the amino acids lysine, tryptophan, methionine, and tyrosine
• Ripen under controllable conditions
• Have defined organoleptic benefits (texture; taste; feel; consistency;
ability to blend with water, oil, fiber)
• Have high oil content, e.g., of the much-valued cacao plant oil (cocoa
oil) that goes into chocolate
• Are free from toxins, as in the rape seed or the gossypol in cottonseed
• Have the capability to produce parts of human or animal antibody
molecules
• Have the capability to produce human serum albumin for large-scale
use in blood extenders
• Are fruit and vegetable products that can be held in storage
In raw number terms the aggregate of different types of genetically engi-

neered plants may exceed those plant species that are lost through the trans-
formation of wild areas of land to cultivated areas. But as we learn to read the
genomes of organisms with staggeringly increased speeds, we will be able to
accumulate a database of virtually all genes in almost all plants so that even
if we do lose a plant species in the field, it may yet be possible to recover it
through the application of genetic tools that are being honed for just such
purposes.
The ethical problems facing the engineer when engaging with the biodi-
versity issue are therefore many and varied. Apart from resistance to the
introduction of genetically modified plants for reasons that have more to
do with the fear of using new biotechnology tools (see Section 3.1.1.4.20),
there are yet concerns as to what biodiversity means and how it might
be measured. What kinds of biodiversity are harmful? What are beneficial?
The dangers of monoculture are apparent; how might we construe agricul-
tural practice so that the equivalent of the Irish famine does not occur again?
Many such questions were raised in a special section of the journal Nature
of May 11, 2000.55 There is also resistance to the implementation of the
new technologies as a result of many national and international bodies
promoting of the “precautionary principle,” which I will examine in the next
section.
(iii) The “Precautionary Principle” (PP). I am in favor of the principle

of prevention. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” For
25 years I designed, built, operated, and improved systems that would
enhance the productivity of virus vaccines. Part of my time was spent
seeking to redress the disparity in expenditure between prophylactic
and therapeutic research and development in health-care systems,
which, at present, is roughly in the proportion of 1:10, respectively. Also,
I founded and edit a journal called Vaccine. So readers may be surprised
to find that I am not wholly in agreement with the way PP has either
been formulated or used with regard to the way we deal with our envi-
ronment in respect to the dumping of wastes or the effects that our activ-
ities have on biodiversity.
The earliest formulation of the principle is accorded to the Germans of

the 1930s and was incorporated into German law in 1976 as the Vorsorgeprizip
(Foresight Principle). Their view is that
Environmental policy is not fully accomplished by

warding off imminent hazards and the elimination of
damage which has occurred. Precautionary environ-
mental policy requires furthermore that natural
resources are protected and demands on them are
made with care.56
Later versions of the PP faced up to the issue of pollution, particularly in

relation to the dumping of wastes at sea. This is embodied in the Declaration
of the Third International Conference on the Protection of the North Sea
(Preamble) (1990):
[The participants] will continue to apply the precau-

tionary principle, that is to take action to avoid poten-
tially damaging impacts of substances that are
persistent, toxic, and liable to bioaccumulate even
where there is no scientific evidence to prove a causal
link between emissions and effects. [my emphasis]
Here we meet the idea that we do not need scientific evidence to support
statements that seek to link the dumping of wastes with the creation of harm
or damage. This means that anybody can assert that material X will persist in
a toxic state and bioaccumulate irrespective of the nature of X. The applica-
tion of this principle could prevent the voiding of any wastes into the envi-
ronment. This in turn could lead to the producer of material X to withdraw
from that part of the business or to deal with the material X on-site at greatly
increased cost; a bill that would be passed to the consumer.
Readers will also note the misconcept that science can prove something
about what is going on in nature. The application of the scientific method that
gives us our science changes the reliability we place on our hypotheses or

guesses as to the nature of the world outside ourselves.
Another concept that is linked into these principles is that of serious or
irreversible damage, as in the Bergen Declaration (Paragraph 7) (1990):
In order to achieve sustainable development, policies

must be based on the precautionary principle. Environ-
mental measures must anticipate, prevent and attack
the causes of environmental degradation. Where there
are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full
scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for
postponing measures to prevent environmental degra-
dation. [my emphasis]
Again we are dealing with words that discount science as a source of

information, in that lack of full scientific certainty should not hold back
action. Science cannot provide certainty, let alone full certainty; we must
learn to make do with levels of certainty that are less than 100%. With regard
to the use of the word irreversible, all changes in nature are irreversible. It is
not possible to re-create in exact detail a situation that has receded into the
past. The issue that has to be resolved is, “What constitutes damage and
when is this serious, while bearing in mind that change, in and of itself, is not
a synonym for damage?”
One definition of damage is given in a Convention for the Protection of
the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (Article 3[2]) (1992), which
talks about
hazards to human health, harm living resources and

marine ecosystems, damage amenities or interfere with
other legitimate uses of the sea. . . .
And when this is applied to the Northeast Atlantic (Article 2[2][a]) (1992),
we have
preventative measures are to be taken when there are

reasonable grounds for concern that substances or energy
introduced, directly or indirectly, into the marine envi-
ronment. . . . (my emphasis)
I have quoted from these statements at length to show that there are both
hard and soft versions of the principle.
The hard version of the principle would not permit any dumping what-
soever; any change to the environment would be regarded as harmful—even
if there were no evidence that the change was damaging. This would stran-
gulate all development. But as the hard version is uncompromising, it cannot
avoid the application of the hard version of the principle to the use of the hard
version of the principle. Here the question would be, “If developments can-
not proceed because they might be harmful, can we proceed with a principle
(a sort of development) that asserts that, it, as a development, might in and
of itself be harmful and therefore it (i.e., the principle itself) cannot be
progressed?”
Notwithstanding the neutralization of the hard version of the principle
by its reflexive application as above, it is yet often used with regard to the
potential loss of biodiversity that could result from a change in the environ-
ment. There is little doubt that any change to the environment would cause a
change in biodiversity. For example, the transformation of agriculture in the
U.K. has modified the bird population in the countryside. A report in The
Times57 provides a table that shows that 15 species of birds have increased
their numbers by over 13%, while 9 species of birds have decreased by over
13%. However, the setting aside of areas of “great natural beauty” provides
havens for the unhampered development of wildlife, both as prey and as
predators. It is unrealistic to expect that all the countryside should be just this
way. What species will survive and what will become extinct in that location
are difficult to predict; but those who love nature in the raw should find
enough to satisfy their interests and curiosity as the life-forms of the set-aside
areas go through their evolutionary hoops.
By contrast, the soft versions would allow some pollution of the envi-
ronment, provided the polluter pays. Discharging the runoff from sewage
works a few miles off the coast could be considered an act of pollution, but if
the organic content of this discharge were transformed into microbes that set
off a food chain leading to healthy fish, then the original pollution could be
justified. All sorts of things are dumped at sea; examples include fish wastes,
vessels, scrap metal, excavation material, dredged material, the washings of
the tanks of oil tankers, low-level radioactive waste, and the products of the
incineration of combustible waste. The ability of vast quantities of water to
dilute the added materials to concentrations at which they are barely
detectable (even using the most sensitive of today’s laboratory apparatus,
which can pick up single molecules in a sample of about a microliter) may
not be regarded as an act that needs to be prevented. Here the decisions are
based on cost-benefit ratios. The problem this raises is that it is difficult to
obtain a figure for either the cost or the benefit for those occasions that are
new and untried, or when the conditions into which the dumping occurs are
not those that were thought to prevail: a current changes direction or height;
an organism that bioaccumulates the material emerges as the local dominant
species; or a change in wind direction drives the dumped material back on
land.
The London Convention of 1972 makes suggestions as to how to deal
with waste in a realistic manner. It requires that people who have disposable
waste should
(a) Encourage prevention of pollution at the source, by

the application of clean production methods,
including raw materials selection, product substi-

tution and clean production technologies and
processes and waste minimization throughout
society;
(b) Evaluate the environmental and economic conse-
quences of alternative methods of waste manage-
ment, including long-term consequences;
(c) Encourage and use as fully as possible scientific
and socio-economic research in order to achieve an
improved understanding on which to base long-
range policy options;
(d) Endeavor to reduce risk and scientific uncertainty
relating to proposed disposal operations; and
(e) Continue to take measures to ensure that potential
adverse impacts of any dumping are minimized,
and that adequate monitoring is provided for early
detection and mitigation of these impacts. . . .
This section demonstrates that those who seek to progress humanity may
not find their way free from obstructions. Some such impediments may come
in the form of adopted principles (such as PP), which seem well intentioned,
but can be used by the unscrupulous to hinder genuine progress. When faced
with resistance to change on the basis of conjectures about future harms that
are unsupported by evidence or data, it may be necessary to go back to first
principles and rehearse the concepts behind the scientific method and the
way it provides us, and other living beings, with ideas about the world that
are sufficiently reliable that we can and do use them with assurance to pro-
mote our survival.
Today’s developed world may be characterized by its sensitivity to envi-
ronmental changes, for example, global warming, changes in biodiversity, or
the formulations we use to define our behavior when we want to interact
with the environment. These are ethical issues because they call on us to
change our behavior. It behooves us to understand them well, for on that
comprehension depends the quality of the world we leave to our successors.
3.1.1.4.23 Domestic appliances and lifestyle changes. In the developed

world things are not the way they were. The transition took place during the
last half century, although some of the inventions occurred earlier. Whereas
the responsibilities of running a home and raising children fell mainly on
female shoulders, mass production, through the work of engineers and man-
ufacturers, of the products in the list below, has radically changed the way
homes now operate. Labor-saving devices have proliferated and reduced the
amount of time required to physically deal with the day-to-day needs of the
dwelling place. Condoms, the pill, and the absence of moral condemnation
for practicing birth control have enabled the closer control of the human sex-
ual and reproductive process, a corollary of which is the liberalization of
sexual activity. Food—its preparation, storage, processing, and purchasing—

has been revolutionized through the mass operations of supermarkets that
have increased the degree to which efforts have been made to take the
“work” out of cooking. The virtual elimination of domestic coal fires
decreased dust levels and eliminated the efforts needed to keep them burn-
ing. Personal private transportation (the car) enables people to pack more
commitments into a schedule. Whereas a public transport system would get
you to where you want to go once you had presented yourself at the appro-
priate stopping point, the increase in journey time due to walking to the stop,
waiting for the bus or train, the travel time that includes the regular stopping
points for entering or exiting passengers, and the walking time at the other
end of the journey more than double most journies of 1–5 km; the majority of
commuting trips in medium-sized towns. The culmination of this evolution
is that more women have joined the workforce, and social changes have been
made to enable this changeover. In 1964 there were 8 million women in the
8
U.K. workforce, which increased to 12.3 million by 1999. Day-care nurseries
and the use of grandparents have figured in the provision of time for women
to take full- or part-time jobs.
A consequence of these changes is that women have become increasingly
capable of expressing economic self-sufficiency. This, coupled with the pro-
motion of feminist philosophies and the ability to control their fertility, has
changed the nature of the relationship between adult men and women across
society. Two U.K. statistics may reflect this tale. Some 37% of babies were born
to unmarried mothers in 1997 (most of these are in “stable” relationships, and
only about 8% of mothers are both unmarried and unpartnered); in 1996
some 171,000 marriages ended in divorce. Comparable figures for 1974 were
as follows: babies born to unmarried mothers, 9%; to unmarried and unpart-
nered mothers, 5%; the total number of divorces in 1961 was 27,000.59
Over the period from 1971 to 1997, notifiable offenses recorded by the
police in the U.K. rose from 3.5 per 100 people to about 8 per 100 people.60
These changes in social behavior are a consequence of the activities of
engineers and manufacturers who, in making the products in the list below
widely available, have provided opportunities for enhanced self-expression
while decreasing the time spent on less salubrious jobs.
Aerosol spray Disposable diaper Penknives

Airplanes Disposable syringe Photocopier
Aluminum foil Domestic boilers Polaroid camera
Analog camera Double glazing Polyester
Answering/machine Electric coffee grinders Polythene
Ball pen Electric homogenizers Power tools
Battery lights Electric kettles Prozac (mood control)
Bicycle pedal/motor Electric light Radar
Binoculars Electric mixers
Radio
Birth control pill attachments Refrigerators = ice
Calculators Electric toasters Safety glass

Cats eyes Electronic clocks Self-adhesive tape
CAT scanner Extraction fans Stapler
CD records E-mail Tape recorders
Central heating Fax Telephone/hands free
Cling film Freezers Telescopes
Clothes dryers Guillotine Television
Clothes washers Internet Timers
Computers In-vitro fertilization Toys
(personal) (IVF) Traffic lights
Desktop Microwave ovens Typewriter/electric
publishing Mobile music Vaccines
Dictaphones Mobile phones Vacuum cleaner
Digital camera Motor car/van Viagra (erection aid)
Dimmer switch Nylon Videotape
Dishwashers Nonstick surfaces Wrist watches
Almost without exception, the inventions in the above list were accepted
with acclaim. As ever, the ones that interfered with our biology generated the
most stir. So the birth control pill and IVF caused some noticeable concern,
possibly because they evoke the debate about the ethicality of abortion in
humans and the moral status of the fetus. But the question that these devel-
opments pose is that as a result of the incremental improvements of the qual-
ity of life afforded by each invention as it integrates into the consumer
society, we have radically changed the nature of the family and the environ-
ment in which many (perhaps on the order of half) of our children are reared
in the developed world; is this a change for the better or worse? Also, in the
period following the last world war, governments were keen to replace the
people who were killed and to fill empty workplaces in new industries by
encouraging the promotion of families and the production of children. So
generous tax allowances were devised to support the production of children.
At the present time these stimuli for family stability and offspring produc-
tion have been considerably diminished in many countries, so that the mon-
etary incentive to remain married has all but disappeared. When there are
two or more possible causes for the same effect, we can only conclude that
one or other is the dominant force or that both or all are involved. Engineers,
however, cannot escape the question, because, as a result of their efforts
either in the area of manufacturing or in the area of social engineering, they
cannot be disengaged from the causes of the social changes we are presently
witnessing.
My point in relating these developments is to show that in all spheres of
engineering, the products generated affect the way we live. In this they act in
a comparable manner to the way ethical guidelines work. We have to give
them the same kinds of consideration that we give to the introduction of

changed ethics. Do the new products provide benefits or harms?
While a particular product made several years ago may have been bene-
ficial, is it still beneficial in today’s world? An example of this is the cigarette.
Years ago many people smoked and believed that this benefited them sensu-
ally and socially; today the story is different, as the cancer-promoting prop-
erties of the cigarette have been clearly established, and the pollution of the
air by smokers is now regarded as a harmful process. Many similar examples
are available; consider the cases of DDT (Section 3.1.1.4.22), lead in gasoline,
asbestos fiber insulation, high alumina cement, hydrogen-filled airships, the
domestic coal fire, etc.
While inventors and engineers do their best to respond to the needs of
the day and the near future, it would be unrealistic to require them to deter-
mine the balance of cost versus benefit for the lifetime of the products on
which they are working. But what we can expect is they maintain a vigilant
and a scrutinizing approach to their works so that they may alert the public
if and when they think that the cost side of the relationship is about to esca-
late. This responsibility could be built into the education of the engineer, and
the public would be more at ease were that the case.
3.2 Engineers make and use tools

Tools in themselves are not the problem. Throughout the world each house-
hold might possess several tens to hundreds of tools. Each such tool can be
used to cause harm, and on occasion some do. Most murders are within the
home and use instruments or tools that come readily to hand (knives, ham-
mers, screwdrivers, wrenches, string/rope, scissors, fire, etc.). In 1991 in the
U.K. 62% of 298 female and 24% of 396 male homicide victims were killed by
a spouse or family member, and a further 17% of females and 37% of males
were killed by people who knew them.61 Society does its best to prevent all
homicides. Laws are passed forbidding it; punishments are designed to deter
it. The police regard homicides as their primary target for detection, arrest,
and charge; the detection statistics are high and are regularly proclaimed;
and forensic techniques are honed to provide information leading to the con-
viction of those who are eventually judged guilty of the offense. Here the
ethic seems to be clear, and for the most part the majority of the citizens com-
ply with it; but is it?
Engineers have expressed their ingenuity in the production of the appa-
ratus used in legal executions and in the private domain for enabling people
to end their lives with dignity. In 1995 in The Netherlands, doctors assisted
the deaths of 3600 patients out of the 9000 who sought such help.62 The new
machines that can deliver a deadly dose of morphine or potassium chloride
are based on computer-controlled pumps that, once set up, can be activated
by the person seeking to die. In the invention of equipment for the military,
the engineer’s creative abilities may be directed toward originating and
improving machines used for the killing of the enemies of his or her country.
King Uzziah of Judah (785–733 B.C.E.) is credited with encouraging the con-
struction of such engines of destruction as in II Chronicles 26:15:
And he made in Jerusalem engines [devices, contrap-

tions, inventions], invented by cunning men, to be on
the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and
great stones withal.
An examination of the ethical guidelines in Table 2.1 could provide sys-

tems that could reconcile this position. The simplest principle, which is based
on survival (here operating at the level of the society), would prescribe such
actions for engineers. An unfortunate corollary to this is that the enemy is
thereby emboldened to create new war machines to counter the existing
machines of the opposition. This escalation in the effectiveness of destructive
and defensive abilities has been in progress for as long as groups of people
have collected themselves together in societies. However, as the global soci-
ety emerges, questions have to be asked as to the value to the larger collective
of the commitment of resources to this continually escalating competition.
Perhaps it is opportune for more pacifist philosophies to prevail, so that now
the ethical focus can shift to the level of humanity. Here the challenges requir-
ing ingenuity will not be lessened, as we come to recognize that the main
threats to our survival (apart from ourselves) are the multikilometer diame-
ter rocks hurtling through space on a possible collision course with Earth.63
Having solved that threat, the next problem is the colonization of the planets
circling the other stars in our galaxy.
The requirement to comply with the laws of the land is not different for
the engineer using existing or new tools. There are laws that prevent any act,
whether tool wielding or not, that may lead to the demise of a fellow citizen.
Rules, regulations, and codes support the laws and seek to prevent those
events in which people might suffer damage or harm. Here the law is active
not only in the criminal sense, where judgments are made on the basis of
“beyond reasonable doubt,” but also in the civil sense where determinations
are made on the basis of “the balance of the evidence.” As we progress, we
seek new ways to make the operation of tools safer for the user and those
passing by.
As the engineer designs and produces a new tool, there is in the mind of
that individual some intentions as to the ends that could be achieved by its
use. Insofar as the engineer’s intentions are to provide new opportunities to
enhance the benefits available, we may agree that what is intended is a
wholesome activity, and it should proceed. However, where we might con-
sider that an intent is malevolent, as in the construction of a camouflaged let-
ter or parcel bomb to be sent to an innocent victim, we would do our best to
prevent such work and to punish the perpetrator. So when a tool emerges
from its inventor’s stable, it is already loaded with the intentionality of its cre-
ator. And were such a tool to be given a use that was not considered by the
original inventor, then whoever changed the use may be considered to be the
inventor of a novel tool, as a new intentionality has been accorded to the orig-
inal object. A screwdriver that can detect the passage of an electric current is
clearly in a different category than an improved knuckle-duster or flick knife.
In which case we have to assign an ethical quality to a tool; so tools are not,
in and of themselves, ethically neutral.
An item of knowledge or science cannot be ethically neutral either; for it,
too, is loaded by the intentionality of its discoverer. Although some such sci-
entists hide behind the mantra that their work stems from “pure curiosity,”
we have to go one step further and ask for the basis of that curiosity; just why
was that question tackled and not another? Even under the circumstances
when a scientist looking to answer one question falls upon information that
answers another question, the use of the latter information is then tainted
with whatever intentionality is associated with it following its discovery and
use. A final retort to the person attributing intention to a scientific investiga-
tion is that the curiosity that sparked it is sui generis, or it came of its own
accord; which implies that there was not any preceding cause that brought it
into being. However, readers will recollect that we divided people into those
who believed that we lived in either an EO or EP world (see Section 2.4), so
that it would be surprising if EO scientists claimed that there was not any pre-
ceding cause to their investigations. But in the case of EP scientists, there may
be claims that it was something other than what was involved in the system
of causation that motivated their scientific investigations. This, too, seems
unreal. Even if the cause is immaterial or lacking in energy, it could be a cause
generated within the spirit world; if so, it could not be less of a cause for
all that; it would just not be one based on matter or energy: a compilation of
nonsense.
There are tools whose intentionality is clearly beneficial, and others
where the intentionality is obviously malevolent. We have little difficulty in
condemning the latter, but there are problems with the former. With the best
will in the world, the engineer alone cannot prevent the development of the
use of his or her invention in ways that slide from the beneficial into the
harmful. For example, the ability to extract heroin from poppy capsules may
have provided a beneficial sedative, but in our present world it has been
transformed into a mind-bending, addictive drug used both widely and illic-
itly. The development of the laser for the generation of holograms has
changed into the possible uses of high-power lasers for the destruction of
missiles in space, thus providing another step in the weapon/antiweapon
escalation already referred to above. Satellites are another case in point.
Peaceful uses involve improved communications, surveying the universe,
and mapping of Earth resources and surface temperatures. But with their use
as global positioning systems, they enable the pinpoint precise targeting of
missiles and the surveillance of the deployment of resources by a putative
enemy.
The lessons that people are drawing from the implementation of new
technologies is that what was invented for a benign purpose may eventually
be turned to malign ends. Many of the negative reactions to the development
of new tools in the biotechnology area are based on such fears. Along with the
capability to genetically engineer a human being so that an individual will
not suffer a genetically based disease (e.g., cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s
chorea), there is also the use of the same genetic engineering tools to change
human parameters that are not connected to disease. These may include
height, color, shape, intelligence, longevity, endurance, sexual prowess, sex-
ual appetite, hairiness, musicality, criminality, sexual orientation, and so on.
The question raised is, where should we stop? And having decided where
that line is, how may it be held? Some have recognized this as a slippery
slope. Once you start using the tool for benign purposes, it may be difficult
to stop the slide to less and less benign applications. This issue is causing
much concern and deserves the further examination it will receive in the next
chapter.
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Appendix
Questions posed by new developments in biotechnology:
1. What are the limits (envelope) to which we can/should proceed?

2. How do we discover such limits?
3. Which individual/group of individuals, makes what decisions vis-à-
vis limits etc. (federal, state, community, expert committee, NGO,
Quango [quasi nongovernmental organization], court, legislature)?
(The principle of subsidiarity may be examined in this context.)
4. What matters may be left to individuals/groups and what have to
become a matter of public policy and legislation?
5. What weight should be given to individual views?
6. What weight should be given to collective views?
7. What are the collective and individual views?
8. How may different cultures view biotechnology ethics?
9. How much risk is acceptable? Or what is a justified cost to achieve a
defined benefit?
10. How do we handle uncertainty when we cannot assess either the risks
or the magnitude of any gain or loss?
11. Is “nature” fragile or robust?
12. Are asteroid impacts of more or less importance than climate warm-
ing or air pollution?
13. Should biotechnologies be used to normalize or optimize?
14. Who should reap the profits from the application of biotechnology?
Or how should the wealth generated by the application of biotechnol-
ogy be distributed?
15. How does time affect the view taken by individuals and societies
to the kind of new ideas and capabilities that biotechnology is
providing?
16. What may be regarded as progress/benefit and for whom and to what
degree?
17. How much biodiversity is there and how much is desirable?
18. How should misconduct issues be treated?
19. How should whistle-blowers be treated? (cf. treatment of “false wit-
nesses” in the Hammurabi code and the Bible)
20. How should conflicts of interest be treated?
21. How is public trust achievable? (when scientists do not purport to
deliver truth or facts)?
22. How should “slippery-slope” issues be handled? (See Chapter 4.)
23. Where does the “power” lie and is this just and/or fair and/or
controllable?
24. Can the monopolies that result from the ability to provide a particular
herbicide-resistant seed and the herbicide be justified?
25. Will the contrived interactions between universities and commerce/
industry so pervert the university function of the honest reporter/
investigator that society will be disadvantaged?
26. How can the technology be controlled?
27. Quis custodiet custodies? (Who guards the guardians?)
28. What is a fair (just) distribution of generated wealth, and how can it
be achieved?
29. Are scientists autonomous? If they are not, how does the responsibil-
ity for what they do get shared?
Ethical issues associated with biotechnology products:
1. Genetic Knowledge
• Patent issues
• Biopiracy; biotheft
• Human Genome Project
• Biopharmaceuticals: prophylactic, therapeutic, diagnostic agents
• Data protection; confidentiality
• Data banking; bioprospecting
• Genetic data trading
• Insurance
• Employment; promotion
• Mortgage; loans
• Marriage
• Identity: paternity, criminality, sexuality
• Reductionism/commoditization of humans
• Ethnic identity: race, exploitation, diversity
• Human origins: relations to other primates
• Eugenics
—What human traits should be promoted and what human traits
discouraged? Approach defined norms or maxima?
— By which method(s) can human traits be changed?
• Abortion; euthanasia
—When does life begin?
—When does brain death occur?
2. Genetic Engineering
Viruses
• Vaccines, diagnostics, assays
• Gene vectors
• Warfare agents
Bacteria
• Vaccines, diagnostics, assays
• Bioremediation agents
• Antibiotic production
• Antibiotic resistance genes
Protista
Animal cells in culture
Vaccines, viruses, expressed protein/glycoprotein
• Questions of population control
• Questions of who gets what vaccine at what cost
• Questions of prophylaxis versus therapy and the distribution
of R&D monies
• Vested interest of the over-the-counter medicine industry (not
excluding public and private health-care facilities and person-
nel) in the perpetuation of disease
• How safe should a vaccine be? Who pays for vaccine-
attributed damages?
• DNA vaccines
• Testing of biopharmaceuticals in local or indigenous foreign
populations
• Testing in animals: relevance and stress, controls that are
necessarily diseased
• Vaccines for orphan diseases; societal responsibilities
• Vaccines used in place of changes of behavior (Hepatitis B
vaccine versus safe sex)
• Oral, water-carried contraceptive vaccines
• Vaccines from fetally derived cell lines
• Vaccines for healthy children versus sick adults
• Informed consent
• Interference with nature (God[s])
Biopharmaceuticals: therapeutics, diagnostics
• Glycoproteins, proteins, monoclonal antibodies, cytokines,
enzymes, cellular biochemicals, insecticides
• Testing of biopharmaceuticals in local or indigenous foreign
populations
• Pregnancy test kits
Whose cells
• Exploitation for profit of the unique biochemical features of
an individual’s cells
Fungi
Plants
Herbicide-resistant
• Development of uncontrollable weeds
• Stacking of resistance genes in weeds
• Unemployment caused by a decreased need for weeders
particularly in the developing world
Virus resistance
• Development of new viral plant pathogens by virus

recombinations
Fungus resistance
Insect resistance
• Developments of new nonsusceptible insects
• Stacked resistance genes in insects
Sterile hybrids (male sterility)
Expressed biopharmaceuticals: therapeutic, prophylactic,
diagnostic, assay spoilage resistance
Increased resistance to environmental stress (drought, salinity,
etc.)
Fatty acid composition
• Making palm oil in oilseed rape—Labor effects in developing
countries
• Making cacao butter fats from oilseed rape—Labor effects in
developing countries
Labeling of foods made from genetically modified organisms
(GMOs)
Grain traits: protein (enhanced methionine proteins), oil,
carbohydrate
Altered flowering, ripening, color
• Ownership of germ plasm
• Control of product area through a genetic modification
Transgenic trees
• Growth rates
• Habitat range
• Stress-resistant
• Wood quality
Invertebrates
Sterile males
Nonprimate vertebrates
Human disease models
Human transplantable organs (xenografting): possibility of
pathogenic virus transmission to humans
Hormonal enhancement of milk production
• Economic effects on small holdings
• Carryover of hormones to humans with human sexuality
changes as a consequence
Sources of biopharmaceuticals: 1 antitrypsin (AAT), melanin,
hemoglobin, albumin
Transgenic fish
Increased growth rate
Increased slaughter weight
Improved feed utilization
Increased tolerance to low temperatures
Increased resistance to freezing

Increased resistance to disease
Control of reproductive process
Reduced aggression
• Escape and pollution problems
• Use of sterile stock
• Use of antibiotics
Nonhuman primates
Human disease models
Humans
Genetic therapies
Genetic changes (enhancements?)
Somatic and/or gametic transfections
• Informed consent
• Transnational issues with cultural differences and levels of
understanding
IVF
Fetal tissue transplantation (Parkinson’s, diabetes)
3. Environmental release of GMOs
• Dealing with the uncertainty of the consequences of the release
of any one GMO
• Bioremediation
• Pollution removal (water, air, and solids waste treatment)
• Sustainability; material and energy cycling
• Biodiversity
4. Clones
• Plant
Monoculture
Hybrid vigor and commercial control
• Animal
Monoculture
• Human
—The deliberate production of humans in order to harvest their
organs for spare-part surgery
—The establishment of clonal societies consisting of hundreds
or thousands of individuals with identical genomes, while
recognizing the problems of the susceptibility of monocul-
tures to infectious disease and to threats to the reproductive
“purity” of the cloned genetic inheritance
—The cloning of recently deceased or killed people
—The achievement of ostensible immortality through the con-
tinued “asexual reproduction” of an individual (This ability
has implications in that it could be used to propagate prefer-
entially only those with the financial means to maintain
themselves into the future, which could also be contrary to the

principles of the ethical distribution of wealth in the society.
—The use and continual propagation of clones of accepted and
demonstrated geniuses of the like of Einstein, Beethoven,
Newton, Pasteur, etc.
—The obviation of the need to propagate males
—The extension, at least until artificial wombs are developed, of
the need for and use of surrogate mothers
—The controlled and directional interference with the develop-
ing clone in the embryonic stages to produce an environmen-
tally modified variant
—The relief from mitochondrial-based genetic diseases
—The ability to propagate otherwise spermatozoa-sterile males
—The degeneration of the concept of parent-descendant and
confusion in the legally defined issues relating to inheritance
—The possible confusion caused by clones generated at widely
different times interacting with one another
—The selection of the sex of a cloned line of people
—The overproduction of people on a crowded resource-limited
planet
—The production of children and adults who are predictably
similar (not identical, as each clone will experience a different
environment and will therefore have a different phenotype)
will reduce variety in the species, thus decreasing the oppor-
tunities for evolution.
—The “right” of an individual to be genetically different would
be impugned where clones are “manufactured to be geneti-
cally identical.”
—The eugenic approach to the refinement and improvement of
selected groups of individuals would be promoted.
—The development of animal clones will lead to animal prod-
ucts of consistent quality, the production of transgenic materi-
als for diagnosis, therapy, or prophylaxis and animal lines
that can be used more effectively for testing the efficacy and
toxicity of products designated for eventual human applica-
tions.
—The issue wherein cloned individuals seek to understand who
they are, and how they identify themselves as individuals,
distinguishable from the others of the same clone.
—The use of clones to determine the detailed nature of the
biochemical interactions between the nuclei and cytoplasm
of cells will further lead to the promotion of the reductionist
model of living organisms and their possible commodi-
tization.
—The issue of cloning may become confused with the other

techniques that are in use to deliberately modify the human
gene composition (genetic engineering, IVF and embryo
screening), leading to judgments that are not appropriate for
the case in question.
—The use of cloning techniques will open the door for the use
of techniques like genetic engineering that will have a
profound influence on the way humans evolve in the future.
5. Chimeras
• Frankenstinian creations
• Trans-species hybrids
6. Bioleaching of minerals
• Copper
• Heavy metal extraction from polluted fluid streams
• Heavy metal extraction from seawater
7. Foods
• Transgenic plants, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas, maize, corn, etc.
• Milk from BST-treated cows
• Use of GMOs in beer production
• Use of enzymes from and actual GMOs for cheese and yogurt
production
• Transgenic fish
Appearance
Color, taste, and texture of meat
Fatty acid composition
8. Chemicals
• Bioplastics (biodegradable)
• Biosynthesis with chiral specificity
• Biotransformation; transesterification; transketolase
• Decreasing viscosity of diesel fuel oils
9. Bioprocessing energy
• Light capture and transformation
• Methane production from organic wastes
chapter four
Managing slippery slope

arguments
You are working on an industrial contract at your university. The project con-
tractor asks you to join him for a glass of wine; you agree and part friends.
Just before Christmas you receive a bottle of wine from the same contractor
with season’s greetings. You send a thank-you card. After a year of working
with this friendly contractor, you receive a case of the special wine. You pick
up the phone to protest his generosity, at which time he proposes that you act
as a paid consultant for his company; a substantial fee is mentioned for what
seems little expenditure of effort on your part. You like the man and his busi-
ness, and you accept and inform the university. Time passes, and payments
are made; then the call comes for you to do a little extra by way of research,
which may involve some of your colleagues and the library facilities of your
university. You cannot really refuse. You do the job. Your new paymaster now
learns that you have been appointed to a government quango (quasi
autonomous governmental organization), which is to prepare a report on the
area of technology in which both you and your contractor are working. The
contractor asks you to lean on this committee to benefit the company for
which he works. This worries you, as you now have at least three responsi-
bilities: to the society as a whole, to your university, and to the contractor and
his company. Your work for the quango is unpaid; your university pays your
salary; and the contractor pays a consultancy fee, which has now become a
necessary part of your life because you have contracted to send your children
to a private school with a high tuition. It is inevitable that conflicts of interest
will occur; how do you resolve them?
In the imaginary scenario set out above, I have described a series of inci-
dents where each action was prompted by the preceding event. The accep-
tance of that first glass of wine led to a deep involvement with a contractor’s
company and to a situation in which there were conflicting interests. In

essence the subject of the story has skidded down a slippery slope into a posi-
tion in which that individual would not necessarily have chosen. So from an
initially acceptable situation, a person can slide into circumstances that are
less than salubrious. This is a well-recognized scenario. For not only may a
person glide from a position that seems acceptable to one that is barely ten-
able, but engineers may also be required to develop abilities and tools from
those that have been deemed worthy and of value to related implements that
may cause damage to society. To some outside observers, any novel develop-
ments herald the emergence of a new opportunity to create harms hitherto
inexperienced by a long-suffering humanity. Those people, who are con-
cerned that currently proposed developments that are seemingly benign may
eventually lead to harmful situations, call up the prospect of the develop-
ment of a slippery slope leading to a future unwanted state. This, then,
becomes an armamentarium of arguments used to prevent new develop-
ments. As engineers are committed to the invention of new and wondrous
tools, it behooves them to be aware of this situation. In those cases where they
are presented with this argument that alleges that what they are about is to
set one at the top of a slippery slope, they will have some notions of how to
deal with it.
The slippery slope argument can be used in two ways. The optimist will
see the new development as heralding a future of untold prosperity and won-
der, while the pessimist will predict that doom and gloom lies ahead. This
immediately opens up one approach an engineer might take to refute that
pessimist’s view—to present what would be the view of an optimist. But
when presented with the mass psychology of public debate, it is rarely suffi-
cient to reply in a tit-for-tat way.
A clear example of this phenomenon may be seen in a quotation from the
Financial Times (U.K.) of Saturday, July 1, 2000, where we find in Clive
Cookson’s article on “A New Lease of Life” the following:
But ministers are wary of an outcry from those who

believe stem cell cloning would be the first step on a
slippery slope to the cloning of whole human beings.
It is a matter of record that the first steps on this project were taken over 150
years ago when the theory of the cell was enunciated,1 and much human ben-
efit has sprung from this beginning: namely the arts and sciences of modern
medicine. I will take up this topic in the final stages of this book, as it forms
a useful paradigm for the application of the ethical principles enunciated
herein to a contemporary concern.
So, the pessimist’s views are commonly expressed and are used as the
basis on which governments make policy. Therefore, they may need to be
refuted at many levels, some of which I will explore below.
Chapter four: Managing slippery slope arguments 193
4.1 Slippery slope anatomy

Slippery slopes may take on many guises.2 –3 Indeed, they are credited with
several names, including thin end of the wedge arguments, domino theories,
and the camel’s nose in the tent argument—a string of propositions in which
the predicate of the previous proposition becomes the subject of the next
proposition—given the name sorites after the Greek ós, meaning “a
heap.” What they have in common is that from a given starting point events
will inevitably occur, resulting in a conjectured endpoint at some future time.
For the purposes of my discussion, I will concentrate on endpoints that are
clearly undesirable, while bearing in mind that desirable outcomes are not
excluded. The examples that provoke the most attention tend to come from
the world of human biology, where life-and-death situations exacerbate the
impact of the issues. For example, one could construct a sorites that proceeds
as follows:
If we permit people to take their own lives (commit suicide), then we

have colluded in a denial of the sanctity of life.
If life is no longer sacred, then other kinds of human killing can occur.
The kind of killing that should be permitted should provide some sort of
benefit.
It would be beneficial to assist people, who experience unbearable pain,
have an incurable illness, or who have expressed a desire to die to pass
out of this world in the least hurtful way.
Other individuals with incurable ailments, such as anencephalic babies
(babies born without brains) or quadriplegic newborns (born without
being able to move one’s limbs), who have no prospect of being able to
support themselves in life might also be helped to pass on.
Members of the aged, infirm, and mentally deficient communities who
are not able to support themselves and are a nuisance to the wider
community might also be so helped.
Others who are a nuisance to the community (e.g., people of different
ethnicities, religions, races, traditions, etc.) might be relieved of their
lives.
The breeding of the true and pure race without nuisances is to be the
objective of an active eugenics program.
Such chains may have branches. For example, where we have a state-
ment that the kind of killing should provide a benefit, the next development
could be as follows:
When it is diagnosed that a fetus is carrying a gene that will cause an

hereditary and debilitating disease, it would be of benefit to abort that
fetus.
A beneficial use of abortions is to control the size of the population.
The size of a population may be controlled most effectively by the com-

pulsory abortion of fetuses or by sterilization after a live birth.
Compulsory sterilization after a live birth requires a totalitarian govern-
ment to assert its edicts.
One such asserted edict is that speech shall not be free, etc.
In the above chains it is clear that the first step taken has little or no ref-
erence to what happens at the end of the chain. In the above series the first
statement involved the sanctity of life, while the last statement was about
either the implementation of an eugenics program or the elimination of free-
dom of speech. An alternative chain can be envisaged that is just a straight
progression, such as the following:
Would you do me a favor for £5?

