Entre o a priori e o a posteriori

Discutir sobre tecnociências não é de fato uma tarefa fácil, quer se trate de tecno-economia ou biotecnologia. O Sistema Institucionalizado de Produção de Conhecimento (SIPC) conseguiu angariar para si um status invejável, no que diz respeito às suas possibilidades de crescimento e mobilização de recursos sociais.
De fato, quem fala de qualquer regulação a priori do SIPC parece incorrer em pecado mortal e imperdoável. O programa de desenvolvimento das tecnociências não admite limites e, nesse caso, restrições ao ritmo de produção de mercadorias que muitas vezes é característico das tecnociências são confundidas propositadamente com restrições inadmissíveis à própria ciência como um todo. Do ponto de vista do SIPC, a imposição de barreiras e vetos é sempre inadmissível porque vai contra a própria natureza da acumulação de conhecimento.
Diante dos resultados indesejados de inúmeras ações em pesquisa e desenvolvimento, restaram-nos apenas os vetos ou os limites impostos a posteriori. E quando isto se dá? Após uma ou mais catástrofes. E mesmo assim, se nos lembrarmos que logo após o despejo das bombas atômicas na Segunda Guerra o feito foi saudado efusivamente por editoriais de jornais americanos, têm que ser catástrofes universais, ou pelo menos vistas como tal, exatamente como reivindica o próprio SIPC.
Se a regulação prévia é inadmissível e a regulamentação posterior corre sério risco de atuar sobre catástrofes – algumas delas potencialmente incontroláveis – o que nos resta fazer no presente?

Morte de paciente que submetida à terapia genética

As pesquisas na área das biotecnologias têm crescido muito rapidamente; em geral, são pesquisas caras e que demandam continuamente muitos recursos humanos e financeiros. Esse processo de mobilização de recursos é majoritariamente político e parte desta estratégia política tem um lado fortemente midiático. a cautela que muitas vezes caracterizou todas as promessas vinculadas a programas de pesquisa é hoje, em algumas áreas, uma vaga lembrança. Parece haver uma certa competição – em detrimento da colaboração – para ver quem pode colocar produtos no mercado mais rapidamente.

Inúmeros grupos de observadores das tecnociências têm feito alertas sobre a necessidade de um comportamento mais cuidadoso, sobre a necessidade de realização de mais debates mais públicos e menos espetaculares sobre as implicações das biotecnologias.

Há algumas semanas, esse processo alucinado fez uma nova vítima, desta vez uma paciente (como se viu acima, a cautela, a humildade e a paciência já foram devidamente esquecidas no campo das biotecnologias). Jolee Mohr, uma americana de 36 anos, submetia-se a uma terapia genética para tratar um tipo de artrite. Ainda não se sabe se a causa de sua morte teria sido mesmo a terapia genética; mas seu marido declarou que seu estado de saúde começou a piorar logo após uma sessão de tratamento, em que foi inoculada por vírus geneticamente modificados.

O que a denúncia do Center for Genetics and Society faz questão de ressaltar é que a paciente não apresentava um quadro grave ou risco iminente de morte que justificasse o emprego de medicamentos e terapias para as quais os riscos ainda não estavam bem delimitados.

A filantropia da Fundação de Bill e Melinda Gates

Este link (clicando aqui) traz um texto interessante sobre a atuação da Fundação mantida com recursos da fortuna de Bill e Melinda Gates. Em resumo, em 2004 eles se aproximaram de um grupo de pesquisas na Argentina que havia desenvolvido uma forma de tratamento para a Doença de Chagas. O tratamento em corações severamente danificados pela doença foi feito com sucesso empregando células-tronco dos próprios pacientes (futuramente, pretendo abordar aqui algumas questões sobre a pesquisa com as chamadas células-tronco embrionárias).
Segundo os autores, a pesquisa, diagnóstico, protocolos de tratamento e tudo o mais envolvido com a Doença de Chagas é feito pelo setor público - universidades, hospitais, órgãos da administração pública etc - e é fácil saber o porque disso. É uma enfermidade de pobres em países pobres. Para estes as verbas de pesquisa não fluem tão facilmente, mesmo em se tratando de financiamento na área da saúde, atratoras notórias de recursos.
Representantes da Fundação de Bill Gates aproximaram-se dos pesquisadores argentinos oferecendo apoio, mencionando possível apoio da ordem de 2 milhões de dólares. Os pesquisadores então elaboraram um projeto detalhado (que levou mais de dois meses para ser redigido) submetido à avaliação dos representantes da Fundação americana.
Qual não foi a surpresa dos pesquisadores quando tomaram conhecimento de que a Fundação Gates achou por bem oferecer o projeto à iniciativa privada, porque entendiam eles que ela seria mais eficiente (nem sei porque se preocuparam em se justificar) para tocar o projeto.
Tudo está devidamente documentado no site do Institute of Science in Society, em artigo escrito pela pesquisadora Lilian Joensen, com nomes de pessoas e e-mails de envolvidos no processo bem como links para notícias publicadas na imprensa e em periódicos científicos que relatam os avanços das equipes argentinas no combate à doença de Chagas. Em inglês, infelizmente.

Por que eu não gosto de transgênicos

Transgênicos, ou OGMs, são organismos que sofrem alterações em seu DNA produzida por intervenção biotécnica – em geral com o uso da técnica do DNA recombinante. Esses organismos passam a manifestar características que não são resultado do desenvolvimento da própria espécie.

