Call Me Ishmael

The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering. This enterprise has proceeded so rapidly-with so little outside commentary-that its dimensions and implications are hardly understood at all.

This is the opening paragraph from Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. This was one of the most important books I have ever read as it nearly defined my whole life. As a fifteen year old beginning to wonder what I would do with my life it was the first time I actually thought that an adult profession sounded interesting. It was at this point I decided I wanted to be a geneticist.

Obviously I am not a geneticist, I ended up doing Excel which I could make out to be similar to a geneticist but I would just be saying it to flesh out my word count so I won’t. Still Jurassic Park had a lingering effect on my life.

It can be summed up by this opening line, and a key scene that involves no dinosaurs, which highlights the dangers of doing something just because you can. The headlong rush to be first or to break the barriers of what is known leaves many in its wake and what they are left with is often worse than what they had before.

I believe that science and technological progress is important, but too often we have tragedies like thalidomide or the environmental impact of dams like the Nasser in Egypt. It is true that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so the greater the benefits of a scientific breakthrough the greater the impacts.

Jurassic Park failed because the scientists were given unrestricted freedom to do, they were asked the question “can you do this?” and because they could they did. My time doing Microbiology (and Zoology) at university was always focused on the how you can do an experiment but never why, or should you.

There are arguments for a number of objectionable scientific methods, but it appears that scientists are never taught to consider the ethics of what they do. When Oppenheimer tested the first nuclear device he had no idea whether it would work, or if it would ignite the entire Earth’s atmosphere. That is a pretty big risk to be taking, the entire destruction of the planet because someone asked you to do something.

Perhaps this is the big problem with science, you have a bunch of people who are dedicated to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and are being fed by those with no understanding of the risks. I don’t believe those military people in charge of the Manhattan project understood the physics they just knew it could blow up a lot of stuff, in the same way that John Hammond wanted to open a theme park but couldn’t comprehend the complexity of the chaos it contained.