Mad Science Gone Awry

Scientists genetically modify the ebola virus, one of the most deadly known to man, for study. Science is run amok. They create genetically modified foods, cloned cows, chemicals that eat the ozone, and generally f-up the natural balance. Right? That’s bad, wholly and totally disturbing. Keeps us up with nightmares of the nano “grey goo” that eats all life on the world and leaves a dead, barren planet. Right?Well, since this is one of the first posts here, it may not be clear that my answer is a qualified “no”. All of those things, yes even the ozone eating CFCs, are not all bad. In general, the products of science are made to actually do something, at least potentially, life saving, useful, or at least helpful.Look at that list, of the things that are real (grey goo is sci-fi only), there are actually things that make a lot of sense behind them.

• Refrigerants (CFCs) made the modern world possible, let us store blood for donations, air condition office buildings, and have access to foods we would have never dreamed of (great Nova recently on this)
• GM foods have the potential to feed more people (grains that can grow in deserts, might perhaps be useful as global warming kicks in and effects the poorest humans the most), or even be resistant to pests, potentially reducing our dependency on chemicals
• Cloned beef? Well, not so sure on that one. I’m assuming the cows haven’t stopped screwing all the sudden, but it is simply an extension of breeding practices we already use

What about the scientists mucking around with the ebola virus? Shouldn’t we not messing around with things we don’t understand? Honestly, I don’t understand that question. It seems to me, if we don’t get inside and figure things out we never learn. What they are working on here, if I understand, is creating a version of Ebola that we can actually learn from, understand, and maybe produce a vaccine. Potentially avoiding a really scary situation where Ebola gets out into the general population in an airborne form and starts killing. If we never try and learn, we’ll never be able to protect ourselves. To me, it seems similar to saying humans aren’t meant to fly; so we shouldn’t try and create machines that can help us do it.The “natural balance” is most humans dying within the first years of their life, then scraping a living and starving just long enough to reproduce before we die at age 20 or so from things a lot more common than Ebola. The “natural balance” doesn’t give a shit about us, its driven 99% of all species to extinction.  I’m not saying we should run willy-nilly into dangerous experiments or exploit the planet. Its just that the evidence doesn’t support some kind of warm and fuzzy “mother nature” that is looking out for her children.