OPINION
OPINION
Ever since the dawn of time man has played with 'fire'. He has experimented. He has learned but there has often been a price to pay during this learning phase. The cost might have been be an arm, a limb, or even a life.
This 'price of learning', (or the 'price of ignorance' if you prefer), has persisted right through the course of human discoveries and into modern times: A brother in the case of TNT; Cancers produced before X-rays were discovered to be harmful.
In fact, as the discoveries become greater, their potential danger has increased too. Poorly understood drugs kill or maim 100s, radioactive materials kill or maim 1,000s.
It is my opinion that at some stage the price of discovery will become greater than the eventual benefit to mankind. However this is a belief that scientists would find very difficult to agree with for it entails placing an artificial break on their definition of progress.
I argue that we should not attempt to thwart the progress of our understanding for it is within our genes to learn. However, it is my opinion that the days of experimental science are numbered. The experiments will become too dangerous.
All through time we have cheated when it comes to scientific understanding. Instead of working things from scratch, we perform intelligently led experiments. In the worse case we throw intellect out of the window and use brute force: in field of biology this leads to the 'break every part of an organism in turn, and study the consequences' method of coming to an understanding; in physics, when the paperwork is tiresome, far better to go and smash protons into each other at 1,000,000 m/s.
These are short cuts to the truth and there is a price to pay for them. The biological example has created objections from animal welfare groups, (and lets face it they have a point). In terms of the physics example, one would be totally correct, if one told a nuclear scientist that he did not really understand what he was doing: since that is the very reason he did the experiment.
The trouble is, that the experiments are getting more and more dangerous, and yet scientists have not changed their methodology to reflect this fact. It would truly be a shame if two protons colliding together at 1,000,000 m/s actually resulted in a 'singularity' being produced inside the accelerator and the entire solar system was destroyed. I am trying to remind you that when you experiment, you do so out of ignorance and as such you will make mistakes.
You can blow your own arm off if you want but I want you to ask me, before you test your nuclear bombs, (even if you are doing it on the other side of the world).
What is needed in the scientific community, is a governing body from the outside, to monitor and prevent dangerous experiments from taking place, until the result has been worked out, yes, worked out before hand on paper. I am sorry, but scientists have been allowed to take the 'short-cut' of morally, and technically doubtful experiments for too long. Do the work. Don't expect to be able to pay the price for every mistake you make.
The reason that an outside body would be required is merely the fact that scientists are too close to their own work. They fail to comprehend their studies in the wider perspective. This is simply due to the fact that discovery is the whole aim of science, and you will need a very strong governing body to be able to contain them.
Anyhow, why am I saying this now? And why is this page entitled, 'Genetics'? To put it briefly, in my opinion we have already gone far too far, using short-cut science, much further than I, and also the countless victims of science would wish. However, now, we are entering a new and entirely different league: Genetics, and in particular the idea that we might start to tamper with the human genome.
This truly is another level. I believe that this society is politically, socially, intellectually and morally incapable of tampering with our greatest gift. Do I really need to state that our DNA has been built up over millions and millions of years? This is not some primitive binary computer language. This is a living, changing, 3 dimensional (in action), ultra parallel program, Hah! Even our computing terms are to primitive to describe its form.
And yet, the level of discussion within society stubbornly remains at a nadir, where questions such as "Should we be able to choose the sex of our baby?", actually need to be discussed, instead of being thrown out, and branded 'environmental suicide' like they will be. A society which allows the 'patenting' of mouse DNA will destroy us all, for by assigning a 'value' to DNA, ordered and considered thought will be thrown out in favour of reckless profiteering.
We are, as yet, too immature to alter nature's most beautiful form. I urge scientists, not to give up their study, never that, but to stop using the 'short-cut' methodology of experimentation. Think, use your brain, solve the riddles, rather than crossing off all the failed answers. The consequences of our actions at this time, could destroy every single strand of DNA on this planet.
Who knows? Maybe that one piece of altered mouse DNA will actually turn out to be a deadly, time delayed virus, and the 'patent' held on it, will simply serve as our tombstone.
FEEDBACK:
On March 10 2000 Paul Miller wrote:
Interesting page, but you're missing the point
about experimentation. It's completely wrong
to say that experimentation is the result of a failed
deductive process - the most important experimental
results are those we could never have deduced. For
example, relativity and quantum mechanics arise
from the need to explain some very surprising
experimental results - the Michelson-Morley
experiment for relativity (in which we failed to
measure the velocity of the earth through the 'ether'),
and the two slits experiment for quantum mechanics. It
would be very difficult for you to claim that we
could somehow have proven these results without experiment.
The whole point of the scientific method *is* the
power of experimentation - we are often in the
situation where we cannot guess from first principles what
phenomena will actually arise. There are some interesting
connections between this, and Godels results on the
completeness of deductive systems - Godel showed that
there are truths about the world which cannot be reached
through deduction from a set of axioms.
The genetics issue is much more complex than this,
partly because the experimental results are so much
less clear. To talk of a 'gene for X' is to pretend
that the developmental process is a simple one; in
reality, is it extremely complex and ill-understood.
I agree that genetic research is dangerous, and could
have devastating consequences, but don't use the
same reasoning to trash the whole of experimental science.
While it is true that a description of a system cannot be complete without observational data, it is also the case (according to quantum theory), that the accumulation of that observational data will wreck the completeness of a description.
Thus, while I accept your reference to Godel to prove that one cannot intellectually deduce all the properties of a system from first principles, you have to accept in return that experimental science as a complete solution is likewise flawed.
The only solution we have therefore is to minimise the undesired effects of our experiments - in short to make them as passive and as few in number as possible wherever there is a potential danger, or wherever the description would be compromised by the act of observation. Compare this with the 'suck it and see' attitude of modern day experimental science (esp Biological sciences).
James/.
Please tell me what you thought...
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