Jeremy Rifkin is an elegant man. Eloquent, precise and self-confident, he begins his speech with an overview of future catastrophes, each accompanied by the refrain: “and who is going to pay for it?” The question remains in the air, but one is reassured knowing that this American economist has advised several insurance companies. Turned into a demiurge in the face of the technological challenge, his books The End of Work and The Century of Biotechnology , now published in Spain, have earned him a notable audience. As he picks up the computer to have his photos taken, he realizes that he is not using it: the time it takes him to write by hand better matches the rhythm of his thoughts. This paradox illustrates his message about the times.
–The title of his previous book is The End of Work . Does this mean the return to paradise or that the machines will finally leave us without jobs?
-It could be paradise or paralysis, it depends on how you look at it. The reality is that we have computer programs every day more capable of performing the same tasks as human beings. This could be one of the great victories of humanity; If machines were responsible for the realization of goods and services, we could free successive generations from these tasks, to use their minds in something much more creative: creating culture, civilization. The problem is that we do not have an adequate vision of how new technologies can liberate us. And we are scared because we do not conceive in what else the human being can be used. A few months ago I participated in a meeting of the Council of Europe on how to create labor policies. We face challenges and we are beginning to respond.
–Some of the questions posed by new biological technology are also frightening.
-One of the reasons why I wrote The Century of Biotechnology was to have a new approach to what the 21st century is going to be. People think it will be the information age, but that would be like calling the industrial age “the age of the printing press.” The printing press was not important until the power of coal and the steam engine was joined, and it became the language of the industrial revolution. Facing the 21st century, two emerging technologies are also uniting: communication and resources, computers and genes. And from this fusion a new field is born, bioinformatics. This is a broader change than you might think. The information technology revolution is just the language of the biotech revolution.
–Could you tell us about this new resource, genes? You have called them the green gold of the 21st century.
-Yes, the genetic trade is prevailing in all sectors, from construction materials to energy, food or medicine. We are moving from the age of physics and chemistry to the age of biology. Proof of how quickly these changes are taking place is that, in the last couple of years, the four giants of the chemical industry (Du Pont, Monsanto, Novartis and the German Hoechst) have made the decision to abandon part or all of their chemical division to dedicate himself only to genetics. They are metamorphosing to adapt to the new era. People do not know to what extent these changes will affect them, starting with GM foods that have caused a political storm.
–And what is the true scope of this problem? Are the harmful effects on our health already known or are they just a threat for now?
-They are a real problem; These crops and foods are unlike any we’ve had so far. In classical reproduction, close relatives, a horse and a donkey, are crossed and we have a mule, but a donkey and an apple tree cannot be crossed. Thanks to new technologies, it is possible to take genes of any species and put them in the code of any other: it is playing at being God, redesigning the printing presses of life. But it is not known what will be obtained in terms of environment and health: this is the most uncontrolled experiment we have ever done. We are putting foods with genes in our mouths that we have not eaten in hundreds of thousands of years. Most will be safe, but not all, and this will not be known until people are sick.
–However, the discourse of science is so arrogant, scientists seem so sure of themselves, that people believe that every day we know more and that we know where we are going.
-Let me give you an example: the monarch butterfly, the most beautiful of our butterflies, an icon of America. Scientists at Cornell University fed them pollen from a transgenic corn that had been incorporated with the toxic Bt gene, and 40 percent of the larvae died. Then they did the same test with normal corn pollen and nothing happened to them … Look, the idea of a neutral science is a joke. Chemists did not anticipate the harmful effects of DDT, nuclear physicists did not anticipate what to do with nuclear waste, and biologists are doing the same with genetic pollution. There is so much money at stake!
? Do you think they are going to stop and wonder if there is a problem? Will they do a scientific test?
? No, that would hinder the smooth running of trade. In this sense, the moratorium approved by the European Union environment ministers until stricter measures are adopted is very important. It is a moral guideline for the rest of the world.