Há muitos problemas ainda não inteira e devidamente esclarecidos sobre um número muito grande de incertezas associado ao uso dos transgênicos, ao seu consumo por humanos e aos possíveis impactos no meio-ambiente. Muitas das questões que permanecem em aberto sobre os transgênicos seriam suficientes para acender as luzes de alerta, no mínimo reduzindo a velocidade com que esta técnica é empregada comercialmente.

Vejamos o caso, muito conhecido, da soja Roundup Ready (RR). Examiná-lo sob um ponto de vista crítico é interessante porque é possível abordar tanto problemas mais gerais como outros mais específicos, tanto problemas de ordem sócio-técnica como de ordem tecnocientífica.

Como funciona a Roundup Ready? De modo resumido, podemos dizer que ela é uma variedade de soja que resiste à aplicação de um defensivo agrícola muito agressivo, o Roundup (daí a soja ser chamada de Roundup Ready). O Roundup é extremamente tóxico às plantas que não seja resistentes ao glifosato, o princípio ativo do defensivo – é essa a “habilidade” que é transferida à RR. Segundo os biotecnólogos, o glifosato não é tóxico para seres humanos.

De um ponto de vista sócio-técnico-econômico, RR não é apenas uma semente de soja. Ela é um modelo completo de negócio (mais tarde, a Monsanto tinha a intenção de também fazer com que a semente originada da colheita da RR fosse estéril – tentou isso com uma variedade de milho, que chamou de Terminator, mas as reações foram tão significativas que provocaram a desistência da comercialização do milho; por enquanto). Sem o Roundup, a RR não tem valor econômico baixo ou, pelo menos, não tem valor econômico para o agricultor capaz de justificar ou sua escolha dentre outras tantas variedades de soja ou um eventual preço mais elevado (por vários motivos ela é mais cara; como é comuníssimo nestes casos, a empresa alega os elevados custos da pesquisa e inovação; e, também, porque como sua quebra na safra é menor, sua produtividade por kilograma de semente plantada seria também muito maior, o que compensaria seu custo maior).

Esse modelo de negócio, que institui um ciclo de dependência entre o agricultor e o fornecedor de sementes, consegue ser também exclusivista e monopolista mesmo quando o agricultor não compra sementes estéreis. Se considerarmos o fato de que as plantações de soja sempre ocorrem em áreas contíguas ou muito próximas, estaremos de fato diante de uma situação inusitada. O pequeno agricultor que não se sujeitar a comprar a RR não estará apenas correndo o risco de que seu concorrente tenha maior produtividade por kilo. Ele corre também o risco da disseminação incontrolada do Roundup. Esse direito de escolha fica prejudicado porque na verdade toda semeadura de soja não resistente ao glifosato em área próxima à aplicação do defensivo corre risco. Se algum vizinho seu escolher usar o Roundup, até mesmo a opção de mudar de cultura - passar para o milho ou o feijão por exemplo - fica prejudicada. Na verdade, junto com as plantas não-resistentes, o Roundup elimina também praticamente todo o direito de escolha do agricultor. A RR e o Roundup oferecem-se aos agricultores de todo o mundo mas, de fato, constituem-se como um sistema de plantação, cultivo e colheita desenvolvido para o agro-negócio, para a grande propriedade.

Por outro lado, eu desconfio muito de vários outros argumentos esgrimidos pelos defensores dos transgênicos (e tendo claro que a transgenia não é uma técnica exclusivamente empregda pela Monsanto). Um deles, em especial, me é profundamente incômodo. É aquele que relaciona o fim da fome no mundo à disseminação dos alimentos transgênicos e de seus “benefícios” associados. Porque me incomoda? Ora, desde quando, pelo menos desde o final da Segunda Guerra Européia (ou mesmo desde antes, no começo do século XX), as fomes mundiais são causadas por escassez de alimentos? Recorrer a esse argumento de defesa é de uma desonestidade intelectual incrível. É como se dissessem: olhe como somos bonzinhos, gastamos fortunas imensas para aperfeiçoar uma técnica que irá resolver um problema que faz a humanidade sofrer horrivelmente há décadas! Ele na verdade não é um argumento novo e está fundado em uma crença à qual se recorre muitas vezes desde que a produção deixou o domínio das técnicas simples e começou a ficar cada vez mais complexa e tecnologizada: a crença na tecnologia como solução para todos os problemas, inclusive aqueles criados por ela mesma. É um argumento na verdade bastante recorrente: aquecimento global? Não se preocupem, o aperfeiçoamento das tecnologias dispensa essa preocupação com o clima. Uso excessivo do petróleo e de automóveis? Não se preocupem, os novos motores mais eficientes dispensarão combustíveis fósseis em um futuro bem próximo. E vai por aí.

Além disso, o problema das fomes mundiais ou locais não é tecnológico, stricto sensu. É geopolítico, de alocação de recursos em sociedades capitalistas. São inúmeros os relatos de sobreprodução deste ou daquele alimento. O que se faz com isso? Distribui-se aos pobres? Providencia-se uma maneira de fazer chegar aos que não têm recursos para comprar seu próprio alimento diariamente? Sim, eu sei, não se vive só de cebola – se a crise de superabastecimento for de cebola, por exemplo – mas o ponto central aqui é a lógica do sistema de alocação. Ela é governada pela eficiência do sistema de preços e não pelas necessidades de sobrevivência de quem quer que seja. Não será aumentando a eficiência da produção de soja que se aumentará o acesso aos alimentos para quem não tem dinheiro para os adquirir. E isso é verdadeiro tanto para as pessoas, individualmente falando, como para comunidades e Estados-nação.

