If, as a Christian, you wonder how to respond to the new medical technologies, such as cloning and gene therapy, you should read the book by Robert Song entitled Human Genetics: Fabricating the Future (Pilgrim Press).

Robert Song, who lectures in Christian ethics at the university of Durham, is not one of those pessimists who sees nothing but doom and gloom in the new technologies. He fully recognises that advances in genetics will lead to new cures for old diseases and new diagnostic tools making possible prevention or earlier and more effective treatment of disease.

Yet, at the same time, he warns that 'new powers bring new dangers'. Thus he says that fears expressed by the public and voiced by many ethicists and journalists are not to be lightly dismissed. These fears are not necessarily mere irrational yuk reactions. Underlying some of them are our deepest beliefs about ourselves and the meaning of life. We are talking about fears based on a concern to temper with nature, with the work of the Creator. For some of the new technologies seem to be 'trespassing on the prerogative of the Creator alone'.

Fuelling technologies such cloning and the making of designer babies is a secular consumerist culture in search for man-made perfection and individualist choice. But, as Christians, we know that perfection is not of this world. The Christian understanding of salvation, not through ourselves, but through Jesus Christ fosters humility and presents an alternative view of our powers as limited as well as of the human good.

Dr Agneta Sutton
Head of Research, CBBP - Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy

agneta.sutton@care.org.uk