How about a larger favor for £20?
This may be slightly embarrassing, but I wonder if you would do X for
£1,000.
I’m pretty desperate, and I really need Y to be done; here is £10,000.
This is probably not illegal, but I am sure you won’t get caught anyway,
and I’m letting you have £100,000 . . .
In this example there is an escalation of the size of the deed and the size
of the payment. It would seem that when the subject has accepted this rela-
tionship, its scale-up may be presented in such a way that it is difficult to get
out of the situation, even when this may involve committing acts of dubious
legality. The components of the slope at the beginning and the end are of the
same nature; it is just the scale that is different.
But the connections in the chain need not be logical or related; they can
be based on feelings or suppositions. For example,
If we allow people to use soft drugs such as marijuana, then habituation

will set in that will require more uses of the drug to achieve the same
psychoactive effect.
To get around the need for more marijuana for the same kick, people will
try harder drugs such as heroin or cocaine.
Once they get on heroin or cocaine, they will become addicted and will
require more of these drugs to satisfy their needs.
This will lead to lawless activities to acquire the money to finance the
drug addiction.
All these activities taken together will shorten the life of the drug user
and cause the society much cost and disturbance.
In this example the connections between the steps are conjectural.

Experience with the use of alcohol as a drug shows that while people may
become addicted to the toxin, many millions of alcohol drinkers do not
become captivated and can engage in occasional social drinking without

being pressurized into ingesting ever larger quantities. On the other hand the
same situation may not apply in Russia, where chronic imbibition of alcohol
is rising to a level that is becoming a serious social disease. Nevertheless, the
liberalization of police practices in The Netherlands with regard to marijuana
laws has not led to a society where hard drug use has significantly increased.
In the U.K. marijuana is used by some 32% of 16–24-year-old males and by
22% of the females of the same age group; this is in comparison to a 4% and
3%, respectively, usage of cocaine that tends to be taken by older people.4 Yet
in spite of the gaps in the logic, the kind of argument presented above is often
used in attempts to prevent the first stage of the sequence.
If this kind of argument was applied in full, then it would begin with an
attempt to prohibit alcohol. This would be contrary to the practices of the last
7000 or so years and run into the lawlessness that characterized the prohibi-
tion era (1920–1933) in the U.S., when the purchase of alcohol was forbidden.
Here too a slippery slope argument would have been in operation:
If you drink one glass, you are likely to drink another.

If another, then yet another.
And why not another?
Surely you can manage another? Etc.
It is also clear that the relationships between the start-point and possible
endpoint can be many and varied. The reliability with which the end can be
predicted could vary between totally unreliable to reasonably probable.
There might be differences in outcome to which one could refer. The spec-
trum over which this might vary could be from the banal of an extra drink to
the seriousness of a death or disaster. Again the link could be one or many
steps, and the sharpness and distinctiveness of the steps could vary from the
diffuse and indistinct to the clear and well defined. With the latter it may be
possible to identify a step at which to call a halt; but where the steps meld
together or when there is some dynamic or force that propels one down the
slope, calling a halt at any particular location may not be a simple matter.
4.2 Slide control

When presented with the slippery slope argument as a reason for not
embarking on a new development, the engineer may retort that the progres-
sion may actually lead to an improved future; but that may not be enough. To
more effectively face the pessimist, an additional advantage would be to
demonstrate a thorough understanding of the position of the naysayer (the
slope will inevitably lead to disaster) and articulate the possible downward-
pointing slopes with clearly defined stopping points along them. In the event
that we have to deal with a continuum such as the number of glasses of intox-
icant imbibed or the speed at which one may travel in a car, the engineer
might point out that it is possible to set up arbitrary checkpoints for control
purposes and, if necessary, review their levels after they have been in opera-
tion for a time period that is long enough for an effect to be noticed.
Once it is recognized that there may be defined set points that can be
used for control purposes, it is possible to bring into play the apparatus of the
control engineer to provide assurance for the doubter that once a set point
has been determined, it is possible to set up a mechanism to hold the system
performance to that set point. Some of the details of such a system may be
viewed in Figure 2.2 (see page 55).
In mechanistic terms the control system calls for a measurement of the
present state of the variable one is seeking to control and a device that com-
pares this measurement to that which has been put into the system as its set
point. This comparison will result in an error signal that will be either posi-
tive or negative depending on which side of the set point the measured vari-
able occupies. From the error signal the controller generates a response that
acts on the measured system so as to influence the measured variable in such
a way that the size of the error signal between that variable and the set point
is decreased to nearly zero. (It will never actually eliminate the error entirely,
but will approximate its parameters and constitution to the zero error posi-
tion.) Philosophers will immediately note that what I have just described will
work well for the control of the temperature of coffee in a coffee pot, but how
may it be applied to the workings of human beings? This is particularly true
when some ethicists think that humans can act as autonomous agents free
from any external influence whatsoever, and that when making decisions as
to how to behave, the only legitimate way of coming to some such statement
of duty is via a state of autonomy (I. Kant [1724–1804]5). Although I am aware
that humans are a special case, and that in some moral and ethical situations
they cannot possibly occupy the position of a “system” whose behavior is
controlled by any agency (mechanical or otherwise), I have to point out to the
reader the world we live in is one where such systems are not only in place,
but are operating at all levels of our existence.
For example, take the case of a speed limit on a suburban road. Society
decides that a safe speed along a particular section of road is 30 mi/h. People
who drive below that speed are deemed to be driving safely, except if a speed
of say 5 mi/h was adopted without a qualifying reason (heavy load, immi-
nent breakdown, dense fog, etc.), this could be construed as creating a delib-
erate obstruction and would be dealt with under a different set of laws. Let’s
return to the 30-mi/h limit. Motorists who exceed the limit will generate an
error signal to the social control system. If the speed is, say, 10 mi/h over the
30, then one particular level of fine is imposed; for 20 mi/h over the limit the
fine is doubled; another 10 mi/h and a further doubling is imposed. At 60
mi/h a fine of 8 times the 10-mi/h infringement has been imposed, and at 100
mi/h it becomes 128 times the minimum fine. At this level or below it, other
penalties could come into effect, such as incarceration for increasing periods
of time, with strenuous retraining sessions thrown in. Having installed a
measuring device (a camera) that clocks the speed of a vehicle by taking two
photographs a defined time interval apart, showing not only the car and its
registration plate but also the series of measured markings along the side of
the road, it is possible to obtain a reliable estimate of the measured variable:
the speed of the car. The calculation of the error is simple and the kind of con-
trol action that needs to be applied to the driver can be prescribed, this being
the level of the fine or the length of the incarceration. These systems are nor-
mally effective in controlling driving speed so that drivers stay within the
posted limits, especially when signs are erected ahead of the camera warning
the motorist that he or she is likely to be photographed in the next several sec-
onds.
In some societies the law is more draconian. Theft might be controlled by
the removal of the organ that did the stealing; rape by the excision of the
reproductive apparatus; murder by decapitation. From this extreme to the
more usual ways of handling behavior that fall outside the set points (the
laws), there are many levels of sanction that can be applied. It is also possi-
ble, by the same token, to promote behavior that is desirable, but not required
by law. This may be done by a system of publicly acknowledged awards and
decorations. In each of these cases, society is operating as the controller in a
control system responding to the behavior of the individuals in that society.
It either seeks to eliminate errors from required behavior set points or pro-
vides set points that encourage positive behavior, where the elimination of
the error signal is effected by the provision of ever-increasing rewards.
If it is possible to modulate or control the behavior of individuals by the
kinds of methods described above, then the engineer may assert that the
determination of a particular position on the slippery slope should be an
agreed set point beyond which methods will be employed to prevent a fur-
ther deterioration in the position. This may be a plausible approach if society
is to be well defined and the development retained within the controllable
envelope of that body. But what if another society decides that the novel
development is worthy of exploration beyond the set point that was origi-
nally set by the engineer and the society that initiated the development? The
response to this situation is to assert that whoever wants to go beyond the set
point does so at his or her own peril. However, it behooves the innovating
engineer to watch what happens when the set point is exceeded, for instead
of resulting in a disaster, additional benefits may be accrued. In essence it is
most useful to adopt an experimental view as to where on the slippery slope
the set point has to be set; but in all events it should be set in such a way that
the system can be controlled at that point, or, in the event that the system gets
out of hand, the negative features that result are of a size and quality in which
minimal damage is incurred.
What is clearly needed from the engineer is a demonstration of the
awareness of the situation and what might happen in both the positive and
negative senses. This to be coupled with a discussion of the possible set
points, how the operation may be held at those set points, and that further
provisions are to be put in place to hold the situation and prevent damage
should the initially defined set points be broached. Armed in this way, the
engineer can meet with confidence the arguments of the pessimist who sees
danger in any new development.
4.3 Slopes and tools

Engineers make and use tools. Whenever a tool is devised, its uses are ab ini-
tio, both conceived and unpredictable. As we saw in the previous chapter, a
tool arrives in this world with the baggage of the intentionality of the inven-
tor strapped to it. But this is just the starting point for the tool. Those (pes-
simists) who use the slippery slope argument will claim that from such a
position it is possible to cause harm, a statement that, in itself, is irrefutable.
Also the application of the precautionary principle (cf. Section 3.1.1.4.22 [iii])
in its hard form would also have us desist from further developments, for
even the testing of new tools may cause irreparable harm. In both of these lat-
ter situations the proponents of the argument can be presented with the situ-
ation that to do nothing is also a condition that, in and of itself, is a cause of
existing harms, because that is what the present system is delivering all the
time; and at least the intention of the engineer is to ameliorate the situation
so that current, ongoing devastations are decreased.
It is not a simple task to convince an individual who sees all new devel-
opments as antiprogressive to realize that we are living in a world that is far
less salubrious than it need be. Some 75% of the people on this planet suffer
starvation from time to time. The richest 20% of the globe’s population enjoys
the beneficial use of 86% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), while
the poorest 20% shares 1% of the GDP.6 Over 80 active armed conflicts have
killed and are still killing people who are on the margin of survival since
WW II. Over 3 million people die from preventable infectious diseases each
year. The amount of water available for irrigation is decreasing, and changes
in the climate (whether athropogenic or not) are likely to further exacerbate
the variability in the supplies of this essential resource. Arable land that can
grow edible crops is in short supply, and the tendency for the people of more
developed countries to eat meat and fish as opposed to vegetables puts an
even greater strain on the productivity of those lands that support crop
growth. There is much distrust between the nations whose war machines
consume high proportions of the energy and nonrenewable resources with
which we were gifted. And should this list be insufficient, we have to realize
that with a world population that is due to double in the next 30–40 years, it
will take the maximum amount of engineering ingenuity to develop tools
and solutions that may keep such an increased population alive without
incurring mass migrations that are likely to spark additional and inflamed
armed conflicts. Not to mention the possibilities of an asteroid collision with
Earth or the eruption of a super large volcano that could plunge us into an
extended winter with great loss of life of all species, including our own.
So bearing in mind that doing nothing is not a solution, because the dire
conditions recited above will merely continue or get worse, we have to adopt
a more optimistic attitude to the new tools that are coming along. We cannot
afford the luxury of inaction. Indeed we have a duty to bend every effort to
ameliorate the situation in which we find ourselves. Yes, the emergence of a
new tool does represent the beginning of a new slope or the thin end of a new
wedge, but we have an obligation to those who are worse off than ourselves
to explore the properties of new developments, particularly as our overrid-
ing intention is to use these emerging and increased powers for the common
benefit.
References
1. Spier, R. E., History of animal cell technology, in Encyclopedia for Cell Technology
Vol. 2, Spier, R. E., Ed., Wiley Interscience, New York, 2000, 853.
2. Lamb, D., Down the Slippery Slope: Arguing in Applied Ethics, Croom Helm,
London, 1988, 134.
3. van der Burg, W., Slippery slope arguments, in The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics,
Vol. 4., Chadwick, R., Ed., Academic Press, London, 1998, 129.
4. quoted in The Guardian (U.K.), 7, June 29, 2000.
5. Kant, I., Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals in Ethical Philosophy (transl.),
Hackett Publishing Company, Cambridge, 1994, 1.
6. U.N. Human Development Report, 1999.
chapter five
Control of tool use
5.1 On the different kinds of laws

No matter how detailed laws are, it is impossible to define and regulate each
and every act of all humans in any given society. The intentions of the legis-
lators, however clearly expressed in words, have to be interpreted by people,
judges, and juries. How else may one explain the academies of teachers and
learners who command considerable social resources for the job of interpret-
ing the words of the law? For divine law we use hermeneuts, be they priests,
rabbis, monks, or mullahs; for secular law there are numerous individuals of
the legal profession who strive with every sinew to obtain interpretations of
the law that will satisfy their clients; in some societies the judgments that
result from this adversarial process provide precedents on which new legal
cases are tried.
Laws tell you what you can’t do and what you must do at particular
times and under defined circumstances. In some societies laws dictate how
one dresses, prepares food, eats that food, deals with business and nonbusi-
ness associates, and, of course, conducts ceremonies that constitute the rites
of passage from one state of life to another. Religious ceremonies and rituals
are prescribed in considerable detail; yet there is a recognized latitude for
local customs to provide the odd unique embellishment to orthodox dogma.
Notwithstanding the complaint, or boast, of Tevye, the milkman in the
motion picture Fiddler on the Roof who asserts that each and every act of the
Jewish people of his nineteenth century Russian village, Anatevka, is gov-
erned by tradition, there is yet room for variance and novelty—but not much.
In these Jewish societies people are required to assemble and pray at least
three times a day (the men), wear ritually defined clothes, and eat food that
has been selected and prepared in accordance with written laws. The times
when sexual relations may occur are determined by the female’s menstrual
cycle and her ritual immersion in a cleansing bath. Even the order of putting
202 Ethics, tools and the engineer
on one’s shoes is ordained. By contrast most modern secular societies are far
less prescriptive in their legislation.
There are relatively few things that one has to do in a positive sense to be
a member of a twenty-first century secular society. Pay one’s taxes, wear
clothes (mostly), acquire an education, obey the rules of the road if driving,
wear a seat belt, and serve on a jury or enlist in the armed forces when called
upon. There are many laws governing what one must not do. These fall into
two categories. Some laws govern the outcome of acts however the acts are
done, while other laws proscribe the acts themselves with a view to prevent-
ing bad or harmful eventual outcomes. For example, we do not have laws
telling us not to commit murder with implement X, Y, or Z; rather, the law
stipulates us not to commit murder—no matter the instrument used. By con-
trast we have laws telling us that we may not carry a dangerous weapon
(handgun, commando knife, etc.) in a public place unless we have a specific
license to do so. This latter proscription is to prevent the deployment of a spe-
cific implement whose use will most likely cause harm or damage. The laws
that apply to the use of all (whether already existing or novel) tools therefore
will, on the one hand, confine their use to ends that are not contrary to the law,
while on the other hand, and in addition, the use of specified tools will be pro-
scribed in ways that are specific to those tools. A partial list of tools whose
uses are specifically restricted in some way is provided below:
Airplanes Drugs (medicinal) Radar detectors

Alcohol Explosives Radioactive chemicals
Antibiotics Guns Syringes
Boats Knives Torture devices
Cigarettes/tobacco Poisons Vaccines
Detonators Psychoactive drugs Vehicles
The criminal laws relate to areas where the state may use its law enforcement
agencies (the police, etc.) to prosecute those suspected of having transgressed
the law. Another suite of laws applies to the civil sector, where private indi-
viduals may sue and be sued via the court system. In this area the laws of con-
tract are upheld, and a fair arrangement that is consonant with the relevant
rules, statutes, regulations, and ordinances is sought in matters of family,
church, township, and employment disputes. Noncompliance with legal rul-
ings in these latter matters becomes an issue that may then be taken up by
criminal law.
All criminal and civil laws are set aside when issues relating to human
rights are invoked. Such matters have to be settled first before other laws
come into play.
The engineer at work is beset by suites of rules and regulations. Apart
from needing to comply with the laws of the land and the local township,
there are other guiding principles that require attention. Some of these are as
follows:
Chapter five: On the different kinds of laws 203
• Health and Safety at Work Acts

• Care of Substances Hazardous to Health
• Animal Welfare Acts
• Experiments on Humans
• Institutional Codes of Conduct
I will examine each of these areas in turn.

In this exposition I will use laws passed by the Parliament of the U.K.,
while recognizing that other countries would have both similar and dissimi-
lar provisions. It is not my purpose to do a comparative evaluation of such
regulations; rather, I wish to present a selection of the measures that have
some degree of commonality and generalizability, so that the overarching
principles may emerge and serve to inform.
5.1.1 Health and safety at work regulations

On December 3, 1999 the government of the U.K. enacted Statutory
Instrument 1999 No. 3242, “Management of Health and Safety at Work
Regulations 1999.”1 This instrument requires that employers and employees
should behave in certain ways so that their health and safety are enhanced.
In particular it requires employers to make risk assessments of the threats to
the health and safety of employees under their work conditions and of oth-
ers who could be exposed to such conditions. At first glance this seems to be
a straightforward exercise—but is it? In the first place each and every action
by an employee incurs a potential risk. Furthermore, the level of the risk
depends on the psychological and manipulative abilities of the employee as
well as levels of training, the physical and temporal way the work is pre-
sented, and whether known chemically or biologically hazardous materials
are involved. Correspondingly, each piece of equipment may fail in any one,
some combination, or all of its parts and thus provide innumerable addi-
tional risks. How may such risks be characterized and estimated?
5.1.1.1 Risk assessment

We obtain values for risk when we can ascertain the number of failures (or
successes) in relation to the number of instances of that action, be it human
action or machine action. Examples may be seen in the number of times a car
owner has to seek professional help to keep a car running as a function of the
number of miles traveled or the number of years of possession. Data can be
obtained to determine the risk of injury or death from driving a car as a func-
tion of the number of miles driven. (A single death results, on average, after
having driven some 250,000,000 km in the U.K. of the 1990s, or about once in
25,000 years for the average driver.)2 There is a risk of failure of a light bulb
as a function of the number of hours it is used, plus some factor of the num-
ber of times it is switched on or off, plus some factor that relates to the ambi-
ent temperature and its diurnal variations. When seeking the top prize in the
British National Lottery, it is recognized that the chance of a single ticket win-
ning is 1 in about 14 million. All of these risks are calculable on the basis of
events having occurred historically and whose enumeration has led to a
determination of the chances of the event occurring. But what can we do to
assess the risk of damage happening when we do not have historic data of
damage? For many tasks there has never been an occasion when an employee
has been damaged or injured by doing what is required. This does not mean
that there is zero risk—far from it. It may be that the job is relatively new and
that few employees have ever done that task. Comparable rates of damage
caused by essentially similar tasks effected by employees in other companies
cannot be included by an employer in an assessment of risk; most companies
do not publish their accident records in such detail as to be able to make such
an assessment.
It looks as if the assessment of on-the-job risk is a hopeless task. Yet, if we
stand back and agree that we cannot determine the basis on which the risk is
to be assessed nor obtain values for that risk (even with known errors in the
measurement) in detail, we can and should be aware that each and every task
does entail some risk. The mere act of specifically considering possible
sources of failure leading to injury from any delineation or definition of the
tasks performed by the members of the workforce is an event that will often
to lead to improvements in those working conditions. The requirement to do
a risk assessment, then, is not so much an exercise in statistics as it is
a genuine attempt to decrease the possible dangers from workplace activities.
It becomes real as the employer has to put something on a piece of paper
that indicates that there has been some intentionality of effecting a change
in the work conditions toward an amelioration in the health and safety
of employees. Of course, none of this is in the instrument of 1999; but then,
as I have noted above, the law cannot be explicitly prescriptive, whereas
it can encourage us to go down the route that will, in time, lead to social
benefits.
There is extensive literature on risk assessment as a prelude to the
3
implementation of precautionary measures. This is a politically sensitive
area, and much attention is given to the involvement of all the possible stake-
holders in risk assessments. In making regulations it is clear that a cost-
benefit analysis provides the basis of the decision-making process. The steps
in the process move from the determination of the problem that needs to be
solved to a consideration of all the possible risks that could be involved. In
this context the risk includes the delineation of the nature of the injury.
Having determined the harms and estimated the probability of their hap-
pening, it is then necessary to set out the options for action. A decision is
made on the most salubrious option, which is then put into effect. The con-
sequences of this are then monitored, and further determinations are made as
to whether or not the benefits have materialized as per expectations, or
whether remedial actions have to be taken to correct harms that have unex-
pectedly emerged.
5.1.1.2 Implementing preventive measures

Taking action with a view to precluding danger derives from our Paleozoic
ancestors. Coelenterates like the jellyfish and sea anemones withdraw their
tentacles when physically disturbed; snails and tortoises seek the safety of
their shells when upset; birds fly off under the slightest of provocations; the
rattlesnake rattles to ward off impending danger; the herd runs away when
the carnivorous cat approaches and humans translate what is already encoded
in their genes into abilities that enable words to be used socially to forestall
harms. The 1999 regulations include such provisions. For details of this, the
1999 regulations defer to the “General Principles of Prevention as set out in
Article 6 (2) of Council Directive 89/391/EEC,” which require the following:
• Avoiding risks
• Evaluating the risks that cannot be avoided
• Combating risks at their source
• Adapting the work to the individual, especially in regard to the design
of workplaces, the choice of work equipment, and the choice of work-
ing and production methods with a view, in particular, to alleviating
monotonous work and work at a predetermined rate and to reducing
their effect on health
• Adapting to technical progress
• Replacing the dangerous by the nondangerous or the less dangerous
• Developing a coherent overall prevention policy that covers technol-
ogy, organization of work, working conditions, social relationships,
and the influence of factors relating to the working environment
• Giving collective protective measures priority over individual protec-
tive measures
• Giving appropriate instructions to employees
Readers will note these conditions in relation to the less constrained views
that abound in the promulgation and discussion of “the precautionary prin-
ciple” (Section 3.1.1.4.22 [iii]). An interesting condition relevant to the pur-
poses of this book is the one that requires “adapting to technical progress.”
This is far from the “do nothing” approach of those who use the argument of
the slippery slope (see Chapter 4) to prevent the introduction of new meth-
ods, products, or processes into the workplace.
5.1.1.3 Additional measures to protect health and safety

Other provisions of this act seek to decrease the damage to employees from
workplace accidents or hazards. The health of the worker is to be monitored,
and particular individuals in the workforce have to be selected and given the
task of making sure that the provisions of the instrument are met on a day-
to-day basis. Such considerations would include the following:
• The procedures to be used in the evacuation of the shop-floor in the

event of an emergency.
• The installation of guards over the moving and exposed parts of

machines; the regular inspection and certification of all electrical
installations; and the maintenance of published and posted protocols
and notices for the operation of complex equipment that could, if used
improperly, become dangerous.
• The setting aside of time for the training of employees in matters of
health and safety.
• The publication of external services to contact in case of injury (first
aid, ambulance) or fire or rescue.
• The distribution of information to all personnel as to the nature of the
risks of the job that is to be undertaken, the provisions to decrease the
possibilities of damage, the available training courses, and the name
and location of the person with responsibility for monitoring the
health-related risks of the job.
• Any changes in the job have to be accompanied by additional training
with regard to health and safety provisions and in accordance with the
aptitudes of the employee.
• Employees have a duty to bring to the attention of other employees,
the person who is in charge of monitoring the health and safety of the
workforce, or the employer any instance where an employee could be
in danger of being harmed while working on the job.
• Temporary workers, pregnant employees, and young people have
special requirements that are in addition to the ones above and that
recognize their special status.
• If an employer is held to be in breech of these regulations, there is no
automatic right to sue that person in the civil courts.
Engineers embarking on the design phase of an invention have to be

aware of the above provisions and the welter of acts, instruments, and regu-
lations that amplify and spell out in detail the nuts-and-bolts of actions that
are required by law. But they may also recognize and welcome that many of
the behavioral guidelines for the installation and operation of existing and
new equipment are already in place. In discussions with the public about
new technologies, it would be important to dwell on the regulations that are
already in place to protect the people working with the innovations. But the
reader will note that the 1999 regulations do not regulate how the products
of the workplace will be deployed in the society at large. This will require fur-
ther discussion in the following chapters.
5.1.2 Control of substances hazardous to health

Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 0437 is one of a suite of instruments of the U.K.
government that flesh out the material described in the previous section. This
instrument is of special interest in that its schedules provide much informa-
tion about the carcinogenicity and toxicity of various substances, as well as
the ways in which biological organisms may be classified according the level
of danger they present.4 There are also details of the kinds of facilities in
which organisms of differing degrees of hazard may be processed and the
procedures that have to be undertaken in the event of spillages or other forms
of contamination of the worker or the environment. The key provisions are as
follows:
An employer shall not carry on any work which is

liable to expose any employees to any substance haz-
ardous to health unless he has made a suitable and suf-
ficient assessment of the risks created by that work to
the health of those employees and of the steps that
need to be taken to meet the requirements of these
Regulations.
Every employer shall ensure that the exposure of
his employees to substances hazardous to health is
either prevented or, where this is not reasonably prac-
ticable, adequately controlled.
Some ways whereby the above requirements may be met are provided.
They include the confinement of operations to designated, marked, clean-
able, and enclosed spaces; the minimization of uncontrolled events, such as
spillages, etc.; the use of the smallest quantities of the dangerous materials
involving the fewest people; the prohibition of eating and smoking in the
enclosed area; and the storage of all hazardous materials in clearly labeled
containers in a manner that is secure from casual or unauthorized incursion.
In compliance with these regulations, most chemicals provide on the con-
tainer label an indication of the degree of hazard posed by that chemical.
This, then, provides the beginning of the paper trail of documents that has to
be generated to enable an experiment involving hazardous materials (such as
most investigative or synthetic work in chemical and biochemical laborato-
ries) to proceed.
5.1.3 The animal (scientific procedures) act 1986 (U.K.)

Animals, including humans, may be considered as tools when they provide
a means to arrive at information that could not otherwise be obtained. As far
as the engineer is concerned, they provide a special class of tool that is unlike
the category of inanimate tools normally envisaged. Although animals
may be “engineered” either via breeding programs or by changes to
their genetic makeup effected by gene transfer technologies, their animation
sets them aside for special treatment. This is reflected in the Animal
(Scientific Procedures) Act because it lays down the particular ways individ-
uals may approach the Secretary of State to obtain the cluster of licenses
legally needed to effect the different procedures that are required in using
animals as experimental tools.
The main aims of the Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act are to prevent
unnecessary pain, suffering, distress, or lasting harm. There are also provi-
sions that animals such as dogs, cats, horses, and primates are not to be used
unless there is due cause and other animals cannot be substituted for them.
To ascertain that these provisions are in operation, the regulated sites of
such experimentation are inspected by designated inspectors, and a pro-
fessional veterinarian has to be appointed to provide guidance on the care,
upkeep, and discarding of the animals. All individuals who engage in proce-
dures with animals have to be trained in a certifiable manner. Within the last
year or so a further requirement for the oversight of the licensing procedure
has been instigated by the requirement that those in charge of licensed
premises set up an obligatory ethical review process of all the experiments
effected on animals at that location. Among other duties this body makes
sure that:
• The minimum number of animals are used to reliably acquire the data
that are sought.
• The animals chosen are as low down on the phylogenetic scale as pos-
sible while yet enabling the acquisition of data that are of the required
value and meaning.
• The experiments are designed in such a way that the minimum harm,
pain, and suffering are incurred.
• Wherever possible, a nonanimal means (such as an in vitro animal cell
culture) is used to obtain the data.
Notwithstanding the many rules and regulations regarding the use of ani-
mals in scientific procedures or even in foods, there are many who take the
view that this exploitation of animals for the benefit of humans is unjustified
and should be stopped. In many countries groups of activists have formed for
the expressed purpose of stopping these legal uses of animals. So, in addition
to the requirements of the Secretary of State, institutions that breed animals for
experimentation or that experiment using animals have to provide CCTV
cameras and protective fencing to deny access to the more aggressive activists
who have invaded many such establishments and disrupted their operations.
Engineers, who are not used to having their place of work invaded, may wish
to be appraised of the arguments that impel such individuals to these destruc-
tive acts. This controversy takes us back to the realm of ethics.
Animals are sentient beings that are capable of feeling pain and experi-
encing suffering. They move and form relationships with other animals as
parent and offspring or as a member of a troupe that may or may not have a
hierarchical organization, for example, ape or gorilla bands. Recent research
on primates in the wild has clearly shown how many aspects of their social
lives have close analogues in human social situations.5 These facets of animal
nature are not generally in dispute. What is questioned is the way humans
behave in relation to the other animal species on Earth.
Studies of animal feeding habits enable us to characterize three types of

eating behavior. First, we have animals that only eat vegetable materials: the
herbivores. Second, there are animals that only eat meat obtained by killing
other animals or from the corpses of dead animals: the carnivores. And third,
there is a group of animals that eats both vegetable materials and meat
derived from other animals: the omnivores. Humans are omnivores. As we
noted in Section 1.1.1, the advantages of the omnivorous mode include (1) an
increase in the flexibility of the diet, which means that as one food source
becomes scarce, others may be used as a substitute; and (2) the high energy
content of animals (they are more fatty) means that more energy can be
ingested per volume of food eaten. This latter facility is one of the features
that has led to the development of enlarged brains, which accounts for over
25% of the total energy consumption of the whole person.
In any discussion of the way animals behave in relation to one another, it
is necessary to recount that animals, at all levels of size and complexity, man-
age to survive by eating other animals. Encyclopaedia Britannica lists 274
species of carnivores among the mammals alone, and this does not include
the carnivorous insects (spiders), fish (pike, salmon, piranha), amphibians
(crocodiles and alligators), reptiles (snakes), and birds (carrion crow, pen-
guin, eagles, vultures, owls). There are even carnivorous plants such as the
Venus flytrap, of which there are 105 species, as well as the 70 species of
pitcher plants and some 120 species of bladderworts. So the eating of animals
is not uncommon in nature. Indeed, there are well-established predator-prey
relationships, where the numbers of one partner in this interaction are
inversely related to the numbers of the other.
The ascription of “rights” to animals or any other nonhuman entity
denies two essential features of what a “right” connotes (cf. Section 2.4). In
the first place the rights that pertain to different sectors of particular human
populations have been won as a result of an assertion of the power of those
sectors against individuals or institutions that had previously wielded those
powers. Second, the transfer of rights is normally effected as part of a bargain
or contract between the ceder of the rights and the new right holders, in
which the latter commit themselves to certain duties, obligations, or respon-
sibilities in exchange for the new rights. It is inconceivable to attribute to any
members of the nonhuman animal group the ability to strike a bargain or
contract and to commit themselves to duties and obligations. It may well be
the case that some animal species may acquire certain powers that enable
them to maintain their presence even when they are classified as vermin;
examples are the cockroach, ant, rat, rabbit, kangaroo, and gray squirrel. But
while we may admire their tenacity in the survival scramble, we do not
accord them rights as a consequence.
Billions of chickens and farmed fish, plus many millions of sheep, cows,
pigs, and other animals, are eaten by humans annually. The conditions under
which such animals are reared are necessarily adequate for the breeding, fat-
tening, milking, and egg-laying of these animals. Yet, as with many humans,
these circumstances can always be improved. In the U.K. there is a suite of

laws and instruments that governs practice in this area and in the trans-
portation, killing, and butchering of animals intended for human consump-
tion. People who are vegetarians or vegans do not avail themselves of such
animal-based food resources, relying instead on vegetable materials for their
livelihood. Their reasons for living in this way vary from a distaste of the
process of breeding, killing, and butchering of animals to a belief system that
holds that animals have as much right to life as humans and should be
allowed to live without human intervention. It is not usual for such people to
interfere with the way of life of the meat-eating humans, except in circum-
stances where serious abuses of animals are incurred or where unnecessary
pain and suffering are inflicted. In this sense the programs used to breed
improved varieties of domestic animals using selected matings, artificial
insemination, or cloning does not arouse special attention. However, the use
of animals in laboratories for the testing of pharmaceuticals or for the devel-
opment of therapeutics and vaccines does generate animosity.
Recent surveys have shown that whereas some 83% of people are pre-
pared to accept the use of mice in painless processes used in research to find
a cure for childhood leukemia, only 38% of people will approve of similar
procedures to test a new cosmetic. Both of these figures reduce by 8% when
monkeys are the test animals and decrease by a further 25% or so when there
is pain or surgery involved.6 When people are given background information
as to why and how animals are necessary as experimental subjects to find
cures for diseases that damage humans, the population splits almost 50/50 as
approvers and disapprovers. A small number of these objectors have joined
activists groups that have damaged and destroyed premises where experi-
ments using animals are known to occur.
In justifying their actions, the objectors to animal experiments present
pictures of experiments on rabbits whose eyes have been used to test
cosmetics, of dogs smoking cigarettes, of monkeys gyrating neurotically
around undersized cages, of cats undergoing vivisection, and other visually
shocking images. Although the Draze test using rabbit’s eyes has been aban-
doned in the U.K., and there has been an overall improvement in caging and
the treatment of experimental animals in most developed countries, these
exceptional images are still portrayed. Also, mice are the most-used animals,
some 1.52 million of them were used in the 2.64 million licensed procedures
in the U.K. in 1997. Most of the testing done is to ensure that drugs and vac-
cines both in development and in production are unlikely to cause harm to
humans, a precaution that is made obligatory by regulatory agencies in most
countries of the world. And as monkeys and chimpanzees are the only non-
human species to express the symptoms of AIDS, they are the principal
experimental animals used to discover putative drugs and vaccines that can
keep HIV at bay.
Part of the cost of promoting human survival is that the nonhuman
world has to be exploited. It is hard to see how this could be otherwise.
Humans do not have the means to convert sunlight into chemical sources of
energy nor can we absorb the carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere to
produce the sugars and amino acids we need for survival. (This is not to say
that through some future technology based on silicon-based solar cells to
capture the energy in sunlight, plus some clever chemical engineering to
convert carbon dioxide and ammonia to carbohydrates and proteins, we will
be independent of the living organisms on our planet as the sources for our
foods. Indeed we may have to perfect these, or equivalent, techniques on
Earth before we ship them off to another planet circling a star in a galaxy far
from where we are at present as a preconditioning event in our colonization
of the universe.) Until we can synthesize all our food from inorganic raw
materials, using a source of energy that is independent of sunlight captured
by plant life, we will continue to be dependent parasites on other organic
beings. This being the case, we have every reason to deal with the other life-
forms on this planet with respect. In providing examples of appropriate
behavior to others, we improve our condition when we express concern for
the well-being of other living things. But this does not mean that we must
become vegetarians, desist from animal-based experiments that can improve
human health, or hold back on vaccination campaigns that seek to eradicate
particular types of disease-causing viruses (e.g., polio and measles). Our sur-
vival depends on our respect for life; each opportunity we can grasp to
express that esteem strengthens us in our commitment to one another.
5.1.4 Experiments on humans

