Biotech Revolution

From Gothpoodle

Latest revision as of 14:59, 8 September 2011

The technology which epitomized the early 20th century was the nuclear weapon, the highest achievement and most fearsome weapon of industrial civilization. The technology most characteristic of the late 20th century was the digital computer, foundation of the networked societies of the future and source of unparalleled prosperity. As the new century began, some believed its primary technology would be genetic – the manipulation of DNA. They were right, but the new revolution was stubbornly slow to appear. By 2010, most of the industrialized world (particularly the United States) was in a technological slump. Innovation continued, but at a slower pace, and the unprecedented economic growth of the 1990s was gone.

Biotech Sanctuaries

Genetic engineering was rapidly becoming a mature technology in 2000. However, even as the new technology’s potential for human advancement was becoming obvious, its tremendous potential for abuse also became clear. Some feared cloning would rob humans of their individuality, and even the notion of cloning human tissues for transplants was violently rejected in many nations. Genetic testing and therapies promised to end the suffering caused by many diseases, but they also opened the door for discrimination on the basis of one’s genetic inheritance. Engineered food crops and “pharm animals” promised to vastly increase agricultural productivity worldwide, but they met resistance from environmentalists, traditional farming interests, and populations who feared eating altered foods.

It was the misfortune of genetic engineering that it matured at a time when much of Western civilization had soured on the notion of “progress” and technological innovation. Space development had stalled. Nuclear power was regarded with deep distrust. The Internet, once regarded as a source of endless miracles, had proven to be vulnerable to both deliberate attack and sheer accident. Genetic technology was particularly mistrusted, being associated with genetic discrimination, biowarfare, and “Frankenfood.”

The new genetic technologies were severely restricted in the most developed nations. The United States, the European Union, and Japan all agreed to strictly limit and monitor the use of genetically altered organisms. Foods and drugs originating from transgenic organisms were subjected to the strictest regulatory regimen of any industrial product. Scientists were strictly prohibited from using transgenic organisms in any situation which might allow them to escape into the “wild” ecosystem. All experiments with human genetic transformation were strictly monitored.

Still, no new technology can be suppressed for long. One of the great advantages of early 21stcentury genetic engineering was that it could be practiced without much of the infrastructure of a high-industrial society. The startup costs for a genetic lab were low, and almost all of the needed equipment could be purchased on the open market. As a result, geneering was an ideal area of research for emerging economies in Latin America, Africa, or South Asia. Through the 2010s and early 2020s, many developing nations and individual entrepreneurs quietly invested in geneering facilities, hoping to steal a march on the wealthy nations who were moving cautiously with the new technology.

At first, these “biotech sanctuaries” floundered. Even with the strict limits placed on their activities, First World genetic engineers simply had more resources to apply to their task. Eventually, the sanctuaries hit on their main advantage: the ability to take risks, free of the shackles of regulation. Sometimes the results were grim, as in 2021 when a modified strain of hantavirus escaped from a bioweapons lab to devastate the population of Dar-es- Salaam. Sometimes, however, the sanctuary engineers hit gold. The most prominent example of this was a working cure for AIDS, developed in 2016 by the South African firm Ithemba Biotechnologies.

Doing Well By Doing Good

By 2016, Africa had suffered the ravages of AIDS and other immune-deficiency diseases for almost two generations. Many areas of the continent had been devastated, with whole villages wiped out and a complete breakdown of organized society. The owners of Ithemba Biotechnologies were painfully aware of Africa’s needs. Unfortunately, they were also aware that much of Africa’s population would be utterly unable to pay for the AIDS cure.

Ithemba’s strategy was characteristic of the time. Backed by the South African diplomatic apparatus, the corporation struck bargains with a number of African and South Asian governments. In exchange for distributing the AIDS cure free of charge to anyone who needed it, Ithemba would receive controlling interests in various state-held enterprises. As a result, by 2027 the biotech firm was diversifying into mineral extraction, petroleum refining, rare woods, computer manufacturing, and a variety of other industries. From these, and from the extremely favorable regulatory terms offered by the host governments, Ithemba made the profit that it could not make directly by selling its geneered wares to the desperately poor people who needed them.

From about 2025 to 2040, many other firms followed the Ithemba example. Biotech Euphrates made its first fortune with a series of robust food crops, which could be used to transform marginal terrain into productive farmland. Even the high-industrial firm Columbia Aerospace invested heavily in the developing world, building its largest launch facility near Quito in partnership with the government of Ecuador. It was a time when many entrepreneurs ventured outside the “completed” markets of the developed nations, risking everything to become merchant princes in the world’s poorest countries. Many of them failed, but others succeeded brilliantly. In so doing, they did much to solve problems in the poorer nations that had long seemed intractable.

The Booming Forties

As biotech sanctuaries worked out the problems with cutting-edge biotechnology, the developed nations began to accept its miracles. The process was slow, but once regulatory restrictions were relaxed the developed nations began to foster their own gene-tech entrepreneurs.

The 2040s were a time of new hope for many people. The suffering of populations in Africa, South Asia, and other poor regions was rapidly being reduced. Even the most developed nations experienced a resurgence in economic growth, along with a new belief in “progress” as a force in human affairs. Digital and genetic technologies resumed the rapid advances which they had enjoyed before the turn of the century. The arrival of energy and mineral resources from space began to fuel an industrial renaissance.

The period was not without its discontents. Some of the era’s great projects, such as the construction of deep-space habitats and the terraforming of Mars, attracted sharp criticism. On Earth, the most controversial innovations involved the design of new forms of sentient life: increasingly sentient AI, “uplifted” animals, and even genetically transformed human beings. As progress seemed to march on, unstoppable, there were growing questions about the moral value of the new technologies.