How can we manage to take it all in or make sense of where it's taking us? Will we be able to keep our balance--or even rediscover our bearings? Perhaps we sometimes yearn for some kind of personal compass--something secure, accurate and trustworthy that we could rely on in a sea of changing ethics and moral values in society.

In particular, the accelerating pace of scientific advances is creating moral dilemmas in society where potentially immense and far-reaching ethical decisions are required to be made against the blur of warp-speed change. We are forced to contemplate issues that previous generations neither conceived of nor could imagine.

Take, for instance, the recent news that the DNA of a Danish woman--taken from a blood sample she gave in the 1980s--has been introduced into thousands of New Zealand sheep, without her knowledge, by the same British firm that genetically engineered Dolly the sheep. The company says it intends to extract a protein from the genetically modified milk of these sheep--a protein that it claims might help cure diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

Then there's the even more recent news of an American couple who used advanced fertility technology to select a fertilized ovum in order to produce a boy. Not just any boy, but one who was genetically ideal to be a bone marrow donor to his older sister, who would otherwise die.

The deep moral and ethical considerations in situations such as these are commensurate with the immense biological and medical implications. With the fast-accelerating pace and scope of such efforts to cure diseases and extend longevity--and, it has to be said, to increase profits--the particular ethical paradox of eugenics rears its head (or should we say heads?).

How do we handle, for instance, the increasingly sharply focused moral dilemma of whether to abort fetuses that we know will become disabled children or that may not possess the desired qualities--such as the "right" sex or intelligence potential? How do we deal with the fact that experiments on human embryos are required for science and medicine to advance in the field of eugenics? Or that cloned embryos will be required for the human spare-parts industry?

This ethical dilemma is heightened by Western society's moral ambivalence and degradation of traditional and spiritual values. Never before have we so sorely needed a firm moral and spiritual basis by which to make sense of the pace and direction of science. Yet Western culture--especially our political, religious and commercial leadership--is, as a whole, utterly incapable of providing such direction or guidance.

We find ourselves groping in an unfamiliar, fast-changing spiritual wilderness, trying to pin down this elusive issue of ethics, figuratively even debating which way is up. At a time of immense scientific and medical progress, it is ironic that we are perhaps less morally equipped as a society to deal with the issues than at any time in our recent history.

British philosopher Anthony O'Hear, professor of philosophy at the University of Bradford and director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, believes--in spite of the advances in science and democratic politics over the last three centuries--that our moral losses far outweigh our gains.

It is ironic that an amoral society--bent on nothing more exalted than the physical perpetuation of life, the pursuit of pleasure and the elimination of pain--is actually moving toward the ultimate cheapening of human life through scientific advances, untrammeled by moral restraints.

As never before, humankind desperately needs a moral compass to provide guidance and direction through the turbulent sea of social issues and moral values in society. More to the point, each individual human being needs that guidance to make sense of a world increasingly dominated by bewildering scientific advances largely unimpeded by moral considerations. In Vision--Journal for a New World, we endeavor to show that there is a better way ahead--if we are indeed willing to accept our need for a moral compass in an increasingly turbulent and confused world.

About the Author

Author, David Lloyd, contributes articles on religion and society for Vision Media. More information about these and other religion and society topics can be found at http://www.vision.org.

Author:

David Lloyd