The title to this section will make some individuals think that the sin of com-
moditizing human beings was committed, making them into bales of cotton,
bags of beans, or crates of machine parts. Where is the respect for life as
extolled in the previous section?
One way of paying homage to others is to consider them as unknowns
and to attempt, via observations and tests, to make some determination as to
their nature. This is an act of deference to the present state of another’s being
and asserts that one is not so presumptuous as to claim to know in advance
a person’s state of being and internal thoughts. But what is going on here? In
essence, in paying my respects, I am having to do some tests or experiments
to find out my colleague’s condition so that I might respond appropriately to
his or her requirements. Surely these are, indeed, experiments on humans.
We all do them, all the time. It is just part of our acquisition of knowledge
about the world around us and is a further application of the scientific
method set out in Section 3.1.1.1.
But, of course, we also do more controlled experiments. While the people
who effect such tests are generally medical practitioners, some of the people
involved in setting up the tests and in designing and producing the test mate-
rials may well be engineers. There is also a sense in which the medical prac-
titioner when acting as a tester of a new drug or vaccine is also wearing the
hat of an engineer. Although much testing is a routine affair, there are situa-
tions that require the ingenuity of the practitioner to overcome particular
difficulties in an innovative way. Here, the doctor becomes an engineer who

seeks to progress toward a useful product using science, ingenuity, and a
desire to improve the condition of humans or animals.
When testing a drug or vaccine, we do much pretesting for safety and
efficacy in a variety of other animals. Only when both safety and efficacy are
assured in these experimental systems do we approach a small number of
humans (generally in the tens) to begin the Phase I trials, for which a license
from a regulatory agency needs to be procured. In this approach we have to
obtain the “informed consent” of the subjects prior to any experimental pro-
cedure. This is, in itself, a matter of major concern.7 –10
In asking a potential subject to sign an informed consent document, sev-
eral considerations have to be met. The first is that the subject is not under
any pressure to consent. Can such an “autonomous” decision actually be
made? As I have presented previously (Section 2.3.2), all we do is the conse-
quence of causes to which we have responded as if we were preprogrammed
in a particular way. I have been trained since childhood to be respectful to
doctors and to do their bidding because it will be better for me if I so comply.
When asked to be part of an experiment, I may already be confined in a hos-
pital environment, where my sense of self-determination has been forfeitted
or at least considerably weakened. Furthermore, I want to be on good terms
with my doctor, because my perception is that my life is in that individual’s
hands. So am I really making an autonomous decision when I give my con-
sent? Probably not.
These matters may be further complicated if there is any payment
involved as compensation to the subject. The level of the payment cannot be
set at a level where it becomes an inducement. This means that unemployed
people who may have a “need” for money cannot be accepted as subjects for
a test because, to them, the money would be the feature of the arrangement
that brought (impelled) them into the experiment.
Next, can I be informed as to the actual nature of my commitment?
Irrespective of how well educated a subject may be, it is difficult if not impos-
sible to present that individual with sufficient information of a reliable nature
so that an “informed state” may ensue. Second, it is not unusual to test, by
written examination, potential trial subjects on their understanding of the sit-
uation into which they are expressing a willingness to participate. This pro-
vides documentary evidence that the experimenter has made an attempt at
informing the subjects, but does this really mean that the subjects understand
to what it is they are committing themselves? (A court of law may take a dif-
ferent view, as the test applied within the legal system may be less onerous
than one that has to satisfy an ethicist.) Can the subject sensibly assess the
relative probabilities of benefit and harm? After all, if the experimenter
knew the outcome of the experiment, what would be the value in doing the
experiment? So part of the information is that there is a degree of uncertainty
as to what is likely to happen. How may a nonspecialist understand such
indeterminacy?
The experimenter may know with reasonable assurance the extreme

limits of both the benefits and the harms, but to express such boundaries may
induce the subject to wait before becoming a part of the experiment.
When experiments on, say, vaccines are conducted in developing coun-
tries, where the diseases that the vaccines are intended to protect against are
rife, how may the concept of informed consent be applied? In many such
cases a written examination to indicate understanding is out of the question.
There is always the pressure from the threat of becoming infected by the dis-
ease itself that would make an individual a willing participant in an experi-
ment, particularly if a close family member had recently died as a result of
that disease. But then the ethical position of the mock-vaccinated placebo
controls requires careful treatment (see footnote on page 222).
So even though an informed consent document may have been obtained,
this does not mean that either the putative subject was sufficiently informed
or had freely consented, but it does signify that the subject’s wishes had been
taken into account. The kinds of experiments on humans that both the Nazis
and the Japanese11 –12 effected during World War II could not easily be done if
it was necessary to obtain evidence that the subject had agreed to participate
in the experiment beforehand, and that it had been previously made clear
to the subject that he or she may leave the experiment at any time and for
any reason.
Having completed Phase I trials successfully and shown that the
test material is safe to administer, then it is possible to obtain a license to
proceed with Phase II trials, which test both safety and efficacy in hundreds
of subjects. Should these trials be successful, then the opportunity to
enter Phase III trials ensues. Here the emphasis is still on safety, but
more attention is given to efficacy with the best alternative treatment or
prophylactic and also to an inactive placebo. (The placebo should not
necessarily be inert; it should be designed to be as active as the experi-
mental material, but without the disease-curing or -protecting effects.)
Once these tests have been done on a thousand to hundreds of thou-
sands of subjects on several occasions at different locations, the product
manufacturer may receive a license to fabricate and sell. Phase IV begins
at this point, with postlicensure observations and reports, so that in the
event that adverse effects accrue during use, a commodity may still be
withdrawn.
5.1.5 Institutional codes of conduct

When a specialist possesses talents beyond the comprehension of the average
person on the street, it is necessary for that individual to build a trusting rela-
tionship between him or herself and the people of the society. So felt the Greek
citizens of the island of Cos (Kos), a member of the Dodecanese group of off-
shore islands near the southwest coast of Turkey in the fourth century B.C.E.
They came to terms with the island’s most influential medical practitioner,
Hippocrates (460–377 B.C.E), who committed himself to a contract in which he

asserted that he would neither abuse his specialist powers nor his access to
confidential information about his patients in exchange for the right to prac-
tice medicine on those patients. The Hippocratic oath is presented below,
which is much quoted in part, but rarely in full, because it sets out many of the
provisions of the codes of conduct that govern the behavior of modern
specialists.13
Hippocratic Oath
I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepous, by Health,

by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making
them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to
my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.
To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents;
to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in
need of money to share mine with him; to consider his
family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art,
if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to
impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruc-
tion to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to
indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s
oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the
sick according to my ability and judgment, but never
with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I
administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so,
nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not
give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will
keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not
use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone,
but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.
Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the
sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing
and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man
or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or
hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside
my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what
should not be published abroad, I will never divulge,
holding such things to be holy secrets. Now if I carry
out this oath, and break it not, may I gain forever repu-
tation among all men for my life and for my art; but if
I transgress it and forswear myself, may the opposite
befall me.
This prototypical contract or code of conduct expresses the following key

points:
• A commitment to transmit specialist knowledge to the children of

one’s teacher and one’s own children so as to maintain a monopoly on
specialist information.
• Provide the service of one’s specialization.
• Do no harm.
• Do not procure an abortion.
• Only work within the area of personal competence and yield to others
where they are more expert.
• Do not abuse any individual with whom one comes in contact.
• Keep confidential information about one’s clients.
• On breaking the contract, one foresakes one’s professional and per-
sonal reputation.
Many of these provisions carry through into modern contracts that seek to
control the behavior of specialists in relation to nonspecialist citizens.
To the specialist, a good reputation is all. When a member of the com-
munity commits a car, TV, watch, boiler, or other piece of complex machinery
to an expert for repair, an act of faith is committed simultaneously. Will the
cost of the repair properly and proportionately reflect the cost of effecting the
repair and will the repair have been effected without unbeknownst collateral
damage to some other system whose deficiencies will become apparent at
some future time? At the domestic level the reputation of the repairer is the
main control over the performance of that individual. However, as projects
become more important or costly of money or of lives, then the reputation of
the expert may best be assured in the manner taken by Hippocrates. This
asserts that:
• The applicant for expert status will undergo training and will be
examined by established experts of good reputation to ascertain that a
minimum level of competence has been obtained.
• A final certificate to practice will not be issued until the candidate has
demonstrated to established specialists both theoretical and practical
competence in situations where the candidate has worked under the
supervision of certified individuals.
• The candidate has agreed to comply with the code of practice that the
professionals working in that area have deemed to be the minimum
standards of behavior that are required.
These requirements are met when the society permits the establishment
of self-governing bodies of professionals, ensconced within their institutions,
who have the duty to maintain educational standards, their testing, and the
monitoring of the behavior of all the members of that body in the light of
the code of conduct adopted by them. This code becomes the contract
between the professional body and the society and seeks to assure society
that the specialist capabilities of the members of the body will be used for
benefit and not for social harm. In exchange for that assurance the
professionals acquire the right to practice their profession. When in default of

the code of conduct, the professional is normally deprived of the right to
practice for a defined period or indefinitely.
The removal of this right is a weighty matter. If the actions of a profes-
sional member of an institution were held to be in breach of the code of con-
duct, then he or she would be so informed and asked to appear before a
specially convened subcommittee to examine the case for and against the
alleged infraction. In the event that the case was upheld, then the right to
practice under the professional aegis of the institution could be withdrawn
for a defined period. There would be a right of appeal. In this case it is pru-
dent to include in the appeal tribunal a senior member of the society’s judi-
cial system (for example, a member of the Supreme Court of that society) as
well as the president of the institution plus a lay member of the society. The
judgment of this body would be final and binding. The threat of a lawsuit
against the institution for any damages caused to reputation or earning
capacity resulting from this process can be obviated to some degree by hav-
ing a clause in the terms and conditions of institution membership whereby
all members agree to enable the institution to act in this way and without
recourse by that institute member except in the event of malpractice.
An evolution of codes occurred in the ranks of doctors and lawyers in the
first instance. (The 1996 code for the latter in the U.K. runs to some
746 pages!) Engineers, meanwhile, were for many centuries only asso-
ciated with military activities. The early editions (first [1771] to fourth [1810])
of Encyclopaedia Britannica regard the engineer as the designer and construc-
tor of the major fortifications and the means of attacking similar structures
made by the engineers of opposing forces. However, by the middle of the
nineteenth century that august bastion of knowledge (seventh edition [1842])
came to recognize a second category of engineer: the civil engineer. From
then on additional engineering specialisms became consolidated in their
respective institutions. The first such institution to obtain a royal charter in
1828 was set up by the civil engineers. The institute president at that time was
Thomas Telford (1757–1834), a famous bridge builder. In the U.S. the volun-
tary registration of engineers began in 1907 in Wyoming, with the other states
following in the next 43 years. At present in the U.S. about one third of the
million or so practicing engineers are registered.14 Now architects, surveyors,
accountants, and nurses have to abide by codes of conduct. At one time the
code dealt with the one-on-one relationship between the professional and the
client. Here the interests of the client were central to the work of the profes-
sional. In recent times, however, most professionals are employees of com-
panies or other organizations. In many of these cases the professional
commits him or herself to the well-being of the employing agency as the mat-
ter of first priority. This places the purchasers of the services of such an
agency at a disadvantage, for they now become the object of the strivings for
(financial) success of the company. But in the past decade, for many profes-
sional institutions, there has been a drift away from this focus on the well-
being of the employing company or organization toward a primary goal of
delivering benefit to society as the chief objective of the professional’s work.

In some professional codes this is referred to by stating that in the case of con-
flict between the requirements of the employer (the master in legal terms)
and the code of conduct, the code must have the overriding force. This trans-
position of loyalty is not without its problems. Conflicts are thereby engen-
dered when a professional has to decide how to proceed when the company
will be clearly advantaged, but at a cost to the society. In some cases the code
advises the professional to resign from the job. Nevertheless, numerous case
studies have resulted from this juxtapositioning of countervailing direc-
tives.15 It has also led to the official encouragement of a “whistle-blowing”
culture, which is invariably to the disadvantage of the whistle-blower.16
5.2 Concerning the proper use of tools

The laws that relate to tool use are primarily formulated to prevent harm.
Otherwise a person may pick up any tool and use it as best as he or she can.
For each and every tool in relation to any particular application, there are
both poor and efficient ways in which a tool may be used. The amateur will
learn by trial and error how to hammer a nail (some never improve) or rotate
a screw without the screwdriver careening madly across the work area;
battery-operated devices with magnetic tips and crosshead screws make for
an easy ride. To saw in a straight line and squarely is a teachable art; it does
not necessarily come naturally. Much of the transmission of the skills of tool
use may be learned on the job if supervised by an experienced practitioner in
the field; the apprentice system testifies to the almost universal utility of this
approach. As the complexity and power of the tool increases, so the need for
some knowledge of the way the tool is constructed and operates, as well as
supervised practice, becomes obligatory if damage is not to ensue. Given
some background understanding, most tools become accessible if the infor-
mation provided with the tool is explicit and accurate. This rendering of
information in a way that can serve for the introduction of complex tools is
one of the hallmarks of the recent spate of software tools that have become
available for application in home computers.
Over the last 10,000 years, as we have transited from the end of the Stone
Age to the “Infobiotech” Age, we have seen considerable developments in
the tools that have become available. Admittedly, the fashioning of a stone
arrowhead or spear tip 10 millennia ago was as skilled a piece of work as any-
thing that is done today. The human attributes that were applied to the man-
ufacture of a stone tool are not that different from what is physically required
of a human who makes silicon chips for computers or gyroscopes for rockets.
The coordination of brain, eye, and hand, coupled with the use of ancillary
equipment, remain the principal requirements for tool use in a modern fac-
tory, office, or home. At one extreme we have robots that can assemble cars
and electronic components, while at the other there are the hunter-gatherers
of the Amazon jungles or Borneo highlands whose lifestyle is little different
from that of our hominid ancestors of 50 millennia ago.
Designing, making, and using tools for the benefit of society raises ethi-
cal issues because social benefit may accrue through tool applications that are
unpopular. The introduction of machines to make textiles in the English mid-
lands around 1811–1816 met with considerable and violent resistance by a
group of individuals called the Luddites. Their rebellion was repressed at a
time when prosperity was on the increase, so that the sting was taken out of
the unemployment that had previously been caused by the displacement of
the handmade textile industry.
As each new machine is implemented, the job structure of the society
changes. People are turned out of their current employment, and in the absence
of a social welfare system, are left to their own devices. But as labor-saving
improvements to the production process occur, the price of the manufactured
article decreases, which improves demand for it, with the consequence that
more people are employed to produce the item. The motor car industry is a
case to consider, but only up to a point. As robots take over many of the jobs
involved in the production of vehicles, the displaced people have to look to
new training and employment in expanding industries such as telecommuni-
cations or the infotech sector of computers and their ancillary components.
The ethical issue is not that there is job displacement, but the provision of
the necessary financial, social, and educational support so that a new job in
an expanding area may be obtained. Just as the people in the U.K. employed
in farming dropped from 70% of the total workforce in the 1900s to less than
3% in the 1990s, so the number of people employed in the manufacturing
industries has dropped from around 50% after World War II to 25% at the pre-
sent time (1998).17 The contemporary expansions of the infotech and biotech
enterprises provide jobs that had not previously existed, and the expansion
of the media to satisfy insatiable appetites for entertainment, sports, news,
soaps, game shows, pop videos, and films continues unabated. As comput-
ers and databases become more competent and user-friendly, large bureau-
cracies can release staff engaged in routine data input duties, as these can be
either done automatically or processed by hand in a country such as India
where the cost of labor is lower. The U.K. has, over the last 50 years, lost many
traditional sources of large-scale employment: shipbuilding; coal mining;
and the manufacture of cars, white goods, cameras, motorcycles, textiles,
clothing, etc. But at the same time the standards of living for all of the popu-
lation have increased; over the last 30 years real disposable income per
household has almost doubled.18 So it is unlikely that the ethical issues that
stem from the need to be flexible in one’s approach to a job or employment
will cause serious concerns, at least in the near future. It is clearly important
to be aware of the employment implications of the introduction of labor-
saving machinery and to make full provisions ahead of time for the well-
being of displaced persons. Some such people would find retraining difficult,
and others would be too old to retrain, so provision has to be made to cover
all such contingencies. There are, however, other areas where ethical issues
have to be faced.
• Taking an example from social engineering, raising taxes may be

an appropriate behavior if the society is threatened by an invader,
and weapons need to be manufactured; however, such a recourse may
be highly unpopular.19
• The building of a bypass round the town of Newbury in England was
very unpopular locally, though it served the people in the transport
industry well.
• The introduction in the U.K. of a system whereby welfare payments
can be made via the banks as opposed to the post office has led to the
threat to shut down many rural post offices, as they would then
become uneconomical. This is a cause of great concern in the U.K. at
present.
• Another conflict that concerns engineers can be found in the present
social emphasis on decreasing the use of private cars and increasing
the use of public transport. This is encouraged to prevent persistent
traffic jams and the increase in pollution caused by vehicle emissions.
But these measures aggravate the difficulties of people in rural areas,
who rely on personal transport to a greater extent than those in urban
areas where bus and train services are available.
• A similar situation is building up in the area of solid waste removal
from private premises. As landfill sites are used up and as dumping at
sea is not tolerated for fear of polluting fisheries or the environment of
mammalian sea creatures, the need to deal with waste locally becomes
more pressing. Incineration is the common response to this problem,
but it is not popular with people who have to be discomforted by the
sight of the chimney and the large trucks that service the plant. The
threat of being poisoned by toxic wastes such as dioxins, whose
alleged toxicity is much overrated, is also a detraction. The recycling
of waste is engaging much ingenuity, as much as the ingenuity in cre-
ating the waste in the first place from packages that have become more
elaborate in order to be resistant to urban terrorism.
• As both men and women become economically self-sufficient, they are
able to live independently in their own dwelling as opposed to that of
their parents or spouse (should that be deemed appropriate). This in
turn requires the provision of appropriate housing in the required
numbers. Additional housing on land that is designated “green belt”
in the U.K. is an issue that raises considerable opposition. Here inge-
nuity is required to provide the facilities in a way that is compatible
with the needs of the whole community, not just those who are seek-
ing the new housing.
• As techniques for detecting crime and arresting criminals improves
via the application of various new tools (DNA testing, CCTV, radar
guns, homing devices, breath analyzers, lie detectors, voice recogni-
tion, databases, automated fingerprint matching, communication and
coordination techniques, etc.), the number of prisoners is increasing
(by about 50% over the last 30 years in the U.K.20) So while the engi-
neering of new tools has created a problem for society in the need
to house increasing numbers of “guests of Her Majesty,” there is a
need for more tools to prevent criminal behavior in the first place and
then to educate those falling foul of the law that the present uncon-
scionable rates of recidivism (some 50% of offenders reoffend within 2
years of having been released from custody)21 are considerably
decreased.
• In medicine the welter of new tools (imagers, keyhole surgery tech-
niques, diagnostic techniques, drugs, ion beam machines, laser-based
tools, prosthetics, mechanical joints and hearts, etc.) has made many
more procedures possible, but it has also increased the amount of
social resources that are necessary to acquire the application of these
new techniques. On a national health service where the taxpayer
funds the health service with a fixed sum of money, it is clear that it is
no longer possible to provide each and every taxpayer with the treat-
ment that is the most appropriate. Medicine becomes rationed, which
means that decisions have to be made as to which patient gets what
treatment, as opposed to giving every patient the best possible treat-
ment. The ethical issues that ensue from having to make such deci-
sions can vex the most agile of minds. In this area new tools create new
ethical problems; whether the engineer can engage in the ethical con-
cerns that ensue from the implementation of a new tool is moot,
because some life-preserving device has become available, but the cost
issues may make this particular option unavailable to some who
would otherwise benefit from it. This does not mean that the new tool
should “stay in its box.” Rather, we need to devise ethical systems that
enable us to use fairly the available resources in a manner that is trans-
parent to the people concerned. Many efforts are directed toward such
ends at present.22
• There is a danger that the new computer and Internet tools that
are becoming available will create a two-tier society. Those who
have access to the Internet will be able to find and use information as
never before. They will also be able to shop competitively and obtain
the best prices, which will give them an economic advantage over
those who do not have access to such facilities. The Internet can be
used to obviate visits to shops and to book tickets for hotels, airplanes,
theaters, holidays, and other leisure or business activities. The issue
for the engineer is not that bad things are happening on the Internet—
they are (see also Section 3.1.1.4)—but that we are creating a social
division that is every bit as invidious as the monetary have/have not
split that is a current cause for concern both locally and internation-
ally. Now that we have the wonderful tools of the Internet, it behooves
the engineer to consider how to apply engineering solutions to the
other problem of the two-tier society. The objective of this exercise is
not to make everybody equal in wealth or any other parameter (an

impossible task in any case), but rather to help to distribute the wealth
of society in a manner that most can feel is fair and just. This would
apply between nations and within nations. The crucial matter of the
definitions of “fair and just” is one to which philosophers (qua engi-
neers) have bent their minds.23 But it is clear that more needs to be
done.
• With the advent of a wide range of new and powerful military tools,
there is a need for additional engineering to ensure that the societies
that have built these devices do not use them in combat. It is surely
time to reengineer the world community according to the principles of
the United Nations in a manner that seeks to prevent armed conflict.
The formulation of an international police force to ensure the peace
between peoples who would otherwise use the modern means of mass
destruction to solve their disputes is a priority that cannot be dimin-
ished. Backed by an international court of justice and a means of
bringing recalcitrant lawbreakers into line with judgments, the engi-
neers have a major role to provide the necessary instruments to bring
about this state of affairs.
Solving a problem in one area often results in causing a problem in

another place. It is not always possible to predict the causal chain that is insti-
gated by the creation of a new tool. How far down the line should the engi-
neer look before deciding to launch a novel device? Firstly, it is important to
note that the way ahead is branched and not linear; for most cases there are
many alternative ways ahead, each of which capable of spawning even more
possibilities. Does that mean that there is not any requirement to look ahead
and attempt to predict the consequences of present actions? It is often pru-
dent to consider the most likely outcomes of an action, even though a welter
of others is possible. The existence of comparable events or precedents is use-
ful in this respect, but not infallible. In the event that harmful outcomes may
be foreseen, it would be necessary to draw attention to such possibilities with
ways of preventing them from being realized. This approach has precedence
in that when a new drug is licensed, one of the requirements is that the prod-
uct should be issued along with a paper notifying any contraindications, side
effects, or possibilities of harm when taken with other medicaments or
alcohol. After that it is up to the user to take the necessary steps to prevent
damage.
References
1. http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1999/19993242.htm.
2. Social Trends 29, The Stationary Office, 1999.
3. The Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk
Management, Risk Assessment and Risk Management in Regulatory Decision-
Making, Final Report, Vol. 2, 1997.
4. See also Council Directive 90/220/EEC of April 23, 1990 on the deliberate
release into the environment of genetically modified organisms.
5. de Waal, F., Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other
Animals, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 296.
6. MORI poll conducted for New Scientist in 1999: http://www.newscientist.com.
7. Beauchamp, T. L. and Childress, J. F., Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 4th ed.,
8. Gillon, R., Philosophical Medical Ethics, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1985, 189.
9. The Nurenberg Code is at this Web site:
http://www.ecco.bsee.swin.edu.au/studies/ethics/Nurenberg.html.
10. World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki amended by 41st Medical
Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989.
11. Bernadac, C., Devil’s Doctors: Medical Experiments on Human Subjects in the
Concentration Camps, Ferni, Geneva, 1978, 254.
12. Williams, P. and Wallace, D., Unit 731: The Japanese Army’s Secret of Secrets,
Hoddier & Stoughton, London, 1989, 366.
13. Hippocrates, with an English translation by W. H. Jones, Heinemann Ltd.,
Harvard University Press, 1923, 299.
14. Unger, S., Controlling Technology: Ethics and the Responsible Engineer, John Wiley
& Sons, New York, 1994, 200.
15. Unger, S. H., Examples of real-world engineering ethics problems, Science and
Engineering Ethics 6, 423, 2000.
16. Bird, S. J. and Hoffman-Kim, D., Eds. Whistleblowing and the scientific com-
munity, Science and Engineering Ethics 4, 3, 1998.
17. loc. cit., ref 2.
19. D’Ancona, J., The City of Light (transl.), Selbourne, D., Ed., Abacus, 1997, 516.
21. Social Trends 22, HMSO, 1992.
22. Edgar, A., Salek, S., Shickle, D., and Cohen, D., The Ethical QUALY: Ethical
Issues in Healthcare Resource Allocations, Euromed Communications, Haslemere,
U.K., 1998, 168.
23. Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1971,
607.
A recent (October, 2000) version of the Helsinki Code of Medical Practice does not require
placebo controls for all tests. The best current practice is one control used.
chapter six
Looking before leaping
6.1 The ongoing ethical changes

So far we have gotten away with it. In previous chapters attention was drawn
to the way powerful tools have been introduced into different walks of life
and some ways by which the ethical problems that have emerged have been
handled. Major changes in the way people live and work in developed coun-
tries have been driven by the introduction of new tools and processes. The
consequent changes have not been painless. Job changes, restructuring of
family life, and the adoption of a universalized ethic of tolerance have led to
the acceptance of most of the morals and customs of diverse religious and
ethnic groups. These operate within the frameworks of societies, which until
100 years ago, were ethically and relatively monolithic. Religions that pro-
moted an absolute approach to ethics are based on the interpretation of the
Bible by the hermeneuts. But they used the principle of forbearance to accept
other teachings into society provided that such additions did not affect the
mainstream culture to any great extent. This has brought us, perforce, to a
system of relative ethics—an ethics that revolves around acceptability (cf.
Section 2.4). It also feeds on the “freedom from” principle of Isaiah Berlin
(1909–1999) who promoted the idea.
“Pluralism, with the measure of ‘negative’ liberty that it entails, seems to
me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek in the
great, disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of ‘positive’ self-mas-
tery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of mankind.”1 So, at this time, any-
thing that does not affect the life of the other members of society goes.
Alternative religions, medicines, and lifestyles abound. Homosexuality, les-
bianism, unmarried parenthood, and single-parent families are recognized
as valid ways of being. Society is essentially engaged in a massive ethical
experiment that has been, in part, triggered by the advent of a variety of new
tools and techniques.
Society has withstood this transformation well, and indeed many would
concede that more people are mindful that the quality of their lives has
increased by whatever measure they choose to use. The persecution of indi-
viduals for what they think is a matter of the past; people are not excommu-
nicated if they fall foul of religious law; unmarried mothers are helped and
supported; cohabitation is a prevalent mode of living; divorce is easy; a secu-
rity net prevents the starvation of the indigent; travel to other countries is
permitted. But there are yet challenges in the offing that will test our social
integrity. The new tools in the wings, waiting for a window of opportunity to
take a position on the stage, are capable of totally transforming our societies
yet again. Their impact has not really been conceived because, as tools, they
are not yet competent for application. When these tools do come onstream,
we could well be on the brink of a further suite of ethical changes. How we
handle these developments and devise ethical systems that will protect and
enhance our lives are the challenges that the development and use of these
new tools pose.
The new tools referred to are those techniques that will enable the:
• Genetic engineering of plants

• Genetic engineering of animals
• Genetic engineering of humans
• Cloning of humans
• Networking of humans
• Colonization of space
It would be foolhardy to deal with these issues without some further

preparation. The previous chapter referred to the abundance of laws, rules,
regulations, instruments, and codes that govern the practice of engineers as
they apply their profession in the society at large. To some, these could be suf-
ficient protection against untoward developments. In the face of the radically
new emergent technologies, others would be more skeptical and require
additional protections and assurances.
The new tools listed above are quite different from those that we have
used in the past. Breeding programs have altered beyond recognition the
fauna and flora we use for food, work, and recreation. These changes, taking
place over the last 10,000 years, have given us time to adjust to the
acceptance-rejection criteria that have been applied over these centuries. The
new tools will make even greater changes to the fauna, flora, and humans,
but in a timescale of tens of years rather than hundreds of years. We need to
have mechanisms in place to handle these prospective changes; to prevent
them entirely is probably impracticable—the ideas and concepts that impel
them into being are extant and cannot be “put back in the bottle.”
One way ahead is to borrow from chemical engineers the approach to the
implementation of a new process plant that is becoming the standard prac-
tice in that area. This derives from a suite of techniques developed by the
Chapter six: The ongoing ethical changes 225
company ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries, U.K.) in the 1960s for starting-
up and operating new process plants in a way that minimizes the possibili-
ties of harm to the workforce, the people outside the factory, or the
environment (safety, health, and environment). It is based on a thorough
analysis of the possible hazards that could be envisaged and the actions that
should be taken at the design, construction, and implementation stages to
prevent any mishap from occurring. The process used is designated
HAZOP—a study of hazard and operability. Many process engineers and
operators have worked on these techniques so that a series of defined prac-
tices may be delineated. One version of these techniques has been published
by the Institution of Chemical Engineers in the U.K.2 I will describe these
techniques below, but with an eye on their application to issues in the wider
society. In the final chapter I will attempt to envisage how they might be used
in relation to the introduction of a subset of the new tools from the list above.
6.2 Introduction to HAZOP

Let us consider HAZOP as a gatekeeping operation. The purpose of the gate-
keeper is to prevent harm or damage to the property for which he or she is
responsible. To do this properly, it is necessary to be familiar with the nature
of that property and how it might be damaged. The assiduous gatekeeper
would not just operate at the site of the gate, but would seek to anticipate
what could be in the offing that might be a source of problems. Some strategy
of information acquisition is implemented, and action based on that knowl-
edge is formulated. A group of experts is assembled and presented with the
problem of working out the most effective way of using existing and new
information to prevent future harms. How they do this and translate their
recommendations for action to the people who can put into place the neces-
sary changes is the story to be told about the HAZOP world.
Three essential definitions are required. The first is the word hazard. A
hazard is any situation with the potential for human injury, damage to prop-
erty, damage to the environment, or a combination of these; an example
might be an unexploded bomb on a golf course. The second word is risk.
This is defined as the likelihood or probability of a specified undesirable
event occurring within a specified period or in specified circumstances; here
we could consider the probability that a particular holding tank will explode
if it is subjected to a pressure that is larger than the one stated on the
pressure-rating certificate. While the dictionary definitions of these words
indicate that there are overlaps in meaning, the two definitions given are
sufficiently separate as to be independently useful. It is also useful to intro-
duce into this preparatory section a definition of cost, which is the product
of the risk of a particular damage occurring multiplied by the magnitude of
that damage.
It is common to compound the hazard and probability components into
the concept of risk, so that a definition of risk might read as follows:
The probability that a substance or situation will pro-

duce harm under specified conditions. Risk is a combi-
nation of two factors:
• The probability that an adverse event will occur

(such as a specified disease or type of injury).
• The consequences of the adverse event.3
But I prefer to keep the two components separate, as this keeps the sense
of the word risk in the area of statistics and probability and does not predis-
pose it to a harm or damage. For it may be useful to consider the risk of obtain-
ing a benefit. If I bet on the U.K. lottery, I stand to loose £1 or gain a prize. So
I have put my money at risk, which may either result in a harm (i.e. a loss) or
a benefit (i.e. a prize).
The origin of the word risk is obscure.4 There may be some connection to
the modern Greek word , whose rough transliteration could read riziko,
which, in translation, turns to “fate” or “destiny.” The sense we have of the
words fate or destiny is largely probabilistic. Hence my preference for empha-
sizing the elements of chance that can be associated with the word risk. To
some extent this is supported by the definitions of the complete Oxford
English Dictionary, which gives the following meanings:
1. (trans.) To hazard, endanger, to expose to the chance of injury.

