Question: Do you allow religion to influence your work?

Jeremy Green answered on 17 Jun 2011:

I don’t allow religion to influence my work because religion is in the end about believing without question. Science is all about disbelieving and questioning everything, even “proofs” (which are often wrong). But I do think very hard and carefully about ethics (the rights and wrongs) of what I and others do. Also, you don’t need to be religious to have that feeling of awe and humility in the face of the wonders of nature.

I believe, for example, that human embryos are not people but are very precious. The Catholic Church, for example, says that no research or medicine should be done involving human embryos, but that kind of research has led to IVF (in vitro fertilization) which has given many couples children who would otherwise suffer from the sadness of infertility and childlessness.

Interestingly, many Catholics disagree with the official Catholic doctrine on this because they see the joy and value in lives and families achieved through IVF, and also the perhaps know that the Catholic Church had a different view for over a thousand years before about 1880 (and perhaps may change its mind again, just as it did about the sun going around the earth).

On the other hand, I do think there must be limits on what scientists can do with human embryos, and I generally agree with the current rule that no research can be done after the very earliest stages (before the embryo even has any brain or nervous system to be able to feel anything or suffer), and even then, any research has to be carefully justified and approved by several ethics committees. Also, no experimental individuals (e.g. clones) should be made – although you should also know that identical twins are literally clones of one another, so it’s not the clone part that is a problem but that the process of making a human clone is currently too uncertain and risky.