ARTICLE: Who's Afraid Of Biotech?

[Murray Charters <mcharters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Who's Afraid Of Biotech?
By MICHAEL FUMENTO  -  editors@xxxxxxxxx
Jan. 15, 2004

Virtually everything good that you've heard about biotechnology is true. It's 
making inroads against killers such as
cancer, heart disease, and stroke. It's stopping other diseases for which until 
recently the best treatment was an
aspirin. Biotech crops will provide malnourished peoples with enough calories 
to turn them into American-sized
butterballs.

But to many, biotech has a dark side. They fear cloning humans to rip out their 
organs as replacements, turning our
offspring into ubermenschen, and distorting the whole concept of what it is to 
be human.

Happily, though, almost all of the bad about biotech would be senseless, 
scientifically impossible, or far more readily
done through alternative technologies such as bionics. Or the developments 
actually don't seem very unusual - much less
scary - when considered in a broader context.

Consider the idea of growing human clones for replacement organs, with some 
terrifying scenarios depicting headless
bodies connected to life support until the organ is required.

But already biotechnology is fabricating organs such as bladders and even 
relatively complex ones such as penises. The
immorality of murdering a human aside, why grow and sustain a whole person for 
an organ you may never need when you can
buy an individual organ "off the rack" or have it specially made for you?

Not all controversial applications of biotech lie in the realm of fantasy, 
though. A real scenario is the use of stem
cells from human embryos, which many see as violating the sanctity of human 
life. Even those who don't feel that way
must recognize that others do, and thus it leaves biotech with a black eye.

But it's often the case with biotechnology that new advances eliminate older 
problems. In the last two years, three
different US labs have found evidence that three different types of 
non-embryonic stem cells - those taken from adults,
umbilical cords, or placentas - appear to be able to mature into any cell in 
the body. Even if all three labs fail, so
many different non-embryonic stem cells have been found that can be converted 
into so many different types of mature
tissue that there should be no need for "one-size-fits-all" stem cells.

Researchers whose reputations are built on embryonic research and require 
funding to keep their labs going often insist
that non-embryonics are overrated or even worthless. But non-embryonics have 
actually been used therapeutically since
the 1980s for limited purposes such as treating leukemia, even as embryonics 
are only now moving into animal testing.

WHAT ABOUT what is called "germ-line" gene-alteration to "improve" the human 
race as a whole or at least your line of
descendants? Research will eventually allow changing such genetic attributes as 
intelligence or appearance. Johns
Hopkins University political science professor Francis Fukuyama devotes many 
pages to this in his book Our Posthuman
Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution.

But most of Fukuyama's fears have already come to pass through other 
technologies, albeit ones that cannot be passed
down genetically. Improving your child's looks is as easy as something called 
"cosmetic surgery." Improving his or her
IQ is as simple as flicking off the TV and putting away the video games.

The argument that the rich will have better access to germ-line therapy also 
falls flat; the rich have better access to
everything. For example, wealth can promote higher intelligence even as the 
child is in the womb by providing better
nourishment. After that it can be used to pay for the best pre-schools, 
schools, and tutors.

In any event, the most efficient way to create super-humans will never be with 
biotech.

The technology is inherently limited by the genes that God and nature have 
provided us. You can turn them on or off or
move them from one organism to another, but a gene can never do what it wasn't 
intended to.

But bionics, the use of implanted computer chips and electronic or 
electro-mechanical devices, has no such limits.

Bionics has already brought us "neuroprostheses" such as the cochlear implant 
that popular American talk show host Rush
Limbaugh received. First approved back in 1984, these bypass the normal hearing 
mechanism to provide artificial hearing
to deaf people. Next stop: superhuman hearing. Implanted retinal chips are 
providing limited vision to those who were
completely blind but will surely eventually bring superhuman vision.

Then there are implantable computer brain chips. These are already used to 
control the tremors of Parkinson's and the
seizures of epilepsy. But again the therapeutic will lead to the super. Already 
monkeys have been given the ability to
move a robot arm and a computer cursor with their thoughts alone. The same 
signals that enable a small arm to pick up
food could just as easily move a wrecking crane.

Chips being tested in animals will soon increase people's range of senses 
beyond hearing and seeing. Through wireless
connections such as the already-ubiquitous WiFi (80211.x ), they will allow 
invisible communication with others
directly to and from the brain and thus bypass the eyes, ears, and mouth. They 
will enable consistent and constant
access to information where and when it is needed, with no annoying pop-up ads.

Fukuyama also frets over the likelihood that biotech will allow us to live to 
be 150 and beyond; but, illustrating the
problem of a social scientist suddenly turned life science commentator, he 
speculates we will live those last 50 years
bedpan-bound and drowning in drool.

Yet of the incredible array of such therapies under development that would 
slow, stop, or even reverse aspects of
aging, all would extend not just life itself but also the period before 
decrepitude. Moreover, probably before any of
these therapies is available, biotech will have cured some of the cruelest 
diseases of aging, such as Alzheimer's.

Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, urges us to 
"resist the Siren song of the conquest" of
death. But he sets up a straw man. Even reversing aging cannot confer eternal 
life. There are organisms that appear
genetically programmed to live indefinitely, such as certain trees and turtles. 
But something catches up to them
eventually, be it a chainsaw or somebody hungry for turtle soup. Likewise, 
biotech cannot confer immortality.

But Kass is on firmer ground when he questions lifespan extension, if only 
because he does so with non-scientific
arguments. The best of them might be summarized as Why give people more years 
when they seem so intent on wasting the
ones they have, plopped in front of the tube for hours on end watching other 
people's "reality" because they don't have
one of their own? The only answer is that just as a knife that can be used for 
slicing or for stabbing, biotechnology
is a tool; nothing more. What can be accomplished with that tool is literally 
miraculous. What will be is up to us.

The writer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, is 
author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is
Changing Our World. His website is 

SOURCE:  The Jerusalem Post


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