2. To venture upon, take the chances of.
3. To venture to bring into some situation.
4. To take or run risks.
There is little doubt that in common usage risk has the connotation of
injury or harm, but I would contend that this is by association coupled with
our recourse to the concept of fate when a disaster strikes. Yet a more robust
concept comes out of the gambling world, where we risk losing our stake or
winning a reward.
One reason I have expounded at length on this subject is that it provides
a basis for understanding what we mean by cost in cost-benefit considera-
tions. The cost we put against a benefit is a compound of the probability (risk)
of incurring that payment (harm) of a certain defined size, as opposed to the
chance (risk) of incurring a benefit (gain) of a particular magnitude. This can
be summarized as follows:
probability of incurring a harm magnitude of the harm

compared with the
probability of incurring a gain the magnitude of that gain
The central activity in a HAZOP analysis is the examination of the likely

operational outcomes if, or when, the parameters of a process change to
levels that were not envisaged in the design of that process. These results
then have to be understood and interpreted against the background of the
financial situation, the effect they would have on humans, any consequences
of a change in the levels of security, and the issues that pertain to discovered
design defects. It is clearly worthwhile doing as much of this examination as
far up-front as possible, because once a design hardens and starts to be trans-
lated into an actual process plant, it becomes progressively more difficult and
costly to make changes.
In seeking to help the reader through this section, we have depicted the
main stages and operations that occur in the development of a new process
from the time it is conceived to the time it is decommissioned (Figure 6.1).
The principal pathway normally contains the steps shown in the diagram.
Nothing happens until somebody has a bright idea. This new concept
can come from a requirement to respond to a need or from a revelation that
by putting existing units together in a novel way, the prospects of making an
exciting addition to a product line becomes possible. Additionally, the solu-
tion to the requirement to satisfy a need may also come from a synthesis of
the pieces of an existing jigsaw. The step that leads from the concept to the
design is the second most creative step. For not only must the design lead to
the objectives intended, but it must also do it in a way that is cost-effective,
practical, and compliant with existing resources, both human and material.
Having built the plant, the next stage is to do some test runs. For each such
run one can identify three sets of conditions for which we have to be pre-
pared. The first is the start-up, the second is the run condition, and the third
is the shutdown process. For each of these stages the physical conditions and
material flows will be quite different.
We may also differentiate two different kinds of run modes: the continu-
ous process, in which the materials of the process flow through the equip-
ment and emerge at the end as a finished or partially complete item, and the
batch process, in which all of the materials of the process are modified in a
series of distinct stages. Batch processes tend to operate with multiples of
large-scale process equipment, while continuous processes work with
smaller-scale machines run as uninterrupted unit processes.
The difference between these modes can best be realized when you com-
pare what you would have to do to scale up the process for making boiled
eggs. The simple one egg in one pan containing water on one stove is the
basic process that is under consideration here. To boil 1000 eggs it is possible
to use 1000 pans and 1000 stoves. This would be a multiple batch process, as
it does not involve new technology. This is sometimes the way engineers like
to proceed, particularly when a license for the finished product has been
acquired from material made in this way. (An example of such an operation
is the multiple-bottle process used to produce the hormone that increases the
numbers of red blood cells, erythropoietin EPO, by the company Amgen—a
product whose annual sales are now approaching $2 billon.) To boil the same
number of eggs by a unit process would require putting all the eggs in one
228
Ethics, tools, and the engineer
Figure 6.1 Idealized process flow diagram.

wire-mesh basket and dunking it an enormous pan with the amount of water
that is a 1000-fold multiple of the amount used in one pan, plus some means
of rapidly and effectively propelling the boiling water around the mass of
eggs in the egg holder. By contrast, a continuous process would require the
placing of eggs on a belt that moves through a bath of boiling water such that
each egg is exposed to the water for the time needed for its cooking, after
which the egg is displaced from the belt, which would then go around a loop
so that it might be available for reloading with a fresh egg that needs cooking.
Shutting down an operation generates conditions that are unlike those of
the start-up phase or the running mode, and so this requires examination in
its own right. When the plant has successfully passed its start-up tests, it is
then commissioned for full-time dedicated service in the generation of prod-
uct. From time to time it will be necessary to interrupt the normal stream of
operations to perform a maintenance service that is different from the day-to-
day maintenance that can be effected while the plant is running.
The remaining options for the plant are its modification to make a new
product or its complete decommissioning and demolition. A modification
requires that a new design phase is undertaken. In a decommissioning a
series of steps is taken that has not been part of the normal start-up or run-
ning operations of the plant, so a separate study has to be undertaken to
attempt to predict and prevent any untoward events happening during the
dismantling of the plant. I have designated this as HAZOP 2 in Figure 6.1.
The main HAZOP 1 examination is at a position that is between the design
and construction phases of operation. I shall now turn to a more detailed
review of the actions entailed.
6.3 HAZOP in practice5

HAZOP exercises are only as good as the people who progress them and the
people who support them. Without backing for the implementation of the
recommendations at the highest level, the work of the HAZOP group would
be for nothing. To be worthy of such backing, the group has to be made up of
appropriate experts and led by a person who is respected for expertise and
social skills. Ideally, the group should not have fewer than four people or
more than eight. To support the leader, there should be a person to record the
decisions of the group that become part of the process documentation. Such
documents have to be in a form such that a person who is unfamiliar with the
process and joins the process operating team at some future date, when all
the people who were originally involved have moved on, can, from the doc-
umentation alone, pick up the process and the intents of the engineers who
put it together. Among the other members of the HAZOP group, there should
be a process operator, an expert on instrumentation, and, if appropriate, an
individual who is familiar with the software and computers that are con-
nected to the process. The leader, who will be dedicated to this task, is to be
carefully chosen and will have been trained to assume the role as a result of
his or her previous experiences as a member of such a group, such as the
group secretary or scribe, and will have had the necessary extramural expo-
sure to the appropriate courses given for such individuals.
A HAZOP analysis is not a trivial job to be done on a rainy Friday after-
noon. It is a major commitment to bring into operation a process plant whose
chances of failure in any area are as small as human ingenuity can effect. The
team described above may need to have a 2 to 3 h meeting every day for sev-
eral weeks. As these meetings are intensive, they cannot be done in the broom
cupboard. A sizeable and comfortably furnished room that is well ventilated
and lit by natural lighting, with a table large enough for each member of the
team to spread out full-size A0 diagrams of the process under discussion and
still have some room for a writing pad and calculator, is a minimal require-
ment. Provision for the secretary or scribe to have an operational computer
on the table will also be necessary, as the database that has to be filled out
may be preprepared with the appropriate boxes set up for the comments of
the review team.
Once the team has assembled, it makes a preliminary overview exami-
nation of the project. What are the particularly dangerous aspects? Are there
any special laws or directives that relate to the materials used or made? What
criteria for safety, health, and environment are going to apply? What policies
are going to operate vis-à-vis alarms, automatic shutdown, the control capa-
bilities of manual operators, and the timetable and rules of engagement for
the hazard studies about to be undertaken?
The first task is to examine the firmed-up and completed process flow-
charts, which detail how the raw materials pass through the system to
become products and wastes. These charts will show the physical conditions
that should pertain at each point in the process; the instruments and control
systems that measure process variables and apply corrective action are also
portrayed. The supplies of energy are indicated, as are the ways in which the
energy inputs either stay with the product materials or leave the process.
Thus armed, it is possible for the leader to suggest breaking the process down
into unit operations, each of which can be examined separately and in turn.
The implications of a change in conditions to the process materials will rever-
berate in the downstream operations and will have to be taken into account
as these changes are denoted.
At the core of the HAZOP procedure is the analysis of the hazards and
the risks of the occurrence of those hazards if the process conditions were to
deviate from those that have been set by the design engineers. The HAZOP
group then generates as many deviations from the set points as it can rea-
sonably conceive and asks the question: “What would happen if this devia-
tion would occur, and how would it be dealt with in a manner that does not
jeopardize safety, health, or the environment beyond previously determined
limits?” In other words the group creates an imaginary perturbation to a
controlled system and then views how it might react (see Chapter 2 for a
description of the concept of ethics as providing the set point for the control
systems that modulate human social behavior.) These perturbations (akin to
thought experiments) are created in a systematic manner. For each section of
the process the parameters that are either measured, controlled, measured
and controlled, or there but ignored are considered to have deviated from the
range of intended levels in a variety of ways. Examples of these forcing func-
tions, which are also called “guidewords,” are given below:
• No—none of the design intents are achieved.

• More or higher—there is a quantitative increase in the parameter.
• Less or lower—there is a quantitative decrease in the parameter.
• Before/after—something happens out of sequence.
• Faster/slower/early/late—the timing is different from the intention.
• As well as—an additional activity occurs.
• Part of—only some of the design intention is achieved.
• Reverse—the opposite of the design intention happens.
• Other than—there has been a complete substitution and another activ-
ity happens.
Each of these forcing functions is applied in turn to each parameter that

is one of the system variables. Examples of parameters are as follows:
Addition Oxygen level Specific gravity

Alarm Particle size Speed
Composition pH Start
Compute Phase Stirrer/pump
Control Pressure speed
Flow rate Run Stop
Humidity Separation Temperature
Maintenance Sequence Time
Measure Set point Viscosity
Osmotic pressure changes
The matrix that is created is set out, and for each and every combination
of forcing function and parameter, an entry is made indicating one of the
following:
• The chances of this happening are negligible or significant.

• If it did happen, a hazard would or would not ensue.
• If the consequences are be likely to be disastrous, preventive action
must have already taken place so that the chances of such an event
occurring are minimal (say, once in 10,000 years of operation).
• There is a need for a modification to the design so that the chances of
a hazard developing are below accepted limits.
• Who is to take what action, when, and what the reporting-back proce-
dures are.
The procedures to be adopted can be presented as a flowchart that indi-

cates where decisions have to be made and the consequences that result.
Figure 6.2 shows a variant of such a flowchart derived from reference 2. For
most of the combinations of guideword and parameter, the outcome is so
improbable that it is possible to pass to the next case. However, for some of
the permutations of parameter and forcing function, there will be consider-
able discussion, and the modification of the original design to include more
measuring points, control systems, and alarms coupled to controllers that can
prevent deviations from the design intentions from reaching levels at which
harm to staff, people, and the environment could occur. In these considera-
tions special care has to be taken to make sure that when safety relief systems
are activated, the fluid flows exit the process system in an “orderly” fashion.
In the 1970s when I was in charge of a pilot plant in a government
research institute, I was responsible for the design of a fermenter that could
grow animal cells in culture and produce a highly infectious (for cloven-
hoofed animals) foot and mouth disease virus from such cells. For this design
we had to dedicate one of the vessel outlets to a pipe that housed a bursting
disk. This disk was designed (according to the manufacturer’s information)
to rupture if the pressure in the vessel rose above 30 psi (approximately 2
atm). This posed the following question: “How should we make provision
for a tank full of infectious virus leaving the vessel in an explosive manner?”
This required the engineering of a pipe and tank that contained an inactivat-
ing fluid positioned on the discharge side of the bursting disk.
In all HAZOP considerations attention should be given to historical data.
Although the archives may not provide exact overlaps with what is likely to
be the equipment or operational profile of a future process, there is yet much
that can be learned about the reliability and functionality of process equip-
ment. In most developments the changes are stepwise, and the step size is rel-
atively small, so there is much that can be gained from an historical review of
analogous plant processes. Additionally, computer simulation techniques are
now more powerful than ever before. This means that it may be possible to
simulate artificially in a virtual environment the effects of the deviations that
could be caused by particular combinations of forcing function and parame-
ter. One member of the team should be adept at such techniques and their
interpretation.
6.4 Adapting HAZOP to developments outside

chemical engineering
Hundreds, if not thousands, of new products hit the market every day. Over
the course of a year a few tens of such innovations generate some interest over
and above that caused by advertising. Most are modifications or variants of
existing products. Clothing, shoes, houses, crockery, cutlery, pans, white
goods, cars, and other goods come out in new models each year. Minor
upgrades and the pressures to be fashionable create a demand. Occasionally a
new deviation is made available: the Sony Walkman, mobile phones,
Define the operation to be examined and

its controlling parameters
Discuss and define the design envelope

for the parameters of this step
Select one of the parameters
Combine the parameter with one of the forcing parameters and

generate a deviation from the intended performance envelope
What are the consequences of the deviation
Will the existing process safety measures handle the

situation? If not define a course of action to take
Have all the causes of this NO

deviation been considered?
Have all the forcing functions NO

been considered?
Have all the parameters been considered? NO
NO Have all the sections been considered?
Examine the whole process for interactions END
Figure 6.2 Schematic application of HAZOP to a process.
pocket-sized video cameras, laptop and pocket computers, etc. Most, if not all,
of these developments are accepted with more or less acclaim or indifference.
There are those who assert that “the market knows best.” Whether peo-
ple buy the product or use the process is the criterion for success. The ethical
principle evoked is that of acceptability. However, it may well be that the
application of this criterion is not in the best interests of society in the long
run. The generation of electricity by the use of uranium-based nuclear fission
reactors has been rejected by people in societies that have access to fossil fuels
to burn in an unsustainable manner. Similarly, genetically manipulated foods
have been stigmatized in some European countries to the extent that they
have been removed from supermarket shelves. The Betamax format for
videotapes was regarded as superior to the VHS system, yet the latter
currently dominates the market. The market craves for the sensational in its
media presentations, which distorts and perverts the emergence of a version
of the state of affairs that could better serve the people, albeit in a less excit-
ing manner. This free-for-all may have characterized the way business was
done up to the middle of the twentieth century; it can no longer serve as a
model, as we become more aware and concerned about matters affecting the
safety, health, and the environment of the people.
The alternative claim that the “state knows best” has led to the emergence
and recent rejection (at least in Eastern Europe) of command economies. Such
a system may be most effective in the production of armaments and rockets,
but, in not listening to the voices in the marketplace, it can produce goods and
services at levels that far outstrip their demand. It is also culpable of not pro-
ducing the goods and services for which there is a robust need.
We are left by a process of elimination with the “mixed market,” a com-
bination of a free market (that includes distortions caused by the market
makers in favor of the satisfaction of their own greed) and government inter-
vention to prevent excessive distortions and to include some features that are
necessary for the future survival of current social systems.
However, as we move on, we are brought into confrontation with devices
and products that have, or may come to have, more than a marginal effect on
our lives. I have specified many of these in Section 3.1.1.4.22. It is clear that
the majority of items made available to the consumer do not pose unaccept-
able hazards. However, some do, and therefore it would be worthwhile to
consider what would have been the case if HAZOP procedures were applied
to them before they became embedded in our culture. Let us consider the
family car. Over 20,000 fatalities occur on American roads each year; the fig-
ure for the U.K. is about 3600; these figures do not include the damage caused
to humans and the environment by pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.
The car is an object that is associated with a hazard. Let us now imagine that
we can go back in time some 100 years, and we have been given the job of
doing a HAZOP analysis on the process by which members of our society
meet together to produce a car.
Figure 6.3 is an imaginary flowchart for the construction and use of a car.
Assuming that the subassemblies can be made, the production process
merely consists of putting those parts together. The HAZOP analysis will
consist of an overview of the nature of a car, what it is, what it does; further
considerations then will be given to each of the subassemblies before they are
grafted onto the main construction.
The overview immediately warns the producer that a car can cause
harm. Damage is primarily caused as a result of the car doing the job for
which it was constructed (the intention behind the car) by two methods. The
primary method is via the use of the car as a transportation system; secon-
darily the exhaust gases act as pollutants and can affect the lungs and breath-
ing of sensitive people who happen to live in areas where cars congregate
(traffic jams). In attempting to decrease these negative factors during the
upstream analysis, it will be necessary to examine each of the components
Chapter six:
The ongoing ethical changes
Figure 6.3 Process flow diagram for the construction and use of an imaginary car.
235
that go into the final assembly from the point of view of the probable harms
that the assembled car can effect. The reader will appreciate this is not a triv-
ial task, particularly as each parameter has to be examined through its com-
bination with a number of forcing functions. Two examples of the kind of
parameters one might adduce to two of the subassemblies are given. Two of
the parameters associated with one of the subassemblies are further exam-
ined via a combination with the forcing functions. The subunits chosen are
the fuel tank and the speed control system. For the fuel tank 32 parameters,
are listed below:
• Accessibility • Fuel pump • Pump fuse

• Air bubbles • Integrity • Pump power switch
• Blocking of inlet • Left side crash • Pump rate
• Blocking of outlet • Level • Rear end crash
• Empty • Level indicator • Right side crash
• Fill • Level sensor • Security
• Fire risk • Material of construction • Serviceability
• Fixing brackets • Multiple crashes • Shut
• Flow rate in • Open • Stability
• Flow rate out • Pipe to carburetor • Temperature
• Front end crash • Pressure
In the case of the speed control system 31 parameters are listed:
• Accuracy as a • Engine maintenance • Responsiveness

function of speed • Exhaust gas of readout
• Accuracy of readout composition • Sensitivity
• Air cleanliness • Fuel efficiency (pressure)
• Air supply • Gas composition as • Set point for
• Cable adjustment a function of speed high-speed alarm
• Cable friction • Leads to battery • Sound—noise
• Cable movement • Lower limits • Speed readout
length • Readout light • Speed sensor
• Cable stretching • Readout light • Timing
• Carburetor dimmer control • Upper limits
performance • Readout light switch • Vibration
• Charge plugs • Readability of
• Distributor readout—analogue
• Distributor to or digital
battery connection
The next step in the analysis is to combine the parameters in the list
above with some of the forcing functions and draw conclusions from the out-
come that will make the car more effective, safe, and less hazardous to peo-
ple and the environment.
Let us examine the sensitivity of the accelerator pedal to the pressure of

the foot.
• The design intent is to regulate the speed of the car via the depression
of the pedal, so the purpose is likely to be achieved.
• There is a direct relationship between the amount of pressure applied
and the speed obtained between certain limits. If the pedal is insuffi-
ciently pressed, will the car stall from an inadequacy of the fuel sup-
ply? If it is overpressed, will the engine flood and again stall? How
may either of these conditions be prevented? A recommendation
might ensue that advises that the car should not stall when no pres-
sure is applied to the accelerator.
• Likewise, the engine should be protected against flooding by defining
the amount of travel of the accelerator, which is possible irrespective
of the pressure applied (i.e., the distance to the floor of the driving
compartment is to be carefully defined and the accelerator installed so
that the maximum travel is curtailed to that which does not cause
flooding).
• What would happen if the accelerator were pressed before the ignition
was switched on? This could either cause premature flooding or, for
some cars, it could prime the carburetor so that the starting system
could operate reliably.
• Depressing the accelerator after the car has stalled may also either
cause flooding and prevent restarting; alternatively, it may be neces-
sary to hold the accelerator down after a stall is experienced.
• Turing on the ignition while the engine is running is guaranteed to
cause problems, because it will cause the spark plugs to fire out of the
appropriate sequence and so cause a conflict with the current condi-
tion. This situation should lead to some further design work to pre-
vent this contingency. (Still to be done in the year 2000, I believe!)
• The speed of depression of the accelerator is likely to need some con-
sideration. If it is depressed too rapidly, the engine could stall; there
would not seem to be any untoward effect if it were pressed too
slowly, except perhaps when the engine needs to get started when a
too-cautious approach may prevent the engine from firing. The rate at
which the accelerator may be depressed may be controlled by the ten-
sion in the cable that attaches the accelerator to the valve on the car-
buretor that regulates the flow of fuel into the engine. There is also the
prospect of the rate of depression control by friction in the mounting
of the accelerator and in the use of a spring under the accelerator to
provide feedback to the driver of the degree to which the accelerator
is depressed. All of these parameters need to be adjusted in relation to
the sensitivities and proclivities of the envisaged driver. Different
tensions could be required for males and females or for different
types of cars.
• The forcing functions “Part of” and “Reverse” are not likely eventual-
ities in this case.
• A pedal other than the accelerator may be depressed in lieu of the
accelerator. If this is the brake pedal or the clutch pedal, then the car
may not be controlled sufficiently to prevent a hazard. Provision
should be made to make sure that the sensory feedback to the driver
is sufficiently characteristic that there will not be any mistakes of this
nature.
• As the accelerator controls the speed of the car, and as the number of
fatalities that occur increases as the speed of the car increases, there
may be grounds for requiring the manufacturer of the car to so adjust
the accelerator that acceleration rates and maximum speeds be set up
in such a way that they cannot be exceeded.
By way of contrast, consider the parameter of the speed readout device

(speedometer).
• The readout device provides the driver with a real-time indication of

the speed at which the car is traveling. It is fitted with a high-speed
alarm that is activated by a manually positioned set point. The posi-
tioning of the set point change control should be readily accessible,
and the readout should be visible in its totality, irrespective of the posi-
tion of the steering wheel.
• The readout device should also be observable with a minimum of dis-
traction to the driver from the need to maintain a safe speed while
maintaining an appropriate position on the road.
• One of the design intents is that the readout is an accurate reflection of
the speed of travel of the car. Also the accuracy of the indication should
not be a function of the speed of the car. That is, whatever speed the
car is traveling at, the accuracy of the readout should remain unal-
tered. The precision of the readout need not be as high as the accuracy.
• The readout has to be steady and not fluctuate about the speed of
travel; this dampening of the movement should not be achieved at the
expense of providing a real-time readout.
• If the readout is obscured by some positions of the steering wheel,
then it should be moved to where it can be observed without hin-
drance. Alternatively, the design of the steering wheel and its position
may need to be reconsidered.
• If the numbers on the device are too small and the indicator needle too
fine, the ability of the driver to obtain a speed reading will be
impeded. Attention should be given to contrasting colors of the num-
bers and needle vis-à-vis the background.
• If the readout light system does not work, the readout device is use-
less in the dark. Therefore, a check light or warning indicator light is
necessary for this system.
• The markings on the device have to be readily comprehensible by the

driver; too many numbers will be as difficult to read as too few num-
bers. The units in which the numbers are expressed should be relevant
to the country in which the car is to be sold.
• The size of the device and the size of the markings on it have to be suf-
ficiently large as to be read by a person with indifferent eyesight; the
largest possible size in relation to the space available may have unde-
sirable effects on other readout devices. Too small a readout will also
be illegible.
• An analogue device is easier to read and digest than a digital readout
(particularly when the latter is changing up and down quickly), espe-
cially when the observation is made rapidly.
• In resetting the position at which the alarm should be activated, it may
be useful to be able to switch off the alarm system during the manip-
ulation stage; otherwise false alarms will be generated. The facile dis-
ablement of the alarm system should be prevented by mechanical
means.
• As well as reading the speed, the driver may wish to know the time,
amount of fuel remaining, the rate of rotation of the engine, and other
indicators of engine performance. Space has to be provided for these
readouts. At some future date a computer may be programmed to pro-
vide such information and the derived information, such as the num-
ber of miles that the remaining amount of fuel can support, as well as
parameters such as the internal temperature, humidity, and pollutant
levels.
• In the event that only part of the design intent is achieved, it is crucial
to maintain that part that provides the driver with information about
the current speed of the vehicle; alarm systems may be extra to this
minimal requirement, as is the need to be able to see the readout at all
positions of the steering wheel, provided that under normal driving
conditions the steering wheel does not obscure the view.
• A reverse intent is difficult to conceive.
• If the readout device was connected to another electrical supply than
that which was intended, then the lack of responsiveness of the read-
out to the speed of the car would be readily noticed, which would
require the driver to take remedial action.
I am not suggesting that I have necessarily done a good or complete job

in my attempt at effecting a HAZOP analysis of 2 of the 31 parameters I have
associated with the speed control system of a car. But I hope that I have made
clear to the reader that this operation, when carried out by a relevant team of
experts, can have much to offer in preventing a process or product from being
developed that is likely to fail in a manner that will damage workers, people
outside the plant, or the environment. It is also obvious that much effort and
ability have to be brought to bear on the analysis. The result of the applica-
tion of resources is that the plant when built, or the product when made, is
likely to fulfill its design intents to the greatest extent possible, bearing in
mind existing technology and the state of understandings. We must not for-
get that we can always improve. So, having done such an analysis, we cannot
just put it away and ignore it. The work has to remain in front of us as a con-
stant provocation to conceive better and safer ways of achieving our objec-
tives. By setting down such paths we have begun to function in ways that will
enable us to take onboard radically new developments and tools in a manner
that should not excite the opprobrium of most citizens. To test this hypothe-
sis, the next chapter examines some new tools that will stringently test the
limitations and possibilities of these ideas.
References
1. Berlin, I., Two concepts of liberty, in Four Essays on Liberty, Berlin, I., Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1969, 118.
2. Crawley, F., Preston, M., and Tyler, B., HAZOP: Guide to Best Practice, I. Chem.
E. (Institution of Chemical Engineers), London, 2000, 108.
3. The Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk
Management, Risk Assessment and Risk Management in Regulatory Decision-
Making, Final Report, Vol. 2, 1997.
4. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2 vol.).
chapter seven
Tools in prospect
On Monday, June 27, 2000 the American president and the prime minister of
the United Kingdom announced that the (almost—97%) complete sequence
of the approximately 3.2 billion bases that make up the human genome had
been ascertained with 99.9% accuracy.1 If written out in book form, this
would fill some 270 telephone directory–sized volumes. They thought this
was not going to happen until 2003, but it became available in 2000. This time
contraction resulted from the construction of new, automated, computer-
controlled sequencers and a different technique to create and reconstruct the
pieces of the genetic jigsaw. The waves of ethical issues that this event
unleashed wash over us yet. Indeed, they will continue to do so until we
become comfortable with the many different consequences that result from
this major scientific discovery; and this could take a century or two. One of
the primary functions of this writing is to anticipate some of these sequellae
and to offer ways in which they can be introduced into society with the min-
imum of discomfort and unease.
Although the new biological tools attract much publicity and attention,
a similar upheaval has occurred and is still going on in the information tech-
nology area. As the number of connected homes and institutions increases,
the use and pervasiveness of this virtual medium expands exponentially.
Essentially, the enhancement of our degree of “connectedness” leads to dif-
ferent states of being or a shift in the paradigm by which we live our lives.
The rule book of society has to be amended. The code of conduct of individ-
uals has to be revised. And should this fail to suffice, we will have to com-
bine our knowledge and capabilities in biology and rocketry with the
informatics world so that we might begin the colonization of space. It is yet
a dream that we may divert the effort and expenditure we devote to arma-
ments and earthbound conflicts to the discovery and settlement of worlds
beyond our world.
By looking backward, we get to see the future. If the hypotheses of

Graham Hancock and Santha Faiia are upheld, the pyramids serve to refer-
ence the positions of particular constellations of stars at crucial points in time.
To support this contention, these authors note that the three pyramids at
Giza lined up with the stars of the belt of the constellation Orion at sunrise
of the spring equinox in the year 10,500 B.C.E. At the same time the Sphinx
at Giza faced the constellation Leo, and the layout of the temples in the
area of Cambodia around Angkor Wat mirrored the constellation Draco.
These observations imply that ancient people knew about the precession
of the Earth’s axis of rotation, and, armed with this knowledge, they were
able to predict the position of star formations into the future. This would
be helpful for navigators; it also created a priestly subculture that had the
knowledge that may have united the different groups of humans as they
penetrated the far-flung regions of the globe. One such person who may
have been privy to this information was the first engineer who has a name:
Imhotep. This individual was architect, sage, physician, and vizier to the
Pharaoh of the time—Djoser (2686–2613 B.C.E. [or 2514–2441 in the new
chronology of David Rohl3]) and is given credit for erecting the oldest
building made from faced stone blocks: the 61m high step pyramid at
Sa-qqarah near Memphis, Egypt.
From these beginnings our interest in off-Earth events has grown.
Incidents that have made dramatic changes to the planet’s biology over
the last 400 million years have been attributed to collisions with comets,
asteroids, or volcanic activity that may have been triggered by events in
space.4 So some of the impetus to achieve an off-planet survival capability
derives from our knowledge of what has happened in the past coupled with
a belief that equivalently sized transformations cannot be excluded from any
future scenario. We need the tools to do this job, and we also need to direct
the attention of people to the tasks that confront us all. The design and manu-
facture of the new tools has to be complemented by parallel developments
in ethics.
One way in which our ethics can develop is via the application of the
HAZOP methods described in the previous chapter. Essentially, this requires
us to stop and think hard and long between the design and construction
stages of new projects on which we are about to embark. In the subsequent
sections of this chapter I will indicate how such an analysis might proceed.
My goal is not a definitive rendition of a particular genre of examination;
rather, I am seeking to introduce a method of operation, borrowed and
adapted from chemical engineers, that I think may be of use when we con-
sider some of the new tools and their applications that are on the drawing
boards of biological and informatic engineers at this time of writing. Readers
should feel encouraged and stimulated to apply these techniques for them-
selves. If by so doing we can improve the standard or level of the current
debates that still hover over the contentious ethical issues that have been
raised, then all this will have been worthwhile.
Chapter seven: Tools in prospect 243
7.1 The cloning of humans

Improving on nature is a sure way to progress. If we could do what nature
does, but in a less wasteful and more efficient manner, we might expect soci-
ety to applaud; but when Ian Wilmut and his team cloned Dolly from a
sheep somatic cell that had been grown in cell culture, governmental assem-
blies across the world passed laws to forbid the cloning of humans.5
(I realize that whatever humans do may be regarded as a natural act, so it is
not possible to improve on nature because that betterment becomes just
another part of nature. Yet there is a sense in which a more efficient route of
doing what nature does already can be thought of as an advance as seen from
the point of view of nature itself.)
Humans share something like 99.9% of their genes with other humans,
98.5% with chimpanzees, 70% with fish, and about 50% with cabbages. Only
about 3% of the human genome, made up from 3.2 billion base pairs, is actu-
ally used to code for the sequence of the amino acids in the 50,000–150,000
proteins that make up our bodies. The remaining 97% of the DNA is called
junk DNA; this may not actually be junk, as it has similar characteristics to
the letter and word usage in spoken languages.6 This assembly of DNA mol-
ecules arrived in the human genome by a process that owes much to the hap-
hazard infection of one genome by another genome. Infectious bacteria,
viruses, and even “naked” DNA (plasmids) are nature’s way of moving
genes between genomes. However, nature does not set out deliberately to
create a genome with particular properties; yet humans do this by using sim-
ilar tools to those nature deploys, but in a more controlled and determined
fashion.
This new suite of tools used by the genetic engineers became available in
the last half century. Its application to humans is only just beginning. When
combined with another of nature’s facilities, that of making organisms that
contain an identical suite of genes, or clones, we have to start to come to terms
with a new potent technology that is now at the disposal of humans. This is
not a fanciful notion. A company called PPL Therapeutics Plc (Edinburgh)
was formed some years ago to produce genetically engineered and cloned
animals that were modified to produce a valued biopharmaceutical for
human application. Sheep producing the enzyme inhibitor 1-antitrypsin in
their milk have been successfully engineered by this company. Now that
sheep have been cloned, the application of genetic engineering to cloned ani-
mals can also be achieved. Our task is to consider how we might go about
applying the same procedures to humans. This requires the definition of a
process; I have outlined one such process in Figure 7.1.
7.1.1 The initial analysis

The hypothetical process I have set out takes us from areas of technology
with which we are familiar to an end product that we have yet to achieve.
Figure 7.1 A hypothetical process leading to the production of a genetically engi-

neered clone of humans.
For the past 25 years we have been able to select genes and make their
DNA. Modern techniques enable us to go from a written formula to a fully
synthetic molecule that could be thousands of base pairs in length. Other
tools use enzymes and copying methods to achieve the same ends. The poly-
merase chain reaction (PCR) has proved to be a vital component of the arma-
mentarium of methods. This suite of reactions enables the production of
multiple copies of a single piece of nucleic acid that is introduced into the
system; it is the basis of the forensic DNA testing protocols once the gene, in
its DNA form, has been made. (DNA, when precipitated by the admixture of
alcohol into a salt solution, can be collected on the end of a rod by stirring it
in the incipient precipitate; a fibrous rubbery white material winds itself

about the end of the rod—a bit like chewing gum.) To get this material into a
cell is a tricky business on which a great deal of investigation is in work.
The procedures used are based on precipitating the DNA with calcium
phosphate and allowing the cell to take up the particulate suspension that
ensues. Alternatively, it is possible to incorporate the DNA into the genome
of a virus and then use the methods that the virus deploys to get into the cell
and lodge the nucleic acid into either the nucleus or the cytoplasm, depend-
ing on the nature of the virus chosen originally. Another method is to create
an artificial cell using fats in the form of hollow spheres or vesicles. The DNA
is incorporated into the aqueous interior of these particles and is added to the
cells. The lipid of the particle fuses with the lipid of the cell membrane, which
enables the DNA to gain access into the interior of the cell and hence into the
nucleus. This is more of a hit-and-miss method than the synthetic virus
approach, but it often works and is therefore retained as a viable method.
Steps 1 and 2 of Figure 7.1 are not unknown or unusual. They do not pre-
sent any hazards and do not generally evoke any ethical opprobrium. They
are process tools that, while effective, are becoming better honed to do the
jobs for which they are intended. An example of the improvement in these
techniques occurred recently, when a method was described that enabled the
insertion of the exogenous (derived externally) gene into a particular and
predetermined (as opposed to random) place in an animal cell’s genome.7
The techniques of in vitro fertilization (IVF) are similarly well worked
and not only accepted but highly desired. In the U.K. 7397 babies were born
from 1997 to 1998 as a result of the application of these techniques, of which
fewer than 20% were derived from donor inseminations.8 We might therefore
conclude that steps 3, 4, 5, and 6 pose no particular practical or ethical prob-
lems, although it would be an improvement if the success rate were greater
than about 20% per cycle. It should be noted that the use of donor eggs or
sperm presents the same paternity problems as seen in cases of adultery.
While there are many ethical issues in this area, they are not new. Society
deals with adultery via the common law and handles the physical conse-
quences as best it can.9 When we come to steps 7 and 8, we start to run into
ethical problems.
The manipulation of human embryos in vitro poses ethical concerns. In
the U.K. the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)10 is a
body defined by legislation to police the area of medicine covered by the in
vitro work with human embryos and fertilization. One provision of that
authority is that having obtained the appropriate permissions, scientific
investigations may proceed with viable human embryos, but such proce-
dures have to be terminated after 14 days of in vitro culture. This particular
period was chosen to reassure people that the embryos were always insen-
sate during the investigations, as they did not have any spinal nerves with
which to conduct feelings to any central nervous system. However, during
this period many cells do form, and a clear division of the different cell types
takes place. The cloning of humans via the separation of the cells of the
embryo into single cells, each one of which is then placed in an embryo sac
for implantation into a different surrogate mother, is not allowed under cur-
rent law. But could it be done?
For many years animals have been cloned by the separation of the cells
of a partly-grown embryo. This has been used for prize cattle in Texas, and it
has recently been shown to work for monkeys.11 For these reasons it is likely
that a similar technique will work with humans. So, from a technical point of
view, it is unlikely that steps 7 and 8 will pose problems. Indeed, within the
rules of the HFEA, provision is made for research that would aid fertility,
improve contraception, increase knowledge of congenital diseases, and
develop methods to identify genetically defective embryos before implanta-
tion. Some such tests may well be done on separated cells, so here too there
would not be a barrier to completing the step as set out in Figure 7.1 at this
time of writing. The next step, 9, however, is forbidden by U.K. law; in the
words of the HFEA annual report of 1999:
While encouraging research, U.K. law does not permit

certain activities involving human embryos. These
include . . . altering the genetic structure of any cell
while it forms part of an embryo.
Although what is intended in the protocol outlined in Figure 7.1 is that

the embryo be infected with exogenous DNA after having been dissociated
into its single cells, the HFEA would regard this as being illegal under the
present legislation, even though it is not specifically excluded. The exclusion
of this procedure is based on the final intent of the work, which is to produce
a genetically modified human. I am now going to leave the analysis of this
issue, but will return to it below.
Referring back to Figure 7.1, the procedures numbered 10 (selecting cells
that have taken up an exogenous gene) and 12 (growing an embryo to the
128-cell stage in vitro and dissipating the cells so that they are monodisperse)
pick up on existing methods that are well tried and for the most part unques-
tioned ethically.
Step 11, the creation of an anucleate ovum, on the other hand, is not gen-
erally done with human ova, although it is widely used as part of the somatic
cell-cloning technique as pioneered by Wilmut and colleagues for mam-
mals.12 From a practical point of view there is little to distinguish human ova
from those of other mammals. The removal of the nucleus is by a mechanical
method aided by a micromanipulation device under the manual control of
the operator, who looks at the 0.1 mm diameter ovum via a binocular micro-
scope. Although the anucleation of an ovum may be regarded as a method of
killing that haploid cell, it is not seen in the equivalent way to the demise of
a fertilized ovum when in the form of an embryo. The latter has the capacity
to be a complete human, while the ovum, if not fertilized, will die naturally.
Indeed, women lose some 300–400 ova during the period of time when they
are fertile.
In suggesting at step 13 the fusing of an anucleate human ovum with one
cell derived from a dissipated partly-grown embryo, I am taking something
of a leap into the dark. There are precedents for this operation in the animal
kingdom. In humans there was a report of a triple-cell embryo made from the
nucleus of an ovum in which damaged mitochondria in the cytoplasm were
inserted into an anucleate ovum whose cytoplasm had fully functional mito-
chondria, which was then fertilized by a sperm to form a human embryo for
transplanting into a receptive womb for maturation. Notwithstanding the
novelty of step 11, steps 14 (grow the embryos in vitro to establish both via-
bility and freedom from obvious defects) and 15 (the implantation and
growth of an autologous embryo in the womb of a surrogate mother) are nei-
ther unusual or particularly problematic. There are some minor issues with
regard to the position of surrogate mothers. These involve the level of pay-
ments and the position of the surrogate mother who does not wish to give up
the baby she has nurtured up to birth, while in breach of a written contract
specifying otherwise. The latter situation is improving gradually, as the com-
munity of surrogate mothers and otherwise infertile couples, who turn to
them for help, sort out their differences and work out modes of operation that
are congenial to both parties.
In drafting a method for the production of genetically engineered and
cloned humans, I have set up a notional device to examine the way in which
HAZOP procedures may be applied at contentious positions in the operation.
Of course, at this time, such a process would not be allowed, because clear
laws, which are worded to prevent such an outcome, operate in most coun-
tries. My purpose in using this model here is that in the examination we
would be moving into territory that is yet to be fully explored. I also believe
that the basis for the present legal restrictions is in some measure based on
fears that any further developments will get out of control, and we will then
proceed along a slippery slope (Chapter 4) leading to social decay and
breakup. However, by engaging in an analysis of the issues involved, and set-
ting in place the necessary control systems, we should be able to use these
new tools for the enhancement of the human condition on Earth and beyond.
7.1.2 A more detailed examination of the difficult areas

During the initial examination I set aside three steps that betokened further
analysis (in reference to Figure 7.1):
1. Step 9: Infect dissociated embryo cells with exogenous DNA.

