Where will synthetic biology lead us!? 4 legged chickens and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology

I suppose it could be said that I hold quite a positive view of technology (in general).  Of course there are instances, and certain technologies, which violate this general attitude.  However, on the whole I have experienced the innumerable benefits of being able to communicate, travel, interact, do business, and even deepen my relationships and faith life, through the application of technology.

I have written elsewhere  on this blog about the false, even naive, perspective that many persons have concerning technology (please see this post, and this one, and of course the notion of 'singularity', oh and this one as well)!  In reality we are already 'enslaved' by our technologies!  Simply try to go through one day without employing some form of environmental aid (a car, a telephone, a computer, even spectacles, medicine and most foods are all 'technologically' engineered for human benefit).  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French phenomenological philosopher, understood that human interaction upon the world is not a one way street... We don't simply act upon the world!  There is a reverse action from the world upon us...  For example, if you were to walk into an empty room that had nothing but an chair in it what would you do?  At some point the emptyness of the room and the presence of the chair would act upon you consciously, or subconsciously, and they will cause you to sit.  This illustrates how the space and the objects in the space have informed and transformed your thought processes.  However, the very act of sitting (as an act of physics, where the human body and the structure of the chair encounter one another) is a mutual interaction of material realities in which each has an effect upon the other.  When you sit on the chair the structure of the chair flexes and takes up strain in certain areas.  Conversely the structure of the chair exercises pressure upon your body (changing the shape of your body, supporting your back, lowering the pressure on your feet etc.)

Technology thus has both 'subtle' and 'gross' interactions with its human creators - by this I mean that technology interacts both with what is unseen (thoughts, choices, dreams, hopes, aspirations, desires, fears etc.) and what is seen (our physical being, our environment, our proximity to self and others...)

When one comes to consider this complex relationship between consumers of technology, creators of technologies, and the technologies themselves one can begin to understand that the ethical considerations of what we do (and do not do) with our technologies is even MORE complex!  For example, how far do we go in manipulating the human genetic code to do away with certain pathological conditions (mental illness, disease etc.)?  When have we taken our use of technology too far, and when have we not taken it far enough!?

It reminds me a a joke I heard recently - a man was driving in a rural chicken farming area when he passed on the motorway by a 4 legged chicken doing 130 km/h!  The man was amazed and so he followed the speading bird to a farmers homestead.  He knocked on the farmers door and asked him "have you see that there is a 4 legged chicken running around on your farm?" The farmer replied, "indeed, there are plenty of them here.  We breed them that way.  You see I like a drumstick, my wife likes one, and so do my 2 children.  So, it was for that reason that we engineered chickens that have 4 legs".  Astonished the enquirer asked "So, how do they taste?" "I'm not sure" replied the farmer, "I've never been able to catch one!"

I suppose that is the 'sweet spot' for technology - it must serve a useful and appropriate purpose in order for it to be considered good!  Well, in my trawl of the internet I came across this interesting post on biological engineering.  I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts (particularly from the perspective of Christian ethics) on the use and abuse of technologies!

In “A Life of Its Own," Michael Specter explores the opportunities and challenges posed by the emerging field of synthetic biology. “No scientific achievement has promised so much, and none has come with greater risks or clearer possibilities for deliberate abuse,” Specter writes. Synthetic biologists “see cells as hardware, and genetic code as the software required to make them run,” he notes. “By using gene-sequence information and synthetic DNA, they are attempting to reconfigure the metabolic pathways of cells to perform entirely new functions, such as manufacturing chemicals and drugs.” One team of biologists, led by Jay Keasling at Berkeley, has had great success with amorphadine, the precursor to the malaria medicine artemisinin: they constructed a microbe to manufacture the compound, and by 2012 they will have produced enough artemisinin that the cost for a course of treatment will drop from as much as ten dollars to less than a dollar. “We have got to the point in human history where we simply do not have to accept what nature has given us,” Keasling tells Specter. He envisions a much larger expansion of the discipline, engineering cells to manufacture substances like biofuels.
Another scientist, Drew Endy of Stanford, has collaborated with colleagues to start the BioBricks Foundation, a nonprofit organization formed to register and develop standard parts for assembling DNA. Endy predicts that if synthetic biology succeeds, “our ultimate solution to the crisis of health-care costs will be to redesign ourselves so that we don’t have so many problems to deal with,” but he also acknowledges the risks inherent in the field. Synthetic biology, Endy tells Specter, is “the coolest platform science has ever produced, but the questions it raises are the hardest to answer.” Yet he also argues that “the potential is great enough, I believe, to convince people it’s worth the risk.” Specter writes, “The planet is in danger, and nature needs help.” While biological engineering will never “solve every problem we expect it to solve,” he writes, “what worked for artemisinin can work for many of the products our species will need to survive.”

(Illustration by Joost Swarte) Where will synthetic biology lead us?

Please leave me some feedback and thoughts in the comments!  Come on ethicists, philosophers, theologians, and the rest of us who use technology! What do you think?

Comments

[listeninghermit]

A very interesting paper. My son who has trained in Bio-tech makes the point that Genetic Engineering is, in many cases, simply speeding up what evolution would have done over millennia or aeons anyway.
I am constantly in awe of the reality of human existence considering that we are little less than an opportunistic species that flourished in the niche left by the extinction of the dinosaurs. Now there were "chickens" who could really move quickly!!!

[markpenrith]

As long as the technology serves us I'm all for moving forward. I'm a slave to my digital diary.

Could Bill Gates be a Cylon?

:)

Mark

[digitaldion (Dion Forster)]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the comment! Always great to hear from you... Indeed, the mystery of 'being' within the complexity and chaos of the world's evolutionary trajectory is both humbling and amazing! I'm quite pleased to be here though!

As for those thick skinned, big legged, little head predators of days gone by - yup, I'm pleased they're NOT here! ha ha!

Mark, if Bill gates were a cylon I would not fear him. He would probably be running Windows Vista. That means, with almost entire certainty that he will hang, freeze, need to be rebooted at the critical moment! If Steve Jobs were a cylon... He would be smooth, work well, but cost way to much to actually put into circulation.

So, I think we're safe all around ;)

Blessings,

D