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From: howard@cpocd2.UUCP
Newsgroups: misc.kids,sci.bio
Subject: Re: No Limits to Growth
Message-ID: <533@cpocd2.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 20:13:45 EST
Article-I.D.: cpocd2.533
Posted: Wed Mar 25 20:13:45 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Mar-87 03:07:01 EST
References: <120300015@inmet> <513@cpocd2.UUCP> <1866@k.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman)
Followup-To: sci.bio
Organization: Intel Corp. ASIC Services Organization, Chandler AZ
Lines: 114
Xref: utgpu misc.kids:894 sci.bio:172

Please followup to sci.bio as this has gotten away from a kids subject.

In article <1866@k.cc.purdue.edu> ahe@k.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Bill Wolfe) writes:
>In article <513@cpocd2.UUCP> howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) writes:
>>You mean like in Ethiopia?
>
>   Actually, there is more than enough to go around; it's just a 
>   question of distribution.  Look at all the grain stacked up in
>   Midwestern silos, the overproduction which is driving food prices
>   down to where the farmers are going bust, etc....  
>   
>   The problem is that the Ethiopian economy cannot generate the required
>   cash, and this in turn has a political/cultural basis.

Unfortunately, when transportation/storage/distribution of food costs
much more than the food itself, the only reasonable solution is to have
each bioregion be more-or-less self-sufficient.  Only recently has it
even been possible for a society to eat more than it grows, and only extremely
wealthy states with high population densities, where food is a small part
of the economy, have been able to make it work.  Ethiopia will not be in this
class for many, many years.

>>WHEN we get off this planet onto other worlds, the genetic heritage
>>of each and every living organism on this planet may suddenly become
>>IMMENSELY valuable.  How do we know that some obscure species of
>>Tibetan lichen won't hold the key to colonizing Mars, for example,
>>by being able to survive low pressures and temperatures?  The answer
>>is, we don't.  We haven't got the FOGGIEST notion of what secrets and
>>surprises lay hidden in the "library" that current life holds in each
>>cell.	It's a bad time to be "burning books", just as we begin to be
>>able to read them.
>
>   We will soon be able to WRITE them.

If by "soon" you mean "within the next several hundred years", then I might
agree.  What we can "write" now are the equivalent of the single-syllable
babbling of a 10-month-old baby.  A few dozen codons at a time.  Do you have
any idea how much genetic material there is in a single cell of a large
organism?  Would you believe 50-100 times as many base-pairs as there are
letters in a complete set of Encyclopedia Brittanica?  Now, to represent an
entire species, you need 2 or 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more than that,
because genetic diversity is important to allow a species to adapt.  Then to
represent all the species we now know is another 6 or 7 orders of magnitude
on top of that.

We know how to make tiny genes.  We know how to cut medium-sized genes from
an organism and paste them into E. Coli.  We have a complete genetic code
for a handful of viruses, mostly VERY small ones like PhiX174 (about one
paragraph worth).  All *WONDERFUL* stuff, but just the tip of the tip of
the tip of the iceberg.

When genetic engineering gets 1,000 times better than it is now, we will be
able to design totally new single-celled organisms.  1,000,000 times better
than now for multicelled organisms.  1,000,000,000 times better for complete
new species with adequate diversity to eveolve on their own.  And about
1,000,000,000,000,000 times better and we will be able to design complete
planetary ecosystems.  Perhaps we should try not to destroy our own until
then.

>   I see no need to preserve 
>   obscure species when we will soon be able to create our own,
>   to predefined specifications.

You're not looking hard enough.  One reason: In order to figure out how they
work, so we know what to specify and how to design something that meets those
specifications.  We could easily spend a few hundred years doing small
modifications to existing organisms and trading genes around to figure out
what they do, and cataloguing the results.  It's odd to call that "soon".

>>I'll bet dinosaurs would have considered cockroaches "lower", but
>>look who's still here.  
>
>   This may change as we gain the ability to conduct unprecedented
>   biological warfare along with the ability to design and implement
>   DNA systems.  I seriously doubt that they will survive a massively
>   parallel attack on every system (respiratory, reproductive, immune,
>   circulatory, digestive, etc.) with brand-new microorganisms specifically 
>   designed to seek out and destroy the targeted genetic structure.
>   
>   Cockroaches are a recursive problem, and they require a recursive
>   solution.  (Actually, parallel recursive solutions for good measure) 

The problem is multifold.  First, if we kill 99.999% of all cockroaches, the
remainder can still breed and will likely be more immune to the attack just
launched.  So you need to get them ALL at once.  Second, even if you did that
there is a niche that cockroaches fill that would be left empty.  Organisms
from neighboring niches would evolve into it (tiny mice?  large ants?) and
the only real effect would be to simplify the ecosystem and hence make it less
stable (remember that the Geckos that ate the cockroaches would starve, too).
There's no logical end to that approach other than killing all other animals
on the planet besides man.
   
>>We are easily capable of annihilating ourselves.
>
>   But you can be quite certain that we will not.  You presumably
>   refer to nuclear weapons; they are VERY, VERY tightly controlled.

Tightly.  That's why a new country joins the nuclear fraternity every few years.
Can you say "proliferation"?  What do you think will happen when two minor
nuclear powers go to war, and one starts losing *REALLY* *BADLY*?  I can hope
that we will not; but no one can be certain.

Then let's consider the biological warfare that our new technology makes
possible.  If you can tailor a microbial attack on cockroaches, how about
one on, say, Caucasian Homo sapiens that leaves Oriental Homo sapiens
unscathed?  According to you, it will soon be easy!  And everyone can play!

Of course, we could simply render the earth unfit to support ourselves.
It's so painless until the final collapse.  And blithely wasting species
is still the social norm. :-(
-- 

	Howard A. Landman
	...!intelca!mipos3!cpocd2!howard