2. Step 13: Fuse genetically engineered cells with anucleate human
ovum.
3. Step 16: Produce genetically engineered and cloned humans.
Two of these issues are primarily ethical concerns rather than technical ones,
but step 13 is largely a technical issue that I will consider first. To do this I
will remind the reader of the different forcing functions we can use in the
examination. These were initially set out in Chapter 6, but I repeat them here
for convenience.
• No—none of the design intents are achieved.

• More or higher—there is a quantitative increase in the parameter.
• Less or lower—there is a quantitative decrease in the parameter.
• Before/after—something happens out of sequence.
• Faster/slower/early/late—the timing is different from the intention.
• As well as—an additional activity occurs.
• Part of—only some of the design intention is achieved.
• Reverse—the opposite of the design intention happens.
• Other than—there has been a complete substitution and another
activity happens.
7.1.2.1 Producing a cell fusate

Consider step 13. Using micromanipulation techniques, the genetically engi-
neered embryo cell is maneuvered into a juxtaposition with a human ovum
that has had its nucleus removed by suction in a previous step. When they
are in contact, an electrical voltage is applied to the culture liquid, which
causes the two cells to fuse. The conjugated cells are then transferred to a
growth chamber containing a liquid medium formulated to promote cell
division in this newly formulated embryo.
• Assuming that none of the design intents are achieved, then not much
harm has been done. Some anucleate ova have been used, and the
cells from the genetically engineered embryo have been lost. In both
cases the two starting materials may be replaced at relatively little
expense. An investigation into how the operation failed needs to be
effected. Areas of concern would be the fusion technique, the viabil-
ity of the dissipated embryo cells, the methods used for the anucle-
ation and the sealing of the punctured oval membrane, the
formulation of the medium in which the fusion is attempted may
need attention, and different culture systems used for the fused cell
may need to be explored. The state of the embryo cells with regard to
their position in the cell cycle is to be examined, and the methods
used by Wilmut5 to get cells in the G0 phase should be used. (He did
this by growing the cells in medium containing lower and lower con-
centrations of growth-promoting animal serum.) The examination of
this “null” possibility poses issues in terms of the costs and time
taken by the research, but not issues of harm or damage. It may be
that if all efforts fail, the attempt will have to be terminated; the judg-
ment of this call is a matter of experience, determination (commit-
ment), and the availability of resources. There is nothing that can be

adduced to indicate that this experiment is, in principle, not possible.
• If the experiment is too successful and lots of fused and viable engi-
neered embryos are produced, then it is possible to put some of them
into a frozen state for storage. It may also be possible and desirable to
effect further experimentation on these fusions to discover how best
they may be further developed. There may yet be conditions that pre-
dispose such growing embryos to improved implantation in the
womb and improved chances of a successful pregnancy thereafter.
• With too few fused embryos, then every care should be taken to make
sure that they could be carried forward with the best chances for
future success. A particularly poor harvest of such cells may call for
further experimentation on animal model systems to perfect and
maximize conditions for the fusion and postfusion treatment.
• In cell biology timing is a crucial parameter. The results of inappro-
priate time periods will be lower yields of less viable and transferable
embryos. So it is well to investigate, both from the existing literature
on animal experiments and that available from human IVF work, the
kinds of exposures that the different types of cell may find suitable.
In addition to timing, variables such as temperature; medium com-
position; gas phase composition; and the culture vessel in terms of its
size, shape, and materials of construction may determine the out-
come of the work. Other timing factors are those involved in the
micromanipulation and the time taken to break down the multicelled
embryos to single cells. A low concentration of a dissipant, such as a
dilute solution of the proteolytic enzyme trypsin, applied for a longer
time may be less efficacious than a higher concentration applied for a
longer time. Also the physical conditions during the application of
the enzyme may be critical; shaking can cause the cells to break down,
but zero agitation also prevents the cells from dissipating. An inter-
mediate condition needs to be found. Other enzymes have been used
for this kind of function, such as the plant proteolytic enzyme papain,
but this may cause problems when the action of the enzyme is no
longer needed. (The action of trypsin can be controlled by the admis-
sion of animal serum or a specific antitrypsin factor that occurs in
animal sera.)
• Additional effects may occur. Unless care is taken, it may be possible
to fuse more than one embryo cell to the anucleate ovum. Alter-
natively, one completed fused product may fuse with another. It is
also possible that the embryo cells themselves, without being incor-
porated into an anucleate ovum, may either grow up to form a big
enough ball of cells to be worthy of transfer to a womb or they may
fuse with one another to form a hybrid that will then produce the ball
of cells to be transferred. These latter possibilities do not present seri-
ous issues, as the thrust of this work is to obtain a ball of cells that is
sufficiently viable that it will attach to the wall of the womb and form
a regular placenta—whether or not the additional aid provided by
the anucleate ovum is necessary.
• If some of the design intention were achieved, that would probably
correspond to the production of a small number of viable embryos or
the low viability of those embryos. This in itself would not be dam-
aging, but it would have in it the elements that could be developed to
a more productive process.
• It is fairly difficult to imagine a “reverse” situation. Perhaps the
admix-ture of the anucleate ovum and the embryo cell might cause a
decrease in the viability of either the embryo cell or the fusion prod-
uct so one would be in a worse situation than before the fusion exper-
iment was attempted. The response to this effect would be to explore
what could be done with the embryo cells in the absence of the anu-
cleate ovum and to explore the reasons the latter cell was causing a
decrease in the viability of the embryo cell. Ways around the diffi-
culty may then be sought.
• A substitution activity would happen if two embryo cells fused. This
would form a cell with two times the number of chromosomes (and
genes) than the normal number. Would this matter? Such a cell may
or may not grow to a big enough ball of cells to be worthy of implant-
ing. If it did, should it be implanted? There may be grounds to reason
that if these cells were to result in fully grown people, they may be
quite different from the people living today. As this is a potential haz-
ard both to the surrogate mother and the resulting baby, efforts have
to be undertaken to check the chromosome numbers of the cells in the
embryos that are implanted. This will be a normal control procedure
that is coupled with an examination for known genetic defects that
may render a particular embryo problematic. It would also be of
interest to examine the effect of this doubling of genetic material in
animal experiments. When armed with additional data, it may then
be prudent and desirable to proceed in a similar way with humans.
Given the caveats delineated above, it would seem that we may be opti-
mistic in that a set of tools can be designed that would enable step 13 to pro-
ceed with every chance of its successful outcome.
7.1.2.2 Genetically engineered humans

In transfecting an embryo cell (step 9 of Figure 7.1) with an exogenous gene,
the problems that we run into are mainly ethical. First, this kind of genetic
transfer will result in (and is intended to result in) a new person who is
genetically modified in such a way that the normal reproductive activity of
that individual will maintain the genetic change introduced at this point.
This is gametic modification, as opposed to somatic modification, which merely
involves changes in the genetic constitution of the cells of the body other
than those that give rise to the reproductive gametes. This latter form of
genetic engineering of humans involves adding, replacing, eliminating, or

correcting genes that code for proteins that cause illness. These diseases run
in families and are generally the consequence of single-gene defects. There
may be over 4000 such diseases, yet they strike relatively few families.
Attempts at the somatic genetic modification of such diseased people are
generally approved, providing the protocols for the experiments have
passed examination by the appropriate regulatory and ethical bodies.
Additionally, it is crucial to obtain the informed consent documents in a
manner that can convince an examining body that unfair advantage has not
been taken of people who are suffering from a particular disease and may
not be in full possession of all their faculties.13 This will involve doctors, who
are not involved in the investigation and have no personal or financial con-
flicts of interest, dealing with the consent forms and explaining to the exper-
imental subject the possibilities of an adverse reaction to the test, which may
include death. Unfortunately, the efficacy of the exogenous gene delivery
systems has, until recently, been low. However, these systems are improving
rapidly, and the next decade is expected to be replete with examples of suc-
cessful gene transfers to “cure” such diseases as cystic fibrosis or
Huntingon’s chorea.14
The problem with whole human genetic engineering is that not only is
it illegal, it poses a series of ethical questions that we need to deal with
before the tools for the technology can be unleashed. What are these issues?
• What is the goal—prophylaxis versus therapy?

• From therapy there is a slippery slope to enhancement.
• How might the opportunities for enhancement be distributed among
the people?
• Would a separate class of enhanced people form an elite?
• Would a new species of human be created?
• Could the technique be used to achieve malign ends?
• What are the implications of the creation of a new human species?
Most people would go along with the adage “An ounce (gram) of pre-
vention is worth a pound (kilogram) of cure.” But the people of our societies
in general do not live their lives in this way. They would rather pay to have
their illnesses cured than make the necessary behavioral changes that would
have a high probability of preventing an illness in the first place. In this they
are well catered for (aided and abetted) by the medical and pharmaceutical
professions. Yet what if we could turn the human genetic engineering tool
for the modification of humans so that the probability of their becoming dis-
eased decreases considerably? For infectious diseases this could be achieved
by supplying humans with the genes that code for the regions of antibody
molecules that attach to all known pathogenic organisms. These antibodies
would then be made constitutively (all the time without exogenous stimu-
lus) and would prevent these diseases from developing, although they
would not prevent infection. Other diseases, such as circulatory diseases,
might be tackled through a gene that was an effective regulator of basal

metabolic rate, such that the fat deposition of individuals would be kept at
levels consonant with good health. Other antibody-based, endogenous pre-
ventive measures could be taken against the effects of drugs, such as alcohol
and nicotine. Indeed, vaccines for the latter material are in clinical trials at
this time.5 Such vaccines could be extended to cover other drugs such as
heroin and cocaine, as well as the amphetamine group. Some ethical issues
are raised by these developments; by taking action now, the people who
decide what substances will or will not be effective psychoactive agents will
have made predeterminations without the consent of the person who is
affected. Choice will have been sacrificed in the cause of improvements in
health (and decreases in costs incurred by reference to health care systems).
In taking a prophylactic approach, one has to adopt a careful application
of the consequential or utilitarian school of ethics. Here we have to examine
the cost-benefit relationship between the cost of therapy, the cost of prophy-
laxis, and the value of the resulting benefits. This issue is often misconstrued
by confusing benefits in the future with benefits obtained from an object (say,
a car) that has just been purchased. In the latter case, the depreciation of the
object is positive, that is, it decreases in value year by year into the future. But
what of the value of a vaccine? It may well have zero value in the year it was
applied, but it would achieve its full value when it protects against infection
during a future epidemic of the disease or when the vaccinee goes to a coun-
try where the disease is endemic. In this case the value has appreciated with
time, as opposed to the case of a purchased object whose value decreases.
(This may or may not apply to art, antiques, or diamonds.) When subject to
such accounting procedures, it becomes apparent that much can be gained
by adopting the prophylactic approach to health care. Should this be upheld
by an even deeper examination, then the society will have to reexamine the
way it disburses its research funds; at the present in the U.K. and the U.S., the
proportion of public money that goes into research into prophylactic as
opposed to therapeutic medicine is in a ratio greater than 1 to 10. (This ratio
was 1 to 60 in the charity [the Imperial Cancer Research Fund] that seeks to
cure cancer in the U.K.)16
When does the attempt to cure a disease become an act leading to the
enhancement of the individual? Those diseases that debilitate, cause pain
and suffering, or remove the ability to act in a normal manner are clearly
“negative” states of being that the stricken individual would seek to redress.
But what if the suffering is psychological? This can cause equivalent dys-
functions to physical ailments. Yet the cause of the problem could be the
patient’s dissatisfaction with the shape of a nose, the size of a breast, or the
lack of hair. Does this slippery slope extend even further? Can we consider
properties such as dissatisfaction with intelligence, height, eye color, skin
color, sexual preferences, or physical and musical prowess to be features that
can dispose an individual to states of unease? If this were the case, then there
may be adequate reason for an alteration to the somatic or even the gametic
condition of that person so that the dissatisfaction would be requited. (I real-

ize that this assumes that the properties I have mentioned can both be sen-
sibly measured and controlled by the addition of one or more specific genes;
some conditions, such as intelligence, are controlled by a multiplicity of
genes, but in all the tests done with identical twins reared together and
apart, the inheritability of this property hovers around the 50 –70% mark.17
So, there is a measure of genetic control that can be approached and changed
by the methods under consideration.)
To go beyond the amelioration of suffering, however caused, is also a
prospect we cannot overlook. Using genes from animals that have capabili-
ties that humans lack is one way in which humans may be enhanced.
Animals have sensitivities to a wider range of input signals than humans.
Some are sensitive to magnetic fields (birds) and others to the plane of polar-
ized light (bees). In terms of visual acuity, owls can see in the dark by using
images made apparent by infrared radiation, while butterflies are sensitive
in the ultraviolet; in projecting back up the electromagnetic spectrum, there
is always the possibility that we may be able to develop sensors for radio-
wave frequencies that would open another door. Bats do it by sensing the
reflection of highly pitched sound waves beyond the hearing range of the
human ear, and it is held that whales are more appreciative of longwave
length perturbations of water pressure. Dogs and other animals that live by
their sense of smell can provide genes that could extend our meager sensi-
tivities and perhaps make telepathy another mode of human interaction. On
the output side there are possibilities for radio-wave length emissions, as
well as the generation of light, driven either by internally sourced electricity
or by luminescent processes that depend on external stimulation. All these
developments may indeed extend the range of our sensory inputs and infor-
mation-carrying outputs, but whatever develops along these lines will have
to be accompanied by a highly developed filtering and prioritizing system,
otherwise we will be suffocated by an information overload.18
There is another property that can be affected by genetic changes, and
that is the longevity of the person. Experiments with the fruit fly
(Drosophila), the nematode worm Caenorhabiditis elegans, yeast, and rodents
have shown that changes to single genes affect the length of the life of these
animals. In many cases the genetically modified animals have lived lives
that are over 50% longer and have passed on this trait to their offspring. If
this were available to humans, then lives in excess of 120 years would
be common. Whether or not we could achieve indefinite longevity (immor-
tality) is a separate issue and is unlikely to be a realistic option in the
foreseeable future.19 –20 Several ethical issues need to be dealt with if this
contingency is to be progressed. First, how may the genetic change
to increased longevity be administered to those who seek to live
longer lives? What would it cost? And would such a cost make
certain sectors of the society privileged with regard to the availability of
this facility? What effect would this have on the employment of individuals,
and would the present methods of Social Security payments that are
premised on the person saving during his or her working life for future pay-
outs be adequate to sustain a much longer period of payments? Would a two-
class (based on expected age at death) society emerge? And what would be
the implications of such an eventuality on such social organs as marriage,
public assemblies and their elected representatives, the media and entertain-
ment, as well as the provision of socially worthwhile and productive activi-
ties for those who have chosen to “stay on”? There is also the philosophical
issue; when seeking immortality, we are attempting to become more godlike.
Battles have been fought over this matter in various mythologies. It is not my
purpose to enter into these discussions. I just seek to show that, in tampering
with the longevity of human lives, issues of different levels of seriousness are
raised; we have not yet begun to address them as urgently as we might.
Increases in the ease of communication and travel are shrinking the
globe. As this happens, the gap in material wealth between the developed
and the underdeveloped nations has to be narrowed to satisfy the sense of
justice and fair play that are attributes that enhance the survivability of the
doer and receiver alike. To promote this outcome, the developed world has
to share more of its intellectual and physical resources. By supporting pro-
grams for the provision of
1. Reliable and clean drinking water supplies,

2. Increases in disease prevention via vaccination,
3. Improvements to the nutritious quality and yield of indigenous crops
by genetic engineering of the local plant species, and
4. The enhanced education of the young people of both sexes,
useful steps will have been taken to redress the imbalance.

If these measures were associated with programs that enable local birth
control targets to be attained, then a virtuous cycle may well be inculcated
that could lead to a further narrowing of the wealth gap between the poor
and rich nations. It is well that these disparities in affluence and well-being
are claiming more attention as we progress. Adding more parameters, such
as the ability to live longer, to the existing divide between the rich and the
poor would inevitably exacerbate the situation. Perhaps these features may
be reserved to a future time when other inequalities have been ameliorated
(as opposed to eliminated). In any event it is clear that increases in longevity
have implications for the birthrate of the society; otherwise there would be an
increased danger of overpopulation, with the corollaries of pollution and
unsustainable rates of energy usage.
Can a malign mind use these tools for the deliberate perpetration of
harm? Fantasies and films based on the machinations of “the mad doctor”
abound. If a gene or a suite of genes were discovered that would infallibly
lead to a deranged and violent human, could the genetic engineering of such
individuals be prevented? If such a project was brought before a regulatory
or ethical committee, it would be expunged. If it were executed in secret, then
we have only the general alertness of people and social desire to prevent
harm to protect the rest of society. In response to the initial question, the
answer is that it is possible to use these tools to perpetrate harm; but that is
the case for any and all tools. Our job in taking onboard the use of these new
and powerful tools is to so control and regulate their use that the likelihood
for the projected harms to occur is minimized.
The last issue raised here comes from the prospect that through the
genetic (gametic) engineering of humans, we will develop a type of human
being that is not competent to replicate with other members of the human
species, but only among themselves. While the difference between us and the
apes is some 1.5% of our genes, about 1500 genes, and about 10 or so species
exist between the apes and ourselves, then a rough guess is that it takes about
150 gene changes to make a species—a number that is not outside future pos-
sibilities. It will not be for the first time. In Chapter 1 I mentioned many of the
different species of hominids that filled the evolutionary developments
between us and the apes during the previous 8 million years. The human
species to perish last was that of the Neanderthals, who survived jointly with
the Cro-Magnon and the Homo sapiens sapiens species (us) for over 100,000
years and died out about 28,000 years ago. In using the genetic engineering
tool kit, we may, advertently or inadvertently, be party to the emergence of a
new species of humans. This requires an in-depth examination, because if we
decide to go down this path, then provisions will have to be made to effect
such a transition in a manner that is within keeping of the dignity and wor-
thiness of the individuals concerned. Every effort should be made to appre-
ciate and cater for the different properties of the two or more species so that
mutual advantage rather than dissonance and conflict may be achieved. This
may indeed become the greatest challenge engineers and ethicists have ever
faced. But it is well we begin the ethical examination now, while the pressure
of events does not obtrude on the judgments we have to make. In essence, the
present HAZOP procedures have thrown up an issue on which it will be nec-
essary to do a separate analysis.
7.1.2.3 Cloned humans

Having shown that a cell taken from an adult sheep can provide the nuclear
genes for the reproduction of a whole animal, Ian Wilmut and his colleagues5
have stimulated a far-reaching discussion21 on the possibility of, and
prospects for, the production of cloned human beings starting from the cells
of an adult human. In Wilmut’s presentation of this work to the American
Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia
(February 1998), he doubted that similar techniques could be applied to
humans because many researchers have tried unsuccessfully to clone mice,
whose embryology is closer to that of humans. However, in July 1998,
Wakayama and his co-workers published a report showing that not only
could mice be cloned but also that the cloned animals expressed normal
fertilities.22 This opens the door for the cloning of humans.
The response of the international community to the prospect of being

able to clone humans has been almost uniformly restrictive. At both national
and international levels various representative organizations issued
edicts that sought to ban work that could lead to the cloning of humans.23 –24
Work on animals could proceed, and investigations on ways in which
the technique could be improved and made more reliable have been
sought. Notwithstanding the technical issues involved in cloning, most
of the agencies that banned investigations with humans, held that it
was essential to begin to debate the ethical issues that would pertain to
the cloning of humans as a suitable, safe, and reliable technique prior to
animal experimentation. This ethical discussion has included topics such as
the following:
• The production of an uncontrollable monster or disaster

• The usurpation of the functions of a deity
• The lack of naturalness
• Biotechnology as just another way for multinational companies to
exploit the gullible
Readers will recognize these issues as being common to virtually all

biotechnology projects. Section 3.1.1.4.20 deals with these issues in some
detail. Although they continue to be evoked in the popular press, there is lit-
tle of substance that need perturb people whose intentions are to support the
progressive development of society. However, in the area of cloning humans,
there are additional issues that do need to be addressed:
• Safety (e.g., when cloned humans operating as a concerted body

become a danger to others)
• The dignity of humans
• Changes to family lifestyles
• The horrors of past and, therefore, future eugenics programs
• The commodification (materialistic exploitation) of humans
• The deliberate production of a clone solely for organ replacements
• The attempted removal of uncertainty from the qualities of offspring
• The rights of humans to reproduce irrespective of the techniques used
(always provided that this does not involve harm to others)
• The unfettered freedom to investigate the envelope of the possible
• The psychological effects on the child of being a cloned person
• The difficulties in making the decision of whom to clone
7.1.2.3.1 Human clones evoke disgust. Many people find the concept of
cloning humans offensive; this may be associated with something that has
been called the “yuk” factor by some journalists. In 1997 the American pres-
ident asserted that “human cloning would have to raise deep concerns, given
our most cherished concepts of faith and humanity. Each human life is
unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science.” Others

have expressed disgust at the prospect of a clone of humans, based on his-
torical figures who are presently reviled (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and
Torquemada).25 Visions of serried ranks of humans with virtually identical
features may also remind people of the fictitious, zombie-like characters in
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.26 When we promenade along a series of
fruit and vegetable market stalls, we find the neat piles of identical items of
produce attractive. Each item would be without blemish and the same size,
shape, and coloring as other pieces of that commodity. Clearly, the agricul-
tural process is under control. As a customer one does not have to select those
items that are blemish-free or of a size that is associated with desirable cook-
ing properties. In short we rather like the uniformity with which we are pre-
sented. Would this be different when we deal with animals? A field of cows
or sheep seems were made up of identical animals. We do not balk at this. If
this identicality were applied to humans, however, there may be cause for
concern; it would be because of the absence of differences that humans would
see themselves as in the same category as vegetables, fruits, or the domestic
animals used for human foods. But in any human clone there would be dif-
ferences between the individuals. If the cloning technique is based on somatic
nuclear transfer, then the mitochondria of the anucleate ovum would provide
some genetic distinctiveness as a result of the differences in the base
sequences of the 36 genes they contain. Other sources of variation come from
the environment: initially from the intrauterine world, followed by the phys-
ical and personal situation into which the cloned individual emerges for their
upbringing. We would expect as much variation as occurs in monozygotic
(unrealistically called identical) twins. As we are not disgusted by identical
twins or triplets—quite the opposite—it is not likely that we will be moved
to distaste were a larger clone of humans to emerge.
Much of the discussion of the ethics of the human cloning tool has arisen
from the declaration of the rights of individuals to be unique and to have
identities that pertain to themselves alone. The Universal Declaration on the
Human Genome and Human Rights of November 1997, a UNESCO docu-
ment, claims at Article 2b “that dignity makes it imperative not to reduce
individuals to their genetic characteristics and to respect their uniqueness
and diversity.” Making a human clone is an attempt at making humans as
alike as identical twins. We are well aware that monozygotic identical twins
are as similar to one another as it is possible for humans to achieve. Yet it is
well known that in the most rigorous identical twin studies, only about 70%
or so of the responses to intelligence tests are equivalent. When other charac-
teristics are measured, the correlation between identical twins is less impres-
sive. Whatever we do in the cloning of humans, it would be virtually
impossible to produce identical people. Even if one were to specifically
set about the production of identical (unable to distinguish in any way)
humans, the task would probably never be achieved. So, as the members of a
cloned group would not be identical, they would be able to distinguish them-
selves from one another: a task that might be more difficult for members of
the public. It would then be up to the desires of the individual members of

the group to present themselves to the public in the manner in which they
wish to be recognized. If they habitually dressed alike, then they should not
be distressed if other people could not tell them apart; if they accentuated dif-
ferences and expressed unique preferences as to hair style, choice of clothes,
etc., then it is more likely that they would be recognized for themselves as
individuals.
We are asked to respect the integrity of an individual in various codes of
practice and declarations of rights. In this regard we do not separate from
individuals aspects of their existence that require us to treat them differently.
Thus the religion, ethnicity, gender, race, country of origin, age (between
wide limits), familial situation, and sexual preferences may not be taken into
account when interviewing for a job. Under such a regimen it would be inap-
propriate to single out the mode of origin of a person for special treatment.
7.1.2.3.2 Dangers in cloned humans. There is a primal fear that if an

army of genetically identical soldiers were formed, then their commitment to
one another would be so powerful that their fighting prowess would be
unmatchable. They would come to dominate the world and impose their will
on its people. This may have been an evocative view some decades ago, but
the nature of warfare has changed radically in the intervening period. It is not
necessary to amass armies with millions of foot soldiers for battle. Rather, we
use cruise missiles launched hundreds of miles from the battlefield that can
destroy targets that have been determined with pinpoint accuracy by satel-
lites with high-resolution cameras. Drone planes and tanks that do not have
people to drive them are also part of the modern scene. These weapon devel-
opments, coupled with the construction of long-range rockets that may or
may not carry nuclear bombs as warheads, have changed the rules of war.
While foot soldiers are still required for policing duties under international
control and sanction, the need for armies of millions of like-minded individ-
uals has been superseded. Thus the fear of an army composed of genetically
identical troops is misplaced. Perhaps these primeval reservations will come
to have significance in the area of football teams or in other team sports; but
for now the need for apprehension with regard to a change in the world
power structure is inappropriate.
Human clones, albeit defined in genetic terms, are far from being a
pathological infection of human society. As a worst-case scenario, if being
cloned had such advantages that the members of that group were able to
dominate the uncloned individuals so that they became the new dominant
life-form, would humans have suffered a reversal as a result? If we are to
learn any lessons from evolution, one would surely be that species change,
and improved or fitter variant species occupy niches that were once filled
with species of lesser fitness. The less fit species may well find environments
where their particular attributes provide them with such advantages that
they survive and prosper. When we ask whether human clones are safe, are
we taking the perspective of a present-day uncloned human or a descendent

of such a human 1000 years hence? To be unsafe when engaged in the exam-
ination of such time periods, we have to take into account the nature of life
and the survival driving force that impels it. Collision with a comet or aster-
oid over 10 km in diameter would cause the decimation of all life-forms on
Earth: clearly something that is unsafe and that we might seek to prevent or
avoid. (Although we have to reflect that were it not for the asteroid-caused
demise of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, mammals would not have
been able to thrive to become what they are.) The impact of the use of the
cloning tool is unlikely to have consequences of a magnitude as great as a
large asteroid collision, so issues of safety reduce to a determination of the
chances of an increase in harm and suffering in the short term. As the people
who would be selected to be cloned would be the ones who had a history of
making valued contributions to society, then we would have reason to expect
them to generate further benefits rather than harms and damage. Cloned
humans, therefore, are unlikely to cause such suffering, so this ethical issue
may be set aside.
7.1.2.3.3 The advent of human cloning may usher in an era of eugenics. In

the last century the human species has had some insalubrious brushes with
efforts that sought to improve the “native” stock via breeding and weeding
programs. Many advanced societies did more than just flirt with eugenic
ideas. The U.S., Sweden, and Germany were in the vanguard in exploring the
advantages and disadvantages of this approach to social engineering.27 –29 All
such programs were discontinued. However, the opprobrium that these
efforts at social improvement have engendered has so damaged the social
engineering concept; thus any work that connects, by however tenuous a
thread, to this kind of operation is automatically rejected. Both human
cloning and human genetic engineering have been tarred by the eugenics
brush and have, thereby, suffered in the public imagination.
It would be difficult to deny that human genetic engineering and cloning
would fit into a eugenics program without much ado. It is not difficult to pos-
tulate the slippery slopes that could ensue were this to happen. One such
slide did occur during the Nazi era of Germany in late 1938/early 1939, when
a troubled father sent a letter to Hitler asking for help in terminating the life
of his mentally disabled child. Whereas it was normal for children who
exhibited mental or physical disabilities to be sterilized, it was not until this
letter triggered Hitler to sanction the deaths of such individuals that a wave
of genocidal killings was let loose.
Armed with this knowledge, we are in a strong position to impose the
necessary controls on the new tools that are coming into service in the genetic
and reproductive biology areas. We can, and do, establish regulatory
committees whose decisions are backed up with the full force of the criminal
law. We can provide open information as to what is happening via the
Internet or media, whose voracious appetite for such material borders on the
insatiable. Having set up the necessary controls, we would be guilty of

omission if we did not to attempt to find uses for these powerful tools for
the betterment of the human condition and to make provision for the next
stage in our progression, which is the colonization of planets in other solar
systems.
7.1.2.3.4 Would the dignity of a cloned individual be impugned? On

examination of the word dignity (from the Latin dignitas), we pick up the
connotations of worthiness, honor, merit, grandeur, majesty, distinction,
eminence, esteem, authority, and rank. Few of our number aspire to or reach
such heights. Nevertheless, almost all of us are worthy at some time or other
in our lives. (Criminals expressing their criminality may be regarded as
being unworthy.) The determination of this worthiness derives from the
relationship between the individual and society. When a person makes a
positive contribution to society, then the worthiness of that individual is rec-
ognized by a payment of money, by the respect accorded by fellow socialites,
and/or by a promotion to a higher rank. This implies that to retain one’s dig-
nity, it is both discretionary and essential that people have the opportunity
to make contributions to society from the time that they become so capable
until they are no longer physically or mentally competent to contribute. I do
not see any reason why any clone should be treated otherwise. Indeed, the
same criterion for the acquisition of dignity would apply irrespective of the
genetic nature of the individual.
7.1.2.3.5 The commodification of humans. It may seem that if one

cloned an individual for personal or social reasons, such humans would
thereby become commodified (dehumanized) as a result of the process. But
most of us are the consequence of the intentions of our parents, which
resulted in them expressing their desire and ability to reproduce. Not only
that, many parents take an active role in bringing their children up to be a
particular kind of person, of imbuing them with respect and manners, and
even the rudiments of a career. The extent that committed parents will exer-
cise themselves to prepare their children for a particular career is legendary.
Traditionally, children were regarded as a resource for running a farm and
providing sustenance for aging parents. Are such children thereby com-
modified? It would be reckless to think that one can rear children so that
they are free from the influences of the environment in which they are
housed. Yet in seeking to control the way they develop, we do not infer that
they have been dehumanized. In extreme cases where such teachings are
ineffective and punitive acts are applied, we may consider that the efforts in
control have “gone too far” and that the rights of the children to be as they
wish should be given greater scope. At the appropriate time and under suit-
able conditions, control devolves from parents to children. It is difficult to
appreciate why this should not also pertain in the case of cloned individu-
als. So the invocation of the UNESCO declaration by Federiko Mayer30 to
declaim human cloning is not a particularly effective way to achieve this

