Can scientific expertise be trusted to produce good policy?

The first 200 words of this essay...

Can scientific expertise be trusted to produce good policy?

The years 2000 to 2003 have had a fair load of controversy around biorisk. The war in Irak was justified by the American and British government in order to get rid of potential weapons of mass destruction, it also was followed by the David Kelly affair, which raised questions about the honesty of the official war agenda. In Italy, Dr Severino Antinori claims to have given birth to the first 'Designer Baby', the first cloned human. The controversies around the MMR vaccine, the GM crops and the BSE/CJD (mad cow disease) crisis and of course the Foot and Mouth disaster in The United-Kingdom have been the favourite subject of debate for several NGO's, the media, governments and the individuals.

All those topics concern biorisk in a deep manner because, the consequence of their occurrence has had or may have serious consequences on the environment or effects on human kind. We can cite nuclear power to illustrate the previous statement. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki occasioned many post-bombing casualties due to nuclear radiation. Nearer to us, in 1986, very high levels of radiation were released