Specter, who covers the science beat for The New Yorker, is pissed off. Forces on both the left and right have been coming down on good clean science like never before. Yes, this “denialism”, as he calls it, comes from both sides. People on the left might think of it as Bush-flavoured Intelligent Design agendas and bans on stem-cell research, while those on the right would recognise liberal whining about vaccinations and genetically modified food. It’s all of these factions, and plenty more.

And in his new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, Specter demonstrates that ignorance is death.

For our discussion — fitting the theme of This Cyborg Life — we singled out synthetic biology, a pursuit, as Specter describes it, that “by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology, seeks nothing less than to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world”. Here’s an edited version of our discussion:

So we’re talking about, synthetic biology, the ability to take cells or small organisms and turn them into machines?

Yeah, that’s essentially where building machines, unbelievably complex ones, that will eventually be able to do whatever we want, out of cells and chemicals.

Yeah, so we just mix some chemicals in a pot and suddenly we’ve got a car manufacturer?

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the direction we’re moving in — you put some chemicals together and you get an organism, and then you get a more complex organism, and you get organisms that’ll do things, and you can get drugs or chemicals or plastics or fuel… These [scientists] are trying to take basic sugars, basic chemicals, and make it so they can digest carbon (which is kind of exciting though we’re not there yet) or just diesel fuels, plain fuel, that doesn’t emit any sort of greenhouse gasses. That has happened in small scales — we’re there. It’s just a question of scaling.

So why is this kind of low-level synthetic approach better doing than, say, the guys making fuel from algae?

I think the hope is that this will be cheaper and more stable. I don’t know that it’s better. I’m sort of agnostic on that, I think you’d rather have a lot of different approaches that are kind of greenhouse-gas neutral. And whatever works, you’ll use. And you know we’re not gonna have one source of energy, we’re gonna have a bunch. We’re gonna have wind, we’re gonna have solar, we’re gonna have chemicals.

When we look at the malaria drug [one of the first products that can be manufactured through synthetic biology — and a project funded by the Gates Foundation], they are going to be able to make all the drug that is needed in the world in a couple of vats. One of the reasons that’s exciting is because it’s a stable, easy way to regulate the manufacturing, to make sure that it’s done properly. We have a big problem with malaria medicine because it’s misused, it’s taken the wrong way, it’s counterfeit — and this is a way of regulating it. I think we’ll see that with energy sources too. It’ll be solid.

In the book, you refer to the opening of the Will Smith film I Am Legend, when doctors say they’ve harnessed the measles virus and turned it into a cancer killer, a mutant virus that eventually turns everybody into zombies. But two years after the movie comes out, real doctors from the Mayo clinic say that they’re using measles strains as a real cancer treatment, in real life.

The point I’m trying to make is, these things are a little scary. Anything that powerful has to have a downside. And we need to know what the downside is; we need to talk about the downside. And we need to acknowledge it exists and say to ourselves — and sometimes we won’t agree — but say to ourselves, “Gee, you know what, the potential benefits outweigh the risks.” Sometimes we won’t think that. But I do believe that lots of times, given the information, we would think that way.

We’re on the verge of creating our own viruses that go into the body — I mean, is that right? — they go into the body and they do something good rather than bad.

Yeah, but the thing is, that has a bad connotation but it ought not to. There’s a guy named Eckhard Wimmer who created a fake version of the polio virus, and lots of people screamed, because why would you do that? I even trashed him in an article once and I was wrong and so were those people. What he had been trying to do was to make synthetic vaccines. In order to make totally synthetic, rapidly reproducible vaccines, you need to understand the viruses. Wouldn’t it be great if, for H1N1, instead of growing tons of this stuff in eggs in Pennsylvania, we could just gear up instantly, making in factories all around this country, so that we could have millions of doses in two weeks? That’s not a pipe dream; that can happen.

Who says whether this kind of research happens or not? Who pounds the gavel?

If you live in America, it’d be some sort of democratic process. We need to have some sort of regulatory framework. Who approves a new drug? It isn’t just a pharmaceutical company that says, “Hey, I’ve gotta drug, let’s put it out there.” No, there are tons of hoops to jump through, and we need to have some hoops. And we need to make those hoops reasonable so that they’re not so ridiculous that no-one bothers to try to jump through them but not so easy that we’re endangering our citizens.

But the scientific progress will probably continue regardless of whether there’s a discussion or a regulatory framework?

I’ve never seen anything in the history of our planet where human progress has stopped. People have gotten in the way, people have slowed things down, but yeah it continues. People do the work. And so I think we kind of need to get on board and harness that work. Some people said, “we need to stop some things”, but I don’t think that can happen. I don’t think we can turn information back.

Right. In your book, you mention that Bill Joy’s argument was to just put a padlock on certain venues.

Yeah, and I understand why he said that, I just don’t think it’s realistic. I don’t think that’s the way the human animal is built or has ever acted.

