Inject a Bit of Dinosaur in My Flu Shot, Please!

It was just announced that a new life form has been synthesized. Now humans are in the business of inventing life. Although not a true creation of life from scratch, this development is a major step in that direction. What the entrepreneur Craig Venter and his team of researchers have done is make a cell that functions as the result of a synthetic genome which was pasted together. His team has figured out how to put together a bacterial genome and transfer it between bacterium. Venter said, ""This is the first synthetic cell that's been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer."

This development has many ramifications. There is great potential for the creation of new organisms to serve specific functions, as for example, eating up oil slicks or generating fuel through organic processes. Venter says that this development is an important scientific and philosophical step. In this he is correct. He also says that "extensive bioethical review took place before the experiments were done."

This is a problem, for what ethical review has ever stopped the development of a technology once it is workable? Nuclear fission, the hydrogen bomb, cloning, and an endless string of other technological innovations are things that were developed irrespective of ethical considerations. Science is not preoccupied with ethics; it is driven to develop whatever technology is possible. There are other problems with medical and bio - ethics. Upon what philosophical ground are these fields of ethics based? On logic alone or in combination with a value system. The problem is, that in a scientific paradigm of a relativity of values, and in a secular humanistic value system, one cannot say why any particular set of values are any better than any others. Consequently, don't count on either medical or bio-ethics to come up with any substantive arguments against the development of whatever technologies scientists and entrepreneurs can think up.

These innovators may try to proceed into uncharted waters, and make sure that "science proceeds in an ethical fashion" (Venter) - and this says it all, they aren't considering whether they SHOULD be proceeding and why, they are only concerned with how. For example, a scientist may be careful not to use animal by-products in the development of a new organism, but not worry about whether it is a good idea to develop hundreds of new engineered organisms for generating fuel and what impact these organisms will have if there is a mutation creating a freakish organism when it evolves in the wild if (and when) it escapes. Letting scientists genetically engineer whatever organisms they can think up and produce without a complete understanding of life on Earth and the impacts of individual organisms and species on the whole of the web of life is like giving toddlers (without a knowledge of how to drive or even the rules of the road) the keys to Semi-trailer trucks and unleashing them in downtown New York.

As Michio Kaku says, "You cannot recall a life form"

There are many philosophical, ethical, and environmental ramifications to this development, raising questions, like:

Should we develop every technology possible?

Should there be any limits on genetic engineering?

Should there be any limits on life engineering?

Should corporations be able to own the genomes of living organisms?

Should we be able to patent whole life forms?

Should we clone extinct species, including ones like Neanderthal?

Should we make computers out of living organisms, cloned brain cells, for example?

Should corporations be able to own the human genome?

Should we be able to develop human / machine / animal hybrids?

Should we clone human body organs?

Should we be able to engineer or clone humans?

Should we be able to genetically modify children in the womb?

What do we do if there is an "accident?"

Can we control the natural mutations of engineered organisms?

And then there are the answers to the question "Why" as applied to the above....

So there are many unanswered questions regarding this new breakthrough and the whole areas of bio-engineering, bio-ethics, genetic engineering, and medical ethics. This brings up a quote by Isaac Asimov, "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

According to Ray Kurzweil, human knowledge doubles every year now. Vernor Vinge, another futurist goes on to suggest a "post-human era" - coming soon - in which computers and artificial intelligence will combine to produce super-human intelligence. With the advances in genetic engineering, cellular biology, neurology, and brain science, we may well be able, like the Borg in Star Trek, to connect to what has been called the "World Wide Mind."

So all this futuristic technology is coming at us more frequently, faster, and harder. Cloning other creatures, inventing life forms, artificial intelligence, human knowledge doubling faster and faster, super-human intelligence - all of this is a tall order to ponder. Now, why is this important to me - how does it affect the everyday individual? Well, it will. As 21st Century post-industrial, Knowledge Based societies get increasingly dependent upon science, new knowledge, and technology successful individuals will also be inextricably connected to developments in these areas. In medicine, new treatments, organ regeneration, and life extension will all be things in which everyone will be interested. Better computers, access to the best information and professional practices and tools will be critical. This all raises a few more questions as we move towards playing God with life sciences and Superman with technological prowess.

I think there is a very serious issue here concerning the "horizontal" extension of human capacities without a corresponding "vertical" expansion of being, love, wisdom, consciousness, and conscience...

Will everyone have equal access to such technology and knowledge?

If not, then who or what decides who gets access, and what do you do with the people who don't?

Also, since wisdom may be defined as good judgment, will humanity develop the wisdom necessary to use our scientific and technological potential in a just and equitable manner within in the same timeframe?

And ultimately, how do we ensure the democratization of science, technology, knowledge, and wisdom?

I think there is a very serious issue here concerning the "horizontal" extension of human capacities without a corresponding "vertical" expansion of being, love, wisdom, consciousness, and conscience. Evolution only means that things change; it does not mean that creatures or conditions "improve." Increasingly we are circumventing the forces of natural evolution through our manipulations of the environment, intelligence, the conditions of life in our societies, and life itself. For us, there is no more mechanical evolution - our future is squarely in our own hands. How we deal with that, whether we create better, more just, progressive, and equitable futures or not will depend upon the decisions we make every day in our lives from here on out. If nothing else, this all suggests an increasingly great need for philosophical dialogue concerning the future of humanity. It’s coming one way or another. We can consciously build good futures for all, haphazardly develop decent futures only for a few, or even wreck the future for everyone through conflict, biological monsters, environmental destruction, or sheer ignorance. It’s up to us.

Copyright 2010, B.E. Foley