The work of scientists has in the last half-century brought humanity face to face with two major menaces to its survival and created a situation without precedent in human history. This twofold threat has been posed by the development of nuclear fission for civilian or military purposes and the more recent development of biotechnology or genetic engineering. We live, all of us, all of Creation, in the ominous shadow of nuclear technology. We live also in what is potentially a no less chilling shadow—the darkening shadow of biotechnology, an industry which, according to the Times of India, is ‘the fastest growing industry in the world today’.

It is more than a decade since the distinguished Austro-American biochemist Erwin Chargaff commented that these two immense and fateful scientific discoveries, ‘the splitting of the atom (and) the recognition of the chemistry of heredity and its subsequent manipulation’, both involved the mistreatment of a nucleus—that of the atom and that of the cell. He added—and it was a comment whose prophetic vision was largely ignored at the time—‘In both cases do I have the feeling that science has transgressed a barrier that should have remained inviolate.’