Slashdot Mirror
Solving Climate Change By Bioengineering Humans?
derekmead writes "Forget CFLs, hybrid cars, and organic jeans. Buying our way out of climate change — even if it's green consumption — won't get us far.
A new paper (PDF), published in Ethics, Policy, and the Environment by NYU bioethics professor S. Matthew Liao, poses an answer: engineer humans to use less. The general plan laid out by Liao is straightforward, ranging from using pharmacological behavior modification to create an aversion to meat in people, to using gene therapy to create smaller, less resource-intensive children. The philosophical and ethical questions, on the other hand, are absurdly complicated. The Atlantic also has a great interview with Liao, in which he talks about gene therapy and making humans hate the taste of meat."
It's one thing to use genetic engineering to fight disease and obvious medical problems. But using something with such dangerous potential to advance a social agenda which society can't even agree on is going way too far. It's dangerous enough to screw with Mother Nature even when the objective is crystal clear. Screwing with something as dangerous as genetic engineering and altering humans en masse is insane for an objective this murky (not to mention the fact that it would violate every university's or hospital's ethics policies in about a million ways).
First, do no harm--even if you think it's for a good cause.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
ranging from using pharmacological behavior modification to create an aversion to meat in people, to using gene therapy to create smaller, less resource-intensive children.
Pretty sure I've read this book before. Now, if I could only remember what it was called. Hmmm...
Well, no time to waste, lets go create our bold refreshed earth, now with vegetarian midgets!
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
And parents will feed kids whatever they grew up eating as well..
ITS THE CIIIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIFE
Seriously though how do you break the cycle without legislation or "Let's Move!" type enforcement?
The answer to all your problems
Okay, completely setting aside the staggering ethical issues...
Let's say we all turn into hobbit-sized vegetarians and reduce our footprint. It doesn't fricking matter. Unless we do something about our fertility, our population will still keep growing and we will still eat the rainforests, it will just take a little longer for us to do it. And that's the thing: there really is only one variable that actually matters in the long run. With the right-sized population, we can all be 12-foot-tall gorillas that only eat the prime part of the cow and discard the rest.
Not that there aren't also ethical considerations on that side too, but jesus, it just irks me when so much effort is put into managing these little inconsequential variables that, in the long term, don't change a damn thing about our global impact.
The solution offered here is an example of the class of solution it is supposedly an alternative to:
Buying bioengineered humans is certainly an example of "buying our way out of climate change", and its far more speculative in its utility than any of the forms of buying our way out of climate change it is offered as an alternative to in TFS.
Was it Oryx and Crake?
Do I need to move into the deep wilds and avoid taking vitamins?
why wouldn't you engineer humans to be less in number... o right can't use birth control.
Is there any doubt that coercion would follow, since a lot of people would refuse? The effort to perfect man into someone's ideal image has always resulted in mass death.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
super soldiers that make up the people who refused this and didn't geneticaly tamper with their children to produce smaller people decide to just take what they want from the leaf eating midgets?
The Green Leopard Plague
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Leopard_Plague
By Walter Jon Williams
Even if you did such, all that does it push back the wall some, there is still a wall there. We only have so much farmland, never mind the limits on other resources. If you really want to reduce consumption in a way that won't hit a wall you'll have to stop our population growth, and even reverse as it is pretty much too high as is. I don't think genetics are the solution there though. That's more a social issue.
The ethical concerns are only absurdly complicated when trying to justify something which is clearly unethical.
There was a sci-fi short that posited mankind colonizing other planets, but just as they had started spreading out, all the newborns were coming out "devolved" to Australopithicus. Evolution had driven the growth of intelligence and the brain to get mankind off the single vulnerable planet, but now that it had spread and was safe from a single-point disaster, evolution pointed to the efficiency of not maintaining that large energy intensive brain. Monkeybrains were quite good enough.
So that's actually the solution I propose. Monkeyboys and monkeygirls may fling feces but they don't burn petrochemicals or cause global warming.
We'll all be genetically engineered humans, probably patented by Monsanto, and will then have to pay a licensing fee to reproduce. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Instead of ideas such as making people smaller why not simply confront the fact that we need to severely restrict births. A lower population eats less meat, needs less roads and cars and allows general preservation of the environment as well as having natural land for wild life. Simply have rules that allow only the best young people to have one child in one marriage. Problem solved and no test tubes or fancy thinking need be involved at all.
Double plus good indeed.
A bioethicist advocating eugenics.
professor of philosophy and bioethics
His insights in nutritional science are likely to be as correct and relevant as /.s insights into modern interpretive dance. This was a LOL article.
Old world thinkers have just barely moved beyond the "vital force" principle in organic chem... still hung up on the differences between humans and animals being some mysterious vital force. Sorry, there's just not that much difference.
His theory seems to be he can create a bovine protein allergy. He might succeed at creating a bioengineered lupus-like autoimmune disease.
He might manage to make us allergic to hemoglobin (what could go wrong), or maybe unable to digest some essential amino acid that is in meat and also some plants... kwashiorkor here we come!
Another fun one would be cross species contamination into carnivorous species... Bye bye lions and tigers and housecats and wolves and dogs and...
You know what would be fun? Catholic mass is into the transubstantiation thing where the wafer turns into the body of christ. Unable to digest meat means unable to digest the host. Therefore catholics can't take the pill. The meat allergy pill, I mean, not the birth control pill. Although the jokes are already firing up about "eating meat". Except on Fridays during lent when you're not supposed to eat meat. Except for fish, which is a plant. This will be fun to watch.
Seriously though, it might be an interesting bioweapon. Imagine something that spreads like AIDS so religious types can blame the victim for their sex life, but it gives them fatal kwashiorkor.
