Wonders that need to be watched
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Nerun Yakub
Civil society organisations (CSOs) that have been watching the course of the latest new technologies --- nanotechnology, robotics, neurosciences, space technologies and what not --- have reason to believe that these are on their way to being used this century, not only to control the world economy, but even democracy and dissent. Questions that naturally follow are: who will control the wonderful new technologies and whose interests will they serve ? Can ordinary people, particularly the poor and powerless, trust the scientists and their sponsoring companies to employ these technologies responsibly ? Of course, no technology can justifiably be considered 'good' or 'evil' before its use and impact on life can be measured objectively.
The biotechnologists in the 1990s boasted that they had the tools to 'fix' environmental problems and since then have been going about tinkering with life forms --- plants, animals and microbes --- most of which have gone over the heads of humble hacks and decision makers in countries that are bound to be at the receiving end of 'free tests'. But the cloning of the sheep'Dolly', in 1997, and the first crude map of the human genome in June 2000, did get high publicity, although the implications behind this path-breaking method of creating 'carbon copies' of individuals. received scant attention. The more important aspect of cloning Dolly was that any living cell can, theoretically, be re-programmed to perform any function in the organism. In other words, we can replicate tissue and organs from our own bodies for organ or bone marrow transplants. The prospects for business are dizzying, to say the least, and global companies have been scrambling for research and development, using slices of life-forms from the remaining biodiversity on planet earth.
In 1993, RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) documented the collection of indigenous genetic material and the patenting of human cell lines around the world. RAFI has been the first CSO to look into the very serious implications such developments can have for the world's poor and powerless. The potential for biological warfare is limitless when genetic engineering meets other specifically developed military technologies, including satellites and sensors. With biotech, technologically superior, fascist-minded powers could, and indeed do, play cruelly dangerous games against the 'Others'----- for clinical tests, for economic advantage, for purposes of 'depopulation', for safeguarding interests.
By the end of the 20th century, the amount of genetic information stored in the international gene banks was doubling every 14 months, as genetic sequences became patentable. The US Patent and Trademark Office had half a million applications pending in 1998 on EST (expressed sequence tag). The following year the three leading human genomics companies filed more than three million patent claims !The same year Japanese researchers managed to insert whole chromosomes, several of them simultaneously, into foreign species, setting the ball rolling. They even did it with our own set of 23 chromosomes, stuffing three of them into a rodent!
In 1999, scientists succeeded in isolating a 'memory gene', replicating it and copying it into the DNA of rats to enhance their ability to remember ! Limitless scope there ---- to design Human Performance Enhancement Drugs for all kinds of conspicuous consumers. But all this would seem like child's play in the present Post-Biotech era when ever more mind-boggling developments are taking place. At the centre of all the fantastic scientific sectors now being researched and developed, lies the world of inanimate matter that can be chipped down to the infinitesimally small ---- in nanometers --- one billionth of a meter, that is, an atom-sized bit capable of hiding inside almost anything.
In 2002 AFP reported that a team of 35 professors and a 100 students in the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT (Massachusetts of Technology) had won a 50 million dollar contest to weave high-tech clothing for soldiers, to 'protect them from bullets and poison gases, salve their wounds, make them nearly invisible or allow them to jump further.' A pilot project had already been underway by 1999 to harvest gossamer from spiders for its tensile strength. Was this the stuff for the spidermen soldiers ?
With nanotechnology nothing seems impossible
Intelligent nanobots can be constructed that can be programmed to replicate themselves and build specific products from the atom up. It is already said to be used successfully,and commercially, with spectacular effects ----- in nano-tech grade airbags, inkjet printers, handheld sensors for instant blood analysis, micro-pumps and coated nano-particles for cancer therapy which can reach measured doses of therapeutic drugs to specific sites in organs. It has reportedly been used to reach the human nervous system and replace damaged nerves, the new nerves being constructed through a combination of animate and inanimate matter ! It is indeed awe-inspiring, but can people trust the powerful exploiters to handle it with care, for the weal of human civilization ?
Incredible scenarios have been drawn with nanotech, specially when merged with biotech. Concerned CSOs and analysts therefore warn that, regardless of all the wonders these technologies, particularly nanotech, can deliver, 'if not controlled, it could be more devastating than a hundred Hiroshimas or a thousand Chernobyl meltdowns ……….. self-replicating nanobots capable of geometrically accelerating production of incredibly durable and invisible machinery could cause immense damage. What if the nanobots cannot be stopped ? What of the implications for military purposes and terrorism, specially state terrorism ? ' Note that in 1997 the Pentagon identified nanotech as a major area for strategic research and by the year 2001 the government allocated more than US $460 million to get on with it. Many military applications are already out or are in the pipeline. Civil society must therefore must not be caught napping if it means to steer such technology towards the good of all life on earth.
