My last Trevordamus prediction was wrong. I didn’t know enough about Iraq when I made it. I still don’t know enough about Iraq but I know a lot more.
Anyhow, it’s time for another prediction, which I hope will also be wrong. There will be a bioterror attack in Europe, the United States, or both in the next quarter century. I’ll also predict that only after such an attack will societies get serious about biodefense technology.
Glenn Reynolds writes about the threat:
Pathogens tailored for particular ethnic groups. Diseases that only attack children. Psychotropic pathogens that affect people’s minds — grossly, via schizophrenia or tranquilization, or subtly, by imbuing love for Big Brother. As Pontin notes, this kind of thing isn’t currently within the capabilities of terrorists or small groups, but it’s something we can expect from nation-states. We’ve never seen a technological revolution that somebody didn’t try to weaponize, and here, “the revolution in biological science will provide enormous temptations to nation-states. And the stuff that nation-states will be able to do is really scary. It provides enormous possibilities for coercion and oppression, quite possibly for the most positive-seeming reasons.”
Most people will poo poo this sort of threat because they don’t want to bother elasticizing their own brains to encompass just how quickly technology has expanded our ability as human beings to do good or evil or any of the many layers of actions in between. If you can think it, someone has tried it has never rung more true. Evil people are dreaming up schemes right now that would horrify most of you. What are you doing about it? For most of you, the answer is nothing. We have such short memories. The Holocaust is being turned into a myth by history revisionists in many parts of the world. Oh no, we’ve evolved beyond ethnic, tribal and ideological warfare, you’re thinking to yourself as the genocide in Darfur continues and Muslims slaughter one another in Iraq.
If you don’t think the bad men are trying to take it to the next level, then you are delusional, obstinate or dimwitted.
Both Ray Kurzweil and Senator Bill Frist have called for a “Manhattan Project” level of urgency toward biodefense, with an eye toward developing generic antiviral drugs, rapid-response vaccine production, and even more advanced techniques, yet unknown, for responding rapidly to new pathogens (whether natural or artificial in origin). This new article from Technology Review would seem to underscore the importance of such an approach. Pontin estimates that with that kind of an effort, effective responses might be a decade away. That may be soon enough. Let’s hope, anyway.
My wife has a degree in biology and I’ve often thought I would like to pursue a degree in biotechnology. It’s fascinating stuff and the field is expanding at the same exponential rate that propels our computing power forward. But the important thing to remember is that as biotech expands the people with access to its power are not just benign, some of them are malignant and we must deal with the ramifications.
The clock is ticking. I know people I admire are offering up clarion calls and I hope they are heeded.