Life in the laboratory: public responses to experimental biology

Abstract

Present-day public attitudes to biological manipulation are ambivalent, many surveys show. This paper explores evidence of earlier attitudes to experimental biology, before survey data exists, by examining published responses in the press to the idea that biologists would `create life'. This remarkable claim achieved wide currency in the early years of this century, particularly linked to the work of two prototypical `visible scientists': Jacques Loeb and Alexis Carrel. Analysis of press responses to accounts of their work reveals deep disquiet about its possible implications, at a time when science and technology in general were regarded very positively. The evidence is augmented by studying commentary on a Presidential Address by Edward Schafer to the British Association meeting of 1912. It is concluded that feelings of ambivalence toward the manipulative power of biology are apparent at a very early stage in the development of modern biology, and that this makes it implausible that more recent manifestations of such ambivalence can be ascribed to some generalized `anti-science' sentiment which has gathered strength in recent years.