If the hype is true, then within ten years there will be viable, new life-forms existing that were entirely created by humans: we have no way of predicting what will happen after that. Genetic modification is merely the start of an experiment that has one clear Endgame — the ability to create new life-forms at will, to serve whatever purpose the creators (or rather, the creators’ employers) deem necessary in the name of “progress”. Keith Farnish summarises the situation like this:
Some futuristic pipe dream, you may think. Think again: synthetic biology is real and it is being created at a university, government or corporate research laboratory near you. At this level of work biology, technology and chemistry fuse to provide the means to create the building blocks of life from scratch or make modifications to living things that would have been impossible 20 years ago. A glance at one web site, used by many researchers as a hub for information, reveals a host of tools, methods, protocols and systems that would be far more at home in a computer programmer’s library; and essentially, that’s what it is – a library of tools for reprogramming life. Fancy a new strain of E. Coli, yeasts with artificial chromosomes or perhaps a faster growing mouse cell? You can find instructions for creating these right now, on the Internet. Downloading such “recipes” from the web is perfectly legal, yet were the same web site to host information assisting conventional “terrorist” activities like taking out an electrical grid infrastructure, it would almost certainly be shut down.
It seems that it is not enough for industrial society to change the planet in the course of pursuing the dream of infinite growth and the total ownership of all humanity and all other life on Earth; there is always more in this insatiable appetite for domination, even if it means playing God and lining up innumerable Pandoras Boxes with the lids barely shut, and access granted to anyone who wants to play with nature. Yet we see glee in the pages of the scientific journals, as we keep “progressing” towards some new goal:
Around the world, several labs are drawing close to the threshold of a second genesis, an achievement that some would call one of the most profound scientific breakthroughs of all time. David Deamer, a biochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been saying that scientists would create synthetic life in “five or 10 years” for three decades, but finally he might actually be right. “The momentum is building,” he says. “We’re knocking at the door.”
A synthetic, made-to-order living system might even serve as a self-maintaining, self-improving, adaptable assembly line for producing everything from pharmaceuticals to petrochemicals.
And there you have the key argument for all this tinkering and reprogramming: it is to benefit the economic system, increase profits, develop more “solutions” that we become dependent upon and, as always, ignore the negative consequences, blinded by the desire for “progress”.
But what of progress itself? Ronald Wright has this to say:
Change is not in our interest. Our only rational policy is not to risk provoking it.
The scientists in the pay of the industrial machine attempt to trump rationality with the lie that all progress is for the better, that without progress then we fail as a species. They say: “Producing synthetic life would be an achievement comparable to finding alien life on other planets.” We say: “Bullshit. It would be comparable to destroying any life we find on other planets: such is our inculcated fear of accepting things as they are.”
The dream of synthetic life is not fulfilled yet, and some may hope that it is never fulfilled such that it threatens the biosphere still further – don’t hope! If you just hope this doesn’t happen then you are as culpable as someone who is ignorant of these dangerous experiments — more so, because you knew, yet chose not to do anything about it. Consider yourself informed: now go and stop the experiments, in any way you can, before they have a chance to break out of the laboratory.
The implications of this are really scary and dangerous. Can you imagine what would have happened if Hitler had this technology or what will happen if it falls into the wrong hands, which it inevitably will, in our time?
Stopping progress is irresponsible. This kind of progress could even be the catalyst for us “growing up” anyway.
And I don’t believe this is all about money, mankind will always push forward.
http://superconcepts.blogspot.com/2008/11/technology-will-it-set-us-free.html
http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2009/03/adapt-or-collapse.html
Progress? I think you should read the whole of A Short History Of Progress, Stu, but if you don’t feel like that then look at it from this point of view: What was the motivation for Monsanto to create glyphosate resistant plants – was it to feed the world, or make money? What was the reason to develop nuclear power – was it as a carbon-free form of energy or a by-product of weapons plutonium production? What was the reason for sending a man to the moon – was it to allow a wider view of the world from space or to show which side was more powerful in the Cold War?
Side-effects, all of them, however the “goods” pan out. The primary motivation for “progress” in *Industrial Civilization* is to perpetuate the system of domination over nature, of the rich over the poor, of the powerful over the meek, of those with missiles over those with guns over those with blowpipes and spears.
If this is progress, then we had better find another word for positive human endeavour.