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        There are certain problems which crop up when Technology and Medicine advance as they constantly do, and it is Society, whether in the form of Government or the people as a whole, that both creates and attempts regulation of these problems. Often the problem arises from an exponentially growing gap between what is unstoppably happening and what should be.

        In our era, it has been the proliferation of supposed knowledge of the 'human machine', those things which make humans function in the way that they do, which has been this manifestation. In other times, it was what we now call superstition that caused these problems because of the things that Society thought that it knew. In the future, no doubt, they will look back upon practices of today and repeat what we say of -our- past. In this way, as the knowledge of what makes man tick grows, so too does the danger that this knowledge goes awry.

The Quest for Immortality-

        In the past, Society has made use of biological knowledge in various ways, and held various beliefs about the status of technology/medicine's ability to destroy those things that would attempt to effect death and destruction. Aging, disease, broken bones, war wounds, all seemed to point to technology and medicine for surcease, looking for a 'cure for the common cold' that was something more.

        Countries looked for biological warfare as a method to claim sovereignty over their neighbor, becoming focused up the destruction of the 'enemy' as well as the healing and rejuvenation of their own peoples []. To some extent, they had already found it, in the shape of the gasses of world war II and later the chemical warfare that happened in Vietnam and the Gulf war. Never had there been such insidious tactics, devastating the unwary soldier from within. The paradox still existed, however, that they looked to the same technology to further their grasps for freedom from death.

        Even now, Science and Society look for a cure to past mistakes, attempting to pull back the hands of time, allowing complete control over the animals and plants around them. They try to save species from extinction, protecting them from the ravages of their own voracious capitalism. Using the very same Science and Technology that caused the original destruction, they try to reverse. By Cloning, that process which is still viewed with mystical reverence due to it's pop culture image, they hope to bring forth all the species that are gradually losing ground []. But this dream is an impossibility, grounded only in Society's blind trust in Science.

        A simple illustration will suffice. Imagine that Tigers are 'hunted' out of existence by a multitude of species killing factors, let's say the combination of disease, human predators, and the destruction of the tiger's natural habitat and prey. Society and Science then bring back the Tiger from extinction using Cloning of DNA. The Factors that affected the extinction will still be in existence, and therefore the cycle will just resume where it was before.

        Scientists always warn, with their probabilities and their standard deviation, of the fallacies of science, it's innate chance that something could go wrong, but their warnings are giddy and shallow, for they themselves cannot believe what they speak of. And so they proceed with the misleading of the public at large that Science and Technology can solve any problem, but all the time events are changing so fast and furiously, that man's own ability to use this knowledge towards the right end is what lacks. Unable to keep up with the advancements of it's time, it strikes out to clear a path for itself, perhaps using a weapon or technology that is still beyond it's comprehension, like an atom bomb dropping upon a Japanese city.

Human Re-examination-

        The essential facet that must be made to happen is that the government and society at large must eventually face up to the fact that what it is doing is destructive even to it's self. To a certain extent, one can hope that that is what is happening. There have been massive viewpoint shifts towards the ideas that industry, technology, constant upwards and onwards advancement, must in turn have their constant pitfalls.

        In recent years, there was little that could be deemed an 'amazing innovation' of government or society that has originated from the people. This is because technology is relied upon instead of philosophical or ideological advancement. We are stifled by our own creation, for it does not allow us to expand and grow where it counts. Instead it acts as an inhibiting cast around our potential and a crutch that keeps us from walking unaided.

        Ways of escape from these problems have also appeared, but they are surely the wrong ones, methods that lead only to the problem again. Chemicals are viewed as beneficial to the growing minds of children, not allowing them the chance to be unique, to win through the trials of their emotional or physical problems, but instead teaching them, as soon as is possible, the method to avoid their problems without solving them. Teaching them to use drugs as a way out of pain, even though pain is one of the few things that keeps one alive and let's one -know- that they are alive.

        And then there is confusion, after all this, about why children turn to other drugs, 'illegal', so contemptible to society's view, but little different from what they have seen and used at home [].

        Even the adults, taught by doctors and hospitals and themselves the 'wondrous magic' of drugs, are brought into the use of chemicals to make the 'self' feel good, and then they are wondrous that the ones who think of them as role models carry on their only lesson, to deaden one's mind with chemical [].

        There are those out there who profit from the sale and the addiction of the user to the drug, but I speak not of 'drug dealers' in name. These are not the dealers of the streets, but a something more sinister. They are dealers in profession, sending their heritage out into the world as if it was right and just, as if what they do was healing, yet the only difference that exists is the lack of that 'name', and a replacement with a creditable and honorable occupation. Society has bequeathed them the name 'Pharmacists'.

        Once again, though, it comes back to Science, because Science and Technology give us a feeling of control, the idea that everything is solely cause and effect, when the true case is that everything is cause and effect, effect, effect, infinite effects to a certain cause. Science is searching, still, within the very chemistry of the brain, the material that makes up consciousness, and attempting to break it down, alter it, or build it up, but never with understanding, only with knowledge []. The true understanding may arrive long after, but it still comes only in bits and pieces, never as a complete picture. After all, science is examination of the pieces, not a view of the whole. Why would we wish to know the whole truth?

