The report, “Synthetic Biology: Social and Ethical Challenges”, highlights concerns about ownership, misuse, unintended consequences, and accidental release of synthetic organisms into the environment.
Andrew Balmer and Professor Paul Martin, the report’s authors, suggest a threat from “garage biology”, with people experimenting at home. They also emphasise that there is no policy on the impact of synthetic biology on international bioweapons conventions.
Read the entire report here (PDF).
Cross posted from Next big future by Brian Wang, Lifeboat foundation director of Research
I am presenting disruption events for humans and also for biospheres and planets and where I can correlating them with historical frequency and scale.
There has been previous work on categorizing and classifying extinction events. There is Bostroms paper and there is also the work by Jamais Cascio and Michael Anissimov on classification and identifying risks (presented below).
A recent article discusses the inevtiable “end of societies” (it refers to civilizations but it seems to be referring more to things like the end of the roman empire, which still ends up later with Italy, Austria Hungary etc… emerging)
The theories around complexity seem me that to be that core developments along connected S curves of technology and societal processes cap out (around key areas of energy, transportation, governing efficiency, agriculture, production) and then a society falls back (soft or hard dark age, reconstitutes and starts back up again).
Here is a wider range of disruption. Which can also be correlated to frequency that they have occurred historically.
High growth drop to Low growth (short business cycles, every few years)
Recession (soft or deep) Every five to fifteen years.
Depressions (50−100 years, can be more frequent)
List of recessions for the USA (includes depressions)
Differences recession/depression
Good rule of thumb for determining the difference between a recession and a depression is to look at the changes in GNP. A depression is any economic downturn where real GDP declines by more than 10 percent. A recession is an economic downturn that is less severe. By this yardstick, the last depression in the United States was from May 1937 to June 1938, where real GDP declined by 18.2 percent. Great Depression of the 1930s can be seen as two separate events: an incredibly severe depression lasting from August 1929 to March 1933 where real GDP declined by almost 33 percent, a period of recovery, then another less severe depression of 1937–38. (Depressions every 50–100 years. Were more frequent in the past).
Dark age (period of societal collapse, soft/light or regular)
I would say the difference between a long recession and a dark age has to do with breakdown of societal order and some level of population decline / dieback, loss of knowledge/education breakdown. (Once per thousand years.)
I would say that a soft dark age is also something like what China had from the 1400’s to 1970.
Basically a series of really bad societal choices. Maybe something between depressions and dark age or something that does not categorize as neatly but an underperformance by twenty times versus competing groups. Perhaps there should be some kind of societal disorder, levels and categories of major society wide screw ups — historic level mistakes. The Chinese experience I think was triggered by the renunciation of the ocean going fleet, outside ideas and tech, and a lot of other follow on screw ups.
Plagues played a part in weakening the Roman and Han empires.
Societal collapse talk which includes Toynbee analysis.
Toynbee argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by loss of control over the environment, over the human environment, or attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the “Creative Minority,” which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a “Dominant Minority” (who forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience). He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their “former self,” by which they become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they face.
My take is that the Enlightenment would strengthened with a larger creative majority, where everyone has a stake and capability to creatively advance society. I have an article about who the elite are now.
Many now argue about how dark the dark ages were not as completely bad as commonly believed.
The dark ages is also called the Middle Ages
Population during the middle ages
Between dark age/social collapse and extinction. There are levels of decimation/devastation. (use orders of magnitude 90+%, 99%, 99.9%, 99.99%)
Level 1 decimation = 90% population loss
Level 2 decimation = 99% population loss
Level 3 decimation = 99.9% population loss
Level 9 population loss (would pretty much be extinction for current human civilization). Only 6–7 people left or less which would not be a viable population.
Can be regional or global, some number of species (for decimation)
Categorizations of Extinctions, end of world categories
Can be regional or global, some number of species (for extinctions)
== The Mass extinction events have occurred in the past (to other species. For each species there can only be one extinction event). Dinosaurs, and many others.
