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tools like RNA interference, just discovered in the past two years
to block gene expression. We could develop means to sequence
the genes of a new virus (SARS only took thirty-one days) and
respond to it in a matter of days.
“Think about it. There’s no FDA for software, no certification
for programmers. The government is thinking about it, though!
The reason the FCC is contemplating Trusted Computing man-
dates” — a system to restrict what a computer can do by means
of hardware locks embedded on the motherboard — “is that com-
puting technology is broadening to cover everything. So now you
have communications bureaucrats, biology bureaucrats, all want-
ing to regulate computers.
“Biology would be a lot more stable if we moved away from reg-
ulation — which is extremely irrational and onerous and doesn’t
appropriately balance risks. Many medications are not available
today even though they should be. The FDA always wants to
know what happens if we approve this and will it turn into a tha-
lidomide situation that embarrasses us on CNN?
“Nobody asks about the harm that will certainly accrue from
delaying a treatment for one or more years. There’s no political
weight at all, people have been dying from diseases like heart dis-
ease and cancer for as long as we’ve been alive. Attributable risks
get 100–1000 times more weight than unattributable risks.”
Is this spirituality or science? Perhaps it is the melding of
both — more shades of Heinlein, this time the weird religions
founded by people who took
Stranger in a Strange Land
way
too
seriously.
After all, this is a system of belief that dictates a means by
which we can care for our bodies virtuously and live long enough
to transcend them. It is a system of belief that concerns itself
with the meddling of non-believers, who work to undermine its
goals through irrational systems predicated on their disbelief. It
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