by David Suzuki
Of a more serious nature is the proposal to build a space-based missile defense system reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars. Now deprived of an Evil Empire, the Soviet Union, to justify such a costly boondoggle, Bush is left pointing to an Axis of Evil that may include North Korea, Cuba, and who knows who else among this terrifying group—Libya's three million people? Grenada?
The dangers posed by nuclear-tipped missiles are their speed, accuracy, and destructive power. Armed with multiple, independently targeted warheads, such weapons might be loaded with reflective materials to confuse radar. A defence system would have to pick up a missile immediately after it is launched to maximize the time window in which to respond. Computers would have to identify the missile correctly and not mistake commercial planes, flocks of ducks, or UFOs for the missile. The trajectory, probable target, and payload would have to be analyzed very rapidly to respond in time to knock down the attacking vehicle before it reached the United States (chances are this scenario would be played out over Canada).
Now here's the rub. Someone—a human being—is going to have to recognize the implications of what the entire system has detected and spat out: namely, that one or dozens of missiles are headed to the United States. If I were going to launch such an attack, I would do it at an inconvenient hour, like 3:00 am on New Year's Day or after the Super Bowl. Some poor military person sitting in a silo somewhere in the Midwest, quietly playing a computer game or more likely napping, would have to notice what's going on and calmly assess the information and immediately pass it up the line. Assuming his or her superior was available, awake, and alert, he or she would have to assess the material and pass it on until eventually someone would have to go and wake the president so that he could push the red button or put in a key or whatever it takes to release the defensive weapons.
Can we assume all of the assessment and decision making would take place in seconds as it was passed up the chain of command and that finally someone somehow would enter, knock, blow a whistle, or do something else to wake the president? Can we assume the president would be fully awake instantly, able to assess the information lucidly and with care, ponder the consequences of not acting or responding, and not be distracted by thoughts of the country, his loved ones, or the stock market? Would he become sick or, as we saw him do in Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 after Bush received the news that two jetliners had crashed into the Twin Towers in New York in 2001—sit there for several minutes with a totally blank look? I know I would.
With a response-time window of minutes, even with the most efficient system the pressures would be too great for any human being to respond rationally. So if one believes in the technology, it has to be programmed to assess what is happening as each second ticks by, measure the effective time for response, and then decide when that critical moment is reached and order a response without interference by fallible humans.
The technology required to detect and respond to any possible threat—space satellites with sophisticated detectors and systems to relay information to ground stations, underground command centers, missiles in silos, and so on—is enormously complex. I do not believe for a minute that such a vast array of components will function perfectly from the time it is in place (my smoke detector didn't work the one time it was needed), but the only time we will know will be the first occasion it is put to the test. To function properly, the entire system will depend on the speed and accuracy of the supercomputers that are at the heart of the defense program. The computer program required to analyze all of the data will be more complex than any software ever designed, because every possible contingency has to be anticipated and programmed for without countermanding or interfering with different sets of instructions.
We know that any new program has numerous “bugs,” and the only way to eliminate them is through thousands of people beginning to use it and finding them. Can a program be designed to respond to an attack without being tested by the real thing? It will have to be perfect the first time, something scientists not working for the military or receiving grants from the military tell us is virtually impossible. Only a scientifically literate president can even begin to truly assess the technical aspects of the proposed system.
SINCE I WROTE Metamorphosis, I have abandoned the doing of genetics, which had consumed me for a quarter of a century. In the 1970s, when geneticists began to learn to isolate and manipulate DNA in very sophisticated ways, it was immediately obvious there were enormous social, economic, and ecological implications. For decades writers, philosophers, and geneticists had been speculating about genetic engineering and discussing the potential ramifications of such powers. I never dreamed that within my lifetime, not only would the entire dictionary of sixty-four three-letter DNA words be deciphered, but we would also be able to purify, read, and synthesize specific sequences of DNA and insert them into virtually any organism at will. The day of human-designed organisms was at hand.
I knew there would be tremendous repercussions. Having belatedly recognized the dangers that our inventiveness posed from the battles over the insecticide DDT and then CFCs, I felt genetic engineering would encounter the same problems—our manipulative powers were great, but our knowledge of how the world works is so limited that we would not be able to anticipate all of the consequences in the real world. In my view, we had to be very cautious.
But there was tremendous pressure in my lab to begin working with the new technologies of DNA manipulation, because the techniques were so powerful that they had become molecular equivalents of a microscope, an indispensable tool for virtually every kind of genetic study. However, if my lab began to exploit these new technologies, I would have a strong vested interest in defending their continued use and ultimately application. Wouldn't this make me just like a scientist working for the tobacco industry, someone with a perspective and motivation that bias the way he or she carries out tests, interprets results, and draws conclusions? I had achieved far more in science than I ever dreamed. I hadn't set out to win honors or prizes or make a fortune; I only ever wanted the acknowledgment of my scientific cleverness by my peers.
