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Kurzweil responds to Edge challenge, advises Bush
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0545.html
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Kurzweil responds to Edge challenge, advises Bush
In a hypothetical letter to President Bush, Ray Kurzweil advised him to accelerate FDA review of defensive solutions for bioengineered pathogens, fund a crash program for developing promising new methodologies for human somatic cell engineering, and perfect hydrogen fuel cells, which could have major implications for the economy, the environment, and the geopolitics of oil.
As described in The
New York Times, John Brockman, a literary agent and publisher
of Edge.org,
asked leading scientists, writers and futurists to imagine that
they had been nominated as White House science adviser and that
President Bush had sought their answer to "What are the pressing
scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your
advice on how I can begin to deal with them?" Here is Ray Kurzweil's
response, as stated on Edge:
FIRST, consider the following: would-be bioterrorists have no need
to put their "inventions" through the FDA for approval.
But the scientists we are depending on to develop the defensive
technologies (for example, new anti-viral medications) are required
to go through this extremely cumbersome process. Complying with
these regulations not only takes many years, but slows down the
entire innovation process.
If we look at an analogous offensive-defensive standoff, that of
software viruses, we find that the cyberterrorists are indeed creating
and unleashing ever more sophisticated software pathogens. But development
of the defensive technologies (for example, antiviral software)
has been able to keep pace, and software viruses are at worst a
nuisance. We have done so well precisely because the development
of software technologies is unhampered by sluggish regulatory procedures.
We will need the same speed of innovation and implementation in
the biological sciences.
In the current environment, when one person dies in gene therapy
trials, there are congressional investigations and all gene therapy
research comes to a grinding halt. There's a legitimate need to
make biomedical research as safe as possible, but our balancing
of risks is completely off. The millions of people who desperately
need the advances to be made available by gene therapy and other
breakthrough biotechnology advances appear to carry little political
weight against a handful of well-publicized casualties from the
inevitable risks of progress.
This equation will become even more stark when we consider the
emerging dangers of bioengineered pathogens. What is needed is a
change in public attitude in terms of tolerance for needed risk.
The leadership for creating this change can only come from the top
official, the President of the United States.
SECOND, on another biotechnology front, pressure will heat up
considerably this year in the controversial area of stem cell therapies.
The number of available germ cell lines has turned out to be a small
fraction of the 60 lines that were to be made available for research
purposes. Although I would advocate that this policy be reconsidered,
my proposal is on a different front: to dramatically increase funding
for promising new methodologies in the field of "human somatic
cell engineering," which bypass entirely fetal stem cells.
These emerging technologies create new tissues with a patient's
own DNA by modifying one type of cell (such as a skin cell) directly
into another (such as a pancreatic Islet cell or a heart cell) without
the use of fetal stem cells. There have been breakthroughs in this
area in the past year. For example, scientists from the U.S. and
Norway successfully converted human skill cells directly into immune
system cells and nerve cells.
Consider the question: what is the difference between a skin cell
and any other type of cell in the body? After all, they all have
the same DNA. The differences are found in protein signaling factors
that we are now beginning to understand. By manipulating these proteins,
we can trick one type of cell into becoming another.
Perfecting this technology would not only diffuse a contentious
ethical and political issue, it is also the ideal solution from
a scientific perspective. If I need pancreatic Islet cells, or kidney
tissues, or a whole new heart, to avoid autoimmune reactions, I
would strongly prefer to obtain these with my own DNA, not the DNA
from someone else's germ line cells. The feasibility of doing this
has been demonstrated, and there should be a crash program to perfect
a technology that could dramatically improve the health of all Americans.
THIRD, on a different front, that of energy, there has been dramatic
recent scientific progress in developing hydrogen fuel cells, including
microscopic-sized fuel cells using the same technology that fabricates
electronic circuits. These fuel cells, based on micro-electronic
mechanical systems (MEMS) can be scaled from tiny devices that will
power everything from portable electronics up to cars, appliances,
and homes. These systems use safe fuels such as methanol and generate
no emissions other than tiny amounts of water and carbon dioxide.
The fuels can be fabricated without environmental impact from widely
available coal and shale oil with new technologies that capture
emissions. All of the requisite technologies have been demonstrated.
Perfecting these new hydrogen-based energy sources would have
profound and positive implications for the economy and the environment,
not to mention the geopolitical minefields of our current fossil
fuel-based economy.
Copyright © 2003 by Edge Foundation, Inc. Reprinted with
permission.
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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Excellent Ideas
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Especially the gene-therapy and somatic cell engineering bits. The near-freeze on gene therapy following the death of one man was insane. Equally insane is the current halting of the 'bubble boy' gene therapy programs. 2 of the subjects got leukemia, which is being aggressively treated. 10 or 11 kids got therapy, they all are alive at age 3. WITHOUT THE THERAPY AT LEAST 2/3 OF THEM WOULD BE DEAD NOW.
It also should be pointed out that the young man who died in the penn study was fully informed of the risks, and chose to partake in the study of his own free will. The study was to attempt to fix a manageable, mild, genetic metabolic disorder he had, he was not in a desperate last-chance sort of situation
If our society doesn't start acting a hell of lot more rationally, we're in big trouble.
