Publications

Citation

Bezold, C. (2002), "Publications", Foresight, Vol. 4 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2002.27304dae.001

Publications

Publications for listing in this section should be sent to Graham May, Reviews Editor, foresight, Principal Lecturer in Futures Research, Leeds Metropolitan University, School of the Built Environment, Brunswick Building, Leeds LS2 8BU, UK.

Note: items including a code (e.g. FS 22:8/373) are abbreviated versions of abstracts selected from Future Survey, published by the World Future Society (for more information see http://www.wfs.org/wfs/fsurv.htm)

Biotechnologies in Developing Countries: Present and Future. Volume 3: Regional and Subregional Co-operation and Joint Ventures

Albert Sasson (UNESCO, Paris, 2000, 1103pp.,FS 24:4/171)

A previous volume in the future-oriented series, Biotechnology in Perspective: Socio-Economic Implications for Developing Countries (1991) reflected on the implications of biotechnological innovations for developing countries. Volume 1 of Biotechnologies in Developing Countries presented an overview of R&D in the developing world. Volume 2 was devoted to international cooperation. This volume looks at developments in regions and individual countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific (Japan, Australia, India, China, Thailand, Indonesia, etc.), the Arab States, and Africa. A very brief sampling:

• •

  China: plant regeneration has been achieved from meristem and callus cultures of over 700 plant species in China; by the mid-1990s, virus-free potatoes were cultivated in 25 provinces; new research (particularly transgenesis research) hopes to break the ceiling of rice yields; researchers at the China Agricultural University and Biotechnology Research Center have succeeded in transferring a Bt gene to maize plants to make them resistant to the Asian corn borer.

• •

  Chile: research is being conducted on identifying genes that might confer protective immunity to fish; "Chile has become the world's first-biggest producer of trout and the second-biggest producer of salmon, behind Norway".

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  Brazil: the Bio-Rio Park was inaugurated in 1990 within the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; it includes some 90 R&D groups and over 1,000 scientists, with incubator space for the start-up of small enterprises.

• •

  Cuba: the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana has produced transgenic maize, cabbage, sugar cane, tobacco, rice, tomato, potato, sweet potato, papaya, banana, and pineapple; commercialization of these varieties is expected between 2001 and 2005.

Brave New Brain: Conquering Mental Illness in the Era of the Genome

Nancy C. Andreasen (Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, 368pp., $29.95, FS 24:3/145)

Mental illness is very common: schizophrenia affects 1 per cent of the population, manic depression another 1 per cent, major depression another 10-20 per cent, and Alzheimer's disease 15 per cent of people over 65. Overall, mental illnesses cost us more than any other general class of disease, and thus should be given a high priority for treatment and research – especially because mental illness will only become more important in the next few decades, due to aging populations. Researchers now have a wealth of powerful new technologies that illuminate the causes and mechanisms of mental illnesses on many different levels. These include the tools of molecular genetics and molecular biology, which are being used to map the genome and identify the genetic basis of many kinds of illnesses, including those of the mind and brain. In addition, neuroimaging techniques now permit us to visualize and measure the living brain.

"The terrain of the brain is being mapped in parallel with the mapping of the genome." The long-term goal of mental illness research is to figure out how to strike early and prevent at least some illnesses from occurring – to find a penicillin for mental illness. "We hope to discover a brave new world in which mental illnesses, now painfully common, become infrequent and easily treated." Andreasen explores being blinded by false dichotomies (mind versus brain, drugs versus psychotherapy, genes versus environment), the workings of the brain/mind and of DNA and genes, definition and scientific advances in four major groups of mental illnesses:

1. 1.

   schizophrenia;

2. 2.

   dementias;

3. 3.

   mood disorders; and

4. 4.

   anxiety disorders.

"Genetic fingerprinting" as the ultimate identity card (the quintessential definition of what each person actually is or is going to become; at present, the profiles are still crude), the race to create new and better drugs, replacing damage control with pre-emptive strikes (no true prophylactic drug is as yet available for any mental illness), and new treatments based on the principles of brain plasticity. In an era when two large knowledge bases will meet and mingle (the map of the humane genome and of the human brain), "the time when we can realistically declare a war on mental illness, with some hope of eventually achieving a victory, has finally come".

Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation

National Research Council (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2002, 320pp., $49.95, FS 24:4/174)

Before transgenic plants can be grown outside the laboratory, approval must be obtained from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the US Department of Agriculture. APHIS developed its first formal procedures for assessing potential environmental effects of transgenic plants in 1987, and currently reviews some 1,000 applications for field testing and deregulation of transgenic plants each year. In January 2000, USDA asked the National Academy of Sciences to review the scientific basis for and operation of APHIS regulatory oversight, and to provide guidelines for assessing the cumulative effects of commercialization of engineered crops on the environment. "There is substantial evidence that ecological effects of farming practices exert simplifying and destabilizing effects on neighboring natural ecosystems – potential ecological effects of transgenic crops and other crops bearing novel traits may be heightened in this destabilized ecological milieu." This argues for a cautious approach in releasing any crop that bears a novel trait and to any extensive change in agricultural practices.

Other findings include:

• •

  small and large genetic changes have had substantial environmental consequences, depending strongly on the specific environment;

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  the significance of the consequence of biological novelty depends on societal values;

• •

  based on a detailed evaluation of the intended and unintended traits produced by the conventional and transgenic approaches to crop improvement, the NRC committee finds that "the transgenic process presents no new categories of risk compared to conventional methods of crop improvement but that specific traits introduced by both approaches can pose unique risks";

• •

  APHIS and other regulatory agencies charged with assessing the safety of transgenic plants face a daunting task, despite substantial improvement of the APHIS regulatory system since it was initiated;

• •

  a much broader array of phenotypic traits can now be incorporated into plants than was possible two decades ago, and "the array of traits is likely to increase dramatically in the next two decades"; the experience with the few herbicide-tolerant and insect- and disease-resistant varieties that have been commercialized provides a very limited basis for predicting questions needed to be asked for new plants with very different phenotypic traits;

• •

  thus, with few exceptions, the environmental risks that will accompany future novel plants cannot be predicted and must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis (in the future, many crops can be expected to include multiple transgenes, adding further complications);

• •

  government agencies charged with regulating transgenic plants enforce a much higher environmental standard than those currently used to regulate the impacts of other agricultural technologies and practices.

As stresses on the environment and public concern about these stresses increase, "it is likely that new standards developed for transgenic plants will be applied in some fashion to other agricultural technologies and practices; in that sense, decisions now being made with regard to transgenic plants could set a precedent for evaluating all of agriculture". The NRC committee recommends substantial increases in public-sector investment in improving precommercialization testing methods, improving transgenic methods that will minimize risks, and developing transgenic plants that would provide environmental benefits.

Life Script: How the Human Genome Discoveries Will Transform Medicine and Enhance Your Health

Nicholas Wade (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001, 204pp., $24.00, FS 24:6/275)

The human genome embodies the genetic program and parts list needed to make, operate, and maintain a person. Possession of this instruction manual, first decoded in June 2000, marks the beginning of a new era in medicine. It provides the basis on which to understand the human body almost as fully and precisely as an engineer understands a machine. From that understanding, physicians can hope to develop new ways to fix the human machine and in time correct most – perhaps almost all – of its defects. Knowledge from the genome seems likely soon to meld with new knowledge about human cells to create a novel kind of healing that some are calling cell therapy or regenerative medicine. This book describes the dawning of the genomic revolution, and the ways in which the new knowledge is likely to transform medicine and health.

Genome technology, if allowed to follow its natural course, may be expected to develop in three overlapping waves of innovation:

1. 1.

   Conventional: using the human genome in the same way as other medical research knowledge is used, to develop new and better treatments for disease; impact of these conventional applications will be felt almost immediately in a minor way, and then with growing force, as new treatments arise from knowing how gene variants contribute to specific diseases.

2. 2.

   The era of germline genomics: just as likely are radical departures from current trends to make inheritable changes in the genome (replacing disease-enhancing variants with normal or health-enhancing variants could save almost a lifetime's worth of medical treatment); germline engineering would probably require a significant social change whereby parents go through the same procedures now used in fertility clinics.

3. 3.

   Significant life extension: present knowledge will doubtless be able to sustain current trends toward increasing longevity without severe disruption, but if biologists can lengthen human lifespan four-fold by changing certain genes, as they can now do with roundworms, human life expectancy in the developed world would stretch to 320 years. Having come so far and gained our first glimpse of the human genome sequence, will we really declare it too dangerous to handle? "We can never turn back."

Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food

Daniel Charles (Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, 2001, 348pp., $27.00, FS 24:4/175)

A science reporter who grew up on a small family farm in Pennsylvania writes about the high hopes of biotech companies for a revolution in agriculture that would relieve world hunger while protecting precious forests and grasslands, the research investment of Monsanto (the single most powerful force in the global seed business spent "at least a billion dollars on research before it had a single genetically engineered plant to sell, then billions more to control a handful of seed companies"), cut-throat scientific competition and backroom business deals, the highly partisan debate over "Frankenfoods", opposition to biotechnology research by ecologists, Monsanto's Roundup Ready Project (making plants tolerant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide), the drive by large corporations to take over portions of the seed industry, Calgene's dashed hopes for the Flavr Savr tomato, campaigns in Europe and the USA to bring down the biotech industry, the "global debacle" of Starlink corn, "golden rice" as the poster child for the potential of genetic engineering (its first grains produced "barely enough Vitamin A to make a difference in anyone's health"), and Monsanto president Robert Shapiro's vision of saving the planet (see The Futurist, April 1999; FS 21:9/429).

A "hall-of-mirrors quality to the passionate arguments" is seen: everywhere one confronts brilliant, oversized images of Monsanto as hero and villain, and biotechnology as creator and destroyer. Yet behind these reflected images, little is real. The vast majority of the world's farmers lie beyond the limits of a commercially viable seed trade; they will not for the foreseeable future spend enough to make them a profitable market for biotech companies. The battle over biotechnology has now settled into trench warfare – bitterly contested, expensive, and wearying, with little movement in either direction. Each side in the GM debate has searched desperately for winning arguments and tactics, levers that might tilt history in its direction. Genetic engineering has brought no benefits to giant food companies, only complications. Headaches will intensify as more countries, including Japan and Australia, introduce mandatory labeling of GM ingredients in food. There is no credible evidence that GM foods currently on the market pose any greater risk to consumers or the environment than conventional food. But by promising to overcome all limits of nature, the overhyped promises of genetic engineering awakened deep suspicions and fears.

Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform the World

Douglas Mulhall (Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2002, 392pp., $28.00, FS 24:6/251)

Disruptive technologies are about to accelerate, due to molecular nanotechnology that allows precise arrangement or operation of things at the atomic scale. Molecular technologies are the tools that pry open secrets of Earth and space, and may shake the foundations of environmentalism. Some scientists argue that a "singularity" is near, and might signify a new era in our lifetimes. This book provides a broad description of three great spheres – technology, nature, and human action – and how they may interact or collide:

1. 1.

   GRAIN: the mega-merger of four super-sciences – genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology – may transform who and what we are. Chapters describe Eric Drexler's vision of nanotechnology, molecular computing (see 24:6/256), desktop manufacturing, possible developments of our near-term molecular future (cures for malaria and dengue fever, instant language translation, fuel cells, clothing that changes color at a voice command and provides artificial muscular power, undetectable recreational nanodrugs), "snapshots of the wild ride ahead" (universal units replace the dollar and euro, the first transworld supersonic tunnel is built with robots, robo servers with high intelligence in narrow areas are built in the billions, companies that focus on robotics become the world's largest corporations, unemployment skyrockets, synthesized food replaces animal-based food, world population hits 15 billion (including robo servers and robo sapiens with human-level intelligence), emergence of Homo provectus (upgraded humans or posthumans, with prosthetics attached to our nervous system), our clothing is our office and health care specialist (due to sensors and logic circuits woven into the fabric), problems of accelerating overconsumption in an "overabundance economy".

2. 2.

   Nature's time bombs: mega-disasters set off by our own technology, or by nature itself, as we become more vulnerable (even while survival chances are improving). Possibilities include runaway global warming, nuclear war, volcanic explosion, deliberate or accidental misuse of nanotechnology (rogue nanoreplicators eat up the biosphere), a doomsday virus (naturally occurring or bioengineered), a major earthquake in Japan or the USA, a comet or asteroid hits Earth.

3. 3.

   Blueprints for a molecular defense: redefine "sustainable development" to build defenses against natural risks we know about, ask the right questions about things we do not know (impacts of molecular assembly and artificial intelligence, how communities can withstand natural disasters by using such technologies), and establish new principles to guide development of risky technologies ("odds are we'll see a cultural tsunami as a result of molecular advances, before a natural cataclysm hits"). These principles include developing a more accurate picture of nature's past catastrophic behavior (e.g. see 24:1/043 on volcanic eruptions), learn from the dark side (question science and "national security"), favor scientific freedom over intellectual property restrictions, redesign democracy for artificial intelligence, use technology to liberate the individual from fear, and undertake large inspirational projects.

