Microbial Diseases: Notes, Reports, Summaries, Trends

knowledge, science will be crippled and your new machines will only mean new hardships. Given time you may well discover everything there is to discover, but your progress will be a progression away from humanity. The gulf between you and humanity may one day be so wide that the response to your exultation about some new achievement will be a universal outcry of horror" (Bertolt Brecht, Galileo in Life of Galileo Galilei). With such strong words Brecht's Galileo warns scientists and society. This warning, relevant in 1642 during the infancy of empirical science, is crucial today when scientists and society have been looking at each other for several centuries. Efraim Racker, who as a scientist needs no introduction, speaks for and to scientists in these letters to the members of Congress. These letters are based on two axioms: first, scientific positivism, and second, the existence of scientific separatism. On the first writes Racker: "I am convinced that the salvation of mankind will come through answers provided by science and an enlightened government that translates these answers into practical applications." This scientific positivism should not be confused with primitive ideas assigning moral values to science. Science is a methodology; it is neither good nor evil; it is an amoral entity. It is the scientist together with society who holds the moral responsibility for science. Racker's positivism is based on the countless times in which products of basic science have been used to improve the human condition. Throughout the centuries scientists and society have failed to communicate. Society seems ignorant of the immense limitations of scientific knowledge. Racker criticizes the idea of "targeted" and "relevant" research which some sectors of society are trying to impose on science. We cannot blame society alone for this misunderstanding; also guilty is the secluded aloof scientist who has refused dialogue with society. The first four letters present the role played by basic science in elucidating several health problems: mental illness, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and a group of inherited conditions. This short book culminates with letters five and six; these two describe the relationship between science and society as a love affair gone sour. There are many areas of conflict which have eroded the original infatuation. Racker in an effort to curb this disenchantment pretends to educate the public in scientific matters and the scientist in matters of communication. It is a convincing argument, but not a critical review. Anyone who presumes a role in science should at least skim through the pages of these letters, written as much for members of Congress as for fellow scientists. Furthermore, anyone who feels deeply the importance of science in guiding the future of our species will find in these pages a manifesto.