From: cp@panix.com (Charles Platt) Subject: Jeremy Rifkin's book Newsgroups: sci.cryonics Date: 18 May 1998 16:27:24 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Path: news.kth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed1.swip.net!news-pen-1.sprintlink.net!news-east.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!netnews.com!news-xfer.netaxs.com!panix!news.panix.com!not-for-mail Lines: 143 Message-ID: <6jq5jc$m2t@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: news.kth.se sci.cryonics:9354 Rarely, a writer has an opportunity to say something about someone he regards as a true menace to the human future. I was offered this chance recently (on a very modest scale) when The Washington Post asked me to review the new book by Jeremy Rifkin, "The Biotech Century." I believe Rifkin is the commentator who poses the greatest threat to attempts to transcend limitations of the human condition. His book is useful as a catalogue of recent advances in molecular biology and genetics, but is pernicious and dishonest in its pretense to be a "guide," when in fact it is a polemic. Normally I don't quote my own work online, but in this case I offer the text of my review, largely because I would like as many people as possible to know about Jeremy Rifkin. If you are unconvinced by my evaluation, I invite you to look at his book for yourself. Anyone who believes in the promise of technology to improve our lives should be extremely concerned by this man. --Charles Platt ------------------------------------------------------------- Profits of Doom by Charles Platt Doomsayers have always been in plentiful supply. "Resources are scarcely adequate to us," wrote the Roman scholar Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, "while already nature does not sustain us. Truly, pestilence and hunger and war and flood must be considered as a remedy for nations, like a pruning back of the human race becoming excessive in numbers."[1] This was around 200 AD, when world population was under 300 million.[2] Tertullianus was wrong, Malthus was wrong, and modern academics have been wrong--most spectacularly when an MIT study team deduced from a massive computer simulation that all reserves of lead, tin, zinc, and petroleum would be exhausted within 20 years. (This was back in 1972.)[3] Still, the abysmal track record of pessimistic pundits has never impaired their popularity--which explains Jeremy Rifkin's lucrative career as a gene-splicing alarmist, even though none of his horror scenarios has come close to reality, while research continues safely under severe restraints and promises huge benefits ranging from cancer cures to new crops that will fight third-world hunger. Of course, recombinant DNA raises ethical issues and has frightening military applications. But in _The Biotech Century_ (Tarcher/Putnam, $24.95) Rifkin goes far beyond these specifics. With Old Testament hyperbole he warns of an impending "second genesis" threatening "a biological Tower of Babel spreading chaos throughout the biological world and, in the process, drowning out the ancient language of evolution." (page 68) In fact nature already is a chaotic system, and the "ancient language of evolution" is a risky process of random mutations. The AIDS virus emerged from one such mutation; likewise, numerous hereditary birth defects that cause untold misery. We'd be wise to learn how to inhibit these "natural" processes merely for our own self-defense. Rifkin, though, warns that the power to cure defects can also be used to create superchildren. "'Customized' babies could pave the way for the rise of a eugenic civilization in the twenty-first century," he says (page 3). Yet no one complains, today, if a woman chooses a husband for his intelligence or his good looks, hoping that her children will inherit those traits. Shouldn't individuals be allowed to control this process with less uncertainty? In March, 1996, UNESCO denied this right,[4] claiming that "the human genome is the common heritage of humanity." Thus, women should be forbidden to modify their ova, or men their sperm, because germ plasm belongs to future generations of our species, not the person in whom it resides. Rifkin extends this dubious principle even further, opposing private ownership even of plant genes, especially by pharmaceutical companies that extract useful DNA sequences in third-world countries. He doesn't explain who will pay to turn these sequences into drugs, test them, and market them if no one is allowed ownership rights. He simply rejects the idea. "Life patents strike at the core of our beliefs about the very nature of life," he writes (page 62). His view of life, however, is somewhat inaccurate. He complains that gene splicing alters "our concept of nature and our relationship to it, reducing all of life to manipulatable chemical materials" (page 14). But life cannot be _reduced_ to chemistry; it _is_ chemistry, as was proved almost a century ago when sea urchins were fertilized with inert chemicals in a famous experiment at the Woods Hole marine biological laboratory.[5] Since then we've established that every cell contains its own DNA program, and currently we are learning how to modify that program with greater precision. To Jeremy Rifkin, this seems a threat and an insult, possibly for religious reasons, though he avoids mentioning his own faith. _The Biotech Century_ purports to be an objective guide, but this is a deliberate deception. Mr. Rifkin makes no attempt at a fair or balanced assessment, and does not reveal to the reader his long record of anti-science activism. His "survey" of the next century is an endless catalogue of horrors, real or imagined, and he offers no suggestions for solutions. If genetic research is impeded, millions of people will remain hungry or will die unnecessarily. If scare tactics by doomsayers encourage legislation that outlaws some activities (such as cloning), the work will move offshore to nations where fewer safeguards may exist, thus creating greater risk. Since _The Biotech Century_ encourages these outcomes, it raises an intriguing question: who is more dangerous, the scientist seeking to enhance our lives, or the pundit who promotes unreasoning fear? Mr. Rifkin would like tighter controls on risky research conducted by greedy pharmaceutical companies. By the same logic, he should favor restrictions on reckless doomsayers, who work without regulatory supervision and profit handsomely while accepting no responsibility for the social consequences of their scaremongering. ------------------------------------------------------------- References [1] Quoted in Joel E. Cohen, "How Many People Can the World Support?" (page 6). W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 1995. [2] Same source as [1] (page 77). [3] Donella H. Meadows et. al., _The Limits to Growth_ (pages 56-61). Universe Books, New York, 1972. [4] In "Declaration on Protection of the Human Genome," from UNESCO web page; quoted in "The Evolution Revolution" by Charles Platt, _Wired_ magazine, January 1997. [5] Boyce Rensberger, _Life Itself_ (page 9). Oxford University Press, New York, 1996. -------------------------------------------------------------