As a result of the grotesque misapplication of a genetic rationale during the early part of the twentieth century in the eugenics movement, and in the Japanese Canadian evacuation, and then in the Holocaust, I knew a debate about genetic engineering had to be engaged and I wanted to participate in it with credibility. So I began to write a series of disclaimers, stating my intent not to become involved in such research, even though it was perhaps one of the most exciting moments in the history of genetics. That made it all the more imperative that some people with a background in genetics be able to enter the discussion without a stake in the technology.
Nevertheless, I continue to take vicarious delight in the enormous technical dexterity of today's molecular geneticist and revel in seeing answers to biological questions I never thought would be resolved in my lifetime. I watched my daughter carrying out experiments in undergraduate labs that were unthinkable when I graduated with a PhD. It is no wonder geneticists are exhilarated—indeed, intoxicated with excitement. But the rush to exploit this new area as biotechnology has me deeply disturbed.
I am equally distressed at the rush of my peers and colleagues in genetics to tout the potential benefits of this powerful technology with virtually no consideration of the hazards. Like scientists employed by the tobacco, fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and forest industries, geneticists who set up companies, serve on boards, receive grants, or carry out experiments using the new techniques have a commitment to the technology that biases their pronouncements. As issues of cloning, stem cells, and release of genetically engineered organisms in the wild continue to crop up, there is a dearth of scientists trained in genetics who don't have a stake in the technology. Those few of us who are out there are often dismissed as has-beens who don't know what's going on. In their exuberance about the astonishing advances being made, scientists have expu
nged the history of their field and speak only of the enormous potential benefits of their work while dismissing the equally plausible hazards.
I have long agonized over the misapplication of genetics in the past, from the ludicrous claims of eugenics to prohibitions on interracial marriage, restrictions on immigration of ethnic groups, claims of racial inferiority, the supposed racial affinity of Japanese Canadians, and the Holocaust. Because of that, I wrote a series of columns that led to my eventual withdrawal from research to maintain my credibility in the discussions about the implications. In Science Forum in 1977, I wrote:
For young scientists who are under enormous pressure to publish to secure a faculty position, tenure or promotion, and for established scientists with “Nobelitis”, the siren's call of recombinant DNA is irresistible . . . In my own laboratory, there is now considerable pressure to clone Drosophila DNA sequences in E. coli . . . My students and postdocs take experiments and techniques for granted that were undreamed of five or ten years ago. We feel that we're on the verge of really understanding the arrangement, structure and regulation of genes in chromosomes. In this climate of enthusiasm and excitement, scientists are finding the debate over regulation and longterm implications of recombinant DNA a frustrating roadblock to getting on with the research.
I concluded that I wanted to participate in the debate about the implications of genetic work and that if I did, I could not also be involved in research using the revolutionary techniques. I continued:
Can the important questions be addressed objectively when one has such high stakes in continuing the work? I doubt it. Therefore I feel compelled to take the position that . . . no such experiments [on recombinant DNA] will be done in my lab; reports of such experiments will not acknowledge support by money from my grants; and I will not knowingly be listed as an author of a paper involving recombinant DNA.
As a geneticist, I believe there will be monumental discoveries and applications to come. But I also know that it is far too early and that the driving force behind the explosion in biotechnology is money. I graduated as a fully licensed geneticist in 1961 and was arrogant, ambitious, and filled with a desire to make my name. We knew about DNA, and the genetic code was just breaking; it was a delirious moment in science and we were hot. But today when I tell students about the hottest molecular ideas in 1961, they laugh in disbelief because forty years later, those ideas seem ridiculously far from the mark.
Those same students seem shocked when I suggest that when they are professors twenty years from now, today's hottest ideas will seem just as far off the mark. The nature of any cutting-edge science is that most of our current ideas are wrong. That's not a denigration of science; it is the way science progresses. In a new area, we make a number of observations that we try to “make sense of” by setting up a hypothesis. The value of the hypothesis is not only that it provides a way of thinking about the observations but also that it allows one to make a critical test by experiments. When the experiments are complete and the data in, chances are we will throw out the hypothesis or radically modify it, then do another test. That's how science progresses in any revolutionary area, which is what biotechnology is. It becomes downright dangerous, then, if we rush to apply every incremental insight or technique within a theoretical framework that is probably wrong.
Geneticists involved in biotechnology make breathtakingly simple mistakes and assumptions. With the power to isolate, sequence, synthesize, and manipulate pieces of DNA, it is easy to conceive of all kinds of novel creations—bacteria that will spread through our bodies to scavenge mercury or other pollutants and then extrude them from a pimple, plants that photosynthesize under much lower light intensities or at twice the rate, plant crops that can live on highly salinated soil or fertilize themselves from air, and so on. Even though these are just pie-in-the-sky speculation, companies are often set up on such ideas. But if such notions are considered real possibilities, transfer of sterility genes to wild plants, genetically engineered fish that destroy ecosystems, and new deadly diseases are every bit as plausible. We just don't know.
