Submitted by Terence Blackett
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal – Albert Einstein
Ours is a day where we have gone from muscles to missiles spending billions on armament and trifles. Ours is a day when an astronaut can fly all around the world in less time it took Lindbergh to fly across the Atlantic. Ours is a day where you can eat breakfast in London; lunch in N.Y. City and dinner in Mexico City. Ours is a day when man is exploring outer-space but cannot live on earth together. Ours is a day when in one generation science has replaced God; artificial intelligence has replaced men and now scientists will have the creative power to make whatever “species” in whatsoever image or likeness they choose.
We have entered the final “age” where the “gods” of science will have to stand up and be counted. This is the last battle between quantum science versus the existence of a Creator God – an oxymoronic maze of order and disorder termed “on the edge of chaos”.
As of Friday 21st May 2010, social scientists now find themselves with a new dilemma on their hands. Is this finally the “genie” out the bottle? What have we unleashed? And what does the “creation” of a “synthetic” life form mean for 21st century mankind? Will we be able to final fuse AI with synthetic biology to create the ultimate “robot” – a sub-human specie that bears grave and inalterable consequence for the billions on planet earth. This is not “Sci-Fi” but the realm of reality and possibility.
At the core of this debate, will be a new sub-set of bioethical concerns with the strongest ethical arguments and questions arising about our relationships to life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology. Will governments be able curb the potential downside of such technology in the hands of rogue governments, cartels and/or individuals? Most importantly and let us not fool ourselves here – ‘who will control this technology’ going forward?
So what are the implications of this ‘neo’-concept being termed “quantum biology”? Equally, what do we know about quantum psychology? Or the fusion of both? The answer is very little. It remains a world of discovery.
Professor Stuart Hameroff, a physician and researcher at the University of Arizona Medical Center, and a mathematical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, England, provides us with a theory that posits – deep inside the cells that form the brain are microscopic structures known as microtubules. It is at this microscopic level that the brain produces the mind. They are the nervous system of the cell and process information internally to organise what happens within each cell, as well as how cells interact with each other. These microtubules are very well designed as computational devices, and they act as Quantum computers.
The Quantum world at the level of atoms and below has some very strange properties. Everything can be interconnected with everything else; particles can be in two or more places at the same time. This process is called ‘Superposition’, so in a Quantum computer information can be in two states at the same time.
So at this level consciousness exists, connected to the brain by Quantum processors and the microtubules. When the brain stops functioning, the microtubule coherence – the pumping metabolic activity if you will – stops, and this information leaks out. It isn’t lost; it isn’t destroyed because it is occurring at the fundamental level, so it leaks out into the universe at large. But rather than dissipate and spread out it hangs together due to another strange phenomenon called quantum entanglement or quantum cohesion. So by this mechanism it is possible for consciousness to exist, perhaps only temporarily, outside of the body.
It is important to see how we have arrived at this place.
In 1946, (one year after Hitler’s forces were destroyed) Erwin Schrödinger, theoretical physicist (disillusioned by what was done to the Jews in Nazi Germany) developed a quantum theoretical study of genetic systems in a desperate search for what was to become a well-known little book entitled ‘What Is Life?’.
Schrödinger’s work was later followed by a more detailed formal approach to quantum genetics by theoretical biologist Robert Rosen in 1961 whose research was concerned with the most fundamental aspects of biology, specifically the question “What is life?” or “Why are living organisms alive?”. So what the world saw on every news network on Friday was J. Craig Venter answering Erwin Schrödinger question – “What is life?” by resolving practically the role of quantum effects in biological systems not limited to properties of molecules.
Today we have squared Darwin’s circle – with posthumous ramifications.
Welcome to the brave new world of Quantum Biology (the holy grail of synthetic bacteria) and the effects that it could potentially unleash on our planet.
Michael Garfield argues that “one hundred and fifty years ago, palaeontologist Thomas Henry Huxley (an autodidact and philosopher who coined the term “Agnostic” and was known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his passionate defense of natural selection) asserted that humankind would eventually take the processes of evolution into our own hands.”
Back in 2008, in the Times, Venter’s team stunned the scientific world by revealing that with their knowledge of quantum biology they had carried out a “species transplant” that replaced the entire genetic code of one bacterium with another. His plans to design new mathematical codes on computers to programme synthetic microbes to produce fuel from sunlight have become a reality in the making.
According to the Times, fears have been raised about the dangers of tinkering with life and releasing malignant bugs. “We don’t yet know what the social, ethical positions are and even bio-weapons implications of this research,” said Hope Shand of the ETC technology pressure group. The most ominous note was struck by a scientist at MIT: “The genetic code is 3.6 billion years old. It’s time for a rewrite.” Venter claims the project was interrupted for 18 months while a bioethics panel was reconvened to review it.
“Obviously, if we made an organism that produced fuel, that could be the first billion or trillion-dollar organism,” he told Newsweek. These organisms, he predicted, will “replace the petrochemical industry, most food, clean energy and bio-remedication”.
