Progress, and the "Icarus Effect"

Progress, it's a weighty word, one that often has place humanity in a precarious position. The unlimited potential of the individual is held up as the saving grace of science, time and time again we are told that those who are at the forefront of our chemistry, economics, and biology fields have nothing but the best intentions of humanity at heart but intentions seldom matter in the case of the "Icarus Effect". Anyone familiar with the story of icarus will remember that icarus is the son of a famous inventor daedalus who designs wings of wax and feather that allow man to fly, icaurs however grows ambitious and seeks to esacpe his home on the island of crete and ignores his fathers instructions to not fly too close to the sun. Icarus in his hubris ignores his father and the wax on his wings is melted by the sun plumeting him to his death, To make the "icarus effect" more modern we need look no farther than the situation of our nuclear weapon capabilites. We currently have enough nuclear weapons between the 20 or so countries who possess them capable of wiping all life on the planet out several times over and yet through continued peace negotiations and a number of uneasy NATO sanctions have kept ourselves from self anihilation. Increasingly technology seeks to make us faster, smarter, more disease resistant, and more powerful but somewhere along the line science makes mistakes. Silly Putty was invented trying to come up with a formula for new tires that used less rubber for the military but what will our next scientific "whoops" produce? In tampering with DNA we have the unlimited potential to design bio weapons more effective than any plague that has ravaged our species (this is a favorite topic of science fiction you need look no farther than andromeda strain and resident evil to see it) and conversely design our children into the perfect performers and scientists of tomorrow as shown in Brave New World. The question then becomes, "Well who should we allow to censor our science so that we don't end up destroying ourselves?" To this I have no clear answer to comfort but I can say that the only true censoring of science occurs in our labs by the nice men and women in white coats and by their financial backers. What would our society be like had Einstein chosen to stop working on the Manhattan Project with Openheimer I can only surmise but if you ask me if we might have been better off I will say that, yes we might've been better off had the secret of splitting atoms never been uncovered. No nuclear power or microwaves shur but also no 3 mile island, Cherynoble, Nagasaki or Hiroshima.