Unfortunately Michael’s accelerating future blog is having some issues so here is a cached link.
Michael was identifying manmade risks
The Easier-to-Explain Existential Risks (remember an existential risk
is something that can set humanity way back, not necessarily killing
everyone):
1. neoviruses
2. neobacteria
3. cybernetic biota
4. Drexlerian nanoweapons
The hardest to explain is probably #4. My proposal here is that, if
someone has never heard of the concept of existential risk, it’s
easier to focus on these first four before even daring to mention the
latter ones. But here they are anyway:
5. runaway self-replicating machines (“grey goo” not recommended
because this is too narrow of a term)
6. destructive takeoff initiated by intelligence-amplified human
7. destructive takeoff initiated by mind upload
8. destructive takeoff initiated by artificial intelligence
Another classification scheme: the eschatological taxonomy by Jamais
Cascio on Open the Future. His classification scheme has seven
categories, one with two sub-categories. These are:
0:Regional Catastrophe (examples: moderate-case global warming,
minor asteroid impact, local thermonuclear war)
1: Human Die-Back (examples: extreme-case global warming,
moderate asteroid impact, global thermonuclear war)
2: Civilization Extinction (examples: worst-case global warming,
significant asteroid impact, early-era molecular nanotech warfare)
3a: Human Extinction-Engineered (examples: targeted nano-plague,
engineered sterility absent radical life extension)
3b: Human Extinction-Natural (examples: major asteroid impact,
methane clathrates melt)
4: Biosphere Extinction (examples: massive asteroid impact,
“iceball Earth” reemergence, late-era molecular nanotech warfare)
5: Planetary Extinction (examples: dwarf-planet-scale asteroid
impact, nearby gamma-ray burst)
X: Planetary Elimination (example: post-Singularity beings
disassemble planet to make computronium)
A couple of interesting posts about historical threats to civilization and life by Howard Bloom.
Natural climate shifts and from space (not asteroids but interstellar gases).
Humans are not the most successful life, bacteria is the most successful. Bacteria has survived for 3.85 billion years. Humans for 100,000 years. All other kinds of life lasted no more than 160 million years. [Other species have only managed to hang in there for anywhere from 1.6 million years to 160 million. We humans are one of the shortest-lived natural experiments around. We’ve been here in one form or another for a paltry two and a half million years.] If your numbers are not big enough and you are not diverse enough then something in nature eventually wipes you out.
Following the bacteria survival model could mean using transhumanism as a survival strategy. Creating more diversity to allow for better survival. Humans adapted to living under the sea, deep in the earth, in various niches in space, more radiation resistance,non-biological forms etc… It would also mean spreading into space (panspermia). Individually using technology we could become very successful at life extension, but it will take more than that for a good plan for human (civilization, society, species) long term survival planning.
Other periodic challenges:
142 mass extinctions, 80 glaciations in the last two million years, a planet that may have once been a frozen iceball, and a klatch of global warmings in which the temperature has soared by 18 degrees in ten years or less.
In the last 120,000 years there were 20 interludes in which the temperature of the planet shot up 10 to 18 degrees within a decade. Until just 10,000 years ago, the Gulf Stream shifted its route every 1,500 years or so. This would melt mega-islands of ice, put out our coastal cities beneath the surface of the sea, and strip our farmlands of the conditions they need to produce the food that feeds us.
The solar system has a 240-million-year-long-orbit around the center of our galaxy, an orbit that takes us through interstellar gas clusters called local fluff, interstellar clusters that strip our planet of its protective heliosphere, interstellar clusters that bombard the earth with cosmic radiation and interstellar clusters that trigger giant climate change.
IF civilisation is wiped out on Earth, salvation may come from space. Plans are being drawn up for a “Doomsday ark” on the moon containing the essentials of life and civilisation, to be activated in the event of earth being devastated by a giant asteroid or nuclear war.
