Inching Closer to Frankenstein's Monster Unless...
In Mary Shelly’s
famous 1818 story, Frankenstein’s Monster,
how the monster is created is left hazy, “an ambiguous
method consisting of chemistry and alchemy”. Today, with our understanding
of DNA, our ability to clone, to write custom-DNA and then to make it come
alive by growing it in the womb of an existing species, we are much further
down that road (Saving grace so far? The custom DNA still needs to be grown
inside the womb of an existing species, which puts constraints on how different
it can be from the mother).
With great power
comes great responsibility. But biology seems to operating the way Dr.Ian Malcolm
lamented in Jurassic Park:
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with
whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
A recent example
of this was when David Evans in Canada resurrected a virus called horsepox
using genetic material they ordered from a company that synthesizes DNA.
Harmless though it is to humans, it a close cousin to smallpox. What if
smallpox were similarly created and released, by malice or by accident?
Each such incident
leads to the same debate. Isn’t it dangerous that horsepox was resurrected by a
handful before the rest of the world
even knew that it was in the works? No, it still took years to get to horsepox.
But won’t the publication of this information accelerate the next cycle?
Possibly, but the tech isn’t that
easy. But what if the tech gets better, easier and cheaper with time? Shouldn’t
there be checks on what can be synthesized? Ok, but given how intertwined life
is, can anyone be sure that something “certified” as harmless won’t interact
and mutate to a monster later on? Sure, but if we don’t do it, someone else
will, right? Oh c’mon, only kids use that argument. And round and round we go…
Ed Yong sums
up the current situation perfectly:
“The problem is that scientists are not
trained to reliably anticipate the consequences of their work. They need
counsel from ethicists, medical historians, sociologists, and community
representatives—but these groups are often left out from the committees that
currently oversee dual-use research.”
Further:
“There’s a tendency for researchers to view
ethicists and institutional reviewers as yet more red tape, or as the source of
unnecessary restrictions that will stifle progress.”
In fact, Calvin
and Hobbes had this exact same argument:
If Bill Watterson
saw this day coming, and yet we didn’t setup mechanisms and systems as checks,
does it mean we are doomed? Or will we devise a framework now? After all, every
country doesn’t have a nuke today, nor has mankind obliterated the planet with
nukes… so perhaps there is hope after all.
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