The point I think that you make in the book is that, if American science infrastructure bans certain researches, it’s not gonna stop people who are outside America from doing the research, and maybe won’t stop people who we definitely don’t want to be doing this research.

It’s true. Look at the stem-cell ban. People went elsewhere to do it. It set us back, it set the world back. But it isn’t like it stopped. That’s a good thing, but it could be a bad thing. If we’re gonna do sort of high-end synthetic biology and be creating all sorts of exciting but theoretically scary things, let’s do it in this country. Let’s not have it done in some place with no regulatory system.

What’s the worst thing that could happen here?

You mean like in terms of?

I mean in terms of messing around with this particular biological technology.

Look, the worst thing that can happen when you mix genes around is you can let something loose that you can’t bring back that destroys, you know, fill in the blank. Humans? Animals? Life? That is the worst thing. That is the doomsday scenario and it… it can happen, these things can happen.

We have had agricultural biotechnology for 35 years and we’ve planted two billion acres. And people still talk about how it’s untried and untested. It isn’t untried. It isn’t untested. It doesn’t make people sick. It doesn’t mean there aren’t problems with it. But to go right to the idea that the worst thing will happen, it’s crazy. There’s always a worst case scenario. We don’t need to assume it. We need to think about it.

And then obviously the upside, this is the point of the book, the upside far outweighs the downside.

Yeah, you know, the worst case scenario is something goes awry and destroys the universe. OK, that’s the worst case scenario, and it’s a pretty remote likelihood.

Now, a pretty good likelihood is, if we continue living the way we live, my kid, who’s 16 years old, maybe she won’t live a whole life because people are dying of skin cancer like crazy in 50 years. This isn’t so long from now. We have really severe problems we need to address instantly. And those are the potential benefits of this research. We don’t talk about that very much. We need to do the work and find out and make our decisions and not decide beforehand that it makes no sense.

If this has piqued your interest, or if you’re just tired of people bitching about stem-cell research, genetically altered foods or the alleged evil that lurks in vaccinations, be sure to pick up Michael Specter’s amazing book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, and meanwhile have a look at his most recent piece on synthetic biology in The New Yorker. Thanks Michael!

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.

Your heart can beat three billion times in your lifetime without maintenance — that’s a performance spec that no motor can match. Tens of trillions of cells inside you undergo constant death and regeneration. And your brain juggles countless autonomic and cognitive processes without so much as a status bar. But it was just eight years ago that we decoded our genome, seizing the blueprints for ourselves. We’re just starting to understand this machine enough to tinker with it. And Man being Man, we need to tinker.

Techie people like new toys. In the future that will mean everything from artificial limbs that perform better than the originals to benevolent viruses that recode the software of the human body. And as the gadget obsessed, we’d be the ones most likely to sign up first. And to go high end, cutting edge.

Last year I got LASIK and sprung for all the upgrades. Like the cornea mapping system to correct sector by sector aberrations on my eye, the same tech used to remap the flaws in Hubble telescope’s glass. And the laser cut instead of the scalpel, which reduces night halos. Everyone else attending the mandatory pre-surgery briefing went budget. But when it comes to our bodies and minds, the gadget-minded think of our flesh and soul as extensible and upgradable with only with the best.

For a far more interesting story, we are lucky to have an amazing guest editor with us this week named Aimee Mulllins — Aimee was born without fibulae in both legs and her doctors decided to amputate her legs below the knees to give her a chance to walk with artificial legs. Eventually, she became the first woman with a disability to compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) using carbon fibre equipment modelled after the hind legs of a cheetah. She’s also been voted as People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people in the world and, at 17, was the youngest person to hold top secret Pentagon security clearance. Some might classify Aimee as handicapped, but I’d call her enhanced. I hope she can share with us what its like to depend on her gear and have it change the way we live and the conditions we’re born with.

Through the week, we’ll hear from other experts too:

• Daniel H. Wilson, author of How To Survive a Robot Uprising, will be writing about his experiences searching for super-powered strength.

• Sexologist Debby Herbenick will discuss some of the upgrades going on below the belt.

• Our own Mark Wilson, who spent a week hearing about the outer edges and most pressing needs of health science at the TEDMED conference in San Diego, will share his encounters with the stars of organ growing, genome mapping, human body imaging and more.

• In a Q&A with The New Yorker’s Michael Specter, we’ll see why it’s more dangerous to not embark on the paths of genetic and viral manipulation than to follow them to their most unnerving ends.

This week, Gizmodo will be exploring the enhanced human future. We’re calling it This Cyborg Life. And its all about what happens when we treat our body less as a holy object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine. Even if we can’t replicate it — yet — we can make it better.

We know, these images look like standard infrared heat maps, but they’re not. They actually depict visible light emanating from skin, the results of scientists tracking five 20 year old males standing in front of a dark room camera for frequent sessions throughout a day.

Apparently linked to metabolism, light emittance seemed to rise and fall during the day with the lowpoint tracked to around 10am and the high point around 4pm. Also notable was that the face seemed to consistently emit the most light, a supposed byproduct of more melanin in the skin (the stuff that makes you tanner) because melanin has fluorescent components that might be enhancing the results.

