Fear has once again achieved a leading role in Western countries’ daily life. The attacks on the Twin Towers and on the Pentagon and the bacteriological attack perpetrated with anthrax have tragically shown how man continues to be exposed (fatally exposed) to the weapons of hatred, violence and insanity.

After September 11th, the vulnerability of the human condition has become even more evident, and the great myth of humanity’s progress has been shattered, together with some of its symbols: technoscience, which has relieved us from a lot of hard work, which has protected us from many diseases and has granted us a quality of life that we had never experienced so far, has proved powerless when faced with the most far-reaching weapon that man is able to cultivate within himself, without the need for many laboratories: hatred. People have once again awakened to the danger of a bacteriological or chemical war, the thought of a possible military use of nuclear energy has again occurred: the possibility of self-destruction, which in the 70s led Potter to invent the notion of bioethics, has again materialised. Therefore, in a different form, an aspect of bioethical reflection, which is not exclusively concerned with medicine and its potentials, becomes again a leading issue, since what was (and is) at stake is the meaning of technological civilisation itself. The ambivalence of every human advancement, which is capable of organising tools that can at the same time both save and destroy human life, reintroduces the cruciality of the human factor. Indeed, no “invisible hand” is there to lead the history of scientific discoveries towards an outcome that is certainly positive and favourable to man’s life. Faced with the new threats coming from terrorism, a first reply is once again linked to the possibilities offered by our technological and scientific skills. From a military, telecommunication and scientific research point of view, we are preparing a new defensive and offensive strategy against the emerging forms of terrorism. The intensification of biological research work, stimulated by the bacteriological war in progress, will be able (this is our hope) to rapidly and effectively address the anthrax threat. But we know, or must acknowledge, that all this is not sufficient. Any advancement in our knowledge retains the ambivalence involved in its use, and whilst new information on the human genome may lead us to the identification of new ways of protecting life, it may also lead us to new ways of threatening it. We are unable to escape this situation for the simple reason that it is inscribed, as a possibility, in the actual protagonist of any research activity, that is man. We have discovered once again, just in case it was not yet clear, that the worse enemy of man can be man himself. Sartre’s lapidary remark “Hell is other people” is an expression of that feeling of anxiety and panic that is spreading today in great part of the world. We fear anthrax, in the same way as we have feared Sarin and we could fear future weapons that may be produced through genetic engineering: but this worry, this fear cannot simply be overcome by strengthening our hope and confidence towards all the possible countermeasures we shall be able to adopt. After all, this fear, which unites us but at the same time divides us, by creating forms of solidarity and also of diffidence, assigns back to us a task which we had thought could be delegated to our technological and scientific development: that of rediscovering a universal language to talk and discuss of good life, of those values which rescue us from estranging ourselves from other living worlds and cultural forms of existence. The historical framework in which the concept of bioethics first developed also contained, although in a different form, many of the unsettling feelings we are facing today; and although the geopolitical scene has changed, the potential self-destructive power possessed by man has not, and likewise there has not been a greater spreading of a moral awareness capable of harmonising the different visions of the world by centring them on an unequivocal respect for human life. If we briefly run over our past we are impressed, and even amazed, by the rapidity with which we Western people have been able to increase our scientific knowledge and our technological attainments, whereas we cannot but be puzzled in realising how limited, in comparison, our progress has been in moral awareness and in the construction of an ethos capable of opposing value fragmentation. In fact, it was on the very ground of our own civilisation that we cultivated the idea of the moral stranger, of the incomparability of values, and the notion of incommunicability zones has slowly grown, together with that of potential conflict among human communities which are thought to be unable to speak a universal language of good. Terrorism, with its destructive power, has enabled us to catch a glimpse of the signs of that far-reaching solidarity whose roots and grounds lie in the rediscovery of the values of justice, protection of the innocents and safeguard of life: a solidarity that goes beyond geopolitical boundaries, as well as cultural and religious traditions. Terrorism continues to be a disease, a virus against which it is difficult to find an unbeatable remedy, because hatred, violence and insanity remain in any case a possibility associated with the human condition. It is not a matter of being optimistic or pessimistic, but of being realistic. We need to again give due consideration to the need, which is implicit within bioethical reflection, to build and spread a body of moral convictions that may balance our ability to globalise economy, research, war, hatred and fear. The weakness of our culture is visible in the naïve optimism with which it has build our progressivist mythology, forgetting the framework which is typical of man. The threat we are facing does not only concern our safety, our health and our daily life, but also our image of man. And this threat does not come only from terrorists, whether they are inside or outside our culture and lifestyles: it also comes from the thoughtlessness with which we are dealing with the themes relating to the sense (meaning and direction) of human existence. To put it the way Pascal would, “we have all embarked” on the same history and we cannot forget that the germs of abuse, violence and discrimination are often also inscribed in the procedures with which we are pursuing our scientific development. There is no need for a “bridge” between science and ethics, because these two territories are not separated, these two forms of intelligence being both rooted in the ground of the human condition. By taking this aspect seriously, we shall be able to look at the present with a renewed sense of responsibility: there is no assurance against the pathology of violence or against terrorism, because the only, frail, antidote is that which can be put together through the universal language of good, provided this is acknowledged and practiced. Terrorism, whether armed with words, or with technological or biological products, will always prevail unless we first of all start to have only one fear: that hatred and desperation may also subtly creep into our minds. (trad.Interpres SaS-Giussano)

Adriano Pessina

Cattedra di Bioetica Università Cattolica

Milano