when I worked at NZs equivalent of CSIRO in the seventies I recall preparing capital expenditure submissions for electron microscopes. They were unbelievably expensive then. But the imaging was like visiting a wonderland.
I also did a few interesting projects - the “brain drain” loss of scientists which actually got much worse in the eighties when science became commoditised and pure research regarded as a luxury. Silly thinking in my view but not an entirely popular perspective.
I also did one around the ethics of genetic engineering because people were starting to make lots of noise about it. I did realise there were potentially unknown consequences of intentionally manipulating genetics but the cat was already well out of the bag by then and in some ways humans have been doing it for millennia. We’ve just got more sophisticated with techniques and maybe a little more god like and our capability seems to outstrip our good sense. But viruses and the like are a reminder that apparently simple forms of life outstrip human capacity for adaptation.
