Сhapter SIXTEEN
TODAY THE MOST powerful force affecting our lives is not politics, business, celebrity, or sports, despite the coverage they receive in the media. By far the greatest factor shaping the world is science as applied by industry, medicine, and the military. We can't go anywhere on the planet without using the products or encountering the debris of science and technology. When I tell children there were no televisions or computers when I was their age, they find it hard to believe and often ask me, “What did you do?” because they can't imagine what one did in such an ancient and bereft civilization.
Each innovation changes the way we do things and renders the old ways obsolete. Looming are even more fantastic technologies, from intelligent machines to cloning, nanotechnology, stem cell regeneration, space travel, and much more. There will also be enormous problems in addition to the ones that already beset us, like global warming, toxic pollution, species extinction, overpopulation, alienation, and drug abuse. Without a basic knowledge of scientific terms and concepts and an understanding of how science differs from other ways of knowing, I don't believe we can find real solutions to such issues. Scientists and educators alike have failed to ensure that scientific literacy is as much a part of what is considered a core value as mathematics, reading, and writing. The consequences of scientific illiteracy among the general public are not trivial.
In the fall of 1987, I was part of a group that examined the degree to which our elected representatives comprehend science. Looking at the thirty-eight Cabinet ministers of the Canadian federal government, we found that of the thirty-two who could be assigned a profession outside politics, twelve were from business, ten from law, three from farming, and two from engineering. Thus, almost 70 percent of those thirty-two were from business or law, perhaps explaining why governments are so preoccupied with economic and jurisdictional issues. Why such a disproportionate representation from those two areas? I think it's because more of the practitioners in these fields can afford or are funded well enough to run for office and risk the enormous costs if they lose.
In a related study in 1987, fifty members of Parliament were administered a very simple test of their comprehension of scientific terms and concepts. Those with backgrounds in business and law scored absolutely rock-bottom. Yet these people will have to make informed decisions about climate change, alternative sources of energy, farmed versus wild salmon, intelligent machines, space research, space missile defence shields, biotechnology, stem cells, cloning, and other issues that require at least a basic grounding in science. No amount of simplification by technical staff will overcome the barrier of scientific illiteracy.
So decisions will end up being made for political reasons. How scientifically literate do we believe U.S. president George W. Bush is apropos of space-based missile defenses, teaching of intelligent design in science courses, foreign aid for HIV/AIDS, or responses to avian flu? Do we believe Australian prime minister John Howard understands the science behind global warming as he opposes the Kyoto Protocol?
Given the degree of scientific illiteracy among politicians, it's not surprising that we can't reach informed, rational decisions on these issues. I have spent a lot of time trying to bring new ministers up to speed when they are appointed, but they get moved around, and we have to start from scratch when a new person is put in the job. Only when scientific literacy is a central part of our education and culture will we have the possibility of a government that can make fully informed political decisions.
IN THE EARLY HISTORY of the human species, the invention of a spear, bow and arrow, needle, pottery vessel, metal implement, and domestication of plants and animals ushered in monumental changes that often reverberated for centuries and transformed individual lives and social arrangements, rendering the old ways extinct. Today multiple technological changes occur at an ever-accelerating rate, thereby ensuring that the world I knew as a boy is no more.
In my childhood, I wasn't permitted to go to movies at all or public swimming pools in the summer because my parents worried that I might catch polio, a viral disease the Sabin and Salk vaccines later pushed into obscurity. Each year around the world, hundreds of thousands of people suffered agonizing deaths or horrible scars from the now-eradicated disease of smallpox. The world I grew up in lacked jet planes, oral contraceptives, heart transplants, transoceanic phone calls, CDs, VCRs, plastics, photocopying machines, genetic engineering, and so much more.
Not only does each innovation alter the way we do things, many may change the very definition of what it is to be human. We love technology because we design it to do specific things for us, but we seldom reflect on the consequences or have any inkling of what the long-term repercussions might be. Thus, we discovered biomagnification of pesticides, the effects of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCS) on the ozone layer, and radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons only after the technologies had been created and used. Consider the impact of the automobile: it liberated us from being local creatures, killed tens of millions of us, facilitated urban sprawl, caused massive loss of land under roads, created global pollution, and accelerated the depletion of resources. Television has had a corrosive effect on communities and social mores and has led to commercials and consumerism and the general dumbing down of issues and thought processes. Technology has huge costs.
