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A spiritually satisfying society that also provides peace of mind is a prerequisite for public health and public safety. Surveys show the public's primary concern to be health ( Fig. 3 ). The public also sees improved safety as the most important objective of science and technology.

Fig. 3: The causes of public anxiety or concern

With lifestyle diseases, emphasis must be placed on prevention through dietary and lifestyle guidance and support. By determining the genetic nature of individuals, genetic testing is also anticipated to help prevent lifestyle diseases, while hope is pinned on gene therapy to help treat genetic diseases and such lifestyle diseases as cancer and diabetes.

New and resurgent infectious diseases have become problematic recently, with human activities and other factors threatening to expand the range of such diseases' incidence. Japan must therefore make preparations against domestic outbreaks and at the same time cooperate with such international efforts as the search for cures and international incidence surveys, including those in nations where the incidence of such diseases is high.

There is great social concern over the health effects of dioxins and other carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Public concerns must be addressed by scientifically studying the health impact of such chemicals, determining their environmental presence, and explaining knowledge to the public, for instance.

Science and technology should be used to increase the effectiveness of measures that are intended to prevent disasters, control the expansion of disasters after they occur, and speed post-disaster recovery.

The alarming rising tendency of traffic accidents calls for efforts not only to improve automobile safety, but also to optimize roads and traffic laws, etc., as a total system by improving safety, energy efficiency, and the efficiency of road space utilization, for instance.

In addition to appropriate measures to assure Year 2000 readiness, it will also become increasingly important to enact vigorous defense measure to prevent intentional and malicious disruptions of the computer and telecommunications systems that form the backbone of modern socioeconomic infrastructures.

To summarize the four important areas of current demands being placed on science and technology, examples of which have been give above:

Being the engine that drives the reform of socioeconomic systems, science and technology can bring out those socioeconomic systems' latent abilities to overcome the various problems that necessitate reform.

In order to respond to various national and societal demands, science and technology must expand the country's intellectual assets through vigorous basic research, which is a wellspring of new knowledge. An important role in the development of humankind's intellectual systems is to create new knowledge and skillfully use that knowledge to overcome problems. Thus it is important to Japan's future to become a "nation with a significant intellectual presence."

Science and technology contributes to cultural evolution by introducing a new worldview or lifeview. Examples include the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, Darwin's evolutionary theory, understanding of life on a genetic level, and the exploration of space.

Science and technology provide the means for attaining both material and spiritual affluence, and should strive to contribute more to attaining the spiritual affluence.