You think Mr. Dyson proposes that we shall need to resort to cannibalism to eat? :-)

While Dyson's science fiction speculations stretch the bounds of rationality, some spectacular developments are well within reach.

Dr. John Thompson's super genes ubiquitous in all known species of plants and animals produce plants that resist heat, cold, drought, salt, poor nutrition, parasites, disease and even death itself. Delivered as drugs in animals, mice have been cured of lung cancer, septicemia, glaucoma and resisted death of heart and brain cells during heart attacks and strokes. This is not the imaginative speculations of a physicist but actual laboratory and field trial results.

Would this mean the death of present species. Actually introduction of such plants could help inhibit the ongoing extinction of species. But don't bother trying to tell that to the anti-environmentalists of Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Those Luddhites are plumb against ending the rape of Mother Earth.

Best, Terry

The lessons to date are that major extinction periods lead to rapid filling of empty niches by new species.

"Rapid" to a paleontologist is rather lengthy to a normal person. This almost sounds like Helen Chenowith's Law that stated for every species that went extinct, a new one was created.

Maybe, Tom, you have some recollection of a proposal that hamburger might be grown as a fruit on trees and we could thus be saved from butchering cows. While we're at it, we might as well have milk as the sap but then only rodeos and bullfights could save cows from extinction. I always knew God gave us rodeos and bullfights for some reason but it never occurred to me before what that reason might be.

Only Greenpeacers and Sierra Clubbers should become extinct along with Big Oil and Halliburton to save the planet.

Best, Terry

Todd -

I read Dyson's article last night, and did find it somewhat dystopian - but not in the way you did.

First of all, you've done wrong to Dyson's phrase by taking it out of context. Nothing in the article suggests that humans would wipe out all other forms of life. Even in the event of an all-out nuclear war or asteroid strike, a billion or more species of bacteria and sea-worms would survive content and undisturbed deep in the earth's crust or on the ocean floor. Dyson knows this perfectly well, and nowhere in the article does he suggest any other means or motive for wiping out all non-human species.

Here's how to understand the sentence you've taken out of context: place the stress on "other". There will be species, but they will no longer be clearly distinct from humans, at the genetic level. The article begins by describing a time before Darwinian evolution when protobacteria-like things survived by 'file-sharing' strands of DNA and other proteins with each other. During that era, the modern idea of a "species" would not have made any sense. It is only when one form of life stopped sharing with other forms that Darwinian evolution began and the concept of "species" began to apply.

Dyson's basic point is that future methods of genetic manipulation will make it possible to revive that primitive era, to a certain degree. Through artificial means, pieces of genetic material will be swapped around from species to species, thus once again making the concept of a species a problematic one. But far from suggesting that this will lead to the annihilation of all non-human species, what Dyson is predicting is an age when new varieties and breeds and permutations of forms will multiply at an exponential rate. When any ten-year old with a genetics kit can create ten or twenty new varieties or even species in an afternoon's work, some of them incorporating significant amounts of human DNA - well, clearly the notion of a human species distinct from all other forms of life will be a problematic one.

So much for the sentence in question. What took me aback was Dyson's vision of plantations of black-leaved trees that would be used as solar panels. Aesthetics are subjective and subject to change, of course, but I can't imagine a human race which would find much to admire in the sight of silicone-based, black-leaved trees; nor would I really want to be around at that time.

Cheers.

maybe man will get chlorophyll in his/her skin and start photo synthesizing.

To boldly go...

Imagine that life by "natural causes" can be eliminated by the advance of science. It has become more realistic to see the outlines of such a future and serious scientists are beginning to talk about it.

Such a future is not Paradise but more like Hell.

I asked rhetorically how it could be that Prof. Thompson's discovery of death-defying genes inherent in seemingly all known species of plant and animal life were not first discovered by Mother Nature? Would not survival of the fittest mean that the superior plants, for instance, able to thrive on marginal land in a harsh environment would quickly displace their weaker kin?

The only rational answer I can come up with is philosophical rather than scientific.

The model of the immortal one-celled amoeba happily dividing forever (not truly accurate but let that go) is not one of advancement anymore than the deadweight of past false beliefs leads ineluctably to future discovery. It takes struggle against adversity and obstacles (adaptation) to survive and advance.

Not a complete answer nor even a very good one but it is all I can come up with for some comfort for the end that looms for all of us. It would be so much nicer to believe in the mythology of Paradise. :-)

Best, Terry

Let me know when Radio Shack starts carrying these kits.

It's sort of a waste of time anyhow to predict what theories or discoveries will be made. At least it's not science. That's what sometimes bothers me about string theory, not that it may or may not be testable, but that for all the fine achievements thus far in proofs of consistency and of how it could correspond with existing theories, it's still less a theory than a promise that we'll get a theory.

Anyhow, I like to cut Dyson a break because he's one of the greatest living physicists, because he could well have earned the Nobel prize but for the rule that only up to three can share in it, and because he's a wonderful writer. His Disturbing the Universe, with its memories of Oppenheimer's torment in building the bomb, is marvellous. And his proof that the versions of quantum electrodynamics were coherent is a great achievement.

Still, take the speculation in contemporary biology of an elder statesman in physics who did his great work more than 50 years ago with a grain of salt. In fact, now people are already drawing back from the fears of how quickly some viruses will cross species. The Institute was founded to free great minds from the burdens of earning a living, but in practice it's often a place for people no longer on the cutting edge to retire comfortably. So it goes. Maybe my genes will swap with my cat's, but that just shows we both already whine too much when we get up in the morning.