My question is – who controls such forces of production and to what end?
Julian Savulescu, Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford University, said: “Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity’s history, potentially peeking into its destiny. He is not merely copying life artificially … or modifying it radically by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of a god: creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally.”
Critics, including some religious groups, condemned the work, with one organisation warning that artificial organisms could escape into the wild and cause environmental havoc or be turned into biological weapons. Others said Venter was playing God. All legitimate claims!
Peter Dabrock, Professor of Theology at the University of Marburg, and Ethics Council member Eberhard Schockenhoff, Professor of Theology at the University of Freiburg, also stressed phrases such as “We are playing God” in the context of synthetic biology are neither fair nor appropriate. After all, a creation from a theological point of view would emerge from “nothing”, whereas scientists here are working with things that already exist.
Columnist & Apologist Andrew Brown ask the question – “does Craig Venter’s creation of life in the laboratory finally squeeze God right out of the scientific universe?” He opines that “atheists of the “Dawkins Type” will take it as practical proof that there is no need to hypothesize God at all: we can make life without any miracles, and there’s no need to imagine a Creator; Christians will retort that they don’t think that God exists the way that things exist, and that God is no longer a man in the clouds with a long white beard; still less is he a man with a short white beard, like Venter. Both sides will continue to shout past one another, feeling entirely vindicated by events.”
Venter’s contention is that the science of synthetic biology pioneering springs from an attitude that scientists are “building machines”, “not living things”. But many feel that is a LIE*. These creations are seen as computers capable of replicating themselves, with genes as software controlling hardware cells – a view that dates from Watson’s and Crick’s discoveries in 1953. But Venter is taking the process to a new level by creating new hardware and software where none existed according to the Times. Hence the fusion of two stridently opposite strands of artificial technologies with the ability to be super-conductors of far-reaching potential and intelligence.
What is scary is not Quantum mechanics dictating evolutionary adaptations but how this science in the wrong hands will be able to manipulate a vast range of human and possible sub-human processes.
These emerging discoveries in quantum biology suggest that those genetic ‘engineers’ who are not willing to consider a ‘look before you leap’ approach to the conversion of their ‘science’ into applied technology are likely to be securing for themselves a particularly infamous place in human history.
One of the basic problems of biology is how the genetic code is transformed into spatial structures during ontogeny, and an attractive idea is that each DNA sequence corresponds to a characteristic wormhole magnetic field configuration serving as a template for the topological condensation of the ordinary matter. The fact that wormhole flux tubes are hollow cylinders, is in nice accordance with this idea (microtubules, axonal membranes, etc. are hollow cylinders).
“Rather remarkably, the critical magnetic fields of exotic super conductors are very low and thus magnetic fields could play key role in the biological information processing if the quantum numbers of magnetic fields serve as carriers of bio-information.”
So what does this all mean?
Garfield contends that “not only do quantum phenomena occur in living systems, but the basic processes of life we take for granted rely on the transfer of information backward in time. Life is so magical because it cheats.”
He further argues that “by appealing to the Quantum oracle, we may be acting in service of something far older and more intelligent than we can even guess. Ultra fast computing, accelerated by our explorations into the new science of quantum biology, could well be the critical technology that pushes us over the edge into the ‘Singularity’ – a timeless and transcendent event in which we already live, because it is the nature of life itself – a vast sentience beyond human comprehension…”
My greatest concern dwells within the realm of developmental genetic engineering where modern science posits this farcical notion that new organisms which are being created is being done for the benefit of humanity when very little is still known about the functioning of biological systems at the molecular level.
As scientists like Venter make synthetic alterations to a complex natural system whose basic organizational patterns are not understood is considered by many to be the equivalent to leaving the stove to be lit by my 4 year old grandson. Knowing this little guy – the whole neighbourhood will go up in smoke.
Despite this level of ignorance at the molecular level there is growing evidence of influences on gene expression and function emanating from an even deeper level of bio-physical existence – influences which emanate from the subatomic or ‘quantum’ levels of life.
This is a level of which even less is currently understood by the biotechnology community than the aspects of gene control and regulation operating from the molecular level.
Quantum bio-effects are likely to operate through channels (some believe that there maybe a “super-highway” in your genes) whose existence is currently barely even conceived of by most genetic engineers. So this is uncharted territory!
In conclusion, after seeing Michael Moore’s film last night on Channel 4 – CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, I am leery of who will be in control of these controversial technologies of the future and I am forced to agree with the words of Sir John Sulston of the Wellcome Trust speaking of Venter: “If global capitalism gets complete control of the human genome that is very bad news indeed. I do not believe it should be under the control of one person. But that is what “Celera” are trying to do as far as they can. Craig had gone morally wrong.”
Whatever the opinions on this issue, one thing is clear – “It is a Brave New World” with the possibility of disastrous consequences if science gets this wrong…
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.