Chapter 13 scientific danger

Today, there is a term for criticizing science and scientists called hubris.Once you say the word, you say everything.That one word that sums up all the fears and anxieties that are in the public mind today—not only about the unbearable attitude of scientists themselves—that people think they are; Another layer of worry: There is also the belief that what science and technology are doing is going terribly wrong as the century nears its end. Hubris is a powerful word with multiple layers of powerful meaning.It comes from a very old world, but has a new life of its own, far beyond its intended boundaries.Today, it is powerful enough to condemn the inexhaustible mind of people everywhere.This attitude has led to strip mining, offshore oil drilling, DDT, food additives, supersonic transport aircraft, and those little round plastic particles that have recently been found to be clogging the Sargasso Sea. waters; this intellectual activity also conceived of the fusion and fission of atomic nuclei, making it possible to blow down and then burn cities after cities.

Now, biomedicine is catching up, and it is about to catch up with science and technology such as physical chemistry, astronomy, geography, etc., so it attracts the same criticism and uses the same derogatory term.It is said that the entire biological revolution was caused by hubris.It's the attitude of hubris that opens up the prospect of behavioral manipulation, psychiatric surgery, fetal research, heart transplantation, cloning from bits and pieces of its own extraordinary cells a politician of exceptional performance. , but also iatrogenic diseases, overpopulation and recombinant DNA.The last, the new technology that allows people to stitch the genes of one organism to the DNA of another, is held up as the epitome of hubris.It is arrogance for a person to make a bastard on his own initiative.

So we are back to that first word, from hybrid to hubris, where the sense of artificially combining two beings somehow remains.Today's conjugation is directly Greek-mythological: it is the combination of human capabilities with the prerogatives of the gods, and critics use today exactly the pretentiousness implied in the word hubris.That's what the word has grown into, a warning, a special incantation, a shorthand notation from the English language itself, which says that if man begins to do things that are left to the gods, to deify himself, the result will be It's bad, symbolically, worse for the ancient Romans than the mongrel of a male wild boar and a female domestic pig.

Therefore, being accused of hubris is an extremely serious matter, and to refute it is more than simply jeering "anti-science" and "anti-intellectual" and so on - which is what many of us in scientific research do. what people do today.Doubts about our scientific enterprise arise from the deepest human anxieties.If we are right and the critics are wrong, it can only be that the word hubris is misused; with a fundamental misunderstanding. There is, I think, a central problem to grapple with.I don't yet know how to deal with it, although I know exactly what my own answer will be.The question is this: Is there some information that leads people to know something that humans don't know anyway?Is there a forbidden zone for scientific exploration? The basis for setting this forbidden zone is not whether it can be known, but should it be known?Are there things where we should stop halfway, stop exploring, and rather not acquire some kind of knowledge, lest we or anyone else do something with that knowledge?My personal answer is a straight no.But I have to admit, this answer is a gut reaction.But I am neither willing nor trained to reason through this problem.

There have been several efforts, both in and outside of scientific circles, to bring recombinant DNA to the center of this debate.The proponents of this study were accused of sheer hubris, of usurping the rights of the gods, of arrogance and violence; what was more, they themselves confessed to making living bastards themselves.The mayor of Cambridge and the chief inspector of New York City were both advised to put an end to it immediately. The debate over whether knowledge should be off-limits, however, is quite different, although that is certainly part of the problem.The knowledge is there, and the debate is about its application to technology. DNA is already used to make some useful and interesting proteins, so how about combining it with E. coli?Is it possible to insert some wrong kind of toxin or dangerous virus, and then let the new hybrid escape the laboratory and spread outside?Could this be a technique for creating new variants of pathogens, and should it be discouraged?

If the debate is kept at this level, I don't see why it won't be resolved; reasonable people will do.We've learned a lot about dealing with dangerous microorganisms in the last century, although, I have to say, opponents of recombinant DNA research tend to downplay this large body of knowledge.There have been dangerous things of one kind or another, such as rabies virus, psittaci virus, Yersinia pestis, and typhoid bacilli, which have been handled by researchers in insurance laboratories, and only in rare cases have researchers I was infected by myself, but there is absolutely no case of causing a plague epidemic.It is a stretch of the imagination to imagine, as some theorists now insist, that new pathogens have been created, powerful and voracious, that can escape from equally safe laboratories and endanger the entire human race.

