Mal Fletcher comments on the rise of anxiety disorders and an over-reliance on science

We also overlook the fact that science is a pursuit undertaken by human beings, with all the frailties they bring to any process. Scientists are just as prone to obsess over status or material gain as the rest of us and to use their skills for essentially self-centred ends.

Without proper accountability - not only to other scientists but to politicians, the law and a cautious wider community - science becomes a form of secular religion.

When that happens, scientists scoff at the subjectivity of other forms of belief - a la Richard Dawkins - while expecting that they will be shown a kind of priestly deference.

This reflects, in fact, what some of them are today: postmodern high priests in a religion that venerates rationalism.

In a sense, our culture encourages us to place our 'faith' in drugs in a quasi-religious way.

Ubiquitous advertising by drug companies offers us near instant cures for even the most mundane aches and pains. In the process it oversimplifies our physical shortcomings, passes over our innermost pain and promises shortcuts to 'salvation'.

Some drug suppliers present narratives and images which suggest that our lives will improve on a wide variety of fronts, if we will use their products. They play on human aspiration in much the same cynical way as cigarette advertisers once did (and would still do, if they were allowed).

The commercial power of the drug companies is considerable. It is set to increase as we become more reliant on emerging biotechnologies, nanorobotics and the like.

This power lies partly, of course, in the huge profits these companies generate.

The influence of drug companies, however, is also based upon a heady sense of utopian idealism. More than a few scientists hold to the idea that we will soon live in a world where disease is a thing of the past and even death is on its way out.

The Transhumanist school of philosophy - a serious academic study in some universities - insists that we are rapidly approaching the next stage of human evolutionary development.

Its advocates promise that advanced bio-mechanical prosthetics, microchip implants and medical advances will extend human lifetimes beyond anything we can envisage now. Within a few generations, they say, we may even be able to live indefinitely.

This sounds exhilarating. The fact is, though, that diseases have a habit of pushing back and fighting for their own survival. Diseases we thought we had eradicated have a tendency to reappear in new forms, having developed immunities to current treatments.

There is also the challenge of the so-called 'law of unintended consequences'. In futurism, there is only one certainty: nobody can definitively predict the future. By definition, the future is unknowable. If we could be certain about what it holds, it would not be the future, but the past or the present.