Ethical Considerations 
ten times as many chickadees as I had last year, and again they 
are hungry, only there are ten times as many of them. 
Chisholm said that we all act in two qualities, as individuals 
and as members of a group. I would go further and emphasize 
that we have two sets of reflexes, and the evaluation reflexes 
are entirely different in the individual as compared with the 
group. Let us consider the following list: 
Murder, 
Robbery, 
Rape, 
Destruction, 
Lies. 
These are the most common crimes in decreasing order of 
gravity. But they are crimes only as long as they are com- 
mitted individually within the group. When they are committed 
by our group in its struggle with other groups, they become 
virtues, the road to glory. The rape of the Sabine women is 
still one of the golden chapters of Roman history! 
Bronowski: ‘They were only solving a population problem! 
Szent-Gyérgyt: One of the great troubles of our time is that 
governments represent group morality. I can even feel it 
within myself when I am going to the polls, and become for 
a while a small part of the government; then my values become 
those of the group and not of the individual. In Massachusetts 
at the last election we elected to high office somebody who was 
actually in jail for fraud; apparently we trusted him to represent 
our group morality better than any Harvard egg-head. 
Lederberg: Whatever the value of this ethical discussion, 
we can hardly take it on ourselves to decide these issues for the 
rest of the world. I do believe, however, that it is extremely 
important that the rest of the world should have the opportunity 
to discuss them; and as Crick has pointed out, public informa- 
tion on the possibilities of human modification, which is part of 
what we are talking about here, is not widely available or 
prevalent, particularly in the seats of high political power. 
The biological competence of governments has been called 
into question, and perhaps we should spend some time thinking 
375 