But that's the trouble with the recombinant-DNA issue: It's become an emotional one, and there have been times when both sides of the debate blew up, often out of control.The debate stopped sounding like a discussion about tech security and started to sound like something else, almost a religious dispute.Here it comes back to the central question: is there anything in science we shouldn't know? After this question mark, there will inevitably be a long series of unanswerable question marks. The leading one is to ask, first of all, should the person making the decision be the mayor of Cambridge?

Perhaps it would be better for all of us to be smart, to get out of the way, and to let the recombinant DNA thing get out of hand before it gets out of hand.If we have to fight this, let's limit it to the safety and security of the recombinants under discussion, anyway, let's have some regulations and codes to ensure public safety.No matter where, as long as these regulations or codes are stated or even implied, they must be followed.But let us leave, if possible, the question of setting off limits to human knowledge.There's so much needlework in there, it's almost impossible for us to deal with it.

Having said that, it is already evident that I have taken sides on this issue, and that my views are utterly prejudiced.That's right, that's what happened.But with some limitations.Don't think how much I support recombinant DNA.My views are not so much in favor of recombinant DNA research as in opposition to those who oppose such exploration.As a longtime researcher of infectious disease pathogens, I unceremoniously dismiss the assertion that we don't know how to prevent infections in the laboratory, much less how to prevent them from escaping and spreading outside the laboratory.I believe that we already know a great deal about these things, and have known them for a long time.Also, I think it's the opposite form of hubris to claim that humans can easily create deadly disease-causing microbes.It seems to me that it takes a long time for a microbe to become a successful pathogen by living together for a long time.Pathogenicity is, in a sense, a highly skilled trade in which only a handful of the countless microbes on Earth are involved; most go about their business, eating, going about their lives The rest of the loop.To be honest, in my opinion, pathogenicity is a biological accident, the signal is misdirected by those microorganisms, or misunderstood by the host, as in the case of endotoxin.Alternatively, the intimacy between host and microbe is so long that some form of molecular mimicry becomes possible, as in the case of diphtheria toxin.I don't believe that simply by putting together a new combination of genes, something can be created that can be like a pathogen - because a pathogen must be that way - highly skilled and adapted to life in a colony, as I am Never believed that tiny life from the moon or Mars could survive on this planet.

But, as I said, I'm not sure that's really what the argument is about.Behind it, there is another discussion that I hope we don't have to get bogged down in. Regarding natural sciences such as physical chemistry, astronomy and geography, I can't say a word.Those disciplines have come a long way in this century, by any standard.It seems to me, however, that we are too ignorant in the biological sciences and medicine to begin to judge what we should and should not learn.On the contrary, we should be grateful for the little things we can grasp, and the scope of our discussions should be much larger than today.

