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Playing God with Monsters
Howard writes "Horrified by "There Be Monsters Here" tales, some members of Congress called for a ban on DNA research in the mid '70s. Because those calls were rejected, millions of people around the world can now hope for DNA-based vaccines against AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases that have destroyed lives, communities and nations. Here's an illustration: The name of Joseph DeRisi keeps coming up in connection with deadly diseases. No, he's not a modern-day Typhoid Mary. Just the opposite. The University of California, San Francisco researcher is using his own custom-built DNA microarrays to look inside the "minds" of some serious serial killers. The "minds" are genes, and his home-brewed gene chips helped solve the SARS mystery earlier this year. Now, DeRisi has chosen malaria as his next victim. For the complete commentary, please go to Howard Lovy's NanoBot."
Didn't they also whine about that at the time?
Perhaps some observant legislator will draw a parallel between the benefits of DNA research that have already been reaped without any of the scary "uber-monster" side effects, and use that to help lift the ban on human stem cell research?
(hint hint)
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
With any luck these advances can be pointed out to those whom want to ban various froms of research in the future. Hopefully, people can come to realise that no research is "bad" or "evil", it just depends upon how the research is applied.
What we lack today is the same kind of scientific consensus-building process in ethical and policy matters. The inability of the research community to show that it cares about the moral, legal, political and social effects of its work has led to greater political scrutiny of that research, and acts such as the Executive Order limiting research into stem cells.
So, to raise the obvious question, what chance do we have for another Asilomar? Can the scientific establishment convince the public that it's not hell-bent on progress at any price, or is modern bio-science too fragmented, too much a creature of academic, corporate, and social specialization to speak with a united voice again?
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Is humanity determined by the specific genotype you happen to have now? Any more that by your fenotype? If you do a aesthetic surgery, you are changing yourself into something that you couldn't naturally be. That too would make you less human?
Changing your life habits to live longer and healthier don't make you less human. If that goal is achieved by changing your genes, would it be different? Or if you are made physically stronger so you don't need a fork lift truck to carry packages and now can do it manually, is that so important?
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
But both the uses of the research (applications) and the priorities of the research need to be moderated by moral, ethical and social concerns. In particular, I am very disturbed by the huge amount of money put into research that benefits the rich, and the lack of money put into research that benefits everyone. Medical research tends towards helping the rich more than anyone else. For example the amount of research on heart disease far outstrips the amount of research on malaria.
One book that really inspired me to question things is "In the Absense of the Sacred" by Jerry Mander. This book is more about technology than science, but it nicely demolishes the idea that technology (application of science) is neutral. Unfortunately the book is also very heavily political and does not question its own assumptions. Nevertheless, for anyone interested in these sort of questions, it is a must read. Another one is "Progress and its Problems" by Larry Laudan which is a classic in the history and philosophy of science. It takes a look at why research goes in certain directions. It is very well written and again, a must read for those interested in science in general and as it relates to politics.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Anybody willing to make a bet with me on whether more people will be killed by genetically engineered weapons than are saved by genetically engineered cures during the 21st century?
an action which has killed millions of people.
And saved many, many more in the long run. Or do you wanna live in a chemical wasteland? Also, there are alternatives for (using) DDT, as there are alternatives for most stuff the enviromentalists you so hate (while they try to pay attention to a world that's being fucked up bigtime, which might ultimately save your ungrateful ass). Its just that the megacorps and the anti-enviromentalists probably don't earn as much money from those. Do you want to know what has really killed a lot of people? Patents on drugs and medicines. Something that all "enviromentalists" I know fiercly oppose, and most megacorps (who are, as you might have guessed, anti-enviromentalist) really, really love.
I know I'll be modded down for this, since my opinion is non-libertarian. Free speech only if you're a market-loving anti-enviromentalist (American) geek.
It's because poor people can't (or won't) regulate or control their fucking reproduction (no pun) in any way. Catholics aside, most middle to upper class people I know have only one or two kids. Most poorer people I know have at least 3 kids already and they're only in their early 20s. I work with homeless single moms, I see this shit every day.
That being said, over-population will become an even bigger problem because now folks are going to get less diseases and live even longer. And of course, left-wingers would fucking freak out if the gubbamint told citizens they can't have more than 1 or 2 kids. (and yet they also freak out with companies withhold medicines...which way do you want it, huh? I think they just like to feel morally outraged)
As far as your example of heart disease goes, I fail to see the relevance. Poor people get heart disease as much as the rich, if not more. They have less healthy eating habits, and are more likely to smoke or use drugs. (This is in America mind you, where malaria doesn't happen all to often anyway) Number one killer: Heart disease. Number two: cancer. Number three: diabetes. (i think) Note that all three can be controlled or prevented to some degree with lifestyle changes, as opposed to medication.
P.S. the people that modded you as a troll are retards. You may be over-stating your case a bit, but hardly trolling.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Oh, so it's only the scary, bad scifi movie stuff that's proven, not the benefits?
I only have two questions for you: one, what is your relationship to the pharmaceutical industry? You seem to know an awful lot about us. And two, what exactly is it that you are proposing? That we forget what genetics is?
sic transit gloria mundi
They killed a perfectly good baboon (of which there are few) to temporarily prolong the life of a human infant (of which there are very many).
Freedom: "I won't!"
if it was your human infant, you may have a different concern.
Borneo is not bad science. Nor is it hype. Nor is it something that someone can claim "ooh, the big bad environmentalists did it to us!"
It's an ecology lesson, that's what it is.
For those who don't know the story, here's the short:
Yah, DDT killed mosquitos. It also raised DDT levels in caterpillars. Which raised DDT levels in geckos, making them slow and easy to catch. Which raised DDT levels in cats, which killed them. Which brought in the rats.
Which brought bubonic plague.
Which kills many more, and much worse, than malaria.
So the WHO, which sprayed DDT in the first place, parachuted cats into Borneo (hence the name of the children's book, "The Day They Parachuted Cats Into Borneo". This isn't a joke - there are about a billion resources on the Web to back this up.
So what, you might say. At least they got rid of malaria. Yah. Sure. Except afterwards, their thatched huts caved in as well, because all the geckos - which ate the caterpillars - were dead. (Plus the fish in the rivers were dead, killing the livelihood of many people there, and much more...)
The WHO made a decision because one exercise of DDT went horribly, horribly wrong. You have no idea what introducing DDT into ecosystems would do. "Ecological engineering" is one thing that we just plain do not know how to do. We're awful at it.
DDT is a very powerful killer, and it can be useful. But we are simply far too bad at ecosystem modeling to use it. We chose to not use DDT because we don't understand ecosystems, and it was a good choice. You can only look back and say "ah, if only we had used DDT, life would be happy, and rainbows would spread over all tropical regions!" Sorry - Murphy's Law would've intervened, so the WHO smartly said "look, this stuff is powerful, and we're not smart enough to use it." Good choice.
Came a bit too late for Borneo, though.
This may be offensive..but its a thought that's crossed my mind more than once:
Has anyone ever considered that man is stunting our own evolution by preventing deaths of those who normally would have died in natural selection?
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."