Raising the Dead: Organ Transplants, Ethics, and Society

Ronald Munson (Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, 288pp., $30.00, FS 24:3/142)

Each year, some 25,000 Americans have their lives extended or improved by receiving new vital organs; 30 years ago, virtually all of those now saved would have been dead. But 75,000 people are on the waiting list for a donor organ, and some 5,000 people die each year without getting the organ they need to stay alive. The waiting list is growing at a rapid rate, and, with an aging population, will grow faster in the future. Moreover, many other people might benefit from a transplant – perhaps another 100,000 – but never get evaluated. Transplantation is still a crude, stop-gap measure – a "second-rate technology" to keep people from dying. Potentially, xenotransplantation of new organs from specially bred pigs could solve these problems. There would be no shortage of organs, and ethical problems in allocation would evaporate. Pigs grow rapidly and are cheap to maintain, their biology is similar to humans, and most people do not object to exploiting pigs to save lives (in contrast to using primates). But problems still persist in outwitting the human immune system. The dream of replacement-parts surgery using off-the-shelf animal organs is still intact, but its realization is still just over the horizon. Moreover, xenografts pose a risk of triggering an epidemic of some AIDS-like disease. Xenotransplantation "remains a goal worth pursuing", but it is "a rickety and potentially dangerous bridge", demanding that we stay watchful.

Less dramatic, but just as promising, is avoiding the need for transplants in most cases by using stem cells to repair damaged organs, or possibly fabricate a new copy of the patient's own organ. "Patching up organs, instead of replacing them, would ease, if not eliminate, the organ shortage." Researchers consider the following organ repairs and tissue replacements to be likely: growing new neural connections to reverse paralysis, new insulin-producing cells in the pancreas to cure diabetes, new brain cells to reverse symptoms of Alzheimer's, new blood vessels to treat heart disease, new bone cells to speed the healing of fractures and reverse damage from osteoporosis, new lung tissue to treat emphysema, new cartilage for arthritis sufferers, new skin to cover burns, new cells in the retina to cure complete or partial blindness, and new liver tissues to treat cirrhosis. This list is only partial: "in principle every disease could be treated by using a sophisticated stem-cell technology". Munson also discusses tissue engineering, which is paving the way for stem-cell engineering. Most scientists believe that stem-cell engineering is within our grasp. "It may take 20 or even 50 years before we're able to grow replacement organs, but long before we can do that, we'll be able to treat diseases that now cannot be treated at all." Yet the road to this goal may be blocked by those with serious moral objections to research involving embryonic stem cells.

Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future

Gregory Stock (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2002, 277pp., $24.00, FS 24:3/140)

Author of Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism asserts that Homo sapiens is not the final word in primate evolution, but "few have yet grasped that we are on the cusp of profound biological change, poised to transcend our current form and character on a journey to new destinations". Today, in vitro fertilization is responsible for <1 per cent of births in the USA, embryo selection numbers only in the hundreds, and cloning and human genetic modification still lie ahead. "But give these emerging technologies a decade and they will be on the cutting edge of human biological change. These developments will write a new page in the history of life, allowing us to seize control of our evolutionary future." Arrival of safe, reliable, germline technology will signal the beginning of human self-design. We do not know where this will take us, but it will transform and speed up the evolutionary process.

Human cloning has been a recent topic of passionate debate, but the implications of germline engineering and embryo selection are far more profound. The first wave of germinal choice technologies (GCT) offering substantive new human reproductive choices may be only a decade or so away: in-depth genetic testing, sophisticated preimplantation genetic diagnosis, egg banking, improved in vitro fertilization, and cloning. Progress in genomics, along with highly targeted pharmaceuticals, will alter perceptions of our genetic potentials and handicaps. "A decade or so beyond this first wave, a few rudimentary germline manipulations may begin supplementing sophisticated genetic screenings and adult interventions. Another decade beyond, more sophisticated germline manipulations may appear." In the future, laboratory-mediated conception may seem no more foreign than medically-assisted birth does today (in 1900, only 5 per cent of births took place in a hospital, and few people thought of this as "natural"; today, almost all births are in hospitals, and some 30 per cent are by caesarean section).