Another fun one would be to build the industrial facilities to generate and package enormous quantities of some obscure non-essential amino acid, then release a plague that converts human digestive systems into having that formerly non-essential amino acid now be an essential amino acid. Then sell the food supplements to keep them alive... at a high profit of course. This is a subcategory of the old game of give new 3rd world mothers enough baby formula to supply the baby until they stop making milk, then say ha ha and charge whatever you can get out of them lest they watch their babies starve. Ha ha, its a great day to be an American isn't it....
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So, are we absolutely sure this guy isn't some good scientist gone mad? I mean the whole concept sounds like the start of a crazy bond movie plot, where the Mad Scientist gets fed up with the world's corruption and decides to make a genetically engineered army that will make the work a better place and distract the governments as he creates his G.E.N.E. Bomb that when detonated near space will forcibly convert all of the world to his ideal. "Do expect me to talk?" "No, I expect you to eat your salad Mr. Bond."
Suprised this hasn't been mention. If any thread fit that tag, this sure enough would.
How about we stop the global populating increasing at the current exponential rate? Then we can look at the minor efficiencies of all the other stuff.
While the Chinese One Child Policy may not be ideal at least it recognizes reality - too many humans creates too many problems. Note, I'm not saying the human population should be decreased (except perhaps, by natural population decline - which is exhibited in advanced countries).
Much of the catastrophic predictions of Malthusian correction are based on the current uncontrolled human population growth. If that growth can be slowed considerably, stopped, or even (naturally) reversed then there is a chance that our technologies might catch up with our consumption (eg. improved recycling, synthetic generation of some resources from our waste, etc).
Also, have you ever given up salt for an extended amount of time? You'll be amazed how much it seems like candy after the first time you try it again ( was off salt for a 3 month personal test
You cannot give up salt. You will die with no salt in your diet. Yes that is correct you will die if you don't eat enough salt. While too much salt can be detrimental, this crazy idea that salt is bad for you is just that "Crazy". I'm sure it tasted like candy because your body needed that salt. Salt helps maintain the fluid in our blood cells and is used to transmit information in our nerves and muscles. It is also used in the uptake of certain nutrients from our small intestines. Eat your salt.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
This paper is written specifically to raise a fire storm with much wailing and gnashing of teeth on all sides.
Meanwhile, Liao loves every minute of the spectacle and writes a couple of grant proposals based on it.
Sorta like when Limbaugh or Beck or Imus etc, says something outrageous specifically because he's not been the center of attention lately.
similar to the one mentioned, namely the project to dissuade humans from the taste of meat. My team works in shifts to identify common foods and cravings people may have. we have assembled around 30 meals we've identified as generally enjoyed
in the US, and after nearly a decade of extensive testing and development im proud to say we've made significant progress. Of the commonly consumed edibles we've engineered, many test subjects eat only some of the food. often times they refuse to eat certain items entirely. By changing the color and texture of the food we've ensured that even the most visibly palletable foodstuffs remain of limited interest to numerous test groups.
the project ive overseen has the potential for proven commercial success. should any reader need more information on patent licensing, design or independent consulting/partnering please feel free to contact me.
regards,
Mike Archer, President
AppleBees Restaraunts.
Good people go to bed earlier.
the sugar issue is very true, it almost becomes painful to taste. as for the salt, it's become interesting since I find different salt's have different effects on my taste buds, Kosher salt is sweet, very large flaky is sweet, table salt is bitter and too strong for me.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Unless we develop a source of energy that has all the convienances of fossil fuels and costs less we should operate under the assumption that all fossil fuels will be burned eventually. It doesn't matter how many political drawbacks you attach to fossil fuels. If burning oil is the cheapest option then someone, somewhere will continue to do so. Any resources we tie up in trying to slow down the consumption of fossil fuels will ultimately have been wasted.
We have two options when it comes to dealing with climate change. We can invest in developing a carbon neutral fuel source that costs less than fossil fuels without subsidies, or we can invest in adapting to a change that we cannot stop. Everything else is pointless politics that can only hurt us in the long run.
You may notice that many of the replies so far advocate population control* as the solution to climate change, aka anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
* Forced sterilization, mandated use of birth control and so forth.
A quick question for AGW proponents: do you want to give control over who can and cannot have children to the same people who gave you the TSA?
Yet the 1991 Honda CRX/HF still gets 72 MPG
You know, if you don't run it on crappy California reformulated gas. If you run crappy California gas, it only gets 64 MPG. Which puts it in the same ballpark as the 1991 Geo Metro convertible, which gets 64 MPG on non-crappy California reformulated gas.
Gotta keep that Chevron refinery monopoly going, they did so well by us with MTBE. Never mind that all vehicles since 1981 have Oxygen sensors, so Oxygenation of fuels does squat for pollution, unless you are driving a 1969 Ford Thunderbird or some other vehicle more than 31 years old.
PS: the US auto industry specifically came up with transverse crash testing to disallow the CRX/HF being imported into the US. Basically, they had to figure out a crash test they could pass that CRX/HF couldn't in order to kill it. Never mind that being simultaneously T-boned from two directions is unlikely as hell.
-- Terry
everyone dies at 40.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Fighting climate change is actually a very conservative position."
Bzzzzzzt! Incorrect. That is not at all "a conservative position", much less "a very conservative position". You just pulled that straw right out yer ass. A conservative position would be to acknowledge that climate has always changed, and changed radically. Then to investigate the claims that *this time* it's due to human activity instead of the mechanisms that had done it all those times in the past. *That* would be a conservative position.
"But if we can not agree on that we might have to change ourselves rapidly."
Hysteria.
They did, but somebody flagged it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."