Oh, and count me among those who cringes every time I see Todd's photo posing as Uncle Duke.  

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

While I certainly do have my fears of the Monsantos of the world, I also fear the tool bench genetic hobbyist in Idaho, the black market genetic hustler in Lagos, the dabbling genetic Avon lady in Darien and little Jimmy with his smokin’ genetic erector set in the basement. I can’t imagine why Dyson is so enchanted and excited by this prospect of the unrestricted broad distribution and radical decentralization of genetic power, any more than I could grasp why one should be enthused about everyone in the world having his own fission reactor or nerve gas kit.

He predicts:

Domesticated biotechnology, once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations prefer. New lineages will proliferate to replace those that monoculture farming and deforestation have destroyed. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art form as creative as painting or sculpture.

Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but a great many will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora. The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others. The dangers of biotechnology are real and serious.

Ah yes, “rules and regulations’ indeed. Yet somehow, I have trouble believing that a technology that is unregulated to the degree that a grade-schooler can hatch a home-made dinosaur from an egg can at the same time be effectively enough regulated to prevent a pimply genetic hacker and prankster from engineering a rapidly reproducing mating pair of inedible super-fish that, say, feed on and quickly displace every species of food fish in Lake Superior.

And how charming it will be when the kiddies and crafties are able to create whole new species of brightly colored critters, each capable of experiencing heretofore unimagined degrees of agony, disorientation, confusion and depression – before they are incinerated or flushed down the toilet. “Yes, it was good what you did with that gopher, Anthony; it was real good!”

What’s most missing in Dyson’s speculative forecasting is any sense that people have the right to choose, collectively and democratically, what sort of future they want to live in. Instead, Dyson is attracted to the old model of undemocratic and weakly regulated laissez faire sci-tech entrepreneurialism, with its absurd and inordinate faith in invisible hands and “emergent order” taking care of everything; where a few spunky, creative individuals call the world’s tune; and where each individual economic agent is free to develop and hawk techno-wares that produce massive externalities affecting people who were not party to the exchange, and that even alter the structure of society. Of course any other way of socially organizing scientific research and technological innovations else would be an intolerable infringement on the precious freedom of scientists like Dyson.

Dyson imagines a nightmarish genetic phantasmagoria in which all the environments, ecosystems, habitats and communities of creatures that give meaning to our lives are continually stripped away and replaced in a new, accelerated evolutionary flux, with each new species and biological innovation as transient as it is meaningless. You loved suburban sprawl? Wait until you get a load of genetic sprawl. I was looking for some sign in Dyson’s piece of bitter irony, or submerged horror – something like a warning. But it appears he is actually drawn to this vision.

Dyson perhaps moves in that high-tech geneticist circle where each new manifestation of bioinsanity and giddy technological opportunism is indulged and reactively defended, and where every trace of concern and restraint is treated with anti-Luddite contempt. In this circle, there is no end to the wonder over “life” as a physical, biochemical process, but somewhat less respect for living things.

It is rather depressing that while so many people have worked so hard on preserving species, restoring and protecting our environments, putting the brakes on climate change and promoting sustainability, there are others who seem positively eager for the brave new world of psychedelic, man-made evolutionary change where the entire biosphere is thoroughly overhauled, regularly and fantastically, and all of life is ultimately transformed into a collection of tools for the satisfaction of human desire.

It is rather depressing that while so many people have worked so hard on preserving species, restoring and protecting our environments, putting the brakes on climate change and promoting sustainability, there are others who seem positively eager for the brave new world of psychedelic, man-made evolutionary change where the entire biosphere is thoroughly overhauled, regularly and fantastically, and all of life is ultimately transformed into a collection of tools for the satisfaction of human desire.

Not to worry. While the species-hating Al Gores will disappear in the twinkling of an eye, Mother Nature knows how to endure and adapt even if she can't bring all her children into the future.

No matter what terrors might be unleashed on the world, no simple mortal has figured out how to provide his creations with the survivability that only one ancient lady with many millions of years to work with imparts.

Even those dunces building nuclear power plants to poison the earth for millenia "for the environment" have limited powers.

There are vastly more fools than prophets predicting the future.

Best, Terry

You make me reflect, and that is a good thing. While genetic engineering techniques weren't available to me when I started doing microbiology, in my basement lab, in the early sixties. Among the ironies is that my mother wouldn't let me use the washing machine across from my bench, "because you could hurt yourself", but I had tentatively identified pathogens before I needed to shave. By my senior year of high school, the identifications were firm.

Luckily, I got a bit of professional mentoring, and I was rather careful to research anything I did. Still, I probably was lucky.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

I have to ask you, what have any of these other species ever done for us?

Most of them aren't even American.

I say we get rid of them.

You are so right.

Rosie is a German Shepherd. How can you get more unAmerican than German?

Rosie is our fearless guard dog who hides under my desk when there is lightning and hunting around here. Rosie is afraid of God throwing thunderbolts at her while Bush is speaking to Him. Cheney could be one of the hunters firing away. He is even more scary. The only people Rosie has ever scared were some Jehovah's Witnesses. Put the fear of God in them I tell you. If Rosie had put the fear of Cheney in them, we might have had to bury them in our driveway.

Not looking good for you, Rosie. Man doesn't need best friends.

Best, Terry