The great challenge is not how we handle GCT, but whether we embrace the possibilities of our biological future or pull back. Many European countries have already made a provisional decision to forego these technologies, in part due to sensitivity over eugenic abuses of the past. Once a single major nation embraces so foundational a development as this, others would soon have to follow, however reluctantly, to avoid being left behind. China may take the lead, based on its active stance in counseling abortion and its rapid embrace of GM crops. "The social imperatives that grip the country seem to be pushing it in this direction." Stock discusses how much the human lifespan might be extended, approaches to reversing aging, engineering human embryos, ethics and ideology, possible negative impacts (e.g. our genetic constitutions might become impoverished, humanity may be partitioned into the enhanced and unenhanced – posthumans and humans), and regulatory paths in the era of germinal choice.

The Terrible Gift: The Brave New World of Genetic Medicine

Rick J. Carlson and Gary Stimeling (Public Affairs, New York, 2002, 305pp., $26.00, FS 24:6/276)

A health care consultant/futurist and a health writer discuss "the gifts of genomics and their terrible implications", suggesting what may be a kind of "reverse alchemy" – not gold from dross but rather the gold of new technologies transformed into the base metal of inefficient, overpriced, unjust medicine.

Many tests and therapies based on genetics will be available very soon. Some breakthroughs to be expected in the next two decades: genome maps of hundreds of disease bacteria leading to effective antibiotics without side effects, whole-genome assays of individual patients to quickly screen for hundreds of potentially disease-abetting weaknesses, vaccines against many diseases (even tooth decay and the common cold), new antidepressants that may help the 40 per cent of patients for whom current drugs fail, new painkillers promising more relief with fewer side effects, new tests for drug-detoxification enzymes in the liver that should end most of the 100,000 to 300,000 deaths/year in the USA from adverse reactions to medicines, new "designer estrogens" to prevent postmenopausal problems without the risks of current drugs, treatments for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, a vaccine for AIDS and a cure for the early stages of the disease, microelectronic devices to give near-perfect sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, tissue engineering to make transplants of various body parts common, hundreds of new cancer drugs, and a repertoire of effective treatments for heart disease. In the next 20-50 years, a person's entire genome might be routinely upgraded or rejuvenated with stem cells, promising indefinite prolongation of life without aging. "In terms of science, then, the forecast for medicine looks bright and sunny."

In terms of delivering these miracles fairly and efficiently to the people who need them, "the forecast is rain, possibly heavy at times", because the awesome powers of the new medicine are being entrusted to a dysfunctional system of high administrative costs, too many specialists, unneeded operations, fraud and malpractice, and gross overmedication. Medicine driven by biotechnology will become more concerned with remodeling, less with repairs. The point where the balance tips in favor of upgrade procedures will come around 2010-2015. By then, well over half of the new medical procedures introduced each year will be elective improvements rather than therapies.

"Longevity medicine is both the ultimate therapy and the ultimate upgrade." Organ transplants, stem-cell injections, and whole-body enzyme-restoration treatments will be among molecular medicine's most expensive procedures. "The rich only used to get richer. Soon they'll be getting taller and smarter, and then they'll live longer." The wealthy may quietly contract for shadow clones, headless bodies with deactivated immune-tagging systems, grown in sterile bubbles to serve as organ trees – a ready supply of transplantables for family and friends.

The three basic roads to the future are a completely laissez-faire, pure-retail system with health care availability entirely a matter of personal wealth, government leveling of the playing field with standardized care for all at an adequate level, or (most likely) some hybrid with parts of the first two models. In the near future, the momentum will increasingly go toward the laissez-faire road. Basic therapeutic family medicine will be marginalized, starved for cash and talent, while money rains down on the glamorous genetic enhancement fields. Many will go without health care almost entirely, especially the one-sixth of the US population without insurance ("as medical spending grows, this group will also grow to a fourth or third of the citizenry"). An explosive increase in choices among competing products for prevention and enhancement will accelerate the shift to retail among all but the very poor. "Then, at some point – between 2010 and 2020? – a repugnant level of class stratification, along with middle class pressure for greater access, may create the political conditions needed to reform medicine in part as a public utility." Or a genetic new deal might be forthcoming to forestall both revolt and complete equality.