Ora, se um produto – e seus produtores - precisa recorrer a um argumento desonesto e/ou a uma premissa discutível para enobrecer-se a si próprio e ser vendido então, penso eu, devemos desconfiar muito, tanto do produto como de seus produtores.

Mas os problemas com os transgênicos não se esgotam aí, em domínio sócio-econômico ou político. Há dúvidas também na área científica. Seu emprego comercial não é o que se poderia chamar exatamente de infenso à controvérsia ou tema consensual entre os próprios cientistas. Comento aqui uma informação que é de conhecimento público e que pode ser outra fonte de desconfiança.

Como se sabe melhor hoje, o processo que leva do DNA no núcleo da célula até a produção da proteína codificada no RNA mensageiro (não sou biólogo, entendo o processo, entendo inclusive alguma coisa sobre os limites desse modelo descritivo – mas não me peçam, pelo menos aqui, para ser rigoroso com a terminologia científica, com o jargão dos biotecnólogos) é extremamente complexo e não acontece em mão única. O campo da epigenética é fundamentado nessa constatação. Resumidamente, podemos dizer que há muitos diferentes modos de codificar uma mesma proteína. E que no âmbito dessa diversidade já se sabe que as famosas cadeias de DNA junky, ou DNA lixo como o chegaram a chamar alguns geneticistas, costumam ter papel não desprezível. Parece que as fitas de DNA encolhem-se ou esticam-se conforme o contexto núcleo-celular ou o citoplasmático. E isso para a produção da mesma proteína. Ou seja, o processo não é apenas intensamente complexo como também é elevadamente dinâmico. Aí, parece haver um papel não desprezível para as antigas sequências tidas como lixo. E o local em que elas ocorrem na cadeia do DNA parece ser também funcional em todo o processo. Por isso tudo, quase arriscaria dizer que nunca se fabrica uma mesma proteína duas vezes.

Bem, porque toda essa longa explicação? Porque biotecnólogos de todos os matizes, a Monsanto, órgãos reguladores, entre outros envolvidos direta ou indiretamente com as polêmicas sobre os transgênicos, sabem que não se conhece, e não se sabe ainda como determinar, para qual lugar da cadeia do DNA vai (foi) o conjunto de transgens. É por isso que os prováveis efeitos nocivos indeterminados da transgenia podem se manifestar não apenas no curto ou médio prazos, mas no longo prazo. Há uma espécie de casamento intolerável entre o risco e a incerteza.

É aí, na composição insegura do riscos e das incertezas, que emerge uma outra questão: a resistência que as empresas que empregam os transgênicos têm para com a rotulagem de produtos. Imaginemos que um ultraliberalismo tenocientífico e biotecnológico nos levasse compulsoriamente a ter de aceitar todas as realizações das biotecnologias. E que qualquer dúvida tivesse de ficar restrita ao nível da decisão individual. Consome alimento transgênico quem assim o quiser. Mesmo em uma situação como essa eu não deveria ter o direito de escolher? E de me informar sobre essa escolha? E de saber sobre a presença dessa nova tecnologia nos alimentos que eu decidir consumir? Por que então a resistência à rotulagem?

Há outras questões e mais perguntas incovenientes, mas fica pra depois.

Sobre ciências e política

As grandes narrativas forneceram pensamento intelectual um terreno seguro por onde caminhar, no qual os limites e as fronteiras estiveram muito bem demarcados, sempre. Direita e esquerda, progresso e conservadorismo, sempre foram categorias muito bem delimitadas (isso, não obstante os extensos textos que delas se originaram quando o objetivo era explicá-las). De algumas maneiras isso também facilitava o trabalho do pensamento quando em causa estava uma tomada de posição a respeito de um assunto sobre o qual não se tinha um conhecimento muito aprofundado. Grosso modo, os de esquerda sempre estivemos ao lado do liberalismo em política e costumes e do conservadorismo em economia; os à direita primavam pelo extremo liberalismo em economia (a santidade da propriedade privada) e um por um conservadorismo quase carola em costumes e política.

Em tempos recentes isso foi tão forte que, em alguns casos, primeiro nos informávamos sobre a qual corrente política pertencia o autor de um texto ou filme, para só aí nos posicionarmos sobre suas idéias e argumentos.

Dentro do campo de forças estipulado por esse conflito político ordenador das idéias, o antípoda das ciências sempre foi a religião. Uma e outras sempre se viram como divisoras da mesma fronteira. É claro que esse esquema não é totalmente rigoroso. A religião – especialmente as religiões cristãs – teve (tem) muitos problemas com a modificação e a modernização dos costumes. De certo modo, o conflito ainda era o mesmo, se considerada uma noção de ciências e tecnociências que se define pela construção do sistema institucionalizado de produção de conhecimento. Isso porque esse processo que, se acelerou desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Européia, trouxe para o campo da produção sistêmica de conhecimento – feito nas Universidades e chancelado em sua maioria por elas – tudo aquilo que hoje conhecemos como as ciências modernas: desde a biologia e a física até a administração e a economia. Isso sem falar na filosofia que, se não se define como uma ciência, abrigou-se muito confortavelmente (com muita justiça, diga-se de passagem) no sistema universitário institucionalizado de produção de conhecimentos.