Neat stuff, no? [LiveScience via Geekologie]

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences now confirms previous theories that being on the night shift is actually an occupational hazard. The findings show that circadian disruption, when a person’s circadian rhythms split off from the regular day-night cycle, cause key metabolic hormones to act crazy.

For instance: When your body’s no longer sleeping when it thinks it should be, it stops producing as much leptin, a hormone that signals a body to stop eating. It also releases more cortisol, a stress hormone that’s been linked to high blood pressure and obesity.

So, other Gizmodo writers: When you wake up in the morning and take a long gander at your so-delightfully svelte selves before settling down to your day’s blogging routine, I want you to know: You’re welcome. [Wired]

The technique, spearheaded by Bo Albinsson at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, encodes DNA in a way that, when mixed with light-receptive molecules called chromophores, self-engineer themselves into a natural photo-sensitive wire that can accurately transmit light–similar to those found in some algaes. The technique may also someday be used for artificial photosynthesis systems that may power next-gen solar cells. [New Scientist, Image: DNA visualized in a cDNA microarray from Wiki Commons]

It’s by Linda Nye from the Exploratorium Visualisation Laboratory, and demonstrates the human bloodstream at a level that zooms from blood-vessel level all the way to oxygen atoms binding to hemoglobin, and everything in between.

I find science pretty amazing full stop: but this kind of competition really goes the extra mile to communicate how intricate the world/universe around us is. Check out the link to the National Science Foundation (who ran the challenge) to see more of the entries…you’ll probably be amazed too. [NSF via New Scientist]

<blockquote><strong>Orchid supports evolution theory at the Botanic Gardens</strong>
 
An example of the genius of Charles Darwin’s theory on evolution is currently in flower in the guise of an orchid, the Star of Bethlehem, at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens.
 
Botanic Gardens Trust Executive Director, Dr Tim Entwisle said Darwin predicted 41 years before its discovery that a pollinator had to exist to ensure the survival of the orchid.
 
“The Star of Bethlehem was discovered in Madagascar in the 1860s.  Its unique because it stores nectar at the bottom of a tube up to 30 centimetres (12 inches) long,” Dr Entwisle said.

“Darwin saw the extraordinary flower with its very thin and long tube and believed an animal had to have evolved to enable it to reach the nectar and ensure the plant’s survival.
 
“In 1903, 21 years after Darwin’s death, the mysterious pollinator was found – supporting  Darwin’s theory of evolution.  The pollinator was a hawk moth with a proboscis long enough to reach the bottom of the orchid’s nectar tube or ‘spur’.  It was named Xanthopan morganii praedicta – to honor Darwin’s prediction.

“It’s clear the moth and orchid evolved together, starting with an orchid with a small tube and a moth with a small tongue and over time they both grew longer and longer,” he said. “It’s all about competition for food and pollination.”

The Star of Bethlehem (Angraecum sesquipedale) is currently blooming at the Tropical Centre at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens. All up there are approximately 232 tropical orchids in the Tropical Centre and over 1,000 other orchid species grown outdoors.
 
Dr Entwisle said the orchid family is one of the largest plant families in the world and many varieties are suitable for planting in home gardens.
 
“There are around 107 orchid genera containing more than 800 species growing in Australia – most unique to the country.  Many are suitable for home gardens,” he said.
 
“Each orchid has particular requirements, but most like a moist, free-draining mix, and prefer semi-shade or filtered light and good air flow.  Orchid plants will live for many years if their conditions are right and there are no pests.

“There are two types of orchids, epiphytes which grow on trees and terrestrial which grow on the ground.  In Australia, the less flamboyant terrestrial species outnumber the epiphytes three to one,” Dr Entwisle said.

<strong>The Tropical Centre is open daily from 10am until 4pm, a fee applies for entry – $8.80 for families (2 adults/2 children), $4.40 for adults, $3.30 for seniors and $2.20 for children or concession.  Entry to the Royal Botanic Gardens is free.</strong></blockquote>

“[this is] a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before”.

The team was able to construct an artificial chromosome of 381 genes and the DNA sequence they have pieced together is based upon the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium (pictured). The original bacterium had a fifth of its DNA removed and was able to live successfully with the synthetic chromosome in place.

The man-made organism, dubbed Mycoplasma laboratorium, still relied upon the intracellular machinery already present to carry out tasks such as replication and metabolism, and in this respect the entity is not an entirely new life form. Though the potential may be phenomenal, at the moment all there is to go on is a scientist’s word, and in science facts are the only language of proof. We will be waiting for an official announcement with baited breath. [Guardian]

From researcher Mihri Ozkan:

Interactions between organic and inorganic particles are quite fascinating…In our case, finding the memory effect was quite unexpected because each nanoparticle does not have any memory characteristics on its own, but only when connected as a hybrid.

I find that quote extremely spooky, even if grounded in some sort of simple scientific explanation. [newscientist]