Thursday November 22nd 2007 Darryl Macer is a Unesco bioethicist who co-authored the recent UN study into reproductive cloning. In it he explains that

Human embryo clone, used for stem cell research. I started out studying biochemistry but became interested in bioethics after reading a work by Martin Luther King Junior, which was probably a strange way to be introduced. It was a book about social justice called Strength to Love, and it made me realise how important it is that society uses its knowledge to construct a just, ethical society.

I was also interested in the exchanges taking place between people who thought science was a good thing and those who were against it. There was a lot of early debate on genetic engineering and reproductive technology in the 1980s, and there seemed to be two different groups in society who couldn’t talk to each other. I felt it would be useful to become an intermediary between the technophiles and technophobes, those who like knowledge and those who dislike it.

I took a PhD in molecular biology because I wanted to understand the way scientists think, but the day I submitted my thesis I left the laboratory for good. I felt I couldn’t continue working as a lab scientist when there were so many interesting social questions to look at. I started to read philosophy and history of medicine full time.

Some people thought it was a bit of a waste of a laboratory scientist, but after a few years it became clear that bioethics was an interesting area in itself. I’ve never looked back. I still find that there are a lot of scientists working on the production of knowledge, but very few on how we should use it in society.

I am a Christian but I don’t find it hard to reconcile religion with science. As a scientist, I’ve worked with people of many different faiths and backgrounds – naturalists, Buddhists, Muslims and agnostics. There are basically two types of question: the scientific type, which is open to falsification, or disproving; and another, more important kind of question, like why is loving people better than hating them? I don’t really find any conflict between the two types. It’s wonderful to try to understand the natural world and use technology for the good of people and the environment, but that's just it: it has to be good, it has to stay within a moral framework.