Synthetic biology

One of the hazards of the kind of dissertation I'm doing - one that engages with contemporary literature based on emerging technologies - is that there's always new technologies emerging that have an impact on the literature being produced. And that means there's always something new I'm learning about.

Take Synthetic Biology.

I actually hadn't even heard the term until a couple of weeks ago, just before the whole James-Watson-discoverer-of-DNA-is-a-racist thing blew up in his face. Frankly, I think the man made a big mistake making the comments he did - first because they smack of racism, and secondly (and more importantly), that because he's a scientist, people assume he's speaking from a scientific perspective - which he's not. But that's a whole different issue - the link above will give you a good idea of the nature of Watson's comments.

Synthetic biology is an interesting extension of transgenics, and it is moving human beings much, much closer to the science fiction scenarios in the books I'm writing about for the dissertation.

From the ETC report (PDF) on Synthetic Biology "Extreme Genetic Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology":

Transgenics, the kind of engineering you find in genetically modified tomatoes and corn, is old news. As recombinant DNA splicing-techniques turn 30 years old, a new generation of extreme biotech enthusiasts have moved to the next frontier in the manipulation of life: building it from scratch. They call it synthetic biology.

Essentially, genetic engineering is the alteration of existing organisms, while synthetic biology is the creation of new organisms from scratch. The report goes on to describe synthetic biology as "the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems that do not exist in the natural world and also the redesign of existing biological systems to perform specific tasks" and that the technologies that allow this design and construction are becoming readily and cheaply available to anyone with a laptop, some knowledge of genetic engineering and a few dollars.

Synthetic biology is interesting to me for two reasons. First, because it is a controversial topic that will require social input into policy production (and that policy will need to be more globally oriented than nationally oriented since the scientific community transcends national considerations and since globalization means that anyone anywhere can get ahold of the materials needed for synthetic biology). Proponents of synthetic biology, the most prominent of whom is J. Craig Venter (quite a character by all accounts), point to the humanitarian solutions to problems that synthetic biology brings. Producing medicines, like those needed for malaria treatment, or bio-fuels through synthetic organisms does indeed have the potential to solve some of the most pressing public health and environmental problems that the world faces today.

But producing beneficial drugs and other solutions to human-made problems is accompanied by a darker potential offered by synthetic biology, and that is the potential to create biological weapons or synthetic organisms that are harmful to human beings on this planet. Just as we have had to do for preceeding technologies (e.g. nuclear energy and weapons), humanity has to come to some sort of consensus about the appropriate use of these technologies and how to regulate them.

Not only am I interested in the development of public policy regarding synthetic biology as a human occupying a space on this planet, but it also impacts the discussion of genetic engineering and other emergent technologies (AI, alife, genomics, nanotechnology, robotics) that emerges in the novels that I'm examining in the dissertation. So it's both my life, and my life, so to speak, that are at stake.

This is in part the second reason that I'm interested in synthetic biology. Synthetic biology offers the means to produce the kinds of people/organisms/beings found in the science fiction novels I'm examining. In other words, synthetic biology, and associated technologies like nanotech, alife, and robotics could create the kinds of humans that right now only exist in science fiction. It could turn science fiction into science fact.

This transformation is the reason why science fiction theorists exist. Science fiction offers readers the opportunity to look into a potential future and decide whether it's a future they want or not. Certainly many of the scenarios imagined in past science fiction adventures have not come to pass. But in some cases I have to wonder if that's simply because history took a different turn, or because someone read a science fiction story that sounded a warning about a society we might not want to create and turned away from an avenue that would have led there.

So synthetic biology interests me as a human who will live in a world where it will become more and more prevalent, and it interests me as someone who studies literature that has already imagined what synthetic biology might produce.

And from what I've seen of the literature, even benign uses of synthetic biology have some negative and unpleasant consequences. But that also is another post.

Closely related to synthetic biology is posthumanism (or transhumanism or extropianism - they're all variations of a similar sentiment even though some within the movements very vehemently draw lines between them). Posthumanism tries to imagine what human beings could look like in the future, as we develop various technologies (robotics, alife, nanotechnology, genetic engineering etc.) that have the potential to change the nature of the human from a fully organic organism to a technologically-mediated one.

One of my first encounters with the ideas of posthumanism was with the Lifeboat Foundation, which appears at different times to be part crack-pot and part rational voice in the wilderness. I suppose that's what happens when you get enough people together that have the same goal, but different ideas about how to get there.

Posthumanists generally embrace the idea that humans will change, with the often unstated assumption that this change will be for the better. They have embraced some of the stranger manifestations of this - e.g. cyrogenics, but they have also encouraged researchers in more prosaic areas of endeavour, such as weather management and storm control.

For the most part, Lifeboat is more supportive of synthetic biology than ETC, though I think the difference has more to do with organizational structure and funding than with the relative assessment of risk associated with synthetic biology. Whether the general population embraces it or fears it, there will need to be public discussion of the technology in order to control it, and the sooner that happens, the better (both for my life and my dissertation!)