Mas, especialmente com as biotecnologias e as novas tecnologias de processamento de informação, ruiu aquela divisão tão facilitadora. O campo de possibilidades que rapidamente se abriu com as biotecnologias não está mais unicamente inscrito na rubrica “progresso”. Atônitos, cientistas mais ingênuos ou ainda – em caso mais grave – acriticamente comprometidos com os interesses imediatos das grandes corporações, revoltam-se contra os antigos aliados à esquerda que ousam questionar a validade do discurso científico ou a proposição de limites ou regulamentações às pesquisas. Muito espertamente ignoram essas vozes questionadoras que vem da própria academia e continuam dizendo em alto e bom som que seus “verdadeiros” contendores ainda estão perfilados nas Igrejas e Templos.

Por outro lado, pensadores identificados com essa mesma esquerda que começam a perceber as implicações de curto, médio e longo prazo encerradas nas realizações das biotecnologias por exemplo vêem-se, de repente, acompanhados por alguns dos antigos “inimigos” conservadores. Quem não se sente incomodado por ver-se dividindo as mesmas idéias que defende um George Bush, por exemplo? É claro que um exame mais aprofundado vai mostrar que na maioria dos casos essa defesa é igual somente na superfície. Por exemplo, o campo de realizações das biotecnologias ou das redes de informações baseado na internet hoje radica intensamente entrelaçado aos interesses das grandes corporações. É inequívoco que um reforço da esfera pública, capaz de recuperar o papel regulador do Estado e devolver à política um conjunto de funções decisórias que hoje está na mão das grandes corporações globais não está na agenda de um conservador como Bush. Mas está na da maioria daqueles que pensam que é preciso regular, conhecer e até mesmo impedir ou desacelerar a realização de alguns tipos de pesquisas.

Capela dos Ossos, em Évora. Trans-humanistas não gostam dela.

Este é o pórtico da Capela dos Ossos, em Évora. A inscrição: Nós Ossos Que Aqui Estamos Pelos Vossos Esperamos.
Trans-humanistas não gostam dela. Em geral, claro. Suas paredes são construídas com ossos humanos. Centenas de milhares de fêmures e crânios. Lembram a finitude da vida. Devia ser visita compulsória para alguns entusiastas das biotecnologias e do trans-humanismo. Mas alguns neo-liberais também não fariam mal se resolvessem passar por lá.

Eugenia Asséptica Tecnocientífica

Quer comprar um óvulo ou amostra de esperma? Via internet? Seus problemas acabaram!
Visite www.xytex.com
Lá você pode escolher entre centenas de doadores. Tudo com orientação especializada para você e seu médico.
Você também encontrará todas as características dos doadores. Informações dele (ou dela), de seus familiares, doenças, potencial para doenças, histórico profissional e educacional. Pagando um pouco mais, você tem acesso a imagens dos doadores e a informações ainda mais detalhadas.
Eugenia Asséptica Tecnocientífica.
Como quase tudo nos EUA, basta pagar.
E, por falar em pagar, óvulos de universitárias (caucasianas) que forem alunas das mais famosas universidades americanas são comprados por valores que vão dos vinte aos cinquenta mil dólares.
Esperma custa menos, de mil a três mil dólares. Homens valemos pouco.
Homens, valemos pouco.

Rússia impede exportação de tecidos humanos

Essa também é muito boa! A Rússia quer impedir a exportação de tecidos humanos por temer sua utilização na construção de bioarmas genéticas. Não é fantástico? E ainda tem gente que diz que esses temas (e preocupações) são coisa de ficção científica (ressalvada a óbvia besteira de tomar ficção científica como "imaginação, apenas"). Publicado no NewScientist.

Russia bans human tissue export in bioweapon alert

• 16:22 30 May 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• New Scientist and AFP

Russia has banned the shipment of medical specimens abroad, threatening hundreds of patients and complicating drug trials by major companies, the national Kommersant newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Kommersant attributed the ban to fears in the secret service that Russian genetic material could be used abroad to make biochemical weapons targeting Russians. The quality daily cited anonymous sources in the medical community.

The ban, initiated by the Ministry of Health and carried out by the Federal Customs Service, began on 28 May. Shipment beyond Russia's borders of all biological material, including hair and blood, has been blocked.

"If this is true, it will hit us like a cannonball" due to the centre's reliance on processing of medical specimens abroad, Aleksei Maschan, director of the Central Children's Hospital, Moscow, told the newspaper.

Secret service warning

The ban may also complicate clinical trials by major pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, which runs trials on tens of thousands of Russians.

The Russian Customs Service and Ministry of Health refused to comment on the reports.

An anonymous medical source linked the ban to a report by the FSB secret service in May 2007, that he said warned of Russian genetic material being used in Western clinics to prepare biological weapons that would harm only Russians.

Nikolai Yankovsky, head of the Russian Institute of Sciences' General Genetics Institute, ridiculed the idea of a ban on transporting genetic material abroad. "Forbidding the shipment of one's DNA abroad is impossible – I am my DNA," he told Echo of Moscow radio.

Alternativa ao Google

Olhaí, tem gente querendo uma alternativa ao Google. Eu uso muito o Google. E acho ótimo que ele rivalize com a Microsoft. Só não simpatizo nada nada com a idéia de precisarmos de um gigante corporativo para fazer frente a outro gigante corporativo. Já pensaram se, daqui a alguns poucos anos, estivermos torcendo pela queda do Google vitimado por uma outra grande empresa? Melhor uma alternativa livre, colaborativa e democrática.
Original aqui.

