Sorry, but the "science marches on" bit is bullshit. There's a difference between Russia and China having the atomic bomb and your friendly neighbourhood drug mafia having one.
It also makes a difference whether China gets a bad rapping for pumping political prisoners full of anticoagulants before shooting them so that they can serve as organ donors, after the execution, or whether they can do that in the full conscience that such things are considered desirable and normal.
If a technology has only criminal uses, it is commonly accepted that research into it is not worthwile. Think of all the exciting ways to build new explosives that are more suitable for suicide bombers, or of all the new and exciting ways of taking planes off the sky with a store-bought laser pointer. These must surely be things that science will pass through eventually, but I doubt anyone will be encouraged or funded to do so.
Conversely, when embryonic stem cell research was crippled in the US in 2006, South Korea (and others) leapt ahead... China, for instance, has no legislation prohibiting such research - the ethics are judged quite differently in other economic (and even religious) cultures.
It also makes a difference whether China gets a bad rapping for pumping political prisoners full of anticoagulants before shooting them so that they can serve as organ donors, after the execution, or whether they can do that in the full conscience that such things are considered desirable and normal.
If a technology has only criminal uses, it is commonly accepted that research into it is not worthwile. Think of all the exciting ways to build new explosives that are more suitable for suicide bombers, or of all the new and exciting ways of taking planes off the sky with a store-bought laser pointer. These must surely be things that science will pass through eventually, but I doubt anyone will be encouraged or funded to do so.