Starting out as a fruit fly geneticist at UBC, when doing good basic science was all that was required to receive a grant. (Don't be fooled by the lab coat, which I seldom wore.)
When I began my career as a scientist, we took pride in exploring basic ideas of the structure of matter, the origin of the cosmos, or the structure and function of genes without having to justify the expansion of human knowledge. Medical genetics was considered intellectually inferior to the kind of work we carried out with fruit flies.
In 1972, a special Canadian Senate committee under Maurice Lamontagne had examined the role science plays in society and concluded there was a need to tie research more directly to society's needs. “Mission-oriented” work was to be encouraged, presaging the enormous pressure that would be put on scientists to make their work economically useful. Scientists are led, by necessity, by the priorities underlying the granting procedure. If good basic science is all that is required to receive a grant, then scientists will be much more honest about what they are doing. But when there is pressure to find a cure for cancer, for example, then scientists engage in a game that ultimately undermines science by creating a false impression of what science is.
Why do we support science? Former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau seemed to feel science is a frill we support when times are good. I couldn't disagree more. We support science because it is a part of what it means to be civilized, pushing back the curtains of ignorance by revealing bits and pieces of nature's secrets. But more and more, we are under a demand that science deliver practical uses. This is a dangerous requirement, because it imposes an urgency that can lead to shortcuts, unwarranted claims, and deception.
Canadian scientists make up a very small proportion of the total number of scientists around the world. Our total grant money is minuscule compared with the U.S. total, and globally, it is even less. If we assume the quality of science is about the same everywhere, then on average perhaps 2 percent of important discoveries will be made in Canada. Thus, the probability that some fundamental “breakthrough” (how I hate that misused and overused word) will be made here is very small, and one might suppose that Trudeau was right—we should simply parasitize the world's literature and focus on rapid capitalization of new ideas.
But that is not how science works or how it leads to applications. The really exciting creative moments are in conversation with leading scientists at conferences and on visits, or in closed meetings where a handful of the elite in a field gather to bat around ideas that are still in the embryonic phase and not available in publications. Such meetings are exciting, creative, and exclusive, open only to the top people. That's why we support the members of our small but top-notch Canadian scientific community—they are the price of a front-row seat at the action. Without them, we aren't plugged in to the cutting-edge work going on around the world.
Canada's granting process was an outmoded system that worked when there wasn't a lot of pressure and the community was small. I sat on one of the granting panels that chose which applicants would be funded and was surprised at how much political considerations entered into the final awards. We scientists on the grant panel spent a lot of time assessing and rating the applications on their scientific merits as best we could and then allocating the funds. But our decisions were only recommendations, which we submitted to the National Research Council. When the final decisions were announced, it was obvious that additions and deletions had been made to our recommendations according to geographic distribution and whether an institution seemed to have a disproportionate amount or was shut out of any support. It was a ridiculous way to give out money. Our policy seemed to be: pee over a broad expanse of ground and hope plants will sprout up everywhere. But if our bladder is small, we should at least direct the fertilizer to where the seeds are, not sprinkle it around.
When I was still active in research, Canadian granting agencies didn't seem to have the courage to identify the outstanding scientists and provide them with as much money as possible while turning down the rest. Today, much larger sums of research money are allocated and the rejection rate is much higher, but when I had a lab most applicants got grants at very low levels of support. We should focus on new, young scientists, because at the start of their careers, they are ambitious and have the energy to work hard. They are the ones who should be given substantial funding with few formal demands other than following wherever their interests lead for three or four years. At that point, they will have a body of work that can be evaluated for originality, quality, and quantity. From then on, those who have done promising work can be supported very well. We don't create excellence by funding institutions or infrastructure—it is individuals to whom we should pay attention and provide support.
Science has never been considered an important part of Canadian culture or celebrated in the way we celebrate the arts. Wisely, the Science Council of Canada was established as a Crown corporation, supposedly with an arm's length relationship with government. I say “supposedly” because when Stuart Smith, who was leader of the Liberal party of Ontario, became head of the Science Council, he had a difficult time reappointing me to the board for a second term because of a B.C. senator who opposed it. Nevertheless, in a time when the most powerful effect on our lives and our society is science, we need a body to look at the implications and provide counsel to guide us into the future. In 1993, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney abolished the Science Council (along with the Economics Council), thereby ensuring that we would move into the future with greater uncertainty and make decisions for political reasons, ignoring science-based assessments of the issues.
the former host of CBC Radio's Morningside, Peter Gzowski, richly deserved the adulation expressed upon his untimely death in 2002. Gzowski was quintessentially Canadian. I cannot imagine him or someone like him with his stuttering, humble, low-key way making it as a star in London or New York. But in Canada, he touched a deep chord.