objective.
In thinking of people as objects that can be used to achieve ends, we may
be accused of robbing individuals of their rights or their autonomy. But each
and every day all of us are asked to do things for other people, and we hap-
pily comply and enjoy the opportunity to be of service; for we know that this
is something that makes us worthwhile. There can be nothing worse than
not being required to do anything for anybody; this is akin to complete rejec-
tion by society. So in seeking to be of help and value, we must relinquish our
autonomy and right to be treated as if we were not required to achieve the
ends of other people. On the contrary we see our personal satisfactions in
enabling the ends of others to be achieved, as we believe that others would
be happy in helping us achieve our ends.
At the philosophical level it is not possible to separate means from ends.
If a means is put into practice, it will inevitably result in an end; that is what
means do. If we think about ends, they can be achieved only by the applica-
tion of some means or other. So if by defining the one we necessarily obtain
the other and vice versa, then the inextricability of the two features makes
them coterminal and part of the same element of being, in which case it is
nonsense to consider them as different—for each necessarily implies the
other.
Medical ethicists (bioethicists) who use the four principles or virtues
approach to ethics—emphasizing “autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence,
and justice”31—might regard cloning as an enhancement of autonomy (in
enabling the nonfertile to have offspring) or as a decrease in autonomy, as
the offspring do not have an equivalent chance of being as different from
their parents as is usual in human sexual reproduction. Others hold that the
uncertainty of the outcome of the sexual method for reproduction would be
lost if the human cloning tool was used for replication. This principle is in
conflict with another dearly held ethical principle—that of “choice.” If we
assert that we want to express choice in the offspring we have, then we have
exercised some degree of control as to what those offspring are to be.
Alternatively, if we want to be surprised by the nature of the progeny,
then we have given up the choice of what we would wish to have happen.
Admittedly, there is some choice as to which way we choose to go.
So we have an essential dichotomy between the autonomy of the parent
and the autonomy of a yet-to-be-realized child. It is well recognized that
until a child can make determinations on his or her own account (informed
consent), a parent or guardian has the responsibility to decide what is best
for that child, in which case the autonomy of the parent would be the para-
mount concern. Whether or not children might review their origins and then
reproach their parents for not having taken more of a chance with the out-
come of the reproduction process is a debatable point. It would be difficult
to sustain such a criticism, as it is well recognized that people often choose
their mates with the intention of maximizing their chances of having chil-
dren of a particular nature.
7.1.2.3.6 A utilitarian perspective. Here we compare the costs with the

benefits. Numerous scenarios, some real and others posited, have been
adduced to create a clear need for the ability to make a clone of an adult
human. People who are unable to conceive via the normal routes or through
IVF may wish to turn to nuclear transfer methods to produce children genet-
ically identical to one or other of the frustrated parents. Other categories of
need for this technique could stem from the loss of a family member through
an accident under circumstances where it was not possible, by the available
methods, to replace a lost and only child or a revered parent.
Using a human cloning tool does enable single people, unmarried males
and females, to have children resembling themselves. People in homosexual
relationships may also procreate in this way. There will thus be opportunities
for the establishment of families in manners other than that based on two
mature humans of opposite sex. Experience has shown that children brought
up in a caring and stable regimen that survives over the long term (in excess
of 25 years) do fare well irrespective of the way that environment is con-
strued. Would this lead to the preference of cloning as the normal way for
human reproduction? This is a question that cannot be obviated. It is not
likely that cloning will become a mainstream activity, as it is certainly more
costly than the traditional way of producing offspring.
Apart from satisfying the need for children who resemble their parents,
society could benefit from the cloning of its special people (see section
7.1.2.3.11). This requires a new suite of social behaviors that, while not going
beyond the capabilities of contemporary communities, would add more
strains and stresses to a political scene that is not without its ongoing conflicts.
The questions thrown up could add fuel to existing flames, or they could be a
rallying point bringing otherwise antagonistic local politicians together.
No statistical program exists that enables us to do an exact comparison
between the costs and the benefits of cloning humans. There is a small risk of
high costs if we allow the technique to be used ad libitum and without
restraint. Having established the regulatory bodies (with international juris-
diction?) and provided the means to police and uphold the regulations, the
risks of the high-cost event emerging is reduced further. On the other hand
we can readily perceive the joy a genetically related child would bring to a
childless person or couple who cannot find another, and less expensive, way
of achieving this satisfaction. We have to add to this the prospect that cloning
special people in the community, providing the effort could be engineered
amicably, would provide a high risk of a valued outcome. Even looking on
the dark side of this application of cloning, the damage could be limited, the
lessons learned, and some benefit in terms of experience gained.
7.1.2.3.7 It’s all in the family. In terms of genetics, the cloning of a

family member creates an unusual event. If an adult were to clone him or
herself, then the offspring would have the relationship of an identical twin,
but one generation removed from the somatic cell donor (parent). Indeed, if
embryos of a particular genetic type were stored, then it is possible that a

family could be composed of one genotype with ten-year age gaps between
each of the clones or any permutation of times and numbers of clones
brought to maturity. That there is seeming identity between people of differ-
ent ages within a single family is not a remarkable event. My college tutor,
without an introduction, recognized with uncanny accuracy our second son
in his first week at the same college. Over the last 100 years the nature of the
family has changed radically. We now witness single parent (of either sex)
families, single-sex two-adult families, and others. Adding cloned individu-
als into caring and stable relationships does not necessarily presage social
disaster. On the contrary we will have to observe the diversity of alternative
living arrangements and make determinations at some future time as to
those that are most likely to serve society best; these then will become the
paradigms for future development.
People are remarkably robust. War, plague, famine, and natural calami-
ties (e.g., floods, fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions) have challenged and
threatened the survivability of humans over the formative period of their
evolution. They had to be flexible and adaptable in order to survive.
Children were raised by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, sisters, broth-
ers, and foster parents without a direct genetic relationship to the child.
Some such children thrived; others did not. But we learn from this that while
a child may have a maximized opportunity to develop in the genetically
related two-parent relationship, this is not the only way in which children
can be successfully raised. The introduction of children who are clones of a
present or previous member of the community would not per se proffer prob-
lems that are outside the range of those already experienced, in which case
this does not raise any irresolvable ethical concerns.
7.1.2.3.8 Would a clone or the people raising that clone be more likely to be
damaged psychologically? Having the same genome as a sibling is not a cause
for psychological distress in itself. Evidence from a study of monozygotic or
dizygotic twins does not indicate that there is a preponderance of psycho-
logical problems arising from either of these groups. When a couple decides
to have children, or finds out that, contrary to intentions, that parenthood is
likely, the baggage of the thinking of those parents becomes the psychologi-
cal environment of the offspring. This mental climate must affect the children
who are subjected to it. In reverse, the children affect their parents’ thinking
and feeling. From this interactive interplay there emerges the suite of physi-
cal and mental circumstances in which both children and parents operate.
Were we to add a further variance in that one or other of the children had
been brought into being via a cloning process, we might expect that there
would be an added influence to the existing panoply of dispositions. This
could generate both positive and negative effects or amplify existing
predilections. But this should not be a cause of concern, as it is readily
encompassed within the range of normal behaviors.
Even being brought up in an environment where there are certain expec-

tations foisted on the children by ambitious parents does not generate exces-
sive concern. However, if a clone were to become known to the public at
large and were this disclosure to generate a welter of media attention, then
one could expect that the stress of the exposure (if not outright hounding)
would have deleterious psychological sequellae. Increases in the number of
clones would dilute this kind of response to the exceptional and make the
matter humdrum and, for most people—except the social scientists—boring.
7.1.2.3.9 Does limiting the genetic diversity of a group of humans

necessarily cause harm? In using the human cloning tool, an attempt is made
to limit the genetic diversity of the resulting individuals to a minimum.
When we have used the cloning tool in the agricultural field, we have had
sustained benefit punctuated by occasional disasters. The use of genetic
monocultures (clones) on advanced farms has enabled the synchronization
of harvesting times; the use of mechanical harvesters operating on crops
whose size and shape is uniform; and the use of herbicides, fungicides, and
pesticides that are tailored specifically for that crop-field situation. The
downside of such operations is seen in the periodic blights that may occur by
the breakthrough of an infectious agent such as a fungus. In the area of fruit
trees and grapevines, the use of cloning techniques has been commonplace
throughout the period of recorded history and is the rule rather than the
exception. (The word clone comes from the Greek klvu (klon), which trans-
lates to “twig,” as used in the grafting of a scion into a root stock.) In animal
husbandry efforts have been made to clone beef cattle in Texas based on tech-
niques of embryo splitting.32 While this is a practical exercise, the extra
expense involved in the highly inefficient embryo-splitting phase is such that
the overall process does not provide outstanding economic advantages.
Using these examples of farm practice, it can be appreciated that both bene-
fits and harms can accrue from limiting genetic diversity through a cloning
process.
As I have suggested previously, it would be advantageous if many dif-
ferent societies adopted alternative practices when using the human cloning
tool. It would be impossible to judge in advance which combination of
society-cloning system would emerge to become the most efficacious or
desirable. Some systems may well fail and be rejected as unworkable, incon-
venient, or expensive. Others might find that perseverance could pay off,
with advantages resulting from the particular ways in which the human
cloning tool was applied.
7.1.2.3.10 Cloned embryos as a source of stem cells for human therapies.

Proposed legislation in the U.S., the U.K., and Europe is being examined
with a view to determining the conditions under which it may be possible to
use human embryos as a source of stem cells for the replacement of defective
human tissues. The transplantation of organs is most successful when the
organ donor has similar cellular antigens to the recipient. A clone would
have antigens that were identical to the person who provided the somatic
cells from which the clone was made. The organs of the clone therefore
would make ideal replacements for organs that were causing problems to the
cell donor. While it is conceivable to produce a cloned baby for the specific
purpose of providing a replacement organ for the donor of the somatic cell
that made the clone, it would be equivalent to asking another fully compe-
tent individual to live and die so that one might live, an impermissible
arrangement under any circumstances.
However, this concept may not be so easily dismissed if one considered
generating a clone and removing stem cells from that clone at an early stage
in the development of the embryo (say, up to 14 days). New techniques in
animal cell technology may well enable us to produce functional organs from
such stem cells without using the agency of a human body.36 Tissues such as
skin, pancreas, adrenals, liver, bone, nerves, and muscle have all been
obtained from stem cell cultures in the laboratory. Some have been success-
fully implanted into sick people. Indeed, it has been conjectured that the
removal and storage of some cells of an early embryo may be a prudent act
for any individual, grown from the remaining cells, who may be thought to
have need for organ replacement therapy many decades later.33
By using stem cells derived from a human embryo for the production of
tissues and organs for therapeutic uses, one necessarily kills the embryo
from which they were obtained. To some, this is the equivalent of killing a
fully competent human being. As human life is held to be sacred, the delib-
erate annihilation of another human is in contravention of the holy writ that
forbids killing. It is not my purpose to enter into a theological debate about
the justified and unjustified killing of humans that are indicated by the wars,
genocides, and judicial executions that may be ordained by reference to
Biblical literature. Yet it is salutary to note that in order to preserve life it may
be justifiable to sacrifice a life. If that sacrifice is a ball of cells barely 1 mm in
diameter, this could be condoned in terms that would not be contrary to that
which is already part of Biblical lore.
It is possible to adduce ethical arguments based on the situation that a
human embryo, although just one cell in size, has the full potential to grow
into a human and should therefore be treated with the same rights and priv-
ileges as a fully grown human. However, rights can only be held if the holder
is capable of discharging responsibilities. An embryo of one cell is hardly in
a position to do this, and therefore it is specious to assert that such a cell has
rights. Whether the human embryo has a special position is also uncertain. It
is common practice in clinics that specialize in IVF to generate more embryos
than are needed for implantation purposes. When there is a successful preg-
nancy, and the parents are satisfied that they have sufficient children, then
the embryos that have not been used and that are stored in the vapor phase
over liquid nitrogen at a temperature of 136°C are killed. With the permis-
sion of the embryo donors, it is possible to do experiments on such embryos
until they are 14 days old for the specific purposes as set out in the laws gov-
erning the use of human embryos for experimentation (see Section 7.1.1).
This connivance at the killing of a viable human embryo may find a natural
precedent, in that many such embryos abort spontaneously. It is estimated
that over 50% of embryos fail to implant and become successful pregnan-
cies.34 Although it is not possible to argue that because there is a natural
embryo wastage or killing rate, the same is condonable by deliberate human
action. It does mean that from a personal and social survival point of view,
a certain wastage rate of embryos does not impugn the overall survival of
the individuals or society. On the basis of this latter ethical principle, that
survival is the end of actions, the use of embryos for the provision of stem
cells cannot be ruled out.
There are, however, arguments that assert that it is possible to obtain the
same stem cells from tissues such as the placenta or from an adult person
when particular parts of the body or tissue are used to make the cell cul-
tures. Were this to be developed, then the need for embryos and the ethical
issues they engender could be bypassed. It would seem that this approach
to stem cells will develop in parallel to that based on cloned embryo stem
cells, so that eventually the benefits and dangers of each approach will
become apparent, and a choice can be made on the basis of best practice as
to how to proceed. What is important in this area is that we press on via both
approaches to therapy, because sick people need cures and relief from the
pain and suffering of their symptoms.
It has also been argued that in permitting stem cell developments, one
is taking the first step on a slippery slope that will result in the production
of cloned humans. Referring to Chapter 4, readers will be familiar with the
rejoinders to this argument. In brief this outcome may actually be beneficial,
or should we wish to prevent this progression, then there is ample oppor-
tunity to reoutlaw the practice should it ever become lawful. Those who fear
future outcomes may seek to invoke the hard form of the precautionary
principle, but this will be of little avail, as it does not serve our communities
well in other areas.
7.1.2.3.11 On deciding who is to be cloned. We can approach the issue

of deciding who is to be cloned by posing the question, “What is the
expected benefit, or who benefits and in what way?” Such advantages may
be realized at the level of the individual who is cloned, the person who is
the product of the cloning process, families and associates of the clone, as
well as the wider society.
In recognizing the right of the individual to reproduce, we may proceed
to identify some couples whose only possible method of reproduction is
that afforded by cloning. To achieve this category, they would have been
required to engage in IVF technology for a number of years and would
thereby be designated as one of the 75% of couples who are not capable of
achieving a successful pregnancy in this way. If it is decided to go ahead and
reproduce using the cloning tool, then a single clone may be formed from
either member of the couple seeking to replicate. Alternatively, if there is
difficulty in determining which member of a couple is to be cloned, then it
will be possible to produce two clones, one deriving from each partner of
the couple. We then have to ask whether the gratification of such individu-
als provides sufficient benefit to justify the expenses-only payment to the
surrogate mother. Similar questions may be posed by those who wish to
clone themselves or a near relative, an only child who may have been killed
in a car accident, or a beloved parent or sibling. As there would be a signif-
icant cost in pursuing such an exercise (figures of $30,000 to $75,000 may be
envisaged once the technology has been worked out), the people who could
engage in such an operation would have to be relatively well-off. This raises
a further ethical question about the fairness of a situation where only the rel-
atively wealthy may obtain for themselves this particular “opportunity to
reproduce.” Another, and possibly fairer, approach would be to provide
public funds on a random basis for those cases of involuntary infertility that
have also satisfied minimum criteria as to their suitability. Whether or not
“privatized” cloning should be allowed in parallel is a moot point, but con-
trol could be effected via the use of licensed cloning practitioners and
premises as is presently effected via the HFEA for IVF procedures. It cannot
be denied that those individuals who engage in the cloning exercise may
appreciate the benefits that accrue. But what of those individuals who are
not so graced? Will the resentments be counterproductive to the benefits?
Or will the clones become accepted as just another way of generating off-
spring? Only pragmatic experimentation can answer such questions.
Generating clones for social benefit proffers a different suite of issues
and questions. It would be difficult to dispute the statement that human his-
tory has been graced by relatively few outstanding individuals whose con-
tributions to humanity have resulted in exceptional benefits. In our search
for progressive uses of the human cloning tool, we would be remiss in our
duty if we did not consider the prospects of increasing the probability of
achieving progress through the cloning of individuals who have already
demonstrated a propensity to make extraordinary contributions to human
well-being. Who might such people be? It would be facile to point to battle
heroes, Nobel laureates, and winners of other internationally contested
prizes, including sporting events or media, beauty, and arts awards. The
processes whereby such individuals achieve their awards are often subject
to well-deserved criticism. But it should not be beyond our collective wit to
devise a method that would yield results that could receive the widest pos-
sible acceptability while at the same time having the highest chance of being
of greatest service to the society. One possible scenario might take the form
of advertising for people who believe they have made an outstanding
contribution to society and who are willing to be cloned. In their response
they would be asked to specify their contribution and their general state of
health and sociability. From this point a number of possibilities ensue. The
easy one is to adopt a method of random choice from a short list of accept-
able candidates. This short list may be obtained by any of a number of ways.
A general society-wide plebiscite could be held. Here the principle of one
person –one vote would be operative. Alternatively, in some future society
it may be possible to win or be awarded extra votes by achievements or
demonstrations of social worth. (The devising of a system for such an allo-
cation of weighted voting rights that does not readily lend itself to cheating
and corruption would have to be engineered with great care. The full use of
databases and personal identifiers would be brought to bear on this distrib-
ution of social power.)
Whereas an individual clone might be reared by those who took upon
themselves the cloning activity, when the society at large makes the choice
of whom to clone, it behooves that selfsame body to look after the clones of
the chosen individuals (assuming that the people who provided the ovum
and the somatic cell do not do so themselves). Foster homes would be
needed and provisions for special rearing techniques adopted depending
on the particular specialty, which was expressed in the beneficial activities
of the individual who was cloned. In the engineering of the environment to
be experienced by the clone, it may well be possible to exceed and enhance
the particular conditions that made the cloned individual such a special per-
son. So, not only may the clones of an exceptionally productive individual
turn out to be equivalently productive, they may surpass their ancestor in
their value to the society. Nonetheless, it is yet possible that many such
clones will fail to reach the performance levels of their originator. This pro-
cedure should not be expected to provide enhanced clones with a probabil-
ity of greater than 10%; rather, the cloning procedure just increases the
probability that under the appropriate conditions of rearing, one of the so-
generated cloned individuals would also become an outstanding benefit to
the community.
What is important is that different societies should effect these proce-
dures in contrasting ways. From these experiments we may learn the
approaches that are more likely to benefit our communities. International
law should confine itself solely to those issues that affect interactions
between sovereign states. What each state does should be left to the deci-
sions of its people. It may well be that we can identify universal rights for
individuals vis-à-vis their societies, as indeed the United Nations and the
Council of Europe have done. But if the 1957 Treaty of Rome has any sway,
then the principle of subsidiarity requires that the overarching community
does not attempt to do what its component states can do for themselves. The
1957 Treaty of Rome, at Article 3b, states:
The Community shall act within the limits of the pow-

ers conferred upon it by this Treaty and of the objec-
tives assigned to it therein.
In areas which do not fall within its exclusive com-
petence, the Community shall take action, in accor-
dance with the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in

so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot
be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can
therefore, by reason of the scale or effects of the pro-
posed action, be better achieved by the Community.
Any action by the Community shall not go beyond
what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the
Treaty. (author’s emphasis)
From diversity we have the material on which natural selection may

operate. This process has been at the basis of developing living organisms
from the single-replicating molecule of some 4 billion years ago to modern
humans. Now having understood the process that made us, we can use that
process in a deliberate and controlled manner to further develop what we
are as people.
7.1.2.4 Application of the HAZOP method to the cloning of

genetically engineered humans
Having examined in some detail the ethical issues raised in pursuance of
achieving step 16 (Figure 7.1), it is now necessary to explore a selection of
the more practical consequences. We can begin with the application of the
HAZOP forcing functions to step 16 (Figure 7.1) that I have discussed pre-
viously.
• Were none of the design intents achieved, then the result may be
either nothing (no genetically engineered clones) or genetically engi-
neered clones that have properties that were not envisaged by the
intents of the genetic engineers. As many of these deviations from
intention would manifest themselves during the process of parturi-
tion, it behooves investigators to monitor all stages of the pregnancy
with alacrity and stringency. Signs of deviation from normalcy or
from what is expected, having taken into account the modifications
that have been done deliberately, should result in the termination of
the pregnancy. These procedures differ little from what is present-
day practice in many countries of the developed world.
• I realize that in using the abortion of a growing fetus as a fail-safe
technique, I have taken a side in the bitter debate that still rages in
some modern societies. It is not just the Catholic Church that seeks to
prevent the abortion of unwanted fetuses. The “Pro-Life” movement
is motivated by a broad sweep of ethics, among which are the sanc-
tity of life and the rights of a fetus being equivalent to those of an
adult human. To a lesser extent, we have duties to other living animal
life-forms that require us to keep them alive as long we can. As I have
shown in the discussion about the environment (Section 3.1.1.4.22)
and the need to move to sustainable ways of using the resources
of planet Earth, the most important parameter that needs to be
controlled is that of the rate of increase of the human population; this

has to be decreased and then changed to a controllable negative rate
of decline until we reach a level that may be regarded as optimal. One
of the tools in the armamentarium of methods to achieve this even-
tual decline in human numbers has to be the abortion of unwanted
fetuses. In the absence of the means or knowledge of contraception
techniques, abortion continues to be one of the mainstays in enabling
families in less-developed countries to acquire some of the resources
that enable an improvement in standards of living and provide
increased education for subsequent generations. On these grounds
we cannot forgo the abortion tool in our efforts to improve the lot of
those in less propitious circumstances.
• Fewer genetically engineered clones of humans will not present a
problem, for that situation will be little different from what pertains
now. More such clones may or may not present problems, depending
on the number of clones and their nature. It may be that clones that
express genes that cause radical differences in comparison to existing
humans may be less well tolerated than clones where the changes are
not so marked. Were the new clones to add value to their societies,
then having more of them would be welcomed. The reverse situation
would lead to decisions that could ban genetically engineered clones
outright. Either way there is little reason to believe that the situation
will get out of control; on the contrary there will be many opportuni-
ties to choose from the variety of clone-society manifestations, those
that are of particular worth.
• The timing of the emergence of such genetically engineered human
clones is dependent on the laws of the hosting societies. At present it
is illegal to engage in the exploration of the potential use of such
tools. However, as societies become more familiar with the applica-
tion of the power of genetic engineering and cloning tools to achieve
outcomes that are highly desirable in other areas, their deployment
to the human condition becomes a matter of time. One of the facili-
tating features that would enable societies to avail themselves of the
new tools would be the thorough evaluation of future outcomes by
techniques such as this HAZOP technique. Through these methods it
will be possible to put in place, before they are needed, the checks,
balances, and facilities that will enable the new tools to be used with
the minimum risk of incurring damage. Each society may then
decide when and to what extent the technique could be applied. It
would be prudent for many small steps to be made, each under the
control of a different community. The exchange of the consequences
of these developments should be open, free, and unbound. All will
thereby learn the most from the effort expended.
• The rate at which we proceed is crucial. To precipitate ourselves
headlong into an unknown world carved out by the use of the new
tools would be foolhardy. We cannot proceed faster than we can do

the necessary preliminary examinations of both a theoretical and
practical nature. The debate about what to do and how to do it has
begun. Yes, it has raised difficult issues in ethics, which need to be
aired and debated in full. Should we come to a consensus as to the
basis of our ethics as a result of being inspired by the emergence of
these new tools, then we will have moved forward considerably. One
of my purposes in this book is to suggest that we reexamine the ethi-
cal messages that emerge from the improved understandings of our
short-term (10,000 years) and long-term (8 million to 4 billion year)
histories. Ethics, those verbal expressions that are used with the
intent of modulating human behavior, are a relative newcomer to the
scene and probably do not date back further than 150,000 years ago.
At that time, it was thought that the components of the animate and
inanimate world were moved by spirits. Current trends toward ecu-
menism have resulted in the emergence of the common factor of most
religions, which is the existence of a world other than the material
and energetic elements with which we are familiar—the spirit world.
So the modern debate about ethics will hinge on what we think
causes the effects we witness. This will require us to focus on the issue
of just what effects, if any, may be attributed to spirits. With our
greater understanding of the way the brain works, we may approach
the issue of how humans become conscious without invoking entities
outside the material cause-and-effect system. We have, thereby,
reduced the scope for the application of animating spirits as being
causally responsible, in some or any part, for what occurs in our con-
scious and subconscious minds. Whether or not spirits are needed to
provide for the origins of the matter and energy in the multiplicity of
universes remains a moot point. We also have to remind ourselves
that prayers to these spirits are unlikely to yield survival-enhancing
effects, as the Aztecs demonstrated through their annual sacrifices of
over 100,000 humans; this did not prevent their complete overthrow
by Hernán Cortés (1485 –1547) in 1521.
• Could an additional activity occur? In the genetic engineering
process we insert genes into a genome, and the activity of each gene
is governed by what the other genes do. Clearly, the insertional
process may upset such arrangements. But we have to notice that
only 3% of the genome is active in this regard, so any insertion has
less than a 1 in 33 chance of effecting an interference with an existing
gene. Were the effects of such an insertion noticeable, then if the con-
sequences take the new clone outside the range of what can be toler-
ated, measures would be activated that would prevent that clone
from coming to maturity.
• Were only some of the design intent achieved, then this should not
present any unforeseen problems, as contingency plans would be in
place to handle the situation if the full design is achieved and is unac-
ceptable.
• Again, it is difficult to imagine what a reverse design could be in terms
of a clone. I have already considered the implications of a reverse
design with regard to the intents of the genetic engineering side of the
project.
Summarizing this analysis, it is clear that most of the possible downside

eventualities can be catered for in such a way that minimizes harm to levels
that are likely to be tolerable. By taking small steps forward under conditions
that can be closely and thoroughly monitored and controlled ensures that
untoward events are even more improbable. It also ensures that the maxi-
mum amount of data is generated so that future uses of the new tools may be
more informed as to the way things may proceed. Additionally, it is impor-
tant to operate under conditions that limit the area within which the experi-
ments occur. This better enables the application of remedial actions, should
these be necessary. All these provisions and prescriptions provide the neces-
sary checks and precautions that are called for by less restrictive versions of
the precautionary principle.35
To retain the confidence and support of the society in general, it is neces-
sary to devise and implement means whereby each member of the commu-
nity, should they so wish, can easily obtain information about the progress of
the trials, but in such a manner that the experiments themselves are not jeop-
ardized. So not only will the monitoring and regulatory boards have sanc-
tioned the trials in the first place, community members will also be able to
give input about how the application of the new tools is proceeding. In these
developments, which will have a major impact on the way our societies will
look in the future, it is essential to regard them as communal activities. To
consider them matters that concern only an elite will be to encourage distrust
and rejection. In the promotion of this new paradigm for the implementation
of a suite of tools that has not yet been assayed, we will have accomplished
much that will be of value to us in the future. Through such analyses and
practices, we can bring society and the engineers into a productive associa-
tion. After we have successfully accomplished this feat, it is not only planet
Earth that will benefit; this message will work just as well on whatever plan-
ets we come to inhabit in the eons ahead.
References
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405, 983, 2000.
2. Hancock, G. and Faiia, S., Heaven’s Mirror, Quest for the Lost Civilisation, Michael
Joseph, London, 1998, 336.
3. Rohl, D., Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation, Arrow Books, London, 1998, 540.
4. Editorial, Crunch time, New Scientist, 166, 19, 2000.
5. Wilmut, I., Schnieke, A. E., McWhir, J., Kind, A. J., and Campbell, K. H. S.,
Viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells, Nature, 385, 810,
1997.
6. Flam, F., Hints of a language in junk DNA, Science, 266, 1320, 1994.
7. McCreath, K. J., Howcroft, J., Campbell, K. H. S., Colman, A., Schnieke, A. E.,
and Kind, A. J., Production of gene-targeted sheep by nuclear transfer from cul-
tured somatic cells, Nature, 405, 1066, 2000.
8. Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, 8th Annual Report, 1999.
9. Dyson, A., The Ethics of IVF, Mowbray, London, 1995, 132.
10. http://www.hfea.gov.uk.
11. Chan, A. W. S., Dominko, T., Luetjens, C. M., Neuber, E., Martinovich, C.,
Hewitson, L., Simerly, C. R., and Schatten, G. P., Clonal propagation of primate
offspring by embryo splitting, Science, 287, 317, 2000.
12. loc. cit., ref. 5.
13. Friedmann, T., Principles for human gene therapy studies, Science, 287, 2163,
2000.
14. Mountain, A., Gene therapy: the first decade, TIBTECH, 18, 119, 2000.
15. Cohen, P., No more kicks, New Scientist, 166, 22, 2000.
16. Wallerstein, C., The quest for a cancer jab, The Guardian (U.K.), 8, August 1,
2000.
17. McClearn, G. E., Johansson, B., Berg, S., Pedersen, N. L., Ahern, F., Petrill, A.,
and Plomin, R., Substantial genetic influence on cognitive abilities in twins 80
or more years old, Science, 276, 1560, 1997.
18. Silver, L. M., Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1998, 315.
19. Harris, J., Intimations of Immortality, Science, 288, 59, 2000.
20. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/letters.288/5463/59.
21. See also the following Web site for a comprehensive bibliography:
http://guweb.georgetown.edu/nrcbl/cloning.htm.
22. Wakayama, T., Perry, A. C. F., Zuccotti, W., Johnson, K. R., and Yanagimachi,
R., Full-term development of mice from enucleated oocytes injected with cumu-
lus cell nuclei, Nature, 394, 369, 1998.
23. Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics
Advisory Commission, Rockville, Maryland, June, 1997.
24. Hirschberg, P., Be fruitful and multiply, The Jerusalem Report, 7, 33, 1998.
25. Levin, I., The Boys from Brazil, Pan Books, London, 1976, 238.
26. Huxley, A., Brave New World (1932), Penguin Books, 1955, 201.
27. Kelves, D. J., In the Name of Eugenics, University of California Press, 1986, 426.
28. Weingart, P., German Eugenics between Science and Politics, Osiris, 5, 260, 1989.
29. Smith, A. D. and Zaremba, M., Outcasts from Nordic super-race, The Observer
(UK), 6, August 24, 1997.
30. Mayer, F., Devaluing the human factor, THES February 6, 1998.
31. Beauchamp, T. L. and Childress, J. E., Principles of Biomedical Ethics 4th Ed.
32. Willadsen, S. M. and Polge, C., Attempts to produce monozygotic quadruplets
in cattle by blastomere separation, Veterinary Record, 114, 240, 1984.
33. Patel, K., Scientists demand embryo law change, The Times Higher, 5, November
13, 1998.
34. http://www.drdaiter.com/preg2.html.
35. Foster, K. R., Vecchia, P., and Repacholi, M. H., Science and the precautionary
principle, Science, 288, 979, 2000.
36. Spier, R. E., Encyclopedia of Cell Technology, Volumes I and II, Wiley, 2000.
chapter eight
Dealing with intent