Open-source search engine gangs up on Google

• 30 May 2007
• Paul Marks

IF HOPE alone could spawn a world-class search engine, Google would be dead by now. In reality it's going to take more than faith to topple the search giant, which has pioneered cutting-edge technology and grabbed a "mindshare" that secured it a place in the Oxford English Dictionary. Yet despite the sizeable hurdles ahead, a rebellious group of engineers is hoping to do just that.

Led by Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales, hundreds of software engineers - ranging from fledgling teenage coders to retired, respected software gurus - are combining in an unlikely attempt to overturn Google's domination of the search market. Their weapon? The transparency provided by open source software.

The idea underpinning their search engine - dubbed Wikia Search after Wales's umbrella company Wikia - is that its search algorithm, which determines which web pages appear top of the lists of links it serves up, will be made public. Wikia's search engineers think this will elicit the trust of users in a way that Google, which keeps its algorithm a closely guarded secret, never will. Open source search results will also be more relevant, as the algorithm will continually be tweaked by its users, keeping it up to date with new technologies as they are deployed, Wales says. The Wikia Search team believes this process of continual improvement will also make it better than Google at dodging the efforts of the spammers who constantly try to "game" Google's search algorithms to put their own nefarious web pages top of the list of search results (see "A spark for spam, or an end to it?").

Google is the top search engine today thanks to an innovative way of determining which pages are the most relevant to a web user's query pioneered by its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, back in the 1990s. Yahoo and Microsoft followed with similar algorithms to rank pages (New Scientist, 20 November 2004, p 23). These algorithms form the heart of each company's intellectual property and so are kept secret. But that, Wales told New Scientist earlier this year, is their Achilles' heel, because it means no one knows why search results appear in the order they do.

Last month, for instance, Google upgraded its algorithm to serve up links to images, news, video, music and books, as well as web pages, in a single search results page, saving users the trouble of having to search under different headings. The company is keeping quiet about how it does this too.

Faced with that silence, people rightfully question the quality of search results, says Jeremie Miller, Wikia's technology chief, who is based in San Mateo, California. Some ask whether Google's algorithm skews results towards its advertising clients, which earned the company more than $10 billion in 2006. Google denies this, but equally, the secrecy means it is difficult to prove otherwise. Similar criticism can be levelled at other search engines. Last year several companies filed lawsuits against Google and Yahoo alleging that the companies unfairly skew their search results (New Scientist, 19 August 2006, p 24).

Politicians are worried too. "European governments have been getting concerned about the competition aspects of search engines, particularly as Google has become so dominant," says Ian Brown, an electronic privacy expert at University College London. "They think there should be much more transparency with search algorithms."

Web surfers may wish to turn to Wikia Search for another reason: it is vowing not to record the terms people search for. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft store this data as they say it helps them improve their technology, but there are concerns that it could be used more intrusively.

Wikia Search still has a long way to go before it becomes reality. Though the discussion forums on the project's website (search.wikia.com) and its associated email list have been up and running since January, and are brimming with ideas about better ways of running a search engine, no clear way forward has yet been decided. What has emerged is that the code will probably incorporate the best elements of two existing open source search programs, neither of which is ready for prime time. One, called Lucene, creates lists of websites and their contents; the other, called Nutch, picks out search results from vast clusters of computers.

Google says it welcomes the competition. "We're just really excited when a new development comes to the space because it is good for everybody," says Jon Steinback of Google.

To take on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the rest, Wales and his coterie of coders face some tough challenges. One is a lack of cash to buy a fleet of global data centres. Today's search engines create lists containing the contents of billions of web pages, known as indexes, and store them on tens of thousands of servers around the globe. The exact number is another trade secret, but there is no doubt that maintaining and powering them is hugely expensive.

Wikia Search is already considering one solution. Rather than investing in data centres, it might store its index on a distributed computing "grid" made up of thousands of volunteers' home PCs and servers connected via the internet. The model for this is the SETI@home screen saver, which divvies up data from a radio telescope among volunteers' home PCs. Each computer would hold a small part of Wikia Search's index and handle search requests relevant to that part.

This strategy brings a bunch of problems of its own, though. What do you do when individual machines are switched off? And how do you stop spammers posing as Wikia volunteers and flooding the index with nefarious web pages?

Miller is confident these problems can be overcome. Video distribution networks that use BitTorrent software also store material on users' machines and can continue to function even when some are switched off by spreading copies of the data across a number of machines. Google itself shows the distributed approach works, says Brown. Using clusters of desktop-class PCs, it deploys clever distributed algorithms to shunt search data between them.

Can Wikia Search's creators win the day? Clearly they are spirited. "Kill and destroy Google," jokes one contributor. "Let's drive a stake through the evil dragon's heart." In the end it may come down to how much users value transparency. "Search needs to be part of the internet's infrastructure, not the domain of commercial giants," says Miller. "Google is an advertising service."

A spark for spam, or an end to it?

Going open source should ensure the ordering of a search engine's results cannot be secretly bent to its owner's whim. But will it make the results any less prone to manipulation by spammers?

Search engine spam has plagued Google's results since the company was founded. One way spammers initially "gamed" Google's search algorithm, which ranks pages more highly if lots of other pages contain links pointing to them, was to put up spoof web pages crammed with links pointing to their own sites. As Google got wise to this, spammers got more sophisticated and the two sides are now locked in an arms race. Spammers deduce how Google's algorithm works from observing how it seems to rank pages, and then devise their own technologies to take advantage of the algorithm and propel their pages to the top. Meanwhile Google has to constantly modify its algorithm to dodge these tricks.

