P icture a biologist holding up a test tube cloudy with suspended cells. Is this image cause for alarm? How about other biologists manipulating colorful patterns on a computer screen, examining newly sprouted plants in a greenhouse, or identifying grasses in a field? Are these scientists threatening the values of modern society or providing tools to protect it? Biologists, philosophers, social scientists, physicians, theologians, and science writers recently gathered in Berlin to address the question "Do current and anticipated developments in bioscience require a new covenant between science and society?"1 The organizers of the meeting, led by David J. Roy of the Center for Bioethics at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal in Canada, wanted to explore what they sensed to be an uneasy relationship between biological scientists and the lay public. They proposed that the basis of this distrust is lay-public fears that new scientific developments threaten strong society values: the integrity of humanity and of the natural environment. While some discussants debated potential effects of research on the human genome, embryos, and fetuses, one group was assigned to consider ecological integrity. In the course of the week-long meeting, discussion in this group shifted from the potential of biotechnology to threaten the environment to the possibility that a broad range of biological approaches, from biotechnology to ecology, can help humanity maintain its existence by protecting the environment. This group concluded that a