Biotechnologists generally deal with a characteristic they want to transfer from one organism to another—for example, a product that behaves as an antifreeze in flounders that enables the fish to live at temperatures below freezing. The DNA specifying the antifreeze substance is isolated and then transferred, say to a strawberry plant, on the assumption that in that totally new environment, the DNA will function just as it did in the fish. But natural selection acts on the sum total of the expression of all of the genes in the cascade of reactions that occurs from fertilization to development of the whole organism. The entire genome is an entity selected to function in the proper sequence. When a flounder gene is inserted into a strawberry plant, the fish DNA finds itself in a completely alien context, and the scientist has no idea whether or how that gene will express itself in the new surroundings. It is like pulling rock star Bono out of his group u2, sticking him into the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and asking him to make music in that setting. Noise might emerge, but we can't predict what it will sound like.
It is far too early to begin to create products for food or medicines or to grow them in open fields at this stage in biotechnology's evolution if we wish to avoid unexpected and unpredictable consequences. But because the driving force to get novel organisms out is money, when I say such things I am confronted with angry biotechnologists demanding to know when we will ever know that a genetically engineered product is ready to be consumed or grown in the open.
My response is that when a field of experimentation is immature, virtually every bit of research yields a surprise and ultimately a publication; last time I looked, there was a profusion not only of articles but of biotechnology journals. The science is in its infancy. When it has reached a point where an exact sequence of DNA can be synthesized or isolated and inserted at a specific sequence in a recipient's DNA and the resultant phenotype predicted beforehand with absolute accuracy and replicability, then the science is mature enough to proceed to the next stages of wider testing. We're a long way from that. The science is exciting, but the applications are frightening in view of our ignorance.
I deliberately stopped research but did not immediately lose all of the knowledge that made me a geneticist. I am proud of my career and contribution in the field, yet the minute I ceased doing research and began to speak out about the unseemly haste with which scientists were rushing to exploit their work, people in biotechnology lashed out as if somehow I no longer understood what is being done.
It is young people, relatively unencumbered by distractions like administration and teaching, who are able to expend the energy to do research. As scientists get older, they acquire layers of responsibility that take them away from the bench. There is always the pull to keep publishing to validate their standing as scientists. It is unfortunate that older scientists aren't afforded recognition and respect for their past achievements and acknowledged as elder statespeople who can afford to look at the broader picture.
THE POWER OF SCIENCE is in description, teasing out bits of nature's secrets. Each insight or discovery reveals further layers of complexity and interconnections. Our models are of necessity absurdly simple, often grotesque caricatures of the real world. But they are our best tool when we try to “manage” our surroundings. In most areas, such as fisheries, forestry, and climate, our goal should be simply to guide human activity. Instead of trying to bludgeon nature into submission by the brute-force applications of our insights (if planted, seedlings will grow into trees; insecticides kill insects), we would do better to acknowledge the 3.8 billion years over which life has evolved its secrets. Rather than overwhelming nature, we could try to emulate what we see, and that “biomimicry” should be our guiding principle.
But even reductionism—focusing on parts of nature—can provide stunning insights into the elegance and interconnectedness of nature, and reveal the flaws in the way we try to manage her.
A good illustration of both the strengths and weaknesses of science and its application is the temperate rain forest of North America. Pinched between the Pacific Ocean and the coastal mountain range, this rare ecosystem extends from Alaska to northern California. Around the world, temperate rain forests are a tiny part of the terrestrial portion of the planet, yet they support the highest biomass of any ecosystem on Earth. That's because there are large trees like Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, red and yellow cedar, hemlock, and balsam. But the heavy rains wash nutrients from the soil, making it nitrogen poor. How, then, can it support the immense trees that characterize the forest? For several years, the David Suzuki Foundation funded studies to answer this question by ecologist Tom Reimchen of the University of Victoria.
Terrestrial nitrogen is almost exclusively 14N, the normal isotope of nitrogen; in the oceans, there is a significant amount of 15N, a heavier isotope that can be distinguished from 14N. Throughout the North American temperate rain forest, salmon swim in thousands of rivers and streams. The five species of salmon need the forest, because when the forest around a salmon-bearing watershed is clear-cut, salmon populations plummet. That's because the fish are temperature sensitive; a small rise in temperature is lethal, so salmon need the shade of the canopy that keeps water temperatures down. In addition, the tree roots cling to the soil to prevent it from washing into the spawning gravels, and the forest community provides food for the baby salmon as they make their way to the ocean. But now we are finding that there is a reciprocal relationship—the forest also needs the salmon.
Along the coast, the salmon go to sea by the billions. Over time, they grow as they incorporate 15N into all their tissues. By the time they return to their natal streams, they are like packages of nitrogen fertilizer marked by 15N. Upon their return to spawn, killer whales and seals intercept them in the estuaries, and eagles, bears, and wolves, along with dozens of other species, feed on salmon eggs and on live and dead salmon in the rivers. Birds and mammals load up on 15N and, as they move through the forest, defecate nitrogen-rich feces throughout the ecosystem.