He interviewed me a number of times on Morningside, and I had also appeared several times on his painful venture into television, 0 Minutes Live. There was much resentment within the Nature of Things unit about the money lavished on Gzowski's television program, but I loved the idea of a nightly showcase for Canadian talent. It's unfortunate that what worked so well on radio was a disaster on television. Gzowski felt I was a strong contributor, and he wanted me to appear as a regular on the show. I was flattered, but I didn't want to simply be a reporter on the “Golly, gee whiz, what will they think of next?” or “Isn't that scary?” aspect of science, so I declined.
One of the high points of my appearances on 0 Minutes Live was the night I appeared with Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Timothy Leary. Vonnegut and I got on famously, and we were both appalled at Leary, who was in his phase of pushing SMIILE, which stood for Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension, the kind of techno-optimism that makes my teeth ache. It was great television, and the sparks were flying between the three of us when Peter broke in for a commercial. When the break was over, we were cut off, and he went on with the next act, which was a man with a bullwhip knocking cigarettes out of his son's mouth.
Much later I spoke with Alex Frame, the executive producer of 0 Minutes Live, and he admitted it had been a mistake to stay so wedded to the prearranged schedule rather than let the energy of Leary, Vonnegut, and Suzuki carry on. The next day, Tara and I went out for breakfast with Vonnegut, who was charming and insisted on taking us to a bookstore to get one of his books. The salesperson did a double take when he recognized Vonnegut and could do nothing but stare when Vonnegut asked where his own books were. Eventually Vonnegut found the book he wanted and signed it, and it is one of our treasured possessions.
I appeared sporadically on Morningside. Peter was laid-back, but I was always wary, expecting some nasty question to come at me. It never did. He was a very generous interviewer, asking a question and then letting me have my say rather than cutting me off to shape the interview the way he wanted, as so many hosts do today. But if he was genuinely interested in what I said, I couldn't understand why he didn't go on to espouse environmental causes. I have always been surprised that hosts of programs may report on frightening or urgent stories, yet when the show is over, they move on to the next issue. It was one of the problems Jim Murray, my boss and best friend at The Nature of Things, had with me. Because of a program we did, say, on the Cree in Quebec, the Kaiapo in the Amazon, or the Haida in Haida Gwaii, I couldn't help but stay engaged with them. So when the program had been broadcast, I'd still be working away with them, whereas Jim felt I should move on and concentrate on the next show, which was a perfectly reasonable position from the standpoint of the series.
Writing about himself in 2001, Gzowski admitted in A Peter Gzowski Reader that he
had a pretty full life. On radio or television or with pencil in hand, I've got to meet the Queen, eight prime ministers (nine if you count Margaret Thatcher . . .), four governors-general, two chief justices, two Nobel Prize winners, the world yodeling, whistling and bagpipe champions (all Canadians) and every winner and most of the runners up of the Giller Prize for Literature.
Gzowski was clearly proud of having interviewed so many important people—and he should have been. The range of people he had met and interviewed in a career spanning almost twenty years, for three hours a day, five days a week, must be mind-boggling. I always marveled at the sheer stamina and concentration needed for such a prodigious effort.
Jim Fulton and me presenting Prime Minister Paul Martin with our document “Sustainability Within A Generation” in 2004
But it's the list Gzowski chose to write down that interests me. All those prime ministers and the Queen and Giller Prize candidates and winners, yet a measly two Nobel Prize winners. I was surprised he even bothered to mention them, and he failed to indicate whether they were scientists, writers, economists, or peace workers. Lester Pearson, prime minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968, was the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize in 1957, but there have been four other Nobel Prize winners in science who continued to stay in Canada—Frederick Banting, Gerhard Herzberg, John Polanyi, Mike Smith—and I interviewed three of them (Banting had died in 1941). There are usually about ten to twelve winners of the prestigious awards in three science categories every year. I was the host of Quirks and Quarks for four years, and during that time I interviewed at least twenty Nobel Prize winners. A huge divide remains between scientists and the rest of society, and the paucity of scientist Nobelists on Gzowski's list reflects it. How can we as a society assess the potential impact of so many issues in which science and technology play major roles in both their creation and solution if we ignore them?
