Lhe economic growth comes up against the physical limits of the planet, and devastates it. But research is a driving force behind this growth. Failing to explain this indirect and essential impact of research, debates on its usefulness are generally limited to its direct repercussions.
The promoters of research point out that curiosity and the use of technology are two fundamental characteristics of the human species, or that research contributes to material comfort and longevity. Equally disparate, criticisms of the research focus on its military or societal applications: manipulation of living things, unbridled pursuit of profit, degradation of the human body into merchandise.
It is impossible to draw a valid benefit-risk analysis from it, no insurance company can guarantee the research, because it has a specificity: its repercussions are unpredictable, can sometimes be felt after several centuries, and cannot be anticipate through a statistical analysis of the past.
Take the example of virology. Separately, two teams of virologists, in Japan and the Netherlands, modified the H5N1 avian flu virus in 2011, and made it contaminating mammalian cells. The announced objective, that of being ready to quickly produce a human vaccine in the event of a pandemic, was unrealistic, viruses being too variable to be predictable (against Covid-19, a different strategy was revealed relevant).
Sorcerer’s Apprentice Experiences
On the other hand, the risk was real: in 2014, given the frequency of laboratory accidents, the United States established a moratorium on the financing of so-called “concerning” research in virology; amendments made it lose all scope in 2017. In the meantime, researchers from North Carolina transferred their experiments to Wuhan, China, to go faster and at lower cost. It is still not known whether SARS-CoV-2 originated from it. On the other hand, we know that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, laboratory leaks were recorded, among others in Taiwan in October and November 2021. In 2022, in the heart of Boston, researchers constructed a virus combining contagiousness of the Omicron variant with the lethality of one of the first variants. Risk of pandemic versus promise of vaccine: what conclusions can we draw?
The indirect impact is certain and more serious. More generally, underline critical collectives like Parts and Main d’oeuvre or the Grothendieck group, research serves competition and the will to power. Hence its indirect impacts on the state of the planet, much more significant than its direct impacts. It is a pillar of current excess, and of the quest for the unlimited, which manifests itself, among other things, in sorcerer’s apprentice experiments: transhumanism, gene forcing, colonization of Mars or brain-machine interface.
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