Bio-Warfare Calls for... Bio-Augmentation?
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This article on bio-warfare and bio-terrorism makes an excellent point. The technology and skills for making designer plagues are becoming increasingly available to potential terrorists. I often keep up with catastrophically destructive technologies on this site because of the impact radically augmented human intelligence could have on their development.
Or to put it another way, if a skilled or even brilliant al Qaeda Ph.D. with a well-stocked lab is a nightmare today, imagine what a fanatic of any stripe and a savant-like ability to synthesize implausible new diseases could do to us. Especially if they also had ridiculously advanced abilities when it came to planning, strategy and the gathering of extraordinary resources.
The article notes that Ray Kurzweil and Senator Bill Frist have both called for a "Manhattan Project" level of focus on bio-defense, "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)."
Regardless of what you may think of the urgency of dealing with conventional bio-warfare, imagine what kinds of consequences could flow from people with implausibly advanced abilities in technological development, if they concentrated those skills on destroying the world as we know it. We might have to engage in several such "Manhattan Projects" just to stay ahead of such people... and we would have considerable motivation to engage in judicious augmentation ourselves -- particularly of the scientists and law-enforcement personnel needed to contain such threats.
We may also find more human enhancement technology flowing out of research into preventing bio-terrorism. Why? Because human augmentation isn't a discrete part of the biotech industry. Rather, all of the serious enhancement therapies being developed seem to be side effects of treatments for medical conditions (Alzheimer's, etc). A massive effort to create resistance to bio-warfare would be apt to yield "dual-use" research -- science which could be applied to other opportunities. If nothing else, we would be to develop a kind of human far more resistant to exotic diseases than the typical person is now. And that would most definitely be an augmentation.
Bio, Soc
Future Imperative
This article on bio-warfare and bio-terrorism makes an excellent point. The technology and skills for making designer plagues are becoming increasingly available to potential terrorists. I often keep up with catastrophically destructive technologies on this site because of the impact radically augmented human intelligence could have on their development.
Or to put it another way, if a skilled or even brilliant al Qaeda Ph.D. with a well-stocked lab is a nightmare today, imagine what a fanatic of any stripe and a savant-like ability to synthesize implausible new diseases could do to us. Especially if they also had ridiculously advanced abilities when it came to planning, strategy and the gathering of extraordinary resources.
The article notes that Ray Kurzweil and Senator Bill Frist have both called for a "Manhattan Project" level of focus on bio-defense, "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)."
Regardless of what you may think of the urgency of dealing with conventional bio-warfare, imagine what kinds of consequences could flow from people with implausibly advanced abilities in technological development, if they concentrated those skills on destroying the world as we know it. We might have to engage in several such "Manhattan Projects" just to stay ahead of such people... and we would have considerable motivation to engage in judicious augmentation ourselves -- particularly of the scientists and law-enforcement personnel needed to contain such threats.
We may also find more human enhancement technology flowing out of research into preventing bio-terrorism. Why? Because human augmentation isn't a discrete part of the biotech industry. Rather, all of the serious enhancement therapies being developed seem to be side effects of treatments for medical conditions (Alzheimer's, etc). A massive effort to create resistance to bio-warfare would be apt to yield "dual-use" research -- science which could be applied to other opportunities. If nothing else, we would be to develop a kind of human far more resistant to exotic diseases than the typical person is now. And that would most definitely be an augmentation.
Bio, Soc
Future Imperative
posted by Ralph Cerchione | Sunday, March 19, 2006
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