We have to be very careful about using the word "snoot" and make sure not to use it without a good reason.To use it in the pursuit of knowledge is to take great risks.The application of knowledge is another matter.There is indeed a great deal of hubris in our technology, but I don't think that seeking new information about nature, at any level, can be called unnatural.Indeed, if there is one attribute of human beings other than language that distinguishes them from all other beings on earth, it is their insatiable and uncontrollable quest for knowledge and the exchange of information with other members of the species driving force.If you think about it, everything we do is learning.I can't think of a human impulse more unruly than this one. However, I can think of many reasons to try to control it.First, new information about nature is likely to disturb someone.Research on recombinant DNA is disturbing enough, not only because of some of the dangers that are now being debated; but people are fundamentally startled by the fact that the genetic machinery that governs life on this planet, To be fooled so easily.We don't want to think that anything as fixed and stable as a family of species can be changed.That idea, that genes can be taken out of one genome and inserted into another, is discouraging.Classical mythology is full of hybrid beings, half-human, half-animal, or half-human, half-plant, most of which are associated with tragedy.Recombinant DNA brings back some nightmares. The easiest decision for society in such matters is to appoint an agency, or a committee, or sub-committee under an agency, to investigate the question, and to make recommendations.And the most expedient course a committee can take in the face of any process that seems to be disturbing people, or making people uncomfortable, is to recommend that it stop, at least temporarily. I can easily imagine a committee like this, made up of impeccable spectacle characters, concluding that the time is not ripe for further exploration on genetic transplantation, saying, we should put it on hold for now and confiscate it. century, and move on to something less embarrassing.Why not do some nicer science, like how to get solar energy cheaper?Or mental health? The trouble is, once the research starts, it's hard to stop it.After all, there are tons and tons of scientific research that one part or another of the public dislikes.We'll soon find out that we've created a room full of subcommittees, standing committees, etc. in Washington to honor and then control scientific research.Let me remind you that the basis for commendation or control is not the possible value and usefulness of the new knowledge, but to defend the society from the harassment of scientific arrogance and to resist some knowledge, which we are better off without. It's definitely an irresistibly fascinating way to pass the time, people have to wait in long lines to apply for membership.Just about anything is a legitimate target, and anything with a touch of genetics, research on population control, or, conversely, aging, etc., is of course off-limits prey.Few disciplines can escape, with a few exceptions, such as mental health.In this area, no one is really expecting anything significant to happen, and there is certainly nothing new or disturbing. The areas of study that run into the most trouble will be those that already contain something that confuses and surprises, and conceivably shakes up some existing dogma. It is difficult to predict what results science will produce.If it is a subject that is going well, it is impossible to make predictions.This is determined by the nature of the science business.If what is to be discovered is truly new, it is by definition not known in advance, so it is impossible to predict where a truly new line of research will lead.You don't have a choice in the matter, try to choose what you think you'll like, and turn off the clues that might cause displeasure.You either have science or you don't have science, but when you have science you have to accept slices of surprising, disturbing information, even information that makes you Information that overwhelms people and turns things upside down.That's the way it is. The only solid scientific truth I feel completely sure of is that we are terribly ignorant about nature.Really, I regard this one as the major discovery of biology in a hundred years.It's a sobering message in its own way.If heard, how little we know.How bewildering the road ahead was, it would have amazed even the brightest minds of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and breadth of ignorance that represents the most important contribution of twentieth-century science to the human mind.We are finally going to face up to that fact.Earlier, we either pretended we understood how things worked, ignored the question, or simply made up stories to fill in the gaps.Now, with honest exploration and no-nonsense research, we finally get a glimpse of how big those questions are, and how far they are from being answered.Because of this, these are difficult times for the human mind.No wonder we are depressed.Ignorance is not a very bad thing, if you are completely ignorant of the fact; the difficulty is, to know more or less clearly the reality of ignorance, and to know that some occasions are worst and occasionally others are not so bad, and yet, in There is no real light at the end of any tunnel, not even a tunnel that can really be trusted.Really tough times. But we've already started.In the scientific enterprise we should have some kind of satisfaction, even ecstasy.With the right approach, there is probably no conceivable question that cannot be answered.Even the question of consciousness will have an answer sooner or later.Of course there must be problems that we haven't thought of yet, problems that we never thought of, and therefore have limits to the capabilities of the human mind, about which we will never know, but that's another matter.Within this limited scope, if we persevere and persevere, we should be able to get all the answers through work. I have approached the question in this way, with as much assumption as I can and as much confidence as I can muster, in order to ask another, final question: Is this hubris?Is there something fundamentally unnatural, or inherently wrong, or dangerous, that makes our species so ambitious that it drives us all to achieve a full understanding of nature, including ourselves?I can't believe this statement.We are so curious, full of question marks, born with the ability to ask clear questions, and let us be willing to sit on an equal footing with other species, not to do anything to nature, and even try to cover the lids of those questions, so that, It seems to me more unnatural, more offensive to nature.Trying to pretend that we are another animal, that we don't need to satisfy our curiosity, that we can get by without exploring, researching and experimenting, that the human mind can simply claim that there are things it doesn't need to know in order to transcend its own ignorance , this is the greater danger.The way I think about it, this is the real hubris, and it endangers us all.