Now Wikia, a company co-founded by Wikipedia pioneer Jimmy Wales, plans to build an open source search engine to rival Google that will publicise the way its algorithm ranks results. Ben Laurie, an open source programmer based in London, says that this will make it easier for spammers to game the algorithms. Instead of having to guess at how an algorithm works, as they do now, they will simply be able to peek inside the software to come up with ways to manipulate it. "By publishing its search algorithm, it's going to be pretty obvious to spammers how to get to the top of the search hits, risking a huge spamfest," Laurie says. "Some genius might come up with algorithms that, despite being published, are resistant to that. But it strikes me as unlikely."

The Wikia Search team, however, expect that to happen. They hope their algorithms will be more responsive than Google to new spam techniques because of the vast number of volunteers' brains that will be thrown at the problem.

Danny Sullivan of the news site searchengineland.com thinks that Wikia Search will turn its army of volunteers to finding ways to block spammers in the same way that Wikipedia handles vandalism in its articles using an army of human editors. "I think they might come up with some novel technology to let humans shape or refine search results," he says.

Freeman Dyson e seu (nosso?!) Our Biotech Future

The New York Review of Books
Volume 54, Number 12 · July 19, 2007
Original em www.nybooks.com
Também pode ser encontrado aqui, no meu Private Clipmarks.
Our Biotech Future
By Freeman Dyson
1.

It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology. Two facts about the coming century are agreed on by almost everyone. Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effects on human welfare.

These facts raise an interesting question. Will the domestication of high technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with the advent of personal computers and GPS receivers and digital cameras, soon be extended from physical technology to biotechnology? I believe that the answer to this question is yes. Here I am bold enough to make a definite prediction. I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.

I see a close analogy between John von Neumann's blinkered vision of computers as large centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides into food crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because he liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs secretly at midnight. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large corporations.

I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized. The first step in this direction was already taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and brilliant colors appeared in pet stores. For biotechnology to become domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly. I recently spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest indoor flower show in the world, where flower breeders from all over the world show off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile Show in San Diego, an equally impressive show displaying the work of another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses, San Diego excels in lizards and snakes. The main problem for a grandparent visiting the reptile show with a grandchild is to get the grandchild out of the building without actually buying a snake.

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also kits for lovers of pigeons and parrots and lizards and snakes to breed new varieties of pets. Breeders of dogs and cats will have their kits too.

Domesticated biotechnology, once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations prefer. New lineages will proliferate to replace those that monoculture farming and deforestation have destroyed. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art form as creative as painting or sculpture.

Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but a great many will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora. The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others. The dangers of biotechnology are real and serious.

If domestication of biotechnology is the wave of the future, five important questions need to be answered. First, can it be stopped? Second, ought it to be stopped? Third, if stopping it is either impossible or undesirable, what are the appropriate limits that our society must impose on it? Fourth, how should the limits be decided? Fifth, how should the limits be enforced, nationally and internationally? I do not attempt to answer these questions here. I leave it to our children and grandchildren to supply the answers.
2.

A New Biology for a New Century

Carl Woese is the world's greatest expert in the field of microbial taxonomy, the classification and understanding of microbes. He explored the ancestry of microbes by tracing the similarities and differences between their genomes. He discovered the large-scale structure of the tree of life, with all living creatures descended from three primordial branches. Before Woese, the tree of life had two main branches called prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the prokaryotes composed of cells without nuclei and the eukaryotes composed of cells with nuclei. All kinds of plants and animals, including humans, belonged to the eukaryote branch. The prokaryote branch contained only microbes. Woese discovered, by studying the anatomy of microbes in detail, that there are two fundamentally different kinds of prokaryotes, which he called bacteria and archea. So he constructed a new tree of life with three branches, bacteria, archea, and eukaryotes. Most of the well-known microbes are bacteria. The archea were at first supposed to be rare and confined to extreme environments such as hot springs, but they are now known to be abundant and widely distributed over the planet. Woese recently published two provocative and illuminating articles with the titles "A New Biology for a New Century" and (together with Nigel Goldenfeld) "Biology's Next Revolution."[*]

Woese's main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, with its assumption that biological processes can be understood by studying genes and molecules. What is needed instead is a new synthetic biology based on emergent patterns of organization. Aside from his main theme, he raises another important question. When did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin understood it, based on the competition for survival of noninterbreeding species. He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution does not go back to the beginning of life. When we compare genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures, we find evidence of numerous transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time.

Whatever Carl Woese writes, even in a speculative vein, needs to be taken seriously. In his "New Biology" article, he is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. Evolution could be rapid, as new chemical devices could be evolved simultaneously by cells of different kinds working in parallel and then reassembled in a single cell by horizontal gene transfer.

But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species of bacteria—and the first species of any kind—reserving their intellectual property for their own private use. With their superior efficiency, the bacteria continued to prosper and to evolve separately, while the rest of the community continued its communal life. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became the ancestor of the archea. Some time after that, a third cell separated itself and became the ancestor of the eukaryotes. And so it went on, until nothing was left of the community and all life was divided into species. The Darwinian interlude had begun.

The Darwinian interlude has lasted for two or three billion years. It probably slowed down the pace of evolution considerably. The basic biochemical machinery of life had evolved rapidly during the few hundreds of millions of years of the pre-Darwinian era, and changed very little in the next two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species, once established, evolve very little. With rare exceptions, Darwinian evolution requires established species to become extinct so that new species can replace them.

