Abstract

Pharming Hildagaard, a fringe theatre production telling of human cloning (Figure 1), is one way our society deals with the contentious nature of modern scientific developments. The fringe theatre production set at a fictitious research organisation in Hamilton, may have been a fantasy, sensationalist, and perhaps contained dodgy science (M. Servian, personal communication), but it was a story that attempted to engage the issues that cloning raises. While this may have been fringe or experimental theatre, opposition to genetic modification is more mainstream and “coming to a field near you”. Questions have been asked over where science is taking agriculture (Anon, 1998) and we might also ask where science is taking society, or where society is taking science? I want to use a number of great thinkers to reflect on how we deal with these questions, and thus how we deal socially with science.

MW, Fisher

Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, Volume 63, Queenstown, 1-2, 2003