ABSTRACT
We touched on the ethical considerations of databases in Chapter 6, but here it would be worth looking at the whole question of DNA profiling and the ethical questions which really should be addressed as soon as possible. Genetics and DNA technology in general have thrown up questions which could not even be imagined half a century ago. It has also put biological science as a whole into the same arena as chemistry and physics. That is to say, chemistry and physics started their ethical and moral questioning centuries before when they came into direct conflict with the Church, later it was as moral transgressors within the realms of pollution and weaponry that caused such distrust. Biology on the other hand had always been seen as both a ‘soft’, or easy, science and one which was on the side of the ‘natural’ world. The inverted commas are deliberate because much of what we think of as natural is in fact man made, especially in the environment.