Now, after three billion years, the Darwinian interlude is over. It was an interlude between two periods of horizontal gene transfer. The epoch of Darwinian evolution based on competition between species ended about ten thousand years ago, when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the main driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence which we call globalization. And now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology, we are reviving the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species other than our own will no longer exist, and the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented.

I would like to borrow Carl Woese's vision of the future of biology and extend it to the whole of science. Here is his metaphor for the future of science:

Imagine a child playing in a woodland stream, poking a stick into an eddy in the flowing current, thereby disrupting it. But the eddy quickly reforms. The child disperses it again. Again it reforms, and the fascinating game goes on. There you have it! Organisms are resilient patterns in a turbulent flow—patterns in an energy flow.... It is becoming increasingly clear that to understand living systems in any deep sense, we must come to see them not materialistically, as machines, but as stable, complex, dynamic organization.

This picture of living creatures, as patterns of organization rather than collections of molecules, applies not only to bees and bacteria, butterflies and rain forests, but also to sand dunes and snowflakes, thunderstorms and hurricanes. The nonliving universe is as diverse and as dynamic as the living universe, and is also dominated by patterns of organization that are not yet understood. The reductionist physics and the reductionist molecular biology of the twentieth century will continue to be important in the twenty-first century, but they will not be dominant. The big problems, the evolution of the universe as a whole, the origin of life, the nature of human consciousness, and the evolution of the earth's climate, cannot be understood by reducing them to elementary particles and molecules. New ways of thinking and new ways of organizing large databases will be needed.
3.

Green Technology

The domestication of biotechnology in everyday life may also be helpful in solving practical economic and environmental problems. Once a new generation of children has grown up, as familiar with biotech games as our grandchildren are now with computer games, biotechnology will no longer seem weird and alien. In the era of Open Source biology, the magic of genes will be available to anyone with the skill and imagination to use it. The way will be open for biotechnology to move into the mainstream of economic development, to help us solve some of our urgent social problems and ameliorate the human condition all over the earth. Open Source biology could be a powerful tool, giving us access to cheap and abundant solar energy.

A plant is a creature that uses the energy of sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide and other simple chemicals into roots and leaves and flowers. To live, it needs to collect sunlight. But it uses sunlight with low efficiency. The most efficient crop plants, such as sugarcane or maize, convert about 1 percent of the sunlight that falls onto them into chemical energy. Artificial solar collectors made of silicon can do much better. Silicon solar cells can convert sunlight into electrical energy with 15 percent efficiency, and electrical energy can be converted into chemical energy without much loss. We can imagine that in the future, when we have mastered the art of genetically engineering plants, we may breed new crop plants that have leaves made of silicon, converting sunlight into chemical energy with ten times the efficiency of natural plants. These artificial crop plants would reduce the area of land needed for biomass production by a factor of ten. They would allow solar energy to be used on a massive scale without taking up too much land. They would look like natural plants except that their leaves would be black, the color of silicon, instead of green, the color of chlorophyll. The question I am asking is, how long will it take us to grow plants with silicon leaves?

If the natural evolution of plants had been driven by the need for high efficiency of utilization of sunlight, then the leaves of all plants would have been black. Black leaves would absorb sunlight more efficiently than leaves of any other color. Obviously plant evolution was driven by other needs, and in particular by the need for protection against overheating. For a plant growing in a hot climate, it is advantageous to reflect as much as possible of the sunlight that is not used for growth. There is plenty of sunlight, and it is not important to use it with maximum efficiency. The plants have evolved with chlorophyll in their leaves to absorb the useful red and blue components of sunlight and to reflect the green. That is why it is reasonable for plants in tropical climates to be green. But this logic does not explain why plants in cold climates where sunlight is scarce are also green. We could imagine that in a place like Iceland, overheating would not be a problem, and plants with black leaves using sunlight more efficiently would have an evolutionary advantage. For some reason which we do not understand, natural plants with black leaves never appeared. Why not? Perhaps we shall not understand why nature did not travel this route until we have traveled it ourselves.

After we have explored this route to the end, when we have created new forests of black-leaved plants that can use sunlight ten times more efficiently than natural plants, we shall be confronted by a new set of environmental problems. Who shall be allowed to grow the black-leaved plants? Will black-leaved plants remain an artificially maintained cultivar, or will they invade and permanently change the natural ecology? What shall we do with the silicon trash that these plants leave behind them? Shall we be able to design a whole ecology of silicon-eating microbes and fungi and earthworms to keep the black-leaved plants in balance with the rest of nature and to recycle their silicon? The twenty-first century will bring us powerful new tools of genetic engineering with which to manipulate our farms and forests. With the new tools will come new questions and new responsibilities.

Rural poverty is one of the great evils of the modern world. The lack of jobs and economic opportunities in villages drives millions of people to migrate from villages into overcrowded cities. The continuing migration causes immense social and environmental problems in the major cities of poor countries. The effects of poverty are most visible in the cities, but the causes of poverty lie mostly in the villages. What the world needs is a technology that directly attacks the problem of rural poverty by creating wealth and jobs in the villages. A technology that creates industries and careers in villages would give the villagers a practical alternative to migration. It would give them a chance to survive and prosper without uprooting themselves.

The shifting balance of wealth and population between villages and cities is one of the main themes of human history over the last ten thousand years. The shift from villages to cities is strongly coupled with a shift from one kind of technology to another. I find it convenient to call the two kinds of technology green and gray. The adjective "green" has been appropriated and abused by various political movements, especially in Europe, so I need to explain clearly what I have in mind when I speak of green and gray. Green technology is based on biology, gray technology on physics and chemistry.

