From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Mon Feb 24 2003 - 08:22:27 MST
Living to 1000?
One futurist thinks it's possible. Others spoke of bioterrorism,
obesity, and the genome project as the conference came to an end.
By FREDERIC GOLDEN
DAVID PAUL MORRIS FOR TIME
U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Richard H. Carmona addresses the
conference
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003
Monterey, Calif. —TIME's three-day forum on the Future of Life ended on
a note of extravagant promises about a coming century of startling
advances — in personalized medicine, including life spans well beyond
100 years, increasingly smart computer programs that will emulate
biological processes, new genetically engineered sources of energy and
outreaches into space that will take both humans and robots far from
their home planet.
But even as the prophets of this bold new world were making their
far-out forecasts, other participants in a conference that marked the
50th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix sounded much more
skeptical notes. They warned that as futurist Arthur Clarke once
remarked, short-term predictions about technological advances often tend
to lag far behind predicted timetables. As an example, composer and
visual artist Jaron Lanier cited problems that still plague even our
simplest computer programs. "Software is still software," he said,
openly questioning its ability to handle increased complexity that all
the projected advances would require.
A different sort of warning for the 400 scientists, academics, artists,
clerics and business executives attending TIME's DNA fest was sounded by
Vice Admiral Richard Carmona, the new U.S. Surgeon General. Replying to
the many scientists trying to get the Bush Administration to lift its
partial ban on embryonic stem cell research, he urged them not to get
ahead of the American public. People are still quite baffled by this
sort of research, he said, and need to be educated about it. "Science
must take care it does not leave the public behind," he said.
In a conference-closing speech that recalled his "truly surreal journey"
from an impoverished childhood in New York's Hispanic East Harlem to
become America's chief doctor, the former trauma surgeon welcomed the
benefits from the genomics revolution, but also stressed that America
faced immediate and very critical health problems, notably the epidemic
of obesity among the young. "It's every bit as threatening as the
terrorist threat," he said, adding it would lead to a level of disease
and chronic illness that would confront the country with a crushing
economic burden.
The answer, Carmona said, was to persuade kids to eat better and
exercise more rather than to look to fancy new biomedical technologies.
Said he, "We should not have to rely on good science to undo the bad
choices people have made." He also called for incentives that would
encourage physicians and other health care providers to stress
prevention and wellness rather than always looking to drugs and surgery
to alleviate chronic disease.
But for sheer scariness, the most grim talk came from Raymond Zilinskas,
an expert in bioterrorism at the Monterey Institute of International
Studies. In chilling detail, he described the efforts of Soviet
scientists at the height of the Cold War to develop lethal germs, such
as variations of anthrax and the smallpox virus, that could be carried
to targets almost anywhere on Earth by ballistic missile. While these
programs have presumably long since been cancelled, he foresaw no real
defense against such bioweapons, other than stronger international
conventions. That's something the Bush administration has resolutely
opposed, he said.
Though they avoided a face-to-face meeting, the TIME forum heard from
both Francis Collins and J. Craig Venter, the rival leaders of the
public and private human genome projects. Collins, describing himself as
both exhilarated and terrorized in the aftermath of his team's great
sequencing effort, announced ambitious new goals. These include
sequencing all 23 pairs of human chromosomes, applying genomics to the
treatment of specific diseases, developing gene-spotting systems for
early detection of disease and expanding genome studies to larger
populations so as to pinpoint the role of genetic differences in disease.
Venter, similarly, stressed that the sequencing effort was just a
starting point for much more science. He said an immediate target should
be reducing the cost of sequencing an individual genome to $1,000 or
less in the next decode or so. This would be a powerful tool, he said,
to catch diseases like colon cancer years before the onset of observable
symptoms when there is a 90 percent or better chance of curing them. "We
would give power to the individual to know their own risk of disease,"
he said.
Now the heading up four nonprofit genomics groups, Celera Genomics'
former CEO discussed his latest interests, notably the development of
synthetic microbes that could be used to produce inexpensive,
nonpolluting alternatives to fossil fuels like hydrogen. Asked if it was
really true, as one magazine recently reported, that his ambition was
nothing less than to save the planet, Venter thought for a milli-second,
then allowed, "Well, we want to make a start."
Perhaps the most exciting discussion centered on using the new findings
from the elucidation of the human genome to lengthen our productive
lives. Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution of Great
Britain, thought that ?quite soon? women would be able to have their
eggs fertilized while they were still in their normal child-bearing
years, store them and then bear the child whenever they choose. "People
of all ages will be having children," she said. Polymath inventor
Raymond Kurzweil made a prediction that left even his fellow futurists
gasping. Asked how long he expected to live in light of all these
advances, he replied unhestitatingly, "1,000 years. My kids, too."
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