If one were asked to name the area where the scientific community's ignoring of ethics has wrought the greatest harm to public acceptance of science, one would have to choose biotechnology. Genetic engineering, cloning, and stem cell research have all engendered equivocal public reactions at best, and outright rejection at worst, by virtue of scientists' consistent failure to articulate and engage the multitude of ethical and social issues the public believes to be inherent in the new modalities.

Any major new technology will create a lacuna in social and ethical thought in direct proportion to its novelty. What effects will this technology have on our lives? Will benefits outweigh costs, harms outweigh goods? What are the possibilities of the technology leading to more evil in the world, or in human society? How likely is it to be misused? Is it inherently wrong for any reason? Will it promote justice or injustice? Is it something benign or beneficial, something to be curtailed or allowed to soar? Will things be better or worse in virtue of its existence? Such questions inevitably bubble up in the social mind, and consequentialist questions are mixed up with deontological ones, issues of bad effects likely or possible to ensue are confused with inherent wrongness. Add to this unsavory mixture a liberal portion of religiosity, and one has truly created an intellectual Golem: powerful, mindless, and unstoppable.