New technologies open possibilities, and close other possibilities. We live in eco-technical niches as anybody else in the world, but we create our niches and we change them. So we adapt to the niches that we already have built in the past, and then we change them and create new niches in which we will adapt. But the changing is exactly what we need to understand.
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What I’m trying articulate here is that there is a really fine balance between how do you spur and invigorate innovation, and then also address security at the same time. Because one cannot drown out the other. Because you’re going to have all kinds of issues.
One of the most important insights that I’ve gotten in working with biologists and ecologists is that today it’s actually not really known on a scientific basis how well different conservation interventions will work. And it’s because we just don’t have a lot of data.
In Shelley’s vision, Frankenstein was the modern Prometheus. The hip, up to date, learned, vital god who chose to create human life and paid the dire consequences. To Shelley, gods create and for humans to do that is bad. Bad for others but especially bad for one’s creator.
When it comes to a field as fast-moving and as high of stakes as genetic engineering, how do we proceed wisely? How do we balance our own wildness and civility as we develop increasingly powerful ways to interact with the living world?
The mythology of genetic coercion is thoughts that genetic data, especially large-scale genetic databases, have the ability to pinpoint certain risk of disease. They provide agency to act to prevent such disease, and it can be used to create accurate personalized treatment for disease, and it should also be entrusted with the authority to dictate the modification of the genome for future generations.