Genetically Modified Organisms
Monday, March 29, 2010 at 04:00PM This is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Our Tragic Flaw:
Technical innovation is the special genius of the human animal. We naturally prefer, therefore, to innovate first and ask questions later. Once the technical innovation has begun, however, we become invested in those pathways, either because of pride in the achievement itself or because of some seductive economic benefit. Especially with money on the table, we find it difficult to pause and give real consideration to the host of ethical conundrums that a new technology or process triggers. In the end, innovation almost always trumps its antitheses: the impulse to preserve simplicity, an aesthetic principle, or some spiritual value — which seem like inadequate, even silly, reasons to block the glorious march of progress.
Genetic engineering offers a stunning example of this phenomenon in modern life. Genetic engineering is fraught with enormous risk, poses myriad ethical issues, and dangles before some of us tantalizing visions of a better (and wealthier) future. The science has already progressed far ahead of our capacity to reach any kind of consensus on the many thorny ethical questions posed by this technology. And many proprietary claims have already been staked by those who expect to realize enormous wealth from this area of technological innovation. Because so much money is involved, governments have been recruited to the cause, pouring dollars and legal resources into the biotech industry. So, as ever, the twin forces of time and money are powerfully arrayed along a vector running directly opposite the flow of thoughtful consideration, ethical reflection, and wisdom.
The chief reasons marshaled in defense of this new field of innovation are the potential to cure disease and to feed the world. Both of these, of course, are excellent reasons to pursue knowledge. But both reasons entail unacknowledged complexities that taint their initial glow; moreover, both completely fail to address the host of issues raised by the specific configuration of technologies and their supporting infrastructure of laws, policies, and practices. In short, though the curing of disease and the feeding of the world seem like totally benign and peaceful aspirations, the logic of violence is very much at work in the politics and economics of the emerging field of genetic engineering.
It seems entirely uncontroversial to suggest that curing disease is an unalloyed good. We can easily understand how the person who has a disease, who loves someone who does, or who may contract it someday would think it purely good to cure that disease. Certainly no one yearns wistfully for the diseases that have been cured, or at least largely contained, in the West, such as polio, tuberculosis, and so on. The medical holy grail of effectively eradicating all human disease now seems to lie within reach, as the collective genome of life on Earth is gradually mapped and examined in detail. Indeed, it seems increasingly plausible that we will eventually be able to slow the aging process dramatically, by impeding the built-in obsolescence features in the genetic structure of human cells. Thus, average human lifespan, which has already doubled in the global North over the last century (mostly by addressing infant mortality and common diseases), could eventually double again. Living well past one hundred years might soon become the norm.
This all seems like tremendously good news. Yet, it proves problematic on a large scale over the long term. Eradicating most diseases in addition to extending the natural aging process can have only one net effect — a dramatically larger human population. From a carrying capacity perspective — a logic that is admittedly cold and merciless but nonetheless critical — a much longer-living population mathematically reduces the capacity of the planet to support our lifestyle. Thus, more people would have to share the resources of a finite planet, likely exerting a downward pressure on average consumption and standard of living. Moreover — if, as I have suggested, the Earth is already at or past its capacity to support the present population — an increase in average lifespan greatly increases the likelihood of a sharp downward spiral in the abundance of natural systems, and therefore a dramatically lower human population in the future.
In effect, therefore, beyond some critical threshold, we gain increases in average lifespan in the short term at the direct expense of average lifespan in the future. Also, it’s likely in a world of diminishing abundance that short term gains in average lifespan among the world’s well-to-do will accrue only at the direct expense of the world’s poor. So we see that even the innocent claim that genetic engineering seeks to cure disease and slow the aging process is far more problematic than generally assumed.
The mantra of agribusiness that it yearns to “feed the world” is similarly fraught with difficulties masked by heroic language. The counter-argument most often deployed against the “feed the world” line, that there is plenty of food in the world already and the problem lies in its distribution, has considerable merit at the moment. But as the human population reaches nine billion or more, and as the natural abundance of the global ecosystem becomes increasingly stressed and continues to degrade, this particular counterargument loses its potency. A deeper critique remains. Agribusiness proposes to address the problem of hunger with a global corporate solution that itself involves catastrophic ecological damage, not least because it entails the systematic eradication of hundreds of years of accumulated indigenous knowledge about local crops and agricultural methods. I am arguing that a corporation’s claim to feed the world is intrinsically spurious, for the world must feed itself — locally and indigenously.
The agribusiness claim is also dishonest. The public posture of Monsanto and other agribusiness giants exudes a total disregard for public safety, the small farmer, indigenous peoples, the poor, and non-Western cultural norms. These megacorporations have made it obvious that they are playing power politics and aim to win at virtually any cost. They have worked assiduously to cut off any thoughtful discussion of the ethical dimensions of patenting genes, of legally restricting the ancient practice of saving seeds, of distributing poorly tested genetically modified materials into our soils and waterways, not to mention the global food system, or of the problematics of mechanized monoculture farming. They have successfully blocked, at least in the United States where they enjoy unfettered access to the halls of power, even the labeling of genetically modified foods in our supermarkets — as if the public has no right to know even if it wants to. Few industries, even today, rival these agribusinesses for the audacity and arrogance of their pursuit of profit. This posture does little to engender trust that they will apply any wisdom whatsoever to sensitive ethical concerns, which happen to be especially urgent in their field, or even that they will tolerate the intrusiveness of wisdom from any quarter if they can possibly prevent it.
The doomsday scenario in genetic engineering involves the possibility that some genetic experiment might escape into the general ecosystem, or that a poorly vetted genetically modified organism might be intentionally released, which then replicates quickly and broadly with disastrous effects on the global food chain, thus threatening human survival. Millions of genetically engineered organisms are currently under development, exist in a lab somewhere, and are being examined for their properties. Despite this study, rarely can scientists predict with any accuracy what might happen if those genetic materials were to run amuck in the outside world.
To make matters worse, we have learned that genetic pollution occurs easily in nature. Genetically modified super-plants grown in fields predictably leach their genetic superiority to neighboring weeds, which then become, of course, super-weeds. This suggests the chastening general principle that genetic materials intended for a particular purpose in the environment will likely leach out in unintended ways, with unintended effects.
Like other doomsday scenarios already considered, it’s unlikely that a genetic disaster sufficiently serious to imperil human survival will occur. But current trends suggest that this probability will continue to increase as more and more genetically modified materials are developed and deployed in the environment, and as our understanding of genes enables us to manipulate living systems more and more powerfully. Similarly, the chances that this knowledge will be harnessed by malevolent interests also increase. Hence, I think it reasonable to suggest that the chances of this doomsday scenario, like the others we have already seen, don’t merely increase over time but accelerate.
Some might hope that our growing knowledge will serve mainly to enhance our ability to manage genetic materials more safely. I submit, however, that a general trend of history will likely continue to hold, just as it has done over the past two centuries: advances in safety progress more slowly than advances in technological innovation. Not only does safety tend to lag well behind innovation, but lagging even further behind is something of even greater importance: ethical consensus. This unnerving trend directly indicates the presence of the logic of violence deep in the marrow of our culture.
Like the other scenarios we have considered, perilous trends will continue to accelerate and proliferate as long as the logic of violence remains dominant in our minds and in society. While technology would undoubtedly continue to advance in a nonviolent world, I will argue that it would do so within a radically different motivational milieu, trending strongly in the direction of benefit to the many over the long term. The statistical direction of such trends would therefore consistently diminish, rather than enhance, the probability of self-induced collapse.
