Abstract
Autore:
Redi Carlo Alberto
Titolo:
"La cittadinanza scientifica"
Nowadays a political and cultural debate must be urgently held on science and technology, capable of redesigning the relationship between democracy and rights, between welfare and democracy, and of identifying the points of contact between scientific research and policies. Among Western societies, this is true especially for Italy, since Italy appears clearly rooted in atavism. It is a country marked by economically catastrophic delay in redefining the relationship between the state and welfare of its citizens, in a perspective whose cornerstone is the individual’s autonomy to make bio-existential choices, thus contributing to redirecting and relocating political, economic and social issues in an ongoing debate. Thus civil society, and in particular the scientific community, becomes ever more frustrated, waiting for a genuine effort on the part of policy-makers to develop working guidelines for adopting policies that could govern the biotechnology revolution. The only way to take Italy out of a decline that seems impossible to stop in any other way is by investing in research and young human capital, and by communicating science to laypeople. Faced with this reality, we must foster interpretative-conceptual discussion and direct communication between the world of life sciences and at least two special groups of laypeople: magistrates and scientific journalists. Magistrates matter because it would be a good thing to try to make the developing of legal propositions progress at the same rate as the rapid increase in biological knowledge. Journalists also matter because they can popularize information about technological innovation, thus helping to produce informed citizens, who can act better and live better in a world that is becoming ever more complex, polluted and less rich in natural resources. In this respect, the governance of biotechnological research, genetic engineering, biomedical experimentation, procreation and the end of life is of the most pressing urgency and relevance.