successfully
Humans have come a long way in the last 100,000 years—from their hunter-
gatherer past, hardly dissimilar to that of the modern higher primate, to a
fire-using and word-using globetrotter who can wholly eradicate a viral
pathogen and use artificial satellites to provide instant access to a colossal
compilation of human knowledge. Having made the same hand ax for about
a million years, we expect our modern tools to be superseded within a decade
or two. In population terms we have gone from a few million to a few billion.
Whereas we once thought of tradition as a guide to the future, now the brakes
have been removed, and we have acquired the opportunity to demonstrate
the full power of our creative minds. Our past can also be described as a
litany of disasters, a succession of devastations, and a subjugation to the
tyranny of the spirit world. Yet in spite of these burdens we have prospered.
We have survived plague, war, famine, and natural catastrophes and
have arrived at a time of unprecedented progress. Our hubris is so great that
we claim we can achieve any set goal (compliant with the laws of thermody-
namics), given the time and the resources. This was the message that Eric
Severeid, an American news commentator of the 1970s, drew from the
landing of men on the moon. And this is the cause of the fears of those who
have not yet come fully to accept the Modern Era. Their reservations concern
the proliferation of new tools and their potential uses. This is because there
are many visions of a future world in which the products made by the new
tools could bring further disasters to humankind. Those who make these new
tools, and the capabilities that accompany them, are well aware of the awe-
some power that is emerging for deployment. So both the toolmakers and the
tool users have to work within the ambit of their communities in making sure
that their beneficial intentions in making the novel instruments are realized
in practice.
As we have seen, all tools come with both a health warning and a
certificate of performance if used as per the intent of the toolmaker. Much of
what I have had to say in the previous chapters has dealt with the way we can
turn the beneficial intents of the toolmaker into advantages and progress.
This in turn requires us to take onboard new tools with great care and
consideration. For the uses they might be turned to may not be those that
were envisaged by the original toolmaker. To decrease the chances that some
new tool might be turned to a harmful end, either knowingly or unknow-
ingly, it is necessary to effect a prospective examination of the possibilities—
even before the new tool has been made and is available on the market.
Some of these methods for dealing with new tools are not particularly well or
consistently designed. The precautionary principle (Section 3.1.1.4.22) has
both hard and soft forms, which would permit either nothing to go ahead
or anything to proceed. While we have laws that define forbidden outcomes
(do not murder), we also have laws that relate to the use of specific tools
(do not use somatic nuclei to clone human beings). Nevertheless, we cannot
expect the law to cover all contingencies. Most tool users and makers
are members of professional institutions, whose codes of conduct require
their members to work for the benefit of society. Although these controlling
elements are in place, there is some latitude for the individual to cause
damage. So, as a last stage defense of society, it is also necessary to
educate in ethics the engineering practitioners who design, make, and use
new tools.
We have to develop ethical systems that we can include in the education
of the engineers and new tool innovators. These will enable us to go ahead
with a modicum of confidence, knowing that there is inculcated in such indi-
viduals a high degree of intentionality that seeks to gain benefits while
diminishing costs or harms. To do this, special tools have been developed.
One such tool requires that we systematically assess the risk of damage and
manage it accordingly. Another tool that I have dealt with in some detail is
that which seeks to define all the operations that are envisaged as being part
of a process and to examine each of them against a number of forcing func-
tions to see what could happen if the intents of the original design team were
not the only ways in which the tool might function. This method, called
HAZOP, was developed in the 1960s for this task. In applying this tool to the
example of the cloning of genetically engineered humans, I hope I have
shown that not only is it feasible to go down this route but also that with the
appropriate monitoring and controls much social benefit might be obtained.
However, it was clear from that analysis that the chief stumbling blocks were
in the area of ethics. These verbal formulas have now been translated into
laws proscribing such developments in many individual countries and con-
glomerations of nations.
Chapter eight: Dealing with intent successfully 277
If the issues that effect progress are to be found mainly in the area
of ethics, it behooves us to shine a spotlight on that area and ask some
basic questions about the nature of ethics and how they are formulated.
Chapter 2 presented such an examination. Words and ethics go together.
When we learned to use languages with words and grammar, not only could
we denote objects and actions, but we also could use words with the intent of
modulating or controlling the way other humans (or their domesticated ani-
mals) behaved. These verbal formulations became our ethics. From the start
it is likely that all such formulations would have been used with the intent of
enhancing the survival chances of the people concerned. (It could be argued
that the survival-enhancing use of words and grammar in the formulation of
ethical statements was a primary factor in the eventual emergence of humans
as a preeminent species.) In essence, ethics is a survival-enhancing tool if, and
only if, it is used appropriately. Therefore, if we understand how it came
about that we obtained these verbal formulations with the intent of enhanc-
ing the chances of individuals and groups surviving, then we would have a
clear guide as to what our modern day ethics ought to be.
This simple approach to ethics worked well until somebody had the
idea that the presence of animating principles or spirits could account for
the differences between living animals and humans and dead animals and
humans that lacked such spirits. This hypothesis would seem to account for
what was observed by the hunter-gatherers of 100,000 years ago. So,
much time and attention were focused on the spirits and the additional
conjecture of a spirit world. The religion of animism was born and still
exists in societies that have only just come into contact with the jet-setting
world. The spirits could do beneficial or harmful deeds. There was a small
chance that if the spirits were approached properly with the appropriate
sacrifices, there would be an increase in the probability of something good
happening as opposed to something bad. Some of the connotations of
this spirit world have been associated with the work done by engineers,
particularly as they seem to be related to the spirit djinn (or genies) via the
letters gin as in en”gin”eer.
We cannot deny that any tool, like any spirit, may be a power for the
conveyance of benefits or harms. But we have moved on since the last ice age.
We can, if we choose, divorce ourselves from the paraphernalia of the spirit
world and adopt a view of the world that is wholly material; the EO view.
Although it is not possible to argue that weightless and invisible spirits
do not exist (the EP view), it is difficult to see, given the laws of thermody-
namics, how such entities may affect the material and energetic components
of the actual world, while lacking the substantiveness necessary to cause
effects. Now that we have seen that the ceremonial sacrifice of 100,000
people each year for some hundreds of years to propitiate the gods of
the Aztecs of Mexico did not protect them from being conquered in 1521
by Cortés, and that we can begin to see that the phenomenon of our conscious
mind can be explained in terms of the interaction of the nerve cells and chem-
icals found in our brains, the room for the manifestation of the properties of
the spirits has shrunk considerably.
Should we be able to come to terms with a spirit-free world, then we
would be able to determine how best we might make our ethics work to pro-
mote the survival of ourselves and our communities. This does not provide
us with the opportunity for a free-for-all. Rather it enables us to test exhaus-
tively the new tools that have been originated.
The HAZOP tool has been developed to effect a disciplined and thor-
ough analysis of the possibilities inherent in any new tool or process before
that tool or process is actually used in practice. Similar tools can be developed
for other applications. In an open society we can conduct experiments where
we deal compassionately with the rare failure, while pressing ahead with
whatever benefits ensue. It is a matter of urgency that we move forward in
these areas, because there are developments in the offing that will need all the
wit we can muster to harvest the gains yet preventing the harms.
In the last chapter I recounted how one might proceed to apply the
HAZOP method to the production of a genetically engineered clone of
humans. While today’s society has a common communication structure
based on the Internet, the application and discussion of HAZOP pertaining
to cloning has not yet been considered on this medium of communication.
Nor have I considered in detail the concerns we would have if we went all
out for the colonization of space. It would be remiss of us if we did not sub-
ject these areas to an equivalently detailed analysis.
Engineers sit at the apex of the moving arrow of progress. It is not a com-
fortable lot that they have chosen. To keep moving forward, they need to be
constantly developing, innovating, and testing new tools. How they do this
determines the evolutionary course humanity takes; it will also determine
whether humans or any new species derived from them will survive the
insults and challenges that a universe in perpetual turmoil can, and will,
engender. My case for this book is that if we add to the engineers’ comple-
ment of facilities an understanding of the origins and nature of ethics, then
our societies may acquire some quietude from the incessant uncertainty as to
just where engineers are leading us. Bringing engineers onside requires that
they appreciate their ethical situation both in terms of the ethics they hold
and the ethics that prevail in their communities. An open, wide-band com-
munication system between engineers and their communities is required.
Speaking the same language of concern for the well-being of the society, engi-
neers and the public can—together—establish goals; set up controls, exami-
nations, and analyses; and monitor progress. In this way engineers working
in communities can do their best to guarantee that their beneficial intents as
innovators are incorporated into new social devices and services with the
greatest chances of successful outcomes for all.
Index
A preservation, 136
solvent, 136
Abortion, 91, 93, 269–270 Alcoholic beverages, 136
Abrahamic texts, 60 Alexander the Great, 35
Abuse, 96 Alexandria, 60
Academia, 119 Algae, microscopic, 164
Academic publication, 124 Allah, 66
Accelerator, car, 91 Allegiance, 86
Acceptability Alphabet, 31, 53, 148
ethics 81, 89, 223, 233 Alsabati, E.A.K, 121
Accident(s), 139, 205, 262 Alternative life-styles, 223
Accountants, 216 Alternative medicines, 223
Acetic acid, 136 Alternative religions, 223
Acetone, 161 Altruism, 80
Acheulian, 15, 117 Amazon jungle, 217
Action, 93 American
Activists Indian, 135, 142, 234
Animals Rights, 208–211 Association for the Advancement
Adenine, 167 Bill of Rights, 85
Adhesives, 138 constitution, 86
Adolescent(s), 79, 95 President, 241
Adult (placental, bone marrow etc.) War for Independence, 150
stem cells, 266 Amgen, 227
Adultery, 245 Amino acids, 211
Adversarial process, 201 Ammonia, 138
Afterlives, 89 Amphetamines, 76, 252
Age, 125 Angels, 58, 89, 107
Agricultural production, 154, 257 Angkor Wat, 242
Agriculture, 26 Animal
AIDS, 91, 114, 166, 210 cell technology, 265
Air, 136, 138, 139 experimentation, 93, 207–211
Airplane, 115, 132, 133 genes for humans, 253
Alchemy, 136 genetic engineering, 224
flames, 137 guesses, 114
Alcohol, 76, 96, 136, 158 pain and suffering, 208–210
intoxicant, 136 senses, 72
279
cells, 4 Astrophysical
hide, 135 changes, 163
skins, 135 Aswan, 142
Animals Atmosphere, 134, 164–167
experimentation, regulations, 207–211 clean(er), 140
for draught, 37 water vapor, 165
genetically engineered, 207 Atmospheric pollution, 140
horses, 37, 145, 208 Atoms, 89
horses and mouth bit, 37 Australia, 142
horses and spurs, 37 Australian Aborigines, 142
horses in war, 37 Author ordering, 124
horse’s padded collar, 37 Authority, 86
horses’ stirrups, 38 Authorship issues, 124
horseshoe, 37 Automata, 155
human consumption, 210 Autonomous, Autonomy, 74, 94, 212, 261
research, in, 210 Avicenna, 66
rights, 87, 209 Awards, 197
selected breeding, 210, 224 Aztecs, 57, 271, 277
tools, as experimental, 207
Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, B
1986, 207
Animation, 57, 62 Babbage, C., 121
Animism, 58, 89, 108, 271, 277 Baby, Babies, 74, 78, 93
Anthrax communication, 93
bacilli, 142 complaining, 93
Anthropology, 73 development, 93
Antiabortion, 91 empathy, 93
Antiparticles, 89 emulation, 93
Antitrypsin, (alpha 1-), 243 excreting, 93
Anucleate ovum (human) feeding, 93
creation of, 246 imitation, 93
Ape(s), 145, 255 responses, 93
Apple, 117, 153 Babylon, 59, 60
Apprentice system, 217 Babylonian exile, 107
Arabia, 66 Back-up, 128
Arabs, 137 Bacteria
Aramaic, 60 genetically modified, 142, 243
Arbitration tribunal, 92 Bacteria, 4, 54, 143, 169
Arbitrator, 92 Bad, 106
Archeology, 73 Bahya ibn Paquda, 66
Architects, 216 Baltic Sea, Convention for Protection,
Aristotle, 47, 61, 67, 73, 75 173
Army, 55 Barley malted, 136
Art, 115 Baryons, 89
Artwork Base sequence genes, of, 167
packages, 153 Bases four, 167
Asmodeus, Ashmedai, Ashmadai, Batch run mode, 227–229
Aeshma, 107 Bats, 253
Assurance, 109 Bayes, T., 111
Asteroids(s), 5, 7, 26, 142, 168, 198, 242, Beer, 136
259 Beginnings, see Origins
Index 281
Belisarius, General, 38 Blair, E.A., 151

Benaiah, 107 Blessings, 96
Beneficence, 74–75, 261 Block and tackle, 37
Benefit, Benefits, 57, 58, 67, 75, 88, 97, Blood pressure, 114
106, 119–120, 130, 143, 177, 204, Blue Green Algae, 168
259, 266 Boat, 139–140
acceptance of, 123 Bogies, 89
mutual, 92 Boiled egg(s), Boiling egg(s),
probabilities, 212–213 227–229
Benton, M.J., 168 Bonobo(s), 145
Benz, K., 41 Bonuses, 147
Bergen Declaration, 173 Book of the Dead, 58
Berlin, I., 223 Borneo highlands, 217
Bernoulli equation, 121 Boyer, H.W., 140
Best guess, 73 Boys, 95
Beverages, also Drinks Brain (human), 63, 64
fermented, 136 Breeding and weeding programs, 259
Bhopal, 138 Brewing industry, 136
Bible, Biblical, 96, 107–108, 223, 265 Britain, 137
Bicycle, 139–140 British Library, 159
Big bang, 1, 77 British National Lottery, 204, 226
Binary code, 148 Bronze, 33
Bioaccumulation, 172, 174 Burgess, A., 68
Biochemical investigations, 134 Bursting disc, 232
Biochemistry, 121 Bus, 139–140
Biodiversity decreases, 162
Bioethicists, 261
C
Biological
engineers, 242 Cabbage(s) genes, 243
hazard, 203, 207 Caenorhabiditis elegans, 253
tools, 241 Calcium carbonate, 164
warfare, 142 Calcium oxide, 164
weapons, 143 Calcium phosphate, 245
Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), 160 Cambodia, 242
Biology Camel(s), 145
cellular, 115 Camel’s nose in the tent, 192
molecular, 115 Camera(s) digital, 149
organismal, 115 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
societal, 115 (CND), 133
Biopharmaceuticals, 141, 243 Campollion, J–F, 30
Biosphere, 77 Cancer, 134, 139
Biotechnology cure(s), 134, 170, 252
products and ethical issues, 185–190, Cannon, 133
256 Canonized system, 118
questions, 184–185 Capital gains, 147
Biotechnology, Biotech, 127, 140–148, Capitalistic principles, 147
181, 218, 256 Car, Cars, 91, 139
tools, 170–171 usage, 140
Bird, S, 125 pollution, 234
Birth control, 175, 254 private, 219
Black powder, 137 transportation, 234
family, 234 Chemical engineer, 224, 242

Carbon particles, 140 Chemical fertilizers, 141, 161
Carbon dioxide, 134, 140, 160, 162, Chemical hazard, 203
164–167 Chemical industry, 135, 137–139
atmospheric, 164, 211 Chemical processing, 135
economy, 164 Chemical psychoactive, 138, 252
greenhouse gas, 165 Chemical reactions, 135
marker of atmospheric qualities, Chemical(s), 128
165 Chemical(s), dangerous, 128, 137
sinks, 164 Chernobyl, 134
Carnivores, 209 Cherubs, 89
Carnivorous species Chicken, 209
mammals, 209 Children, 77–78, 95, 259, 262–264
plants, 209 Children, rights of, 260
Carpets, 138 Chimpanzees, 56, 145, 243
Car’s accelerator pedal HAZOP analy- China, Chinese, 66, 81, 137, 158
sis, 237–238 Chlorinated phenols, 138
Car’s speedometer HAZOP analysis, Choice, 89, 261, 270
238–239 Cholera, 161
Carson, R., 160, 162 Christ, 73
Cartouche, 31 Christian virtues, 74
Case-study, 98 Christianity, 96
Cash-limits, 97 Christians, 60
Casuistry, 91 Chromosomes, 168
Cat(s), 208, 210 Church attendance, 96
Categorical Imperative, 89 Church, Catholic, the, 269
Cause and Effect (system), 89, 271 Church of England, 96
Caveat emptor, 122 Church services, 96
Cell cycle, Go, 249 Church, The, 96, 132, 202,
Cell fusate, 248 Cinematography, 148
Centrifuge, 126 City, Cities, 144
Cerebral cortex, 62, 109 Civil rights, 158
Certainty, 109 Classroom, 95
Certification Clay vessels, 36
experiments, of, 208 Clergy, 96
procedures, of, 208 Climate changes, 164–167, 198
Chalk, 164 orbital changes, 164
Challenger incident, 123 Clinical literature, 121
Chance, 89 trials, 121, 127
Chang, A.C.Y., 140 Phases I, II, III & VI, 212–213
Chaos, 89 Clockwork devices, 155
Charcoal, 137 Clone, Cloned, 141
Charged ions, 114 Clone etymology, 264
Charity, Charities, 74, 90, 114 Cloned beef cattle, 264
Charlamenge, 38 Cloning
Charter of 1689 (English Bill of Rights), humans, 224, 243–272, 276
84 special people, 262
Cheat, Cheating, 95 stem cells from human embryos, 192,
Checkpoint(s) control, for, 196 264–266
Checks and Precautions, Pragmatism, Cloning humans
272 well-off, the, 267
Index 283
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), 151, Comoditization

208, 219 humans, 211
Clostridium Compact disc (CD), 159
acetobutylicum, 161 Companies
Closure, Close out, 98 multinational, 147
Coaches, 95 pharmaceutical, 147
Coatings, nonstick, 138 Company, 128
Cocaine, 76, 252 profitability, 123, 146
Coccolithophores, 164 share price, 129
Code of conduct size, 116
society, of, needs to change, 241 small, 116
Code(s), 179 Competition, 80, 116
advisory, 130 Competitor(s), 122
breach, 131 Component suppliers, 128, 146
compliance, 130 Computation, 148
conduct, 131, 214–216, 276 Computer industry, 154, 218
disciplinary, 130 Computer literacy, 153
encryption, 152 Computer simulation, 153
ethics, Engineering Inst of Ireland, 131 Computer simulation, 232
institutional, 213–217 Computer(s), 112, 132
mandatory, 130 games, 150
missionary, 130 lap top, 148
Morse, 151 pocket, 148
practice, of, 123, 130–132 valve based, 148
statements of intent, 130 Concept(s), 109, 112
Code(s) of conduct Concept(s), reality, of, 150
breaches of, 216 Conceptualizations, 110
employees, 216 Concordance ethics, 81
evolution of, 216 Condensation, 137
professional institutions, from, 215 Conditioning stimulus, 95
prototype, 214 Condoms, 91, 166, 175
self-employed, 216 Conductors, 138
Cognitive development, 94 Confessional, 91
Cohen, S.N., 140 Confidence
Colditz, 150 degrees of, 109
Collaboration, 80 Confidence, 72, 79, 90, 129, 272
Colonies, 137 Confidentiality, 91, 93, 123, 127,
Color, 125 129–130
Commerce, 129 Conflict(s), 92
Commercial exploitation of life, 141 interest, of, 119, 122–124, 126
Commercial interests, 146 interest, of, in engineering, 128–129
Commercial pressure, 123 resolution, 99, 100
Commodification Confucius, 73
humans, of, 260–262 Congress, 85
Commons, 85 Conscious, 57, 62, 63
Communication, 117, 129, 130 Consensus
e-mail, 152 ethics, 81, 89
Communitarians, 76 Consequentialism, 75, 89
Community work areas, 155 Consilience, 64
Community, Communities, 77, 79, 80, Construction stage, 225
91, 128 Construction of reality, 114
Constructivists, 114 Crime, Criminal, 68, 91, 96, 151, 154, 179,
Constructs, 110 219–220, 260
Containment cabinets, 126 Criminal identification, 141
Continuous run mode, 227–229 Crystallization, 137
Contraception, Contraceptive, 77, 166, Cultural orientation, 83
270 Cuneiform, 31
Contract(s), 86, 120, 130 Curiosity
open, professional and society, 132, pure, 180
215 Customers, 128, 146
Contractarian, 89 Customs
Control, 88, 136, 196 local, 201
Control engineer, 197 Cystic fibrosis, 181, 251
Control loop, 54 Cytosine, 167
Control systems, 128, 196
Control of Substances Hazardous to D
Health, U.K., 126, 206–207
Control systems Daimler, G, 41
instrumentation and controllers, Damage, 95, 97, 172–175, 234
230 irreversible, 173
Controllability, 139 prevention, 221, 225
Controller, 54 Dammed rivers, 165
Cooking, 121 Damnation, 96
Cookson, C, 192 Damon, W., 94
Cooperation, 80 Darwin theory of evolution by natural
Copper, 33 selection, 143
Core curriculum, 93 Darwin, C., Darwinistic, Darwinism,
Corn, 170 2–4, 77, 80
Cortes, H, 271 Darwinism
Cos, island of, 213 social, 80
Cosmetic testing on animals, 210 Data, 90, 91, 128
Cost, 75 bases, 153
capital, 28 collectors, 152
cloning humans, of, 262 control, 122
definition, 225 crunching, 153
operating, 128 economical with, 123
Cost-Benefit, 89, 117, 139, 174, 177, 200 graphical presentation, 122
Cost-Benefit analysis, 75, 226, 262 historical, 204
Cost-Efficiency, Efficacy, 89, 116, 227 management, 130
Costs, 91 manipulation, 130
Cost-Utility, 89 misleading, 122
Cotton, 170 preliminary, 122
Council of Europe presentation techniques, 122
1966 Rights, 86, 258, 268 selection, 130
Courage, 90 sequestering, 122
Courses of action, 93 statistical techniques, 122
Court, 92 suspicious, 122
Cow(s), cattle, 145, 209, 246, 257, 264 tainted, 153
Credit cards, 152 valid, 152
Creed, 125 withholding, 122
Crichton, M, 142 Data base(s), 218
Crick, F., 167 Data Protection Acts, 152
Index 285
Database(s) Didion, J, 125

gene base sequences, 171 Die, also see Death, 144
Dates, 136 Differential treatment, 125
Daughter(s), 96 Dignity
Davenport, C, 81 etymology, 260
Dawkins, R, 144 Dignity, 90, 92, 154
DDT, 160 Dinaric Alps, 66
residues, 160 Dinosaur species, 168
resistance, 160 Dioxins, 128, 138–139
Dead, 57, 63, 128, 138 Direct, Directing, Director, 117
Death rates, 140, 166 Disaster(s), 139
Death, see Dead unpredictable, 141
Debates, 98 Discipline, 95
Decalogue, 59 Discovery, 117
Declaration of Human Rights, 83 Discrimination, 125
Decommissioning, 229 Discussions, 98
Decorations, 197 Disease
Defects elimination, 141
single-gene, 251 heart, of the, 170
Defense infectious, 29, 251
common, 86 prediction, 141
Deism, 67, 89 treatment(s), 169
Deistic, 67 Disorder, 144
Deities, 52 Dispute, 90
Democratic ethics, 81 Distillation, 137
Democratic society, 86, 87 Divine Rights of Kings, 84, 90
Demolition, 229 Djinni, see jinni
Demons, 58, 89, 107–108, 150 Djoser, 242
Demotic Egyptian, 31 DNA, 1, 2, 4, 219
Denmark, 98 junk, 243
Deontology, 89 naked -plasmid, 243
Dependency, 114 production, 244
Depreciation structure, 167
cost-benefit analysis, in, 252 DNA incorporation
Descartes, R., 67, 146 directed, 245
Descriptive ethics, 71–73, 97 Document paper trail, 207
Design Documentation process, 229
intents, 269, 271 Dodecanese island group, 213
stage, 225 Dogma
solutions, 115, 227 orthodox, 201
Design(s), Designing, 115, 128, 129, 218, Dogs, 57, 145, 208, 210, 253
227 Dolly, 243
Determinism, 64–68, 89 Domestic appliances, 175–178
Deterministic position, 88 Domino theories, 192
Developed world, 75, 77, 166 Doomsday bug, 142
Developing world, 75, 77, 147, 166 Dose-response relationship, 139
Development, 116 Downside consequences, 137
Devils, 58, 89 Drag-and-drop, 117
Diagnosis, 134 Dragons, 150
Dictators Draze test, 210
examples of, 257 Dream(s), 109–110
Drosophila longevity, 253 Employer(s), 203

Drug advertising, 158 Employer’s property, 123
Drug(s), 50, 96 Employment, 128, 202, 218
Durability, 129 Enchantresses, 89
Duty, Duties, 60, 70, 87, 89, 94, 209 Encryption codes, 152
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 217
E Ends, 54, 89, 261
Energy, 88, 133, 144, 164
Earth Energy demand side, 166
land area, 6 Energy flows, 230
orbits, 163, 242 Energy standards of living, 166
temperature fluctuations, 6, 26, 27, 53, Energy supply side, 166
135, 161, 163 Energy uses, 166, 198
time measurements, 10 Energy only (EO), see also EO-EP, 68, 88,
Earthquakes, 142 92, 100, 114, 180, 271, 277
East African Rift, 5, 7 Energy plus (EP), see also EO-EP, 68, 88,
Eat, 144 92, 100, 115, 180, 271, 277
Eccentricity Engineer(s), 75, 97, 98, 105
orbit of earth, 163 arrow of progress, 278
Economy, Economies, 128 civil, 216
Ecstasy, 76 chemical, 224
Ecumenical, Ecumenism, 96, 271 control, 197
Education, 55 definition, 106–108
engineering, 97 electrical, 127
engineers, of, 276 innovator, as, 118, 278
home, 99 microbial, 117
population proportion, 97 telecommunication industry, 128
science, 97 the origins, of, 105
tertiary level, 97 tool makers, 105–199
young women, 166 tool users, 105–199, 178–181
Efficacy Engineered cells, 145
ethics courses, 99, 126 Engineering
testing, 213 edifice, 130
Egypt, 60, 242 ethics, 98
Egyptian, 31 institutions, 130
Ehrlich, P & A., 169 process, 126
Electricity, 38–39, 133 products, 132–178
Electricity supplies, 128 Engineers and, and with society,
Electrons, 89 278
Elite English, England, 31, 142, 161, 164, 170,
formation of, 251 200
Elliot, D, 99 Enigma code machine, 150
Elves, 89 Enlightenment, 67
E-mail communication, 152, 155 Enschede, 137
Embryo (human) Entertainment, 148–149
killing, of, 265–266 Envelope of the possible, 96
storage (frozen), 249 Environment
Emergency lighting, 127 physical, changes to, 161
Empedocles, 79 pollution, 174
Empiricism, Empirical, 89, 111 research, 125
Employees(s), 119, 203–207 The, 160–175
Index 287
Environmental descriptive, 71–73

damage, 147 determinism, 64–68
engineering, 268 dilemma, 91
issues, 1, 051, 213 distribution of wealth, 154
social, 114 engineering, 98
standards experts, 100–101
beaches, Europe, 162 fairness, 154, 254, 267
Enzymes, proteolytic, 249 free-will, 64–68, 87, 89
EO-EP dichotomy, 90 Golden rule, 73–74, 89, 261
Epochs, 15 good, 48
Equipment miniaturization, 152 grounding, 98
Eras, 15 history, 56–60
Erythropoietin (EPO), 227 human cloning tool, 257
Ethanoic acid, 136 injunctions (writs mandamus),
Ethic 49–50
tolerance, of, 223 institutional, 96
Ethical is-ought question, 69–71, 89
acting, 94, 98 law, 48–49
changes, 223-225 learning, 93–100
development, 94 metaethics, 54, 60–61, 61–64, 69, 71, 98,
education, educators, 93, 95, 96, 97 100, 119
experiment, 224 natural justice, 51
implications, 99 nature of, 277
issues, biotechnology, 148, 253 normative, 60–61, 96, 98
neutrality, 180 origins, of, 271
objections to war, 137 practical, 60–61
opprobrium, 129 psychiatric, 93
problems, 120, 223 regulations, 49–50, 51, 94
questions, 251, 267 relative, 52–54, 83, 223
thinking, 94, 98 reproduction, 166
waters, 119 responsibility, 68–69, 209
Ethical issues rights, 48–50, 51, 87
biotechnology, 185–190, 253 robots, 156
Ethicality, 129 rules, 49–50,
Ethicist, 212 science, 98
Ethics, 25, 47–100, 117 set point in control system, 54–56
Ethics statutes, 49–50, 202
absolute, 52–54, 223 suite of, 95
acceptability, 51, 98 survival-enhancing tool, 277
alcohol, use of, 136 systems compared, 87–90
bad, 48 systems of, 73–87, 93, 98, 100, 224,
basis, 98 276
best guess, 52–54 teaching, 93–100
children, 93–94 tertiary level courses, 97–100
codes, 49–50, 52 traditions, 49–50
commandments, 49–50 values, 56
committees, 93, 127, 254 wrong, 48
conflicts resolved, 90–93 young children, 93
courses, 126 Ethics, Ethical
customs, 49–50, 97 issues, 90, 98, 99, 133–190, 218, 241,
definitions, 47–52, 271 253
standard, 97 Faith, 74, 90

tools, 97, 99 Falsifiability, 111
Ethnic orientation, Ethnicity, 83, 258 Falsification
Ethnography, 73 data, 121
Ethos, 55, 120 Family, Families, 55, 79, 96, 177, 202,
Etiquette, 55 262–263
Eudaemonists, 75 Famine, future, 149
Eugenics, 81, 259–260 Farm
Record office, Washington, DC, 81 industry, 138
Sweden, 81, 259 labor force, changes in over time, 218
US, 81 Fashion creates demand, 232
Europe, European Fatalism, 65
review groups, 126 Father(s), 96, 99
European Community, 76, 264 Fauna, traditional, 138
European Convention on Human Fax, 148
Rights, 87 Fays, 89
European Union, 76, 86, 264 Feedback, 54, 93, 153
Euthanasia, 83, 178 Feedforward, 54
Evidence, 90 Feminism, 82, 176
Evil, 106 Fermentation, anaerobic, 161
Evolution, 2, 79 Fermentation, 136
human, 278 Fermented beverages, 136
lessons from, 258 Ferrara, 161
punctuated equilibrium, 5 Fertility control, 176
rates of, 143 Fertilizers, agricultural, 138
Evolutionary hoops, 174 Fetus, 91
Exact nature, 112 Filing systems, 112
Example, 55 Fire, 15, 18–21, 24, 36, 135, 158
Excrete, 144 Budapest, 15, 18
Execution(s) Eurasia, 15, 18
legal, see also judicial, 178 smokeless, 107
Exile, Babylonian, 107 Terra amata, 15, 18
Exodus, 53, 60 uses, 19–20
Experiments, see tests also, Zoukoudien, 15
110–115 Fireworks, 137
controlled, 211 Firing, 125
Human subjects, 93 Fish, 209, 243
Expert, 100, 215 Fitzgerald, M., 125
Explosive materials, 137 Flood(s), 163
Extinction(s), 168–171 Flora, traditional, 138
Eye protectors, 126 Florida, 162
Focus for survival, 79
F Food(s), 105, 138, 176
preservation, 135, 176
Fabrication data, 121 Food-crops, genetic engineering of, 170,
Fabrics, 138 224
Fact(s), 72, 90, 109 Foot-and-Mouth disease virus, 232
Faiia, S, 242 Forcing function-parameter matrix, 231,
Fail-safe, 128 236
Fairies, 89 Forcing functions (HAZOP) guidewords,
Fairness, 96, 254, 267 231, 248, 269
Index 289
Foresight Principle, 172 engineers, 243

Formative influences, 95 materials, 147
Fortitude, 74 piracy, 147
Fossil fuels, 133, 165, 233 resources, 147
Fossils, 6 wealth, 147
Fourfold way, 108–178 Genetic composition
Four-principles approach, 74, 261 organisms, of this planet, 140
France, French, 66, 98, 141 Genetic engineering
Frankenstein, V, 142 animals, of, 224
Fraud, also Fraudulent, 122 food crops, of, 170, 224
consequences, 120, 126 humans, enhancement of, 251–253
Free will, 62–63, 64–68, 88 humans, of, 224, 250–255, 259
Freedom, Freedoms techniques, 141
of speech, 85, 87, 97 tools, 140, 142, 146, 181
Freedom from, 223 Genetically engineered humans
Freedom to, 223 hypothetical process, a, 244
Freezing point, water, 114 Genetically Modified Plants (GMO), 141,
French Revolution, 85, 86 233, 254
Friends, 95 Genetics and disease, 93
Fuel Genius, Ingenuity, 106, 117–119, 179
elements, spent, 134 Genocide, 259, 265
rods, 134 Genome
spent, storage, 134 enhancement, 141
Fungal cells, 4 reading, 171
Fungicide, 264 Geothermal energy, 39
Furnaces, 136 German law, 172
Fusion reactor, 134 Germany, German, Germans, 98, 172,
Fusion reactors, 40 259
Gestures, 56
G Ghosts, 89
Gibbon, E., 84
Gametic modification (humans), Girls, 95
250–252, 255 Giza, 242
Garden centers, 170 Glaciation periods, 163
Gas supplies, 128 Global warming, 162–167
Gases, 89 Gloves, 126
Gene(s), 112, 144 Glues, 138
base sequences, 167 Goblins, 89
database, 171 God(s), 52, 53, 58, 59, 61, 66, 67, 88, 89,
expression, position effects, 96, 117
145 Abrahamic, 88
incorporation, 5, 145 Abrahamic covenant, 145
multiplication, 5 aspiration of humans, 254
reassortment, 5 deistic view, 145
structure, of, 167 pantheon of, 88
synthesized, 168 theistic view, 146
vectors, 5, 145 usurping, 145
General Principles of Prevention, God’s intentions, 145–146
205–206 God’s laws, 146
Genetic Gold, 34, 35, 36, 136
alteration, 141 Golden Rule, 60, 73–74
Good, 62, 106 prevention, 225, 254

Gossamer web, 160 probabilities, 212–213
Gossip, 113 unexpected, 204
Government, 114, 158 Hasdai Crescas, 66
Government financed research institute, Hazard definition, 225
119 Hazard and Operability (HAZOP), 225,
Governor, 91 247, 270, 276, 278
Gramophones, 148 Hazard(s), 205
Grandchildren, 78 biological, 203, 207
Grant providers, 130 chemical, 203
Grant, Granting Hazardous material storage, 207
agency, 122 HAZOP, 225–240, 242, 270, 276, 278
applications, 126 analysis of hazards and risks, 230
funds, 114, 125 application to a process, 233
holders, 126 applied to the cloning of GE humans,
Grapes, 136 269–272
Graphics packages, 153 applied to the production of a car, 234
Gray, A., 2 group, team, 230
Greek virtues, 74 historical data, 232
Greeks, 31, 60, 213 leader, 230
Greenhouse effect, 164 meetings, conditions for, 230
Greenhouse gas(es), 164–167 process, 230
Grief, 57 Head of laboratory, 124
Grisham, J, 152 Health and Safety at Work (HSW)
Gross, R.D., 94 regulations, 203–207
Grounding ethics, 98 Health care treatments, 93
Group(s), 58, 77 Health service, 74
Grow, 144 Heart disease, 170
Guanine, 167 Heat, 165
Guess(es), 109–113 Heaven, 96
Guidelines, 54, 57, 61, 94, 138, 141, 155, Hebrew(s), 60
166, 177, 202 Heisenberg, W.K., 65, 89
Guidewords, forcing functions, 231 Hell, 89, 96, 107
Guildford, 151, 164 Helling, R.B., 140
Gun(s), 137 Herbicide, 264
Gunpowder, 137 resistance, 170
Gutenberg, J, 32 Herbivores, 209
Hermeneuts, 53, 201, 223
Hermits, 78
H
Hero of Alexandria, 40
Haber, F, 138 Heroin, 76, 252
Hamilton, W., 160 Heteronomous, 94
Hammurabi, 68 Heyerdahl, T., 29
Hammurabi code, 52, 59, Hierarchy, 56, 76
Hancock, G, 242 Hieroglyphics, see Hieroglyphs
Happy, Happiest, Happiness, 61, 75, 76, Hieroglyphs, 31, 58
89 Hillel, 73
Harassment, employees, 125 Hindus, 88, 96
Harm(s), 67, 88, 106, 130, 143, 172–175, Hippocrates, 214–215
177, 204, 234, 255 Hippocratic oath, 214
Index 291
Hiring, 125 clones and utilitarianism, 262

Hiroshima, 133 clones, dangers in, 258–259
Historical misrepresentation, 150 clones, dignity, 256, 260
History, Historical, 98, 100 clones, eugenics, 259–260
life on Earth, 141 clones, who to clone, 266–269
Hittites, 32, 35 cloning, 224, 276
Holism, 89 networks, 224
Holland, see also Netherlands, the, 86 omnivores, 209
Holocaust, 66 rights, 202
denial, 158 Human clones
Holography, 148 army of, 258
Holy texts, 52 safety, 258–259
Home(s) sports teams, 258
education, 140 identicality
entertainment, 140 impossibility, of, 257–258
equipment, 119 Human cloning, uncertainty, decrease
living conditions, 175 of, 261
shopping, 140 Human embryo, moral status of,
work, 140, 155 265–266
Homicide(s), 178 Human Fert. & Embryology Authority
Hominids, 7, 255 (HFEA), 245, 251, 267
ancestors, 217, 255 Human genome, complete sequence,
Archaic Homo sapiens, 16, 22 141, 241
bipedal, 10–14 Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV,
Cromagnon, 22, 24, 255 114, 166, 210
Early Modern, 16 Human life, sacred, 265
Erectus, 14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 161 Humanity, 79
Evolution of, 16 Humanity’s end, 142
Habilis, 16, 19, 22, 161 Human-Robot synergism, 157
Heidelbergensis, 16, 22, 24, 161 Humans
in groups, 23–25, 30, 36 autonomous agents, 197
Modern, 16 commodified, 260–262
Neanderthalensis, 16, 22, 24, 161, 255 comoditization, 211
new species, 145, 251 experimentation, regulations,
Sapiens, 16, 22, 161 211–213
Sapiens Sapiens, 23, 145, 255 genetically engineered, 207
throwers, 11–13 integrity, 258
Homo, see Hominids, meat-eating, 210
Homosexuality, 223 new species, 255
Honesty, 129 sources of infection, 142
Honey, 136 tools, as, 207
Hooker, J.D., 2 Hume, D, 69–70
Hope, 74, 90 Huntington’s Chorea, 181, 251
Housing, 219 Hurricane(s), 163
Hula valley, 162 Huxley, A., 257
Human Hydrogen, 1, 114
clones, application of HAZOP, 269–272 Hydrogen bombs, 133
clones and psychological damage, Hydrogen sulfide, 168
263–264 Hypothesis, Hypotheses, see Guesses
clones and the family, 262–263 also, 53, 56, 72, 110–115
I Information technology, Infotech, 140,