Nothing illustrates the consequences of scientific illiteracy better than the situation in the United States. President George W. Bush received an education at Yale University, one of the top institutions in the world, and rose to head the wealthiest and most powerful nation in history. Yet the country founded on a separation of church and state has seen the intrusion of a Christian fundamentalism into the very center of power. One shocking consequence is the debate about evolution, which has flared into a national movement, putting enormous pressure on teachers and educational institutions to relegate evolution to a theory that must compete with the biblical version of Creation. Once called “scientific creationism,” this literal interpretation of the Bible has been modernized into Intelligent Design, with all the trappings and jargon of molecular biology. The fact that it continues to be considered a serious scientific alternative to evolution is a disgrace. Evolution is as real as the existence of an atom, DNA, or a black hole; we see it everywhere, not only in living systems, but in the geology of Earth and the dynamic universe. The mechanisms and processes of evolution are far from understood, but the fact of its occurrence is not. Scientists have failed to inculcate an understanding of what lies within the scientific realm and where religion intrudes without justification.
But President Bush's kind of faith in science and technology also enabled him to push an agenda of space travel to Mars within a decade or two. I have visited the Houston Space Center many times to film and have shot the mock-ups for the Mars trip. They are unbelievably crude, and I don't believe for a minute that getting to Mars and back will be possible within my children's lifetime, if ever; nor is the cost of trying worth it. It is a political gimmick, a proposal Bush will not have to be accountable for, merely a bauble offered to the electorate if it demonstrates leadership and vision.
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 expunged 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 DrosophilaDNA 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.
Bears are one of the major vectors of nitrogen. During the salmon runs, they congregate at the rivers to fish, but once a bear has seized a fish, it leaves the river to feed alone. A bear will move up to 150 yards away from the river before settling down to consume the best parts—brain, belly, eggs—then return to the river for another. Reimchen has shown through painstaking observation that in a season, a single bear may take from six hundred to seven hundred salmon. After a bear abandons a partially eaten salmon, ravens, salamanders, beetles, and other creatures consume the remnants. Flies lay eggs on the carcass, and within days, the flesh of the fish becomes a writhing mass of maggots, which polish off the meat and drop to the forest floor to pupate over winter. In the spring, trillions of adult flies loaded with 15N emerge from the leaf litter just as birds from South America come through on their way to the nesting grounds in the Arctic.
Reimchen calculates that the salmon provide the largest pulse of nitrogen fertilizer the forest gets all year, and he has demonstrated that there is a direct correlation between the width of an annual growth ring in a tree and the amount of 15N contained within it. Government records of salmon runs over the past fifty years show that large rings occur in years of big salmon runs. When salmon die and sink to the bottom of the river, they are soon coated with a thick, furry layer of fungi and bacteria consuming the flesh of the fish. In turn, the 15N-laden microorganisms are consumed by copepods, insects, and other invertebrates, which fill the water and feed the salmon fry when they emerge from the gravel.
In dying, the adult fish prepare a feast on which their young may dine on their way to the ocean. Thus, the ocean, forest, northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere form a single integrated part of nature held together by the salmon. For thousands of years, human beings were able to live on this productivity and achieve the highest population density of any non-agrarian society, as well as rich, diverse cultures.
When Europeans occupied these lands, they viewed the vast populations of salmon as an opportunity to exploit for economic ends. Today in Canada the responsibility for the salmon is assigned to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for the commercial fishers, to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs for the First Nations food fishery, and to provincial ministers of tourism for the sport fishers. There are enormous conflicts between the ministries, even though they are responsible for the same “resource,” because their respective constituencies have very different needs. The whales, eagles, bears, and wolves come under the jurisdiction of the minister of the environment, and trees are overseen by the minister of forests. The mountains and rocks are the responsibility of the minister of mining, and the rivers may be administered by the minister of energy (for hydroelectric power) or the minister of agriculture (for irrigation). In subdividing the ecosystem in this way, according to human needs and perspectives, we lose sight of the interconnectedness of the ocean, forest, and hemispheres, thereby ensuring we will never be able to manage the “resources” sustainably.