Construction of a lunar information bank, discussed at a conference in Strasbourg last month, would provide survivors on Earth with a remote-access toolkit to rebuild the human race.
A basic version of the ark would contain hard discs holding information such as DNA sequences and instructions for metal smelting or planting crops. It would be buried in a vault just under the lunar surface and transmitters would send the data to heavily protected receivers on earth. If no receivers survived, the ark would continue transmitting the information until new ones could be built.
The vault could later be extended to include natural material including microbes, animal embryos and plant seeds and even cultural relics such as surplus items from museum stores.
As a first step to discovering whether living organisms could survive, European Space Agency scientists are hoping to experiment with growing tulips on the moon within the next decade.
According to Bernard Foing, chief scientist at the agency’s research department, the first flowers — tulips or arabidopsis, a plant widely used in research — could be grown in 2012 or 2015.
“Eventually, it will be necessary to have a kind of Noah’s ark there, a diversity of species from the biosphere,” said Foing.
Tulips are ideal because they can be frozen, transported long distances and grown with little nourishment. Combined with algae, an enclosed artificial atmosphere and chemically enhanced lunar soil, they could form the basis of an ecosystem.
Read the entire article at Times Online. See also “‘Lunar Ark’ Proposed in Case of Deadly Impact on Earth” on National Geographic.
The Economist has a piece on the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI):
Dr [Nathan] Wolfe, [a virologist at the University of California, Los Angeles], is attempting to create what he calls the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI). This is still a pilot project, with only half a dozen sites in Africa and Asia. But he hopes, if he can raise the $50m he needs, to build it into a planet-wide network that can forecast epidemics before they happen, and thus let people prepare their defences well in advance. […]
The next stage of the project is to try to gather as complete an inventory as possible of animal viruses, and Dr Wolfe has enlisted his hunters to take blood samples from whatever they catch. He is collaborating with Eric Delwart and Joe DeRisi of the University of California, San Francisco, to screen this blood for unknown viral genes that indicate new species. The GVFI will also look at people, monitoring symptoms of ill health of unknown cause and trying to match these with unusual viruses.
More here. See also the Lifeboat Foundation’s BioShield program.
The New York Times reports that Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., two scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratories are proposing a process by which the carbon dioxide — the primary greenhouse gas considered responsible for contributing to global warming — emitted from cars and other polluters would be captured and converted to gasoline, methane and jet fuel.
The bold proposal, which the duo have named “Green Freedom” would create a closed cycle from the emission of greenhouse gasses resulting in the creation of a vast source of renewable energy where today we have an open ended cycle that is considered a global threat.
They say the science is relatively simple and straight forward. Polluted air would be blown over potassium carbonate which would sequester the CO2, a chemical process would then remove the trapped CO2 and via a number of established chemical processes it would then be converted to various types of fuel.
Although the process has not been demonstrated and no prototypes have been built the pair claims that the required steps or other chemical processes that they say are close cousins to those required are already in use. In addition, none of the processes violate any known laws of physics and a number of other top researchers have independently made similar suggestions for the sequestration and reuse of emitted CO2.
This concept is not without its share of controversy and detractors however. With claims of everything from the fact that the economics of the process make it unfeasible to concerns that it will encourage further over–population and sprawl not to mention the worry that proliferation of nuclear power brings with it, it is nevertheless an interesting concept and proves — if nothing else — that through continued investment in breakthrough technologies we can overcome all challenges be they environmental or societal.
According to ScienceDaily:
The British-American biotech company Acambis reports the successful conclusion of Phase I trials of the universal flu vaccine in humans. The universal influenza vaccine has been pioneered by researchers from VIB and Ghent University. This vaccine is intended to provide protection against all ‘A’ strains of the virus that causes human influenza, including pandemic strains. Therefore, this vaccine will not need to be renewed annually.