Jeremy Rifkin traces a Dalinian landscape of gum-trees (whose lignin has been destroyed by an enzyme leak) or hyperfish escaping from the test tube. A second Genesis in the hands of a science as blind as the very image of justice. “Will we end up being aliens in a world populated by cloned, chimeric, and transgenic creatures?” Rifkin wonders. In contrast, the new genetic science can put at hand what until now were only dreams. Research to build human heart valves, breasts, ears, cartilage, noses and other parts of the body are so advanced that by 2020, according to their forecasts, 95 percent of the parts of the human body will be replaceable by laboratory organs.
-I am in favor of the new genetic science; it is very valuable to know more about genes. The question is how it is applied. These big companies can only devise one way to use it: you take your cornfield and stick a soldier with guns in it. It’s old-fashioned, primitive science, nineteenth-century engineering; This is what I call the hard way. There is a much more sophisticated soft way that would allow you to use the same information to better integrate plants into their environment, establish a new relationship with nature, learn to make a friend, not an enemy. The hard way gives way to a dark future of genetic pollution, engineered babies, and commercial eugenics.
–Do you think there will come a future when a couple go to the biologist to plan for their future child even before conception?
-Right now, in the US, the first experiment to change the genetic instructions in a human embryo is ready and awaiting approval. But it is a difficult question to decide, because it attracts us and repels us at the same time. I will give you an example: when children who are five years old today are 25, they can go to a clinic where they will make their genetic map, so that men and women will know what their little embryo will be genetically before doing it. If they know that you will have childhood leukemia, cystic fibrosis, depression, dyslexia, extremely short stature … will they not eliminate this gene before conception? Is there a mom and dad who doesn’t want the healthiest and most beautiful baby, the most emotionally balanced baby that money can buy?
–You repeatedly allude to the old specter of eugenics, the application of the biological laws of heredity to the perfecting of the human race. Do you think we know where we are going?
-The new commercial eugenics is pragmatic and friendly, it only aims to help your baby, but the results may be even worse than those of the Third Reich. For the first time in history, the father becomes his son’s designer. And what parent has the wisdom or the right to design someone of the next generation? What will happen to the child that was not designed at birth, for ethical reasons, or because the parents could not afford it? In a world with quality controls, we will be less understanding of a child who does not meet the standards of genetic engineering. It could also be that parents who did not correct their children’s genetic defects before birth were seen as horrendous criminals.
–We talk about designing our children, when thousands of human beings are starving right now and suffer from diseases eradicated in the West long ago.
-But we can feed them. In the West we have so much production capacity that, in fact, we are paying farmers in Europe and America not to produce. There are not enough people in the world with enough income to buy these foods, so it is a question of finding a political solution, not a technological one. Second, a third of the grain that grows in the world today is dedicated to feeding animals. While the poor have no land to feed their children and starve, we rich people use the land to grow animal feed and die of heart attacks from eating it. Only by changing the food chain would we feed a third of the world’s population right now. Most diseases are due to a combination of genetic predisposition, environment and lifestyle. When we know which genetic constitutions predispose to some or other ailments, we can design a combination of diets and habits that help to avoid them. It is not about using our knowledge about genes to manipulate them, but to learn how they work and interact with the environment. It is about adapting the diet to the genotype of each one, that is, quality of life against eugenics.
– As you say, the new science of genomes is being used by large companies that have chosen the hard way. Does this mean leaving the human being in the hands of commercial interests?
-It is not a fact; the hard way is just an agenda. It may not succeed, it may not work. Genetic engineering could be abandoned or used only to a limited extent. What I tell the public is that there is no need to fear the age of biology; Let’s embrace it, but understanding that there are other options than those used by companies dedicated to the life sciences. I believe that we will see a political realignment. If in the industrial era we moved between right and left, in the age of biology we will find two opposite poles: the intrinsic value of life and the commercial value of life. Increasingly, individuals, families, communities and countries will have to decide what kinds of technologies to bring to market and what kinds of political and cultural decisions to make. They are not going to let the market become the arbiter of the new eugenic civilization.
Teresa Ricart
This interview was published in November 1999, in number 222 of VERY Interesting.