148–160, 218, 241
Ice Ages, 15 Information transfer, 157
Ice-minus bacterium, 142 Informed consent, 74, 93, 121, 212, 251, 261
Icons, 117 Infra-red, 72
Idea(s), 109, 112, 114 Injuries, 128, 138
Identical twins, 257 Innate propensity, 54
Ideographs, 30 Insecticide resistance, 170
Idols, 58 Insects, 169
Images, 109 invasion, 170
Imagination, 109 Inspectors, designated, 208
Imhotep, 242 Instinct, 93
Immaterialism, 89 Instinctive behaviors, 54
Immigrants, 96 Institution
Immortality, 253–254 political, 129
Immune function, 139 professional, 215
Impartiality of judiciary, 86 qualifying, 130, 215
Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), Institution of Chemical Engineers, U.K.,
252 52, 225
Imperial Chemical Industries, U.K. (ICI), Institution of Professionals, Managers
225 and Specialists, 120
Implementation stage, 225 Instrumentation, 128
Improve, Improving, 116 Insulators, 138
Imps, 89 Intelligence
In vitro fertilization (IVF), 245, 262, 265–267 monozygotic (identical) twins, 257
Inanimate, 63 Intent, Intentionality, 204, 275–278
Inconsistency, 96 Intercourse
Incubi, 89 forced, 91
Indeterminism, 89 Intercourse (Sex)
India, 66, 95, 138, 154 safe, 91
Indian reservations, 134 Interglacials, 164
Indiana University, 99 International
Individual, 77 community, 256
Individual-society relationship, 260 International Court of Justice, 221
Indonesia, 66 International Police Force, 221
Industrial Revolution, 137, 154 Internet, 121, 148, 152, 154, 165
Industry, 98, 129 Invention(s), 97, 117–118, 132, 146,
chemical, 135–139, 114 176–7, 180–181
farm, 138 Ions, 89
nuclear, 133–135 Ireland, 170
transportation, 139–140 Iron, 35, 107
Infants, 74 oxides, 136
Infection, 91 Islam(ic), 66, 96
Infirm, 74 Is-ought question, 69–71
Infobiotech age, 217 Israel, State of, 161
Informatic engineers, 242 Italy, 161
Information, 90, 112
storage, 112 J
transfer, 148
Information Technology (IT) Industry, Jack, J, 125
154 Jains, 78
Index 293
Japan, Japanese, 133, 213 Land uses, 170

Japanese experiments on humans, 213 Language learning, 93
Jefferson, T., 32, 69 Law, 48, 85, 97, 132
Jew, Jews, Jewish people, 66, 107, 201 civil, 49, 92, 179
Jinni, 58, 89, 106, 107–108, 137, 277 constitutional, 49
Journalists, 141 contract, 50, 87
Judah, 60, 179 criminal, 49
Judaism, 96 ecclesiastical, 49
Judgements, 95 family, 50
Judicial executions, 265 international, 49, 268
Judiciary, 55 religious commandments, 50, 51
impartiality, 86 rituals, 50, 201
Justice, 74, 86, 90, 96, 254, 261 tort, 50
U.K., 246
Lawless acts, 96
K
Laws
Kalahari bushmen, 135 civil, 202
Kant, I., 73, 89, 196 compliance, 179
Kashruth, 53 contract, of, 202
Kilburn, T., 32 criminal, 202
Killer bees, 142 God’s, 146
Killing machines, 179 governing the acts themselves,
King John I, 84 202
King Solomon, 107 governing the outcome of acts, 202
seal, of, 108 immigration, 128
Knowledge national censorship, 97
acquisition, 109–115 secular, 201
application, 115 social, 94
confidence, 109–115 tool use, for, 217
earmark, 109 types of, 201–203
importance, 109 Lead, 35, 136, 140
item, of, 180 Learner, 79
need for, 109–115 Learning ethics, 93
new, 115 Leather, 135
objective, 114 Lee, E., 39
reliability factor, 109 Legal liability, 129
science, 109 Lenoir, E., 41
tags, 109 Leprechauns, 89
use, 109–115 Leptons, 89
value factor, 109 Lesbianism, 223
Kohlberg, L., 94 Leukemia
Koran, Khoran, 66, 107, 146 childhood, 134
Lever, 37
L Liberties
civil, 151
Labor sparing, 156 personal, 151
Laboratory equipment, 119 Liberty, 85, 87
Laboratory head, 124 Library of Congress, 159
Labor-saving License, 116, 128
improvements, 218 Licensed premises, 208
machinery, 218 Life, 70, 92
Lifestyle, 150, 175–178 Masada, 60

Lime, 136, 164 Mask(s), 126
Linguistic philosophers, 71 Masoretic texts, 60
Linnean Society, 3 Mass
Liposome spheres, 245 media, 95, 97, 264
Liquids, 89 production, 156, 175
Literature Material, 88
chemical, 121 flow(s), 227, 230
clinical, 121 radioactive, 133
ethics, 124 Material(s)
scientific, 122 explosive, 137
Lithic Periods, 15 Materialism, 89
Liverpool, 97 Matter, 88
Lives, Living, 57, 92 Mayer, F., 260
Local organizations, 114 Mayr, E., 80
London, 161 McDonald, M., 123
London Convention, the, 174 Mead, 136
Longevity, 137, 141, 253–254 Mead, M., 72
Lords Spiritual and Temporal, 85 Means, 54, 89, 261
Love, 74 Measles, 142, 167
Luddites, 218 Media, 55
Lyell, C., 3 Medical
applications, 134
M ethics, 74, 93
ethicists, 261
Machines practitioners, 211
killing, for, 179 tools, new, 220
Magna Carta, 84, 86 Medical treatment
Magnetic recording, 148 rationing, 220
Magnitude of cost, 75 Medicine, 93, 132
Maintenance, 229 Mediterranean Sea, 66
Majoritarian, 89 Members of the public, 128,
Malaria, 160 141
Malpractice, 132 Memory, Memories, 93, 94
Malted barley, 136 Memphis, 242
Malthus, T.R., 2 Mendel, G., 167
Mammal(s), 141, 168, 209, 259 Meno, 99
Man, 107 Mental
Management construct, 109
data, of, 121–122 states, 98
Manchester, 97 Mentoring issues, 124
University, 161 Mercury, 34
Manipulation Mesons, 89
data, of, 121–122 Mesopotamia, 31
Manipulations, see Tests, also, 110–115 Message(s), 97, 272
Manners, 55 encryption, 152
Manufacturing industry, 154 Metabolic pathways, 134
Marble mountain, 161 Metaethics, see also Ethics, 61
Marijuana, 76, 195 Metal
Market knows best, 233 ores, 136
Market, the, 233–234 Metals, 33–36, 136
Index 295
Metals, 33 messages, 95
Metaphors, 109 questions, 95, 267
Methane right, 99
greenhouse gas, 165 Morality, 87
Methyl isocyanate, 138 fairness, 95, 99, 254
Mice, 210 justice, 95, 99
Microbial engineer, 117 practical, 95
Micromanipulation of cells and theoretical, 95
embryos, 245–249 Morals, 47–49, 79
Microphone, 148 learning, 93
Microsoft, 153 Morphine, 178
Middle East, 92 Morse code, 151
Mikva, ritual cleansing bath, 201 Morse, S., 151
Military tools, 221 Morton Thiokol, 123
Miller, S.L., 1 Moses, 68
Mills, 38–39 Mosquito, 77, 160
Mind, 62, 64, 93, 112 Mother Teresa, 78
states of, 138 Mother(s), 96
Ministry of Truth, 151 Motivation, 93
Misconduct, 125–126 Motorcycle, 139–140
areas of, 120, 127 Mouse, 117
scientific, 98 Move, 144
Misdeeds, see Misconduct, 120 Mulla(h)(s), 53, 201
Misrepresentation Multinational companies, 147
of data, 120–121 Multiple
of history, 150 process, batch process, 227–229
Missile(s), 137 Murder(s), 178
Mitochondrial genes, 257 Music Industry, 158
Mixed market, the, 234 Mutation, 5
Moai, 37 Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), 133
Mobile phones, 148
Modern era, 275 N
Molecules, 89
Monarch, 96, 158 Nagasaki, 133
Money, 33–36, 76, 92, 97 NASA, 123
Monk, 53, 201 National Institutes of Health, 98, 126
Monkey, Monkeys, 210, 246 National policies, 128
Monoculture, 138, 143, 161, 170, 264 National Research Council of Canada,
Monopoly 125
limited period, 146 National Science Foundation of the U.S.,
position, 146 98, 126
Monozygotic twins, 257 National Security, 86
Monsanto, 147 Nationality, 125
Moon, 112 Natural disasters, 88
Moonlighting, 124 Natural Selection, 2, 4, 5, 7, 269
Moral Naturalistic
action, 95 Fallacy, 89
contract, 95 Naturalness, 143
culpability, 95 Nature
good, 99 exact, 112
judgements, 95 processes of, 88
Naval power, 137 tools, 134

Nazi war, 157
era, 259 Nuclear transplantation
experiments on humans, 213 somatic cell cloning, 246, 257, 262
propaganda, 158 Nurses, 216
Nero, 167
Net(s), 135 O
Netherlands, The, 98, 100, 137, 161, 170,
178 Obesity, 149
Netherworld, 58, 89, 105 Objective
Networks knowledge, 114
humans, of, 224 truth, 114
Neutrons, 89 Obligation, 70, 87
New tools (see also Tools, new), 275 Obliquity
New Testament, 96 orbit of earth, 163
Newbury, 219 Observations, 72, 110–115
Newcomem, T., 40 Ockham, W. (Occam etc), 28
Newton, I., 67, 136, 146 Ogres, 89, 150
Nicotine, 76 Oilseed rape, 170
Nights 1001, 107–108 Old Testament, 52, 53, 59, 60, 66, 96
Nitrocellulose, 137 Omniscience, 66
Nitrogen, 138 Omnivores, 209
Nitroglycerine, 137 advantages of being, 209
Nodes Opera, the, 149
communication system, in a, 157 Operant conditioning, 95
Nongovernmental organisations Operation, Operational, 98
(NGOs), 81, 128, 147 Operation(s)
Noninfectious diseases, 141 large, 116
Nonmaleficence, 74, 261 pilot-scale, 116
Nonpeer reviewed, 97 protocols, 118
Nonrenewable resources, 165, 198 Operations
Nonverbal, 57 unit, 137
Normative, 60 Opium, 143
Northeast Atlantic, 173 poppy, 143
Northern Ireland, 92 Orbit of Earth, 163
Notions, 109 Order, 144
Novartis, 147 Ordering of authors, 124
Novelty Orders, 55
significant, 118 Ordinances, 55, 202
Nuclear Organ transplantation, 264–265
bombs, 133 Organ donation, 93
facility, 134 Organism eradication, 167
fission, 133 Organization for Economic Cooperation
industry, 134 Organization for…E…and Development
power, 133 Organization for…Ec. (OECD), 154
power stations, 133–134, 165 Origen, A., 60
reactions, 133 Origins of
reactor(s), fission, 134, 233 agriculture, 26, 27
reactors, 40, 233 alphabet, 31
standoff, 133 automatic control, 39
technology, 133 boats, 28
Index 297
carburetor, 41 Papua, 142

cell types, 4 Paradise, 89, 96, 154
cells, 2 Parents, 55, 95, 96, 260–264
decoration, 33 Patent, 115, 146
domesticated animals, 29 process, 118
Earth, 1 protection, 147
Engineer, the, 105 Paternity determination, 141
ethics, 25, 271 Pathogen
furnaces, 136 viral, 275
gear train, 38 Payment ratios, 147
humans, 7 Peer(s), 96
ink, 31 pressure, 55
internal combustion engine, 41 review, 125–126
language, 22–26 Pennsylvania, 133
life, 1 Pentateuch, 52
paper, 31 Perception, 94
printing (moveable type), 32 Performance
solar system, 1 specifications, 91
species, 2–4 Perfume industry, 136
speech, 21–26, 148 Personal disabilities, 125
spirits, 57, 277 Personal universal principle,
steam engine, 40 94
steam pump, 40 Peru, 162
steam train, 41 Pest(s), 142, 162
tools, 9–42 Pesticides, 138, 141, 161, 264
Universal code, 32 Pharmaceutical companies, 147
universe, 1 Pharmaceuticals, 138
wheels, 28 Philo, 66, 73
Orion, 242 Philosopher(s), 117
Orwell, G., 151 Philosophers
O-seals, 123 Enlightenment, of the, 146
Osmotic pressure, 114 Philosopher’s stone, 136
Otto, N., 41 Philosophies
Oxford, 160 pacifist, 179
Union, 149 Nature’s wisdom, 144
Oxides Phoenicians, 31
nitrogen, of, 140 Photographic film, 148
Oxygen, 2, 114, 136, 160, 168 Physical condition(s), 227, 230
Phytophthora infestans, 170
P Piaget, J., 94
Pictographs, 30, 136
Pacifist philosophies, 179 Pig(s), 209
Pain and suffering Pigments, 135
animal, 208–210 Pill, the, 175
human, 252, 266 Pilot plant, 118
human, psychological, 252 Pimple, K.D., 99
Paint pigment(s), 136 Pipetting, 126
Painting, 135 Placebo control, 213, 222
Paleozoic ancestors, 205 Plagiarism, 121
Papain, 249 Plague bacterium, 77
Papin, D., 40 Planck constant, 65
Planets Prehominids
colonization, of, 179, 260, 278 Australopithecine, 7, 9–14, 16,
Plant(s), 169 18, 22
cells, 4 Prehominids, 9–14
genetically engineered, 171 Premises
pathogens, 169 licensing, 208
resistant, 171 Preprogrammed responses, 93
Plasmid DNA, 243 Presentation
Plastic(s) packages, 153
structural, 138 techniques, 122
Plato, 61, 73, 99 Prevention
Pleasure, 89 crime, of, 86
Pluralism, 223 general principles of, 205–206
Plutonium, 133 Preventive measures, 139
Police, 55, 95 Price structure, 116
Polio virus, 77, 167 Priest(s), 53, 58, 201
eradication, 167 Primates, 168, 208
Political correctness, 98 Prince of Orange, 85
Pollution Principle ethics, 74
car(s), 234 Principles
Pollution, 123, 162 prevention, of accidents, 205–206
Poltergeists, 89 Process
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), 244 areas, 120
Polymers, 89, 138 control, 116
Pope, The, 92 flow-charts, 230, 232
Popper, K., 111 parameters, 231
Population, 105, 275 patent, 118
control, 166, 198, 254, 270 productivity improvements, 141
Pornography, 50 Process, a hypothetical
Postdoctoral Fellow, 124 genetically engineered humans,
Potassium chloride, 178 244
Potato, 170 Product(s)
famine, 170–171 areas, 120
Pottery biotechnology, 185–190
clay, baked, 136 company, 130
glazes, 136 durability, 129
Power, 76 engineered, 132
media, of the, 150 entities, tangible, 117
PPL Therapeutics, Plc. (Edinburgh), 243 ethical, 116
Practice, Practical, 100 failure, 129
achievement of, 115–117, 131 life, 116, 129
Pragmatism, 73, 89, 272 maintenance, 129
Prank(s), 96 manufactured, 117
Precautionary Principle (PP), 89, 198, nature, 116
205, 266, 276 quality, 116
hard and soft versions, 173 replacement, 129
reflexive application, 173–174 safety, 147
Precedential ethics, 81, 89 standards, 129
Precession cycle, 163 stream, 118
Precipitation, 137 test system, 129
Predator-Prey relationships, 169, 209 tools, 132
Predictable, 89 verbal formulations, 117
Index 299
Production R
continuous, 116
full-scale, 116 Rabbi Akiba, 73
Professional Rabbi(s), 53, 201
body, 130 Rabbit(s), 142
status, 131 Racial origins, 83
the, 131 Radio communication, 148
Profit(s), 128, 147 Radioactive
Progress, arrow of, 278 contamination, 134
Prohibition era, 195 material, 133
Pro-life movement, 269 materials, 126
Promotion, 125 probes, 134
Proof, Prove, 72, 109, 111 Radioactivity half-life, 134
Property, 85 Radioactivity, Radioactive storage,
Prophets, 58 134
Prophylaxis, 251 Radon gas, 134
Protection Rail, Railway, 97, 139
of health, 86 Rail transport, 128
of morals, 86 Random, 89
of reputation, 86 Rational, 54
of rights, 86 Rationalism, 89
the North Sea conference, 172 Rationed medicine, 220
Protestants, 85 Rebuses, 31
Protons, 89 Recidivism, 68
Protozoa, 54 rates of, 220
Prudence, 74, 90 Records
Pseudomonas syringae, 142 donations to charities, 152
Psychoactive chemicals, agents, 138, 252 employment, 152
Psychological insurance claims, 152
pain and suffering, 252 medical, 152
Public subscriptions, 152
expenditures, 97 tax payments, 152
the, 130 traffic offences, 152
opinion, 55 travel tickets, bookings, 152
order, 87 Reductionism, 89
safety, 86 Referee, 95
Publication, 120, 125 Referendal ethics, 81, 89
academic, 124 Reflect, Reflection, 109
referee, 126 Regulations, 130
Punishment, 68, 94, 95, 178 Regulatory agency, body, board(s), 127,
Pyramids, 37, 161, 242 212, 262, 272
Pyrenees, 66 Rehabilitation, 68
Relative wealth, 79
Q Relatives, 77
Reliability, 72, 109
Quality assurance, 54 absolute, 112
Quality control, 54, 118, 127 Religion(s), 125, 158, 223, 258, 271
Quango, Quasi Autonomous Gov. Org., Religious
191 ceremonies, 201
Quarks, 89 institutions, 95, 96
Question(s), 116, 267 orientation, 83
Qumran, 60 Reproduce, 144
Reproductive technologies, 93 master directive, 157

Research mobile, 156
communication, 129 programs, 156
degrees, 124 sight, 156
grants, 130 survival skills, 157
proposal, rejection, reasons, 126 Rocket, 97, 133
Resistance to Oppression, 85 motors, 134
Resistant plants, 171 Rohl, D., 242
Resource allocation, 93 Role models, 96
Resources Role-playing, 98
financial, 97 Roman Law, 84
Respect Romans, 31
life, for, 211 Rome, 167
Respect, Respecting, 87, 90, 108 Rope(s), 135
Respond, 144 Rosetta stone, 31
Response Royal Charter, 216
affective, 93, 94, 97, 98 Rule(s), 73, 95, 96, 130, 146, 179,
mental, 93 202
Responsibility, 68, 87, 90, 209 need amending, 241
Retraining, 218 Run
Revenge, 68 condition, 227–229
Reward, 94, 95 modes, continuous and batch,
Rice, 170 227
Rich-poor differential, 254 Runnymede, 84
Right(s), 62, 209–211 Russel, B., 79
Bill of, 152 Russia, 195, 201
civil, 158
ethics, 83, 88, 90 S
fetus, of, 269
forest wealth, 147 Sacrifice, 57, 271
free speech, 97, 150 Safe storage, 134
human, 93, 154, 202 Safety, 85, 123, 133, 138, 256
individual to reproduce, of, 266 committees, 126
mineral wealth, 147 issues, 126
practice, to, 132 product, 147, 256
Risk, 75, 117, 262 relief systems, 232
assessment, 203–205 specification, 129
death, of, 203 standards, 128, 139
definition, 225–226 testing on animals, 212
etymology, 226 workplace, in the, 129
injury, of, 203 Sales, 116
level of, 203, 262 Salt solution, 114
potential, 203, 262 Saltpeter, 137
zero, 204 Samoa, 72
Rites of passage, 201 Sanctions, 132
RNA, 1, 4 Sanctity of life, 89
Robot(s), Robotics, 148, 217 Saqqarah, 242
adaptable, 156 Satan, 66, 89
communication to other robots, 157 Satellites, 134, 180, 275
ethics, 156 communication, 148
learning, 156 Satyrs, 89
Index 301
Savery, T., 40 Sex, 125

Scenarios, 98 Sexual
School, 95 advances, 125
Science, 56 orientation, 83, 125
ethics, 98 preferences, 125, 258
item, of, 180 profligacy, 76
knowledge, 109 Shaduf, 37
process, 120–121 Shamans, 58
process issues, 128 Shamir, the, 107
product issues, 128 Shareholders, 128, 146
scientia, 109 Sheep, 141, 209, 243, 257
Science and Engineering Ethics, 127 Shelly, M., 141
Science, Scientist Shop floor, 128
conscious, 113 Shut-down condition, 227–229
laboratory, 113 Sicily, 79
library, 113 Significant novelty, 118
street, 113 Silver, 34, 35
unconscious, 113 Simon, P., (Marquis de Laplace), 65
Scientific Single-parent families, 223
certainty, 173 Skills
evidence, 172 generic, 130
method, 109–115, 121, 172, 174, 211 Skin
misconduct, 98 bye-products, 135
Scientist(s), 72, 97, 98, 105, 110, 113 clothing, 135
definition, 113 flexibility, 135
social, 113, 264 preservation, 135
senior, 125 proteins, 135
Sea level rises, 163 scraped, 135
Second Law of Thermodynamics, 144 strips, 135
Secrecy, 115 Slide
Secular, 96, 201 control, 195–198
laws, 201–202 Slippery-slope, 191–200, 205, 247, 251,
Selection 259, 266
data, of, 121–122 anatomy, 193–195
Self, 79 examples, 191–195
Self-consciousness, 62 management, 191–193
Self-dealing, 123 tools, 198–199
Selfishness Smallpox virus, 77, 142, 167
selfish gene, 144 Smoke-free zones, 162
Self-judgement, 93 Snow, J., 161
Seminars, 98 Soap operas, 97
Senior citizens, 92 Social
Senses, 72 benefit, 267
Septuagint, 60 construct, 115
Service industry, 154 context, 114
Set point, 54 contract, 94
control system, of, 197 engineering, 259
deviations, 230 power, 268
Severeid, E., 275 rejection, 261
Sewage, 161 Social Darwinism, 80
Sewing, 135 Social group, 55
Social lives new, 162

primates, 208 Speed limit, 91
Societal biology, 115 Sphinx, 161
Society(ies), 58, 72, 73, 76, 105, 215, Spirit stone, 110
223–224 Spirit world, 57, 58, 69, 78, 88, 150, 271,
changes, 177, 223–224 275
contributors, to, exceptionally, Spirit(s), 57, 61, 62, 63, 64, 89, 106, 107,
267–268 136, 271
health, 132 Spirit-free world, 278
living arrangements, 263 Sponsor(s), 128
safety, 132 Sports events, 149
well being, 132 Spreadsheets, 153
Society-cloning Spring Equinox, 242
system diversity encouraged, Sprites, 89
264 Squirrel, gray, 142
Society’s resources, 143 Stakeholders, 128
Socrates, 74 Standardization, 118
Sodium chloride, 114 Standards
Software acceptable, 129
company, 127 definable, 129
expert, 127 living, of, 137
theft, 159 Start-up condition, 227–229
tools, 217 State, 96
unlicensed, 127 State knows best, 234
Solar power, 39, 165, 211 Statements, 109
Soldiers States of mind, 138
genetically identical, 258 Statistics packages, 153
Sole practitioner, 119 Status, 56
Solids, 89 symbols, 147
Solution Stem cells
technical, 91 adult (placental, bone marrow, etc.),
Solutions, 121 266
Somatic cells, 141 Stephenson, G., 41, 97
Somatic cell cloning Stepwise development, 232
nuclear transplantation, 246, 257, 262 Stone, 109
Somatic modification (humans), age, 217
250–252 information, 112
Something ritual devices, 110
in addition to energy, 88 spirit, 110
Son(s), 96 tools, 110, 161, 217
Sony Walkman, 119, 232 weapons, 110
Sorites (heap), 192 Stone-age hunter-gatherer, 108, 217, 278
Soul(s), 58, 78, 89, 96 Stonehenge, 37
Soviet Union, 142 Strawberries, 142
Soya, 170 Strings, 89
Space Strober, M., 125
colonization, of, 224, 241, 278 Style, 118
Spain, 66 Subassemblies, 118
Specialists, 120, 214-217 Subconscious, 57
Species Subjectivity, 114
eradication, 167 Subjects, 84
Index 303
Submarine, 133 Telephone

Subsidiarity, 76, 268 bugging, 151
Sugar, 136, 211 cordless, 132
Sui generis Television, 132, 148
for its own sake, 89 digital, 148–150
Suicide, 49, 83 Telford, T., 216
Sulfur, 137, 140 Temperance, 74, 90
Sunspot cycles, 142 Temple, 37, 107–108
Superoxide dismutase (SOD), 168 Ten Commandments, see also
Superpowers, 133 Decalogue, 59
Supervisor, 122, 127, 132 Territorial integrity, 86
Surrogate mothers Terrorism, 143
payment, 247 Test, Testing, 56, 57, 72, 79, 110, 211
Surveillance, 148 Test(s)
Surveyors, 216 exhaustive, 111
Survival, 43–44, 48, 53, 56, 60, 70–71, 72, stringent, 111
76, 77–81, 83, 87, 88, 100, 135, Tevye
143, 144, 146, 154, 157, 166, 174, milkman, the, 201
179, 266, 277 Texas, 246
individual, 89 The Wellcome Trust, 125
machines for genes, 144 Theft, 125–126
pathway, 144 Theism, 89
social, 89 Theory, 100, 111, 131
Survival of the fittest, 77, 79, 80 Therapeutics, 169, 251, 265
Survivalism, 89, 90 Thermonuclear fusion, 165
Suspicious data, 122 Thin end of the wedge, 192
Sustain, Sustainable, 165 Think, Thinking, Thoughts, 109
energy generation, 165 Third Reich (Germany), 81
Sweden, 81 Thought-experiments
Symbiogenesis, 4 perturbations, 231
Symbols 0 and 1 Thread(s), 135
the binary code, 148 Three ‘R’s, the, 208
System Three-Mile Island, 133
canonized, 118 Thymidine, 167
Tidal flows, 165
T Tide power, 39
Tin, 34
Tally sticks, 30 Tobit, 107
Tanning process, 135 Tolerance, Tolerate, 83
Tannins, 135 Tomato, 170
Taxation Tools
compensating, progressive, 147 Acheulian, 14, 15
Taxes, 128 animal, 9
Teachers, 95, 96 Aurignacian, 15
Teaching ethics, 93 automatic, 156
Technical fix, 155 benefits, 16, 26, 29
Technician, 117–118 biological, 241
Technology biotechnology, 170–171
conventional, 117 characteristics, 217
Revolution, 154 Chatelperonian, 15
Teething troubles, 130 cloning humans, for, 257
control the use of, 201–240 Trevethick, R., 41

design, 132 Tribe, 58, 80
ethics, 18 Trick(s), 96
fire, 15, 18–21, 161 Trimming, 121
genetic engineering, 140 Triple cell embryo (human), 247
hand-ax, 14, 25, 117, 275 Trolls, 89
harms, 16, 26, 29, 36, 41–42, 76, 85 Truck, Trucks, 91
history, 9–42 Trust, 130
intentionality, 27, 42–43, 179, 198 Truth, 72, 109
Internet, the, 160, 220 Trypsin, 249
Kim-Yal people, 16 Tsunamis, 142
Levallois, 15 Turbines, 38
Magdalenian, 15 Turing, A., 32, 148
maker, 275–276 Turkey, 213
metals, 15 Turkey, Turkeys, 145
military, 221 Two-tier society, 220
money, 15 Tyranny of the majority, 81
Mousterian, 15
new, 43, 88, 97, 115, 275
U
nuclear, 134
Oldowan, 14, 15 U.K.
power, powerful, 27, 36–42, 137 statistics, 176, 195, 203, 218, 234
preservation, for, 136 U.K., 96, 97, 126, 128, 133, 138, 139, 174,
proper use thereof, 217–221 178, 195, 203, 210, 245, 264
prospect, in, 241–272 Prime Minister, 241
slippery-slope, 198–199 U.S.A., 76, 81, 95, 96, 125, 134, 195, 216,
stone, 7, 9, 14–18, 135 259, 264
types of, 15, 35 Ukraine, 134
user, 275 Uncertainty principle, 65, 87, 89
wooden, 135 Undergraduates, 124
writing, 30–33 UNESCO declaration, 260
Torah, 52 Unger, S., 127
Tornadoes, 142, 163 Unit
Town(s), Township(s), 144, 202 operations, 137, 230
Toxic process, 227–229
effects, 138 United Nations
fungi, 143 1948 Declaration of Human Rights,
Trade-routes, 137 86, 87, 268
Tradition(s), 95, 275 Universal code, 32
Traffic jams, 140 UNESCO, 257
Tranquility, 86 Universe
Transcultural agreement, 95 clockwork mechanism, 146
Transistor(s), 148 Universe, 1, 77, 88, 146
Transplantation University of Surrey, 151
organs, of, 264–265 Universities, 97
Transportation budget, 98
systems for genes, 143 Unmarried parenthood, 223
Travel Unnatural, 141
means of, 139 Unpredictable, 89
Treaty of Rome, 1957, 268–269 Unreasoning, 96
Index 305
Unsound of mind, 74 Vostok papers, 163

Urey, H.C., 1 Voting system, 268
Utilitaranism, 89, 90, 252 Vowels, 31
Utilitarians, 75 Voyeuristic tendencies, 73
Voyeurs, 151
V
W
Vaccination, 75, 97, 147, 254
Vaccine, Vaccines, 74, 75, 91, 114, 132, Wages, 147
138, 141, 143, 171, 210 low rates of, 147
drugs, against, 251 Wakayama, T., 255
experiments, 213 Walking, 139–140
induced damage, 92 Wallace, A.R., 3
noninfectious diseases, 141 Wallpapers, 138
virus, 172 Walton, K., 116
Vaccine War, 265
the journal, 172 Warfare, nature of, 258
Value, Values, 56, 92 Warnock, M., 92
intrinsic, 95 Warships, 134
personal, 99 Waste(s)
Vampires, 89 disposable, 174–175
Variance dumping, 172
causes, 118 dumping at sea, 172–174
Variation, 5 embryos, human of, 266
Vaughan, D., 123 gaseous, 128
Vegans, 210 incinerator, 128
Vegetarians, 210 liquid, 128
Verbal expression, see Words organic, 165
Verbal formulations, 117 removal, 105, 123, 219
Verifiability, 111 solid, 128
Vertebrates (Chordates) stack, 128
species, 169 Water
Veterinarian clean, 105
professional, 208 drinking, 160, 254
Videotape, 148 freezing point, 114
Vinegar, 136 greenhouse gas, 165
Viral pathogen, 275 hyacinth, 142
Virtual irrigation, 160, 198
environment, creation of, 232, reservoir, 160
reality, 153 river, 160
Virtue ethicists, 74, 261 storage, 160
Virtue ethics, 88, 89, 261 vapor, 134
Virtue, Virtues, 60 well, 160
Virus, Viruses, 5, 29, 91, 143, 169, 243 supplies, 128
translocation of disease causing, 142 Water wheel, 38
vaccines, 172 Watson, J., 167
vectors, 245 Watt, J., 40
Vitalism, 89 Wealth distribution, 221
Volcanic eruptions, 142 Wealth, 56, 78–79
Volcanoes, 5, 6, 26, 198, 242 Weapons, nonnuclear, 133
Weapons, 39, 133 Work mates, 55

Weismann, H., 121 Worker, health, 205–206
Weizmann, C., 161 Workforce, 225
Welfare, general, 87 World, spirit-free, 278
Well-funded, 97 World domination, 137
Wells, H.G., 81 place, 140
Wells, O., 149 World Health Organization (WHO),
Whales, 253 167
Wheat, 170 World outside our minds, 109
Whewell, W., 110 World War I, 161
Whistle-blowing, 126–128, 217 World War II, 133, 213, 218
Wife, 77 World’s Gross Domestic Product
William and Mary, 85, 86 (WGDP), 198
Williams, F.C., 32 Worthiness, 260–261
Wilmut, I., 243, 246, 248, 255 Writing, 30–33
Wilson, E.O., 64–68, 146
Wind farms, 39
Wind power, 39, 165 X
Windows, 117
Witches, 150 Xenophobia, 81
Women Xerography, 148
economic self-sufficiency, 176 Xerox, 117
workforce, in the, 176
Wood
chips, 161 Y
shortage, 161 Young, T., 31
Word processors, 132, 153 Yuk-factor, 256–257
Words, 54, 56, 57, 70, 112
Work, 116–117, 120
conditions, 203
home, 140

Ethics, Tools and The Engineer

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www.Ebook777.

The Strategic Management of Technological Learning

Ethics, Tools, and the Engineer

BJ59 .S67 2000

Visit our Web site at www.crcpress.com.

© 2001 by CRC Press LLC

No claim to original U.S. Government works

2.5 Resolving ethical conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

3.2 Engineers make and use tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Chapter 4 Managing slippery slope arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Chapter 5 Control of tool use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Chapter 6 Looking before leaping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Chapter 7 Tools in prospect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

7.1.2.3.7 It’s all in the family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Some 13 billion years ago a blob of an extremely condensed form of energy

question of debate. The result was a widely diverse plethora of single-celled

1838: Charles Darwin (1808–1882) reads Thomas R.

ing programs and have, by the means of judi-

may be likened to the ignition of a damp squib.

I do not apologize for including this “blow-by-blow” account of the

• Bacteria that do not contain a nucleus and whose genetic material

• Mutation in a gene can be in a single element of a multi-thousand–

• Genes are added by the incorporation of a whole or partial cellular

Changes in the environment may be both controlled and uncontrolled by

through the process of natural selection working on the inherent variation in

1.1 Tools in history

1.1.1 The prehominid era

option. Furthermore, having one’s internal organs hanging off a vertically

such throwing actions were not great. It seemed equivalent to throwing

1.2 Making stone tools

Era Period Epoch

incorporated into a composite structure with a wooden haft or shaft, then

Australopithecenes: Archaic Homo sapiens:

Homo erectus: Early Modern:

1.2.1 Tools have downsides

1.3 Humans turn to fire

clearly rotting could be cooked sufficiently for pathogenic microorganisms

1.4 One tool leads to another: the birth of language

1.4.1 A view as to how language might have begun

fully fledged, language-based information transfers in Homo sapiens sapiens

• On the demise of individuals by accident or sickness, others in the

Improved communication occurs due to refining old sounds, adding

• Sculpted figurines in the form of animals and sex goddesses

1.5 Tools at the dawn of history

although they are willing and capable of eating animal-derived materials if

to be a universal boon, this development led inevitably to the sustainability

1.6 Putting it in writing

France) broke the code of the hieroglyphs on Egyptian monuments. He was

1.7 Money and metals

pots, which would then be exposed to temperatures approaching 1000°C.

1.8 Humans acquire power

us to imagine teams of hundreds of humans pulling, pushing, and levering

widely distributable source of energy becomes available. There are addi-

a home-generated fire, or the misapplication of power tools. Other harms are

1.9 Tools and intentionality

What is/are ethics?

2.1 Ethics: the word

3.b The moral principles by which a person is guided.

In its descriptive or adjectival form the following meanings are attributed to

1.a Of or pertaining to morality or the science of ethics.

As an adverb we have the word ethically, which connotes in an ethical man-

Ethics are verbal guidelines that are used with the

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS