DON'T PLAY GOD, CHARLES WARNS SCIENTISTS

Wednesday, May 17, 2000 00:59

The Prince of Wales was today due to deliver a fierce attack on the dangers of unrestrained scientific research and the perils of tampering with nature.

In a Reith lecture, to be broadcast on Radio 4 tonight, he warns that a world which ignores the "essential unity" of the living and spiritual worlds is doomed.

He also argues that it is because of humanity's "inability or refusal to accept the existence of a guiding hand that nature has come to be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own convenience ... and in which anything that happens can be fixed by technology and human ingenuity".

He adds: "We need to rediscover a reverence for the natural world, irrespective of its usefulness to ourselves, to become more aware of the relationship between God, man and creation."

The forthright tone of his lecture, which also takes a swipe at biotechnology, may also prompt a further rift between St James's Palace and the Government, which continues to support genetically modified food.

The 2,300-word essay, extracts of which are published in several newspapers today, was written by the Prince during his recent pilgrimage to a remote Greek monastery.

"If literally nothing is held sacred anymore  because it is considered synonymous with superstition or in some other way 'irrational'  what is there to prevent us treating our entire world as some great laboratory of life with potentially disastrous long-term consequences?" the Prince asks.

He welcomes a "precautionary approach" to scientific advances and mocks those who portray it as a sign of weakness or an attempt to halt progress. "I believe it to be a sign of strength and wisdom."

He counsels against reducing the natural world to a mechanical process.

"In this technology driven age, it is all too easy for us to forget that mankind is part of nature and not apart from it and that this is why we should seek to work with the grain of nature in everything we do."

Science, he says, should be used to understand how nature works but not to change what it is.

"Only by rediscovering the essential unity and order of the living and spiritual world will we avoid the disintegration of our overall environment," he concludes.

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We're doomed if we ignore nature says Prince By Robert Hardman

THE Prince of Wales will deliver a dire warning of the "disintegration of our overall environment" when he makes his contribution to this year's Reith Lectures on BBC Radio this evening.

In his fiercest attack on the dangers of unrestrained scientific research and the perils of tampering with what he calls the "grain of nature", he says that a world which ignores the "essential unity" of the living and spiritual worlds is doomed.

The Telegraph has seen extracts of the 2,300-word essay, which the Prince wrote during his recent pilgrimage to a remote Greek monastery. They continue many of the themes which he developed in his Millennium address on the BBC's Thought for the Day. But the uncompromising tone of tonight's analysis may prompt a further rift between St James's Palace and the Government, which continues to support genetically modified food.

-- Welcome aboard, sire (@ .), May 16, 2000