Civil society organisations (CSOs) that have been watching the course of the latest new technologies --- nanotechnology, robotics, neurosciences, space technologies and what not --- have reason to believe that these are on their way to being used this century, not only to control the world economy, but even democracy and dissent. Questions that naturally follow are: who will control the wonderful new technologies and whose interests will they serve ? Can ordinary people, particularly the poor and powerless, trust the scientists and their sponsoring companies to employ these technologies responsibly ? Of course, no technology can justifiably be considered 'good' or 'evil' before its use and impact on life can be measured objectively.
The biotechnologists in the 1990s boasted that they had the tools to 'fix' environmental problems and since then have been going about tinkering with life forms --- plants, animals and microbes --- most of which have gone over the heads of humble hacks and decision makers in countries that are bound to be at the receiving end of 'free tests'. But the cloning of the sheep'Dolly', in 1997, and the first crude map of the human genome in June 2000, did get high publicity, although the implications behind this path-breaking method of creating 'carbon copies' of individuals. received scant attention. The more important aspect of cloning Dolly was that any living cell can, theoretically, be re-programmed to perform any function in the organism. In other words, we can replicate tissue and organs from our own bodies for organ or bone marrow transplants. The prospects for business are dizzying, to say the least, and global companies have been scrambling for research and development, using slices of life-forms from the remaining biodiversity on planet earth.
In 1993, RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) documented the collection of indigenous genetic material and the patenting of human cell lines around the world. RAFI has been the first CSO to look into the very serious implications such developments can have for the world's poor and powerless. The potential for biological warfare is limitless when genetic engineering meets other specifically developed military technologies, including satellites and sensors. With biotech, technologically superior, fascist-minded powers could, and indeed do, play cruelly dangerous games against the 'Others'----- for clinical tests, for economic advantage, for purposes of 'depopulation', for safeguarding interests.
By the end of the 20th century, the amount of genetic information stored in the international gene banks was doubling every 14 months, as genetic sequences became patentable. The US Patent and Trademark Office had half a million applications pending in 1998 on EST (expressed sequence tag). The following year the three leading human genomics companies filed more than three million patent claims !The same year Japanese researchers managed to insert whole chromosomes, several of them simultaneously, into foreign species, setting the ball rolling. They even did it with our own set of 23 chromosomes, stuffing three of them into a rodent!
In 1999, scientists succeeded in isolating a 'memory gene', replicating it and copying it into the DNA of rats to enhance their ability to remember ! Limitless scope there ---- to design Human Performance Enhancement Drugs for all kinds of conspicuous consumers. But all this would seem like child's play in the present Post-Biotech era when ever more mind-boggling developments are taking place. At the centre of all the fantastic scientific sectors now being researched and developed, lies the world of inanimate matter that can be chipped down to the infinitesimally small ---- in nanometers --- one billionth of a meter, that is, an atom-sized bit capable of hiding inside almost anything.
In 2002 AFP reported that a team of 35 professors and a 100 students in the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT (Massachusetts of Technology) had won a 50 million dollar contest to weave high-tech clothing for soldiers, to 'protect them from bullets and poison gases, salve their wounds, make them nearly invisible or allow them to jump further.' A pilot project had already been underway by 1999 to harvest gossamer from spiders for its tensile strength. Was this the stuff for the spidermen soldiers ?
With nanotechnology nothing seems impossible
Intelligent nanobots can be constructed that can be programmed to replicate themselves and build specific products from the atom up. It is already said to be used successfully,and commercially, with spectacular effects ----- in nano-tech grade airbags, inkjet printers, handheld sensors for instant blood analysis, micro-pumps and coated nano-particles for cancer therapy which can reach measured doses of therapeutic drugs to specific sites in organs. It has reportedly been used to reach the human nervous system and replace damaged nerves, the new nerves being constructed through a combination of animate and inanimate matter ! It is indeed awe-inspiring, but can people trust the powerful exploiters to handle it with care, for the weal of human civilization ?
Incredible scenarios have been drawn with nanotech, specially when merged with biotech. Concerned CSOs and analysts therefore warn that, regardless of all the wonders these technologies, particularly nanotech, can deliver, 'if not controlled, it could be more devastating than a hundred Hiroshimas or a thousand Chernobyl meltdowns ……….. self-replicating nanobots capable of geometrically accelerating production of incredibly durable and invisible machinery could cause immense damage. What if the nanobots cannot be stopped ? What of the implications for military purposes and terrorism, specially state terrorism ? ' Note that in 1997 the Pentagon identified nanotech as a major area for strategic research and by the year 2001 the government allocated more than US $460 million to get on with it. Many military applications are already out or are in the pipeline. Civil society must therefore must not be caught napping if it means to steer such technology towards the good of all life on earth.