        In much the same way have diseases been mishandled. Not -actively- allowed to grow and become stronger, but simply let to happen by the lack of vision beyond the immediate future. Cause and result, cause and result, these always determine what should be done. So it is that Viruses, Bacteria, and all the types of Things that attack the human body are seen as something that must earn a reprise, no matter how small a skirmish. Even small malaises are treated with excessive amounts of chemicals, back to chemicals. No matter that these chemicals are lethal poisons to humans as well. Keep the doses small and the humans don't die and the do. What about the other effects? The is dead, so why worry?

        It is, perhaps, the fear and loathing that society builds out of the unknown, that makes the need to lash out. 'Kill the ' that inner voice cries. Eventually, of course, this overkill has effected those invisible warriors that assail humans, making them now -invincible- to the antibodies and resistant to the chemicals, and with a lack of an alternative method of destroying them, mankind is at their mercy [].

        This is effecting the area of genetic manipulation all too frequently, as unforeseen consequences 'crop' up.

        (i.e. -The loss of Monarch butterfly populations due to the fact that the new ‘genaltered’ corn is poisonous to them as well as the more 'dangerous' pests []. This appears out of what was to be a helpful trait in the Corn crop. -Another such instance is the genetic engineering of certain fish with a human gene which makes them grow bigger. The problem: they have a drastically shortened life span, and if any escaped into a wild population of fish, they would breed and quite quickly spread the trait of their short life-span to the rest[].)

        The problem is not necessarily that we will not have any butterflies any more, or any of that type of fish. It is that these things will continue to happen. Whenever there is something genetically engineered to -be- something specific, it also loses or gains other traits, and these invariably are what cannot be found out until it is too late.

Making a Picture of a Photograph-

        The main problem that arises along with such sources of untamed power as genetics is that there will always be someone ready to exploit those methods towards their own capital gain, and the combination of an extremely versatile and powerful tool in the hands of a few scientists, and these scientists being backed by large and powerful corporations to further their own ends mixes to make explosives just waiting to happen. And happen these explosions have. No Chernobyl’s quite yet, but there have been outbreaks of certain strange diseases among animals and humans as well, from the lions of Africa to Penguins of the Antarctic, and these diseases are such a sort that they can skip from host species to host species [even animal to human] in ways that did not exist before.

        That -some- of these diseases are due to transgenic experimentation [mixing the DNA of different species] is certainly linked, others, less certain, but the pattern is there. The very fact that a few exist at all is cause for alarm because it shows that the necessary precautions are not being made, which means that eventually, a mistake will be made that won't be so easy to ignore. Unfortunately, as usual, Society would rather look for a cure afterwards than prevention before.

        Perhaps the problem is also that the only prevention is one of attitude, the foresight to treat genetics with the respect and distrust that it highly deserves [].

        For this reason, a Pandora's box has been opened, and the lid may never be able to be pushed back down, much less closed fully. For each area of testing or research that errs on the side of caution, there will be another that goes to beyond without a qualm.

        In this, our open and free market economy is a curse, not a boon, for it encourages a sense of competition which can make the end result an ill-thought out disaster. An illustration of this is the Mapping of the Human Genome, where one company used a slow but sure method, while the second used a fast but more open to error, yet when the second finished sooner, was lauded as the 'winner'. This disregards the fact that what they were handling was, essentially, crystallized human life, ancestry and heredity. What consequences will a misplaced nucleotide have?

        With the new ability to specify what code sequences' pair with what biological effects, there is now a corporate rush for -patenting- DNA sequences because of this relation to it creating disorders or immunities. This privatization of what should be the public domain, the very 'code of life', is more than likely something that will cause extreme problems in the future, as there are numerous biotechnologies that are springing up as offshoots of this.

        These new technologies will more than likely be stifled in this atmosphere of patents and old ideas of static ownership which can be seen to be ridiculous against the backdrop of the exponential growth of new technologies. Not only that, but the US government has certain possibilities that it can use in situations like this, 'copy-left'ing [destroying the ability to copy-right] certain new technologies that would be better served by free exploration.

        The last point that must be made along the existing dangers is the amazing power and versatility that having the ability to alter their own 'life code' is. There are already, for example, locations where by a [somewhat risky and unreliable] procedure the parents of a child can in essence choose between male and female before the cell has grown enough to be called multicellular. The combination of power over human code and the code of other organisms has singular potential for mischance.

        If the issue of Abortion has created such huge conflict, how much more would be made by complete and total genetic control of a human being?

Null Set-

        Of course, no one may know their own future well, so everything is just speculation until it actually happens, but speculation of future events is much better than remorse over past ones. Besides, without some idea of the future, however erroneous, how could we ever be surprised ?

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