Science will shape the future of our society – good or bad?

When Russel T Davies created The Miracle Day (Torchwood) I thought very little about implications of the Types in real life, until I watched the Horizon’s “Are you good or evil?”

The most striking parallel with the fiction came about at the end of the programme when they looked at what was considered at first a definitive capital punishment case in the state of Tennessee, US. After convincing evidence presented by a psychotherapy forensic the jury decided to sentence the accused for man-slaughter rather than first degree murder. Then I realised how close it may get to a snowball effect, when every murderer would appeal on the grounds of faulty genetics.

What if we start treating immoral behaviour as a trait of a faulty gene? Will we have to grade individual’s susceptibility to criminal offence? Should neuroscientists become the new law makers?

Most importantly, will we have to empower the governments to curry out arrests before the individuals commit such acts of violence?

This reminds me of a film, but not quite sure which one. the “Minority report”?

Another snowball effect I can see potentially developing is that of common acceptance of our own faultiness, rendering the current criminal law useless in the face of common fallacy. The value of life should diminish under such circumstances, if not disappear altogether.

Scary.

p.