Roughly speaking, green technology is the technology that gave birth to village communities ten thousand years ago, starting from the domestication of plants and animals, the invention of agriculture, the breeding of goats and sheep and horses and cows and pigs, the manufacture of textiles and cheese and wine. Gray technology is the technology that gave birth to cities and empires five thousand years later, starting from the forging of bronze and iron, the invention of wheeled vehicles and paved roads, the building of ships and war chariots, the manufacture of swords and guns and bombs. Gray technology also produced the steel plows, tractors, reapers, and processing plants that made agriculture more productive and transferred much of the resulting wealth from village-based farmers to city-based corporations.

For the first five of the ten thousand years of human civilization, wealth and power belonged to villages with green technology, and for the second five thousand years wealth and power belonged to cities with gray technology. Beginning about five hundred years ago, gray technology became increasingly dominant, as we learned to build machines that used power from wind and water and steam and electricity. In the last hundred years, wealth and power were even more heavily concentrated in cities as gray technology raced ahead. As cities became richer, rural poverty deepened.

This sketch of the last ten thousand years of human history puts the problem of rural poverty into a new perspective. If rural poverty is a consequence of the unbalanced growth of gray technology, it is possible that a shift in the balance back from gray to green might cause rural poverty to disappear. That is my dream. During the last fifty years we have seen explosive progress in the scientific understanding of the basic processes of life, and in the last twenty years this new understanding has given rise to explosive growth of green technology. The new green technology allows us to breed new varieties of animals and plants as our ancestors did ten thousand years ago, but now a hundred times faster. It now takes us a decade instead of a millennium to create new crop plants, such as the herbicide-resistant varieties of maize and soybean that allow weeds to be controlled without plowing and greatly reduce the erosion of topsoil by wind and rain. Guided by a precise understanding of genes and genomes instead of by trial and error, we can within a few years modify plants so as to give them improved yield, improved nutritive value, and improved resistance to pests and diseases.

Within a few more decades, as the continued exploring of genomes gives us better knowledge of the architecture of living creatures, we shall be able to design new species of microbes and plants according to our needs. The way will then be open for green technology to do more cheaply and more cleanly many of the things that gray technology can do, and also to do many things that gray technology has failed to do. Green technology could replace most of our existing chemical industries and a large part of our mining and manufacturing industries. Genetically engineered earthworms could extract common metals such as aluminum and titanium from clay, and genetically engineered seaweed could extract magnesium or gold from seawater. Green technology could also achieve more extensive recycling of waste products and worn-out machines, with great benefit to the environment. An economic system based on green technology could come much closer to the goal of sustainability, using sunlight instead of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. New species of termite could be engineered to chew up derelict automobiles instead of houses, and new species of tree could be engineered to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into liquid fuels instead of cellulose.

Before genetically modified termites and trees can be allowed to help solve our economic and environmental problems, great arguments will rage over the possible damage they may do. Many of the people who call themselves green are passionately opposed to green technology. But in the end, if the technology is developed carefully and deployed with sensitivity to human feelings, it is likely to be accepted by most of the people who will be affected by it, just as the equally unnatural and unfamiliar green technologies of milking cows and plowing soils and fermenting grapes were accepted by our ancestors long ago. I am not saying that the political acceptance of green technology will be quick or easy. I say only that green technology has enormous promise for preserving the balance of nature on this planet as well as for relieving human misery. Future generations of people raised from childhood with biotech toys and games will probably accept it more easily than we do. Nobody can predict how long it may take to try out the new technology in a thousand different ways and measure its costs and benefits.

What has this dream of a resurgent green technology to do with the problem of rural poverty? In the past, green technology has always been rural, based in farms and villages rather than in cities. In the future it will pervade cities as well as countryside, factories as well as forests. It will not be entirely rural. But it will still have a large rural component. After all, the cloning of Dolly occurred in a rural animal-breeding station in Scotland, not in an urban laboratory in Silicon Valley. Green technology will use land and sunlight as its primary sources of raw materials and energy. Land and sunlight cannot be concentrated in cities but are spread more or less evenly over the planet. When industries and technologies are based on land and sunlight, they will bring employment and wealth to rural populations.

In a country like India with a large rural population, bringing wealth to the villages means bringing jobs other than farming. Most of the villagers must cease to be subsistance farmers and become shopkeepers or schoolteachers or bankers or engineers or poets. In the end the villages must become gentrified, as they are today in England, with the old farm workers' cottages converted into garages, and the few remaining farmers converted into highly skilled professionals. It is fortunate that sunlight is most abundant in tropical countries, where a large fraction of the world's people live and where rural poverty is most acute. Since sunlight is distributed more equitably than coal and oil, green technology can be a great equalizer, helping to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries.

My book The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (1999) describes a vision of green technology enriching villages all over the world and halting the migration from villages to megacities. The three components of the vision are all essential: the sun to provide energy where it is needed, the genome to provide plants that can convert sunlight into chemical fuels cheaply and efficiently, the Internet to end the intellectual and economic isolation of rural populations. With all three components in place, every village in Africa could enjoy its fair share of the blessings of civilization. People who prefer to live in cities would still be free to move from villages to cities, but they would not be compelled to move by economic necessity.
Notes

[*] See Carl Woese, "A New Biology for a New Century," in Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, June 2004 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/MMBR.68.2.173-186.2004); and Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, "Biology's Next Revolution," Nature, January 25, 2007. A slightly expanded version of the Nature article is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0702015v1.