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Dr.Donald Bruce was appointed as Director of the SRT Project from 9 September 1992. Kay Shanks ably looked after the day-to-day affairs after Dr.David Pullinger's term of office ended in February. Dr.Bruce (43) took degrees in chemistry at Leicester University and has worked in nuclear research at Sellafield and at Harwell Laboratory, on safety assessment for HM Nuclear Inspectorate, including the Sizewell B Public Inquiry, and for the Energy Technology Support Unit. He also has a Diploma in Theology from Oxford University. His interests include energy issues, nuclear power and alternatives, safety and risk, public perceptions, the environment, science and faith, the limits of technology, apologetics and Christian drama.
This is the first of two major new tasks have begun in January 1993. It is emerging as an important issue in biotechnology and agriculture, with a growing public and media interest. Much new technology is at the point of implementation, but insufficient ethical work has been done, especially from a Christian standpoint. There is thus an opportunity to consider the ethics before the technology has been fully implemented. It is of particular relevance to Scotland, with major pioneering research in Edinburgh and elsewhere, and also active organisations in animal breeding and animal rights. It also marks a natural development from the SRT Project's more general Genetic Engineering literature review of 1989 by Helen Alexander, and also the Church and Nation Committee's 1992 report to the General Assembly on Animal Welfare, itself based on a 1991 conference it organised with the Centre for Theology and Public Issues.
A working group is being formed, covering a range of views and backgrounds, hoping to include academic, industry, animal welfare, agriculture, sociology and theology. A detailed literature review is underway, surveying the current and future status of the technology, summarising existing ethical studies, and identifying issues which need to be covered. These include :
The second major work of the SRT Project will be a theological study on the limits of technology, which the Director is undertaking through a part-time M.Phil at New College, Edinburgh University which over 3 years, starting in January 1993. This will explore what might constitue moral limits to technological development, and how such criteria might be applied, using nuclear power as a case study.
An 18-page submission was sent in November 1992 to the Office of Science and Technology as a contribution to a wide-ranging Government review of the future of science and technolgy in the UK instituted by William Waldegrave. It consisted of responses to a set of questions posed by the Office, preceded by an introduction on public perceptions of science and technology, and a comparison of some assumptions about technology with some derived from a Christian perspective. This introduction is reproduced for the General Assembly as an annex to this report, as it provides a marker for SRT's view of science and technology. The full submission is also being published as an SRT report. The main points were :
Energy matters continue to be an important area of the Project's activity, with interest in several current issues. A short submission was made to the Government's Trade and Industry Select Committee which was formed to look into energy issues in the light of the October 1992 pit closure proposals. Among the matters stressed were the need for an energy policy, rather than submitting the choice of investment solely to "market forces". Long-term planning was needed, more open to more capital-intensive investment, and taking account of the environmental and safety aspects equally and fully for each technology. It was critical of the "dash to gas", and recommended a return to the previous policy of a balance of energy supply, not overly reliant on any one fuel or option. It pointed out that the present mix of Scottish electricity generation, with its high hydro and nuclear component, had advantages in the control of greenhouse gases. It emphasised the need for more positive steps to encourage energy conservation and renewables.
Foremost amongst SRT's aims is to encourage informed ethical thinking and reflection on current technological issues. The outworking of this aim has three strands - a). as a vital part of the church's mission in the market place where our society's ideas, values and practices are constantly being moulded, and b). within the Church of Scotland and, c). in the widening ecumenical context, in collaboration with the other churches in Scotland, in Britain as a whole, and in Europe. A vital part of SRT's role is therefore one of appropriate communication, in each of these three contexts. To assist the dissemination of the work, publications and services of SRT Project, a regular SRT newsletter is being prepared for distribution to interested people and organisations within and outwith the Church of Scotland. A new SRT logo has also been produced. During 1993 St.Andrew Press is publishing the 20 Year History of the SRT Project, which was written by the Revd. Ron Ferguson at SRT's request.
An annual lecture on ethical issues affecting science and technology has been set up, in collaboration with the Chaplaincy at Heriot Watt University. On 25 February 1993, Professor John Bryant (Cell and Molecular Biology, Exeter) spoke on "Genetic Engineering - Pandora's Box or Aladdin's Cave?" This gave an opportunity to make useful contacts, and for media coverage about the issues and the Project. As part of the Edinburgh Science Festival Debate, the Project is putting on a debate at the Netherbow Theatre on Friday 23 April, under the title "Who Murdered the Earth?", with author, broadcaster and debater David Cook, Ulrich Loening, the Director of the Centre for Human Ecology, and others.
Steps are also being taken to make further use of the media and press service coverage, to explore how channels of communication can be improved within the church, and also to make relevant organisations outside Scotland aware of the Project's work. Increasingly, legislation and policy-making on technological issues is becoming enacted at a European rather than a UK national level. This is highlighted by two 1992 events : the formation of a Bioethics Working Party by the European Ecumenical Commission for Church and Society (EECCS) to monitor European legislation and ethcial content, and the publication of an EEC report entitled "Religions Confronted with Science and Technology : Churches and Ethics after Prometheus". These indicate a growing EEC interest in issues which the SRT Project has been addressing for years, and to which the Project should, if appropriate, contribute. We are therefore seeking to strengthen links with the EEC and with European ecumenical initiatives, as well as to maintain SRT's long-standing contacts with the World Council of Churches.
