Jeff Goldblum has made many contributions to this world, but perhaps the best is the delivery of the iconic line in the 1993 film Jurassic Park. In the scene where his character Ian Malcolm bets Dinosaur Park creator John Hammond, Goldblum speaks of what has become a long-standing meme.
As we might call it high, paradigms are a great way to think about the risks and rewards of scientific efforts.
Still, it is rare to see scientists appear strongly in their field of research. As a mathematician, Malcolm probably didn’t really care much about the development of genetics. Perhaps this has given us a recent warning against creating “Mirror Life.” Molecules can wreaking havoc through the biosphere, where they have an opposite orientation to everything else on Earth.
The creation of mirror life can cause havoc through the biosphere
Mirror Life fails violently on the “must-have” side of the scale, but there seems to be little reason to create it – in other cases, the decision is not that easy. Perhaps the most troublesome recent example is gain-of-function research. This is where often pathogenic organisms are modified and increase their ability to both risk and reward. For example, changing the flu virus makes it obviously a risk to make it easier to infect humans. But if it helps us understand the virus and potentially prevent the pandemic, is it worth it?
The acquisition of features has always been controversial, but recently the debate over it has exploded. People who believe that SARS-Cov-2, the virus behind Covid-19, was created in the lab – no evidence-based belief jumped on gain-of-function research as a smoking gun. Does this mean that such work must be prohibited? Perhaps not, but in Malcolm’s words, we need to keep in mind the distinction between “possibility” and “essential.”
topic:
Source: www.newscientist.com
