In the glorious days of yore, when our cavemen ancestors were busy finding increasingly creative ways to avoid becoming saber-toothed tiger chow, the brilliant caveman scientist GrugBok made the first immense scientific leap. Sneaking up behind an unsuspecting mammoth, he aggressively poked it with the pointy end of a wooden stick. The mammoth promptly sat on him, but that's not the point.
Fast-forwarding a few more millennia, we now stand on the threshold where the pointy sticks of science are being leveled at newer beasts. Only these beasts aren't tusky woolly mammoths, they're moral and ethical hurdles. And hence, ladies and gentlemen, we enter similar yet unknown territory. A territory where our modern-day GrugBoks' eyes gleam with a maniacal glint, their laughter echoing as they holler - "Science can, so Science should."
But the question arises, should we really be holding morality to the blowtorch of scientific innovation? More importantly, can we, the unsuspecting mammoths of the world, afford the equivalent of being sat upon by a creature many times our size?
Let us embark upon this travesty - this ego-bruising, mad-eyed, white-coated frenzy of Unbridled Experimentation. As we stride ever forward into the land of the unknown, the undoubted truth is that, sooner or later, something will most likely go very, very wrong.
Remember Dolly, the world's most white-wooled, innocent face of possibly-playing-God? For those not enlightened, Dolly was the first successfully cloned sheep. Did you hear that? Cloned! This wasn't some wooly reproduction, no sir. 'Twas a fully, purposely engineered, 'I made this and I didn't even have to birth it' sheep. We looked Dolly in her too-similar-to-her-mother’s-eyes and collectively decided to toss morality to the powerful winds of progress, shrugging as it flew off into oblivion.
Next stop on this thrill ride, we tackled the science of genetics head-on. Ever heard of CRISPR? It is not a lovely method of making potatoes. It's a gene-editing tool that has the potential to make alterations to the genetic code of any living organism. Including us, the inquisitive human race. Picture it, Freckle Removal for all who wish it, Six-Pack Abs without the gym, Super Tallness for every 5'4" dreamer. Oh, the chaos, the splendor, the absolute garishness!
But wait, you ask with a nauseated squint, what about ethics? What about the moral implications of all this scientifically enabled tampering? Excellent questions! Simple answer - what about them indeed! It appears as though our merry band of science crusaders are happily ignoring any such queries!
As the juggernaut of scientific progress rumbles gleefully onwards, we're now poking at the beast that is Artificial Intelligence. We're on the precipice of a world where our digital assistants will have personalities perhaps even larger than our own, where our robotic companions will be able to discern whether we need a hug or five shots of tequila after a bad day.
So, ladies and gentlemen, as we stand on the brink, let us take a collective breath and resign ourselves to the fact that something is going to go very, very wrong. We've tackled mammoths, we've cloned sheep, we've edited genes, we're on our way to creating sentient machines. Morality and ethics have been left far, far behind in our scientific wake, fluttering in obstinate oblivion.
Will we ever learn that just because science can, doesn't mean science should? Or will we continue to stomp down this path of reckless innovation and find ourselves sat upon by the massive mammoth of our own creation? Only time will unveil the outcomes, yet in this race of science against morality, one thing remains inevitable - the mammoth may just be getting us ready for a sizable sit-down.