Before and After Moments and Bioethics

My book club discussed The Passage by Justin Cronin a few years ago.  This book is a well written and intriguing example of post-apocalyptic science fiction.   It's sequel, The Twelve, was even better and I am eagerly awaiting the third book in the trilogy.  The Passage examines what happens when an unexpected, "effect" proceeds from a well-intentioned, "cause." 

            There have been other, “before and after” moments in history, and I wonder if we are approaching one now.

The Toba Catastrophe is such a time.  About 70,000 years ago Mount Toba, a super volcano in Indonesia, destroyed itself in an eruption of truly Biblical proportions.  The debris Toba ejected into the upper levels of the atmosphere altered not just the climate, but the population of this world.  This eruption brought about a decade long, “volcanic winter.”

            The result of this entire climatic catastrophe was a serious die-off of our evolving human species.   Mankind was reduced to less than 10,000 members—literally on the edge of extinction.  The result of this bottleneck shows a mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA convergence that implies limited mating pairs.   Humans are amazingly similar in our DNA because of this before and after event.

            The Bubonic Plague of the 14^th century reduced Europe’s population by at least half.  But in its aftermath it also introduced a period of prosperity.   Those who survived had more food, a higher protein diet (absolutely essential for brain growth) and increased wages.  As health, money and mental acuity grew, so did a middle class that challenged the mindless authority of both the church and feudal society.  Modern society grew because of this before and after event.

            The crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and visualization of a circular and singular world, the Industrial Revolution, the atomic and computer age are all before and after events.  They all came with a high price, but they have each brought us a better life. 

            It amazes me that our luck has never run out.

            In 2010 synthetic cells of living tissue were made for the first time.  Three years later, bio-tech companies can make up to 1500 new life-forms a day, punching directions into a computer that synthesizes them in an adjoining lab.  They make biological fuels, medicines, dyes and cosmetics.  Jack Newman, chief scientist for bio-tech leader, Amyris, is quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “You can now build a cell the same way you can build an app for your iPhone.”  This means that the nerdy looking guy working the iPad at the football game could have just created Soylent Green.  

            I don’t believe in Cronin’s monstrous mutants; but, I do believe that life obeys three laws: eat, don’t be eaten, and pass on your DNA.  If you create a life form, especially one as simple as yeast, you can not imagine how it might interact with other life forms.  These synthetics could be the beginning of green technology.  They might save rain forests and all those disgusting frogs, or they might be the unplanned end of grass based grains.  They could mean mass produced malaria vaccines, or the creation of a bug we can’t even imagine. 

            There are no regulatory means to deal with this new life.  But all swords cut both ways.  What is made good can also be made bad.  The fact that we can do something does not mean we should do something, at least not without looking at all the possible, “afters.”  I am a lover of science, even knowledge for the sake of knowledge.  But I also believe that a sound, defensible and consistent set of ethics should be part of all macro decision. 

            Think about before and after, and keep the faith.