What would make this new vaccine different from the ones already available is that it would target M2e, a conserved region of influenza “A” strains. Since that part doesn’t constantly mutate and about 2/3 of seasonal epidemics and all pandemics are due to type “A” strains, it could be a very efficient weapon against repeats of the “Spanish Flu” (1918−1919) that killed at least 50 million people worldwide. Only the future will tell if phase II and III trials are successful.
You can learn more about the Lifeboat Foundation BioShield program here.
Posted in biological, biotech/medical, defense, existential risks, futurism, lifeboat, military, nanotechnology | 3 Comments on On the brink of Synthetic Life: DNA synthesis has increased twenty times to full bacteria size
Reposted from Next Big Future which was advancednano.
A 582,970 base pair sequence of DNA has been synthesized.
It’s the first time a genome the size of a bacterium has chemically been synthesized that’s about 20 times longer than [any DNA molecule] synthesized before.
This is a huge increase in capability. It has broad implications for DNA nanotechnology and synthetic biology.
It is particularly relevant for the lifeboat foundation bioshield project
This means that the Venter Institute is on the brink of sythesizing a new bacterial life.
The process to synthesize and assemble the synthetic version of the M. genitalium chromosome
began first by resequencing the native M. genitalium genome to ensure that the team was starting with an error free sequence. After obtaining this correct version of the native genome, the team specially designed fragments of chemically synthesized DNA to build 101 “cassettes” of 5,000 to 7,000 base pairs of genetic code. As a measure to differentiate the synthetic genome versus the native genome, the team created “watermarks” in the synthetic genome. These are short inserted or substituted sequences that encode information not typically found in nature. Other changes the team made to the synthetic genome included disrupting a gene to block infectivity. To obtain the cassettes the JCVI team worked primarily with the DNA synthesis company Blue Heron Technology, as well as DNA 2.0 and GENEART.
From here, the team devised a five stage assembly process where the cassettes were joined together in subassemblies to make larger and larger pieces that would eventually be combined to build the whole synthetic M. genitalium genome. In the first step, sets of four cassettes were joined to create 25 subassemblies, each about 24,000 base pairs (24kb). These 24kb fragments were cloned into the bacterium Escherichia coli to produce sufficient DNA for the next steps, and for DNA sequence validation.
The next step involved combining three 24kb fragments together to create 8 assembled blocks, each about 72,000 base pairs. These 1/8th fragments of the whole genome were again cloned into E. coli for DNA production and DNA sequencing. Step three involved combining two 1/8th fragments together to produce large fragments approximately 144,000 base pairs or 1/4th of the whole genome.
At this stage the team could not obtain half genome clones in E. coli, so the team experimented with yeast and found that it tolerated the large foreign DNA molecules well, and that they were able to assemble the fragments together by homologous recombination. This process was used to assemble the last cassettes, from 1/4 genome fragments to the final genome of more than 580,000 base pairs. The final chromosome was again sequenced in order to validate the complete accurate chemical structure.
The synthetic M. genitalium has a molecular weight of 360,110 kilodaltons (kDa). Printed in 10 point font, the letters of the M. genitalium JCVI-1.0 genome span 147 pages.
Planning for the first Lifeboat Foundation conference has begun. This FREE conference will be held in Second Life to keep costs down and ensure that you won’t have to worry about missing work or school.
While an exact date has not yet been set, we intend to offer you an exciting line up of speakers on a day in the late spring or early summer of 2008.
Several members of Lifeboat’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) have already expressed interest in presenting. However, potential speakers need not be Lifeboat Foundation members.
If you’re interested in speaking, want to help, or you just want to learn more, please contact me at [email protected].
I’ve been taking a look at an “international civil society organization” called the ETC Group. The “ETC” group is also known as the “Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration”. To be honest, I can’t figure them out. Here is a summary:
“ETC Group is an international civil society organization based in Canada. We are dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights. ETC Group supports socially responsible development of technologies useful to the poor and marginalized and we address international governance issues affecting the international community. We also monitor the ownership and control of technologies and the consolidation of corporate power.”