This kind of idiocy has a real, human impact. Will I, personally, eventually 'lose' my fight against the rather nasty cancer I was diagnosed with a year and a half ago as a result of our fundamentalist rulers' anti-progress attitudes?
Kurzweil might as well have never submitted that response, Bush and his buddies have long ago demonstrated that they will listen only to political expediency, at the expense of all else.
fuck |
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Re: Kurzweil Advises Bush on Science Policy
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Good message, too bad Bush won't listen to it.
As an unrepentant technophile materialist quasi-nietzchean extropian looney, I don't really see much progress ever coming out of politics/politicians. Sure, you can point to a few (a very few) things that politicians have done to better the lives of us poor sods. Kennedy and Ghandi come to mind recently, Marcus Aurelius and various European monarchs further back. But ultimately, in my humble opinion, politics is just a form of mediating science, usually lessening it, to the public. The first group of humans that learned to cultivate crops was, though they didn't realize it, practising science, not politics. Science and technology have changed the world far more than politics. Our longer lifespans, varied lifestyles, cars, telecommuting, spacecraft, microwave ovens, DVD players, all are products of science. Politicians step in to tell us how we can use them. The internet on which we post these messages was created by science, despite what Al Gore would have us believe. The best we can hope for is that the political powers that be will see past the next fiscal year and fund the projects that really need to be funded. Doubtful that they will.
What Kurzweil touched on here, but is really a very important part of the whole argument regarding getting super-science projects off the ground, is this issue of risk assessment. Assessing risks is something that most humans are just not really good at. This is understandable, considering the factors that went into our (undirected) design over the eons. To survive in the harsh world of nature, it didn't do us any good on the African savannah to ponder if a gamma ray burst or asteroid impact would wipe us out. Better to focus on immediately recognizable threats like the sabertooth or the fractured and infected femur. Nowadays, though, this tendency is turning into a disadvantage to our survival. Look at how often we wring our hands worrying about relatively minor threats, like the possibility of dying in war. I do not mean to minimize the dangers, or the horror and injustice of war/terrorism. But to look at the cold hard numbers, I am much more afraid of dying in a car accident than I am of Al-Qaeda, for example. About as many people die every year in America from automobile accidents as died during the entire decade or so of the Vietnam war, but we don't see Oliver Stone making movies about this.
Consider Freeman Dyson and his work on Project Orion. This was the secret-at-the-time project by the US Government (funded by the government, worked on by scientists) to build giant nuclear-propelled spaceships that would have dwarfed anything we have ever built. The idea was totally audacious and could only have come during the 50s and America's love affair with anything atomic at that time. Essentially, numerous nuclear explosions would have been used to get these hulks off the ground, and from there they would go on to explore the entire solar system. The ships would have crews in the hundreds and would have been faster between planets than anything we have now. Had this program gone ahead, we would most likely have settlements on most of the rocks orbiting our sun. Of course, it was nixed. We began to find out about radiation, and determined that enough launches of these "Orion" craft would lead to an increase in cancer cases worldwide (the idea was to launch them from the Nevada desert. Most of the radiated material would come from those nuclear explosions at the start of the launch, near the ground - the successive explosions higher in the atmosphers wouldn't have much matter to irradiate). The rate of increase in cancer wasn't all that much, from a percentage point of view. Still, it was considered too much. And there lies the rub. What is more beneficial? Starships, or less cancer? I don't feel qualified to make that call. But I would love to see Mars!
Realize I'm starting to ramble here, my apologies. But Ray is right that risk assessment must be addressed. Sadly, I don't see how it could be done, short of force-feeding every single one of us a heavy course of real-world statistics. The genetic therapy case is a striking example of this, especially considering that the patient who died had informed consent as to the dangers. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Kurzweil for president 2008!
-ted www.thisweekinscience.com |
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Re: Kurzweil Advises Bush on Science Policy
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A few technical comments:
"... The differences are found in protein signaling factors that we are now beginning to understand. By manipulating these proteins, we can trick one type of cell into becoming another."
While technically true, that is an over-simplification. There are serious epigenetic considerations. And, since human cells were never designed to "reverse" differentiate, who is to say that the mechanisms even exist to make any arbitrary cell type from some other one? Obviously it can be done in some circumstances. To assume that means that it can be done in all circumstances is not logically correct.
"...it is also the ideal solution from a scientific perspective. If I need pancreatic Islet cells, or kidney tissues, or a whole new heart, to avoid autoimmune reactions, I would strongly prefer to obtain these with my own DNA..."
I am not so sure this is such an "ideal" scientific solution when another solution already exists which is simpler, and much more assured of success. There are only about 65,000 possible MHC (major histocompatability complex) combinations. I may have that number a bit off, but it's close enough to make my point, which is that if you had all possible variations in a library of stem cells, you could grow any tissue you needed and never have to worry about rejection. Chinese researchers are already working on such a bank.
Don't get me wrong; I like the gist of the letter. Just wanted to point out that some of the technical hurdles with Kurzweil seems to see as almost trivial, are not, and better solutions exist -- but we are largely prohibited from pursuing such lines of research in the US due to current policies. So I guess in one sense he is completely right: *IF* we cannot pursue the more preferred lines of research, at least prioritize funding for, and have sensible policies for, the alternatives so that we can make efficient progress. |
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