This Assembly welcomes the appointment of Dr. Donald Bruce as Director of the Society, Religion and Technology Project, and the commencement of two new studies into the genetic engineering of non-human life forms and into theological and ethical criteria for the limits of technology.
Appendix
How Science and Technology are seen Today -
a case for Christian values
In November 1992, the Society, Religion and Technology Project made a submission to Government for the forthcoming White Paper on Science and Technology. To give the General Assembly a perspective of how the SRT Project sees its current role in sseking to influence the ethics of modern technology, this appendix reproduces part of that submission.
The changed perception of the value and standing of science and technology is one of the most important single questions which should be appreciated. In the early 1970's, the predominant view was still that science would be able to address many or even most of mankind's problems, through the application of ever more advanced technology. Man had set foot on the moon, as the symbol and pinnacle of what could be achieved if enough money, skill and dedication were once put to a task. Energy was cheap and abundant in the form of oil. Over the next few years the communications and information technology revolution would open up immense new realms. A promised New World was there to be explored and exploited, almost as a new continent.
Now we live in a very different attitude to the great exploratory quest. Too many things have gone wrong for the Technological Expedition to go on without questions being asked about its purpose and direction, the competence of its leaders, and even their motives in pursuing it. We are aware of the damage to our health and our environment as never before - Chernobyl and Bhopal, supertanker spills and car exhausts, acid rain and ozone depletion, agrochemical pollution and soil erosion, and, perhaps above all, global warming. A tension has emerged between the good of our planet and the exploitation of science and technology. The former prestige of science and the great hopes from technology have been replaced by a sense of disquiet and questioning which runs deep, especially in the younger generation. Yet we also want to keep the unprecedented creature comforts of which technology has been the agent. We may be selective in our awareness, and in what we single out for censure, but the cries of censure have become loud and long.
In this light, we can no longer take for granted anything like the level of the popular support for science and technology. Much goodwill has been lost. Many people feel cheated over the expectations in which they were led to believe by the promoters of the post-war technological revolution. They trusted what they were told and feel they have been let down. A lot of the promised future now looks like so much shoddy merchandise. There is also a growing feeling among ordinary people of being remote, and therefore increasingly alienated, from a scientific and technological process in which they seem to have no say. To some it can look, from the outside, like experts with vested interests running a game for themselves. We are hearing increasingly that the public want to know what's going on, and want to have a say that counts in the places where these things are being decided.
With this groundswell change of attitude, if science wants public support, in future it will have to work harder to get it. We have noted the emergence of some public attitudes and perceptions, which, though not necessarily commendable or sometimes even rational, are real enough. They will have to be addressed, whether the scientist likes it or not. These include such matters as:
As point d. illustrates, these attitudes will probably not be applied very consistently. There will still be many areas where we will welcome the latest technological gadget or idea with open arms, but others where we will be extremely suspicious. Our public fickleness may well be a factor to be taken account of!
In all the foregoing situation, as we have attempted to describe it, there is an undercurrent to which we as Christians cannot but draw attention. There are a considerable series of underlying assumptions that have too often accompanied our application of science and technology (the God-given potential of human creativity in the sciences), and which lie at the heart of some of the problems that are now belatedly being recognised. Unless in some considerable measure these attitudes are changed, including in the formulation of public policy, the bitter fruits of technology will continue to be reaped with little to check them and, in the long run, the future and the perceived value of science will be the more undermined.
Such attitudes, often unspoken and unaware, lie close to the root of the situation we have found ourselves in, and are part of the Christian conception of "sin". We are aware that Christians have sometimes been as much to blame as anyone else in failing to apply a more God-centred perspective on humanity's technological endeavours. Nonetheless the critique still stands. Many of the assumptions we have been used to making have clearly failed us.
Against these motivations, we would set principles which derive from Christian teaching, either in the historic concepts of the biblical records, or of the the reflections of Christians down the ages over what constitute fit principles for the relation of men and women, and of human creativity, to God and to the whole created order. If a visual image or symbol is required for these relationships, that of a triangle with God, humanity and the rest of creation at the apices, God uppermost, is perhaps a particularly appropriate one.
We have summarised below the contrasting principles arising from prevailing and Christian assumptions.
We recognise that to change such fundamental attitudes towards the planning and implementation of science and technology is a societal matter reaching far beyond the scope of government. It is, however, in the assumptions and attitudes adopted in government policy-making that a significant part can be played in adopting a less exploitative, more measured, human, ecological and co-operative approach to the subject of the White Paper. We would not say these Christian principles will bring utopia if followed. Both human history and our awareness of human fallibility tell us otherwise, no matter how laudable human intentions have been. They represent, we believe, a far better starting point for our scientific, and especially technological, endeavour than those which have held primary sway in our culture in recent times. Thus we would commend them as sound principles for anyone to embrace, whether professing Christian belief or not. The future of science and technology is a more uncertain one than it has been, perhaps at any time since the industrial revolution. We believe they are part of the God's gift of common grace to mankind, but to be used wisely under the principles God has established for human activity. It has never been more vitally important that we take that lesson to heart.
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