So they look like a somewhat standard leftist environmentalist technology oversight group. Alright.
Here is their stance on nanotechnology:
“Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of matter on the scale of the nanometer (one billionth of a meter). Nanoscale science operates in the realm of single atoms and molecules. At present, commercial nanotechnology involves materials science (i.e. researchers have been able to make materials that are stronger and more durable by taking advantage of property changes that occur when substances are reduced to nanoscale dimensions). In the future, as nanoscale molecular self-assembly becomes a commercial reality, nanotech will move into conventional manufacturing. While nanotechnology offers opportunities for society, it also involves profound social and environmental risks, not only because it is an enabling technology to the biotech industry, but also because it involves atomic manipulation and will make possible the fusing of the biological world and the mechanical. There is a critical need to evaluate the social implications of all nanotechnologies; in the meantime, the ETC group believes that a moratorium should be placed on research involving molecular self-assembly and self-replication.”
(Bold by me.)
This is a touchy issue for researchers. At the Lifeboat Foundation we sometimes talk about the Religion of Science, which states that science must progress as quickly as possible and that any attempt to limit it is foolish and immoral. We’ve had people leave our Scientific Advisory Board when they realized that we did not subscribe to this Religion, but in fact question whether any scientist should be allowed to do just anything.
But we do not go as far as the ETC Group, which is proposing a blanket ban on all molecular self-assembly, a very large and potentially incredibly fruitful field.
What prompted me to write on the ETC Group was a news release they sent me today on synthetic biology:
ETC Group
News Release
17 October 2007
www.etcgroup.org
Syns of Omission:
Civil Society Organizations Respond to Report on Synthetic Biology
Governance from the J. Craig Venter Institute and Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation
A report released today on policy options for governance of synthetic
biology is a disappointing effort that fails to address wider
societal concerns about the rapid deployment of a powerful and
controversial new technology. Synthetic biology aims to commercialize
new biological parts, devices and living organisms that are
constructed from synthetic DNA – including dangerous pathogens.
Synthetic biologists are attempting to harness cells as tiny
factories for industrial production of chemicals, including
pharmaceuticals and fuels. ETC Group describes the synthetic biology
approach as “extreme genetic engineering.”
The report, authored by scientists and employees from the J. Craig
Venter Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the
Center for Strategic & International Studies (Washington, D.C.) was
funded by a half-million dollar grant from the U.S.-based Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation and billed as a “project to examine the societal
implications of synthetic genomics.” The study was more than two
years in the making, but the report makes no policy recommendations
and failed to properly consult civil society. While the authors do
acknowledge possible bio-error (i.e., synbio accidents that cause
unintended harm to human health and the environment), the emphasis is
on how to impede bioterrorists “in a post-September 11 world.”
“This report is a partial consideration of governance by a partisan
group of authors,” explains Jim Thomas of ETC Group. “Its authors are
‘Synthusiasts’ – or, unabashed synthetic biology boosters – who are
primarily concerned about holding down costs and regulatory burdens
that could allegedly stymie the rapid development of the new
industry. By focusing narrowly on safety and security in a U.S.-
centric context, the report conveniently overlooks important
questions related to power, control and the economic impacts of
synthetic biology. The authors have ignored the first and most basic
questions: Is synthetic biology socially acceptable or desirable? Who
should decide? Who will control the technology, and what are its
potential impacts?”
The report’s authors include representatives from institutions that
have a vested interest in commercialization of synthetic biology.
According to the J. Craig Venter Institute, one of the three
institutions that led the study, scientists are just weeks or months
away from announcing the creation of the world’s first-ever living
bacterium with entirely synthetic DNA and a novel genome. Scientists
from the Venter Institute have already applied for patents on the
artificial microbe, and Craig Venter predicts that it could be the
first billion or trillion dollar organism. The report fails to
address issues of ownership, monopoly practices or intellectual
property claims arising from synthetic biology.
“The sixty-page report has oodles of input from a small circle of
scientists and policy ‘experts,’ but the 20-month long study fails to
incorporate views of civil society and social movements,” points out
Hope Shand, ETC Group’s Research Director. “An insular process like
the one that produced the Sloan report instills little confidence in
the results.”
The economic and technical barriers to synthetic genomics are
collapsing. Using a laptop computer, published gene sequence
information and mail-order synthetic DNA, it is becoming routine to
construct genes or entire genomes from scratch – including those of
lethal pathogens. The tools for DNA synthesis technologies are
advancing at break-neck pace – they’re becoming cheaper, faster and
widely accessible. The authors acknowledge this reality, and evaluate
several options for addressing it.
One proposal aimed at “legitimate users” of the technology – those
working in industry labs, for example – is to broaden the
responsibilities of Institutional Biosafety Committees, which were
established (in the US) to assess the biosafety and environmental
risks of proposed recombinant DNA experiments.
Edward Hammond, Director of the Sunshine Project, a biotech and
bioweapons watchdog, argues, “Institutional Biosafety Committees are
a documented disaster. IBCs aren’t up to their existing task of
overseeing genetic engineering research, much less ready to absorb
new synthetic biology and security mandates. The authors of this
report are aware of the abject failure of voluntary compliance by
IBCs, including by the Venter Institute’s own IBC. So it is very
difficult to interpret their suggestion that IBCs oversee synthetic
biology as anything but a cynical attempt to avoid effective
governance.”
Options for governing synthetic biology must not be set by the
synthetic biologists themselves – broad societal debate on synbio’s
wider implications must come first. Synthetic microbes should be
treated as dangerous until proven harmless and strong democratic
oversight should be mandatory – not optional. Earlier this year the
ETC Group recommended a ban on environmental release of de novo
synthetic organisms until wide societal debate and strong governance
are in place.
ETC and other civil society organizations have called repeatedly for
an inclusive, wide ranging public dialogue process on societal
implications and oversight options for Synthetic Biology.
The full text of “Synthetic Genomics: Options for Governance” is
available here:
http://www.jcvi.org/
ETC Group’s January 2007 report on synthetic biology, Extreme Genetic
Engineering, is available here:
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=602
Backgrounder: Open Letter on Synthetic Biology from Civil Society,
May 2006:
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=11
~~~
Does synthetic biology need more oversight? I believe it does. But I am hesitant to support the ETC Group in full, because some statements on their website have a Luddite flavor. For instance, I think it is infeasible to call for a moratorium on molecular self-assembly.
Another cause the ETC Group seems to be involved in is that of “Terminator” seeds — seeds that grow into plants which are sterile, forcing farmers to return to the seed market. They call this “an immoral application of biotechnology” and I’m inclined to agree.
The ETC Group also seems preoccupied with the phrase “Playing God” to scare up support a little too often for my liking.
I think that new technologies such as MNT and synthetic biology need to be regulated, but I don’t like the extremes I’m seeing: either pure boosterism, or borderline Luddism. The only organizations we can trust are those not attached to any particular extreme. The Lifeboat Foundation seems to be one.
What do you think?
Robert Freitas, Jr., Lifeboat Foundation Fellow and head of the Lifeboat Foundation’s Nanomedicine Division has won the 2007 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in Communication.
Dr. Pearl Chin, President of the Foresight Nanotech Institute, said Freitas received the award for “pioneering the study and communication of the benefits to be obtained from an advanced nanomedicine that will be made possible by molecular manufacturing [and for having] worked to develop and communicate a path from our current technology base to a future technology base that will enable advanced nanomedicine.”
Prior to his Feynman Prize win Robert shared the Lifeboat Foundation’s 2006 Guardian Award with technology legend Bill Joy. Freitas and Joy shared the Guardian award for their many years of work on mitigating risks posed by advanced technologies.