The century of science and
the culture of pessimism
By Dirk Maxeiner and Michael Miersch
This Essay was first published in "Science vs Superstition – the case for a new scientific enlightenment"
(Policy Exchange 2006)
Fifty years ago in a laboratory in Mexico City a young chemist was looking for a new method of producing cortisone, a drug considered at the time to be a miracle treatment for arthritis. Carl Djerassi’s experiments with steroids, which were thought to play an important role in the development of cortisone, would turn out to be hugely important for a reason entirely different to the treatment of arthritis. Although he did not realise it at the time, Djerassi was on the way towards a groundbreaking medical discovery that would play a decisive role in the revolutionary social changes occurring in the post-war period: the contraceptive pill. As with so many other technical and scientific breakthroughs, chance played a decisive role. The development of the pill was made possible only because of the knowledge Djerassi was generating about the characteristics of certain kinds of steroids. Timing was also on Djerassi’s side.
It was the right moment for a number of reasons. The 1960s were the years of Rock’n’Roll, drug culture, and hippies; the gradual freeing up of social relations and the rise of youth culture meant that promiscuity was on the rise. Despite the nervousness of the pharmaceutical company, Schering, who originally trialled the drug in Australia for fear of the moral approbation they expected were the drug to be released in Europe, there was no great public outcry when the pill was released onto the market. Djerassi himself was surprised: “No-one, no pharmaceutical company and really none of the researchers, expected that the pill would be accepted so rapidly by so many women.” i
Though the pill did not trigger the sexual revolution, its acceptance and spread were the result of the social and cultural transformations already underway in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Djerassi and the other scientists involved in developing the pill were not motivated by any desire to contribute to the promiscuity of the swinging Sixties, but to bring an end to the life-threatening infections that all too frequently resulted from illegal abortions. Djerassi is convinced that without the pill “there would have been a lot of unwanted pregnancies” resulting in many more dangerous terminations. The pill, in his opinion, prevented “a lot more misery”.
Of course, like any drug, the contraceptive pill can lead to undesired side effects in some users. This is why the law is so strict in ensuring clinical trials and other testing procedures before any new medicine can be approved. Even with this diligence, however, risks can never be entirely ruled out. It is worth remembering that even penicillin can be lethal in some circumstances. Since the discovery of the pill in the 1950s our attitudes towards new technologies, science and medicine, have drastically changed. Most important in this change is the fact that we are no longer willing to accept the important insight that, whatever precautions we take, nothing we do will ever be one hundred percent certain. It is for this reason that Djerassi is convinced the timing of his discovery was a crucial determinant in the eventual development of the contraceptive pill.
In the 1960s, the consumer protection movement took off, and it has since developed into a mass industry. In the US, and to a slightly lesser degree in the UK, litigation against corporations for damages for actual or even suspected side effects of medicines and other pharmaceutical products has become a vast industry with a multi-billion dollar turnover. In today’s context it seems highly likely that the contraceptive pill, which not only saved many lives through reducing the need for back-street abortions, but also allowed women to take control of their own fertility, would not have been developed and released onto the market at all.
At the root of contemporary society’s attitude towards science is the so-called ‘precautionary principle’, which states that a procedure or experiment should not be undertaken unless we can determine with absolute certainty the outcomes of the process. In relation to the development and licensing of drugs, this implies that a drug ought not to be released onto the market unless we can guarantee that it will have absolutely no problematic side effects, both in the long and the short term. This, of course, is scientifically impossible. As Djerassi points out: “Final certainty about the long term side effects of the contraceptive pill could be achieved only after women had been taking the drug for many years.” In today’s precautionary climate many companies think twice about introducing a new drug, whatever its expected benefits may be. The male contraceptive pill, which has been put on hold precisely because of such uncertainties, is but one example. The combination of the precautionary principle and the culture of litigation, keeps many new pharmaceuticals off the market.
Contemporary society is dominated by a widespread pessimism about science; a pessimism which can only be understood within the context of developments that began in back in the 1980s. Though the churches may have been increasingly emptied, society has not developed an enlightened scepticism or a free-thinking culture; not even agnosticism. The ever present need for salvation has simply found new modes of expression. Among the educated classes a variety of new religious creeds is spreading: anthroposophy and esotericism of numerous kinds. But the strongest and most popular belief refuses to be called a religion. Its name: ecologism. Under a worldly camouflage we have come to be dominated by a new natural religion.
Ecologistic dogmas have increasingly come to dominate public discourse on science, environment, technology, and even politics. Their mantras are delivered by a mass media which for three decades now has announced the imminent end of the world. In the early 1970s it was predicted that the turn of the millennium would see the end of the world: by the year 2000 natural resources would have been exhausted, the trees would have died and many other plant and animal species would have become extinct. The Americans Paul Ehrlich and Dennis Meadows, the German Herbert Gruhl, the Austrian Robert Jungk and other prophets of environmental doom were complimented by an endless stream of catastrophist headlines in the newspapers. While none of the prophecies ever came true, the headlines nonetheless became shriller and yet more catastrophic.
Just as abstinence and penitence are central to the Christian moral credo, so too they are central to the ecologist’s dogma: it is through abstinence and penitence that we should prepare for the coming end. The literature on climate change is full of such motifs. Many leading newspapers are adopting the picture uncritically: nature is good, man is evil. And if man does not obey the rules, he risks the “revenge of nature”. The furious goddess of nature demands rituals of placation such as recycling paper and installing energy-saving light bulbs. The natural is pure, unspoilt and holy. By contrast, everything man-made is sinful, dirty, and corrupt.
And, as in all religions, there are food taboos which allow the spiritual elite to mark out their differentiation from the “impure pagans”. “Organic” is not so different from “halal” or “kosher”: a symbolic statement of purity that strengthens one’s resolve against material temptations; and although many attempts have been made to prove the greater health and nutritional benefits of organic and GM-free, the scientific evidence is still wanting. Deliverance is promised through joining an “ecological circle” which transcends individual transience into an eternal circle of nature.
“Ecologism is one of today’s most influential religions in the Western World,” argues Michael Crichton, a writer whose thrillers perceptively capture the contemporary zeitgeist. “It seems to have become the preferred religion for urban atheists.” As traditional Christianity is eroded, ecologism is conquering the hearts and minds of the people. But there is a difference: ecologism is a religious creed which deems itself entirely rational, indeed, considers itself to be based on scientific facts.
The ecologists do not think of their belief as a belief, but as a reflection of undeniable, scientific facts. However, discoveries within the science of ecology often stand in direct contradiction to the dogmas of ecologism. For example, no scientific ecologist would still claim that there is anything like an equilibrium in nature. But the motif of “natural equilibrium” and “balance” belongs to every fancy political speech.
The ecologistic preference for everything rural and rustic, in contrast to the industrial complex of the modern world, cannot be reconciled with ecological facts. From a rational point of view, the primary sector (e.g. agriculture, mining, forestry) today still exerts a greater influence on landscapes, plants and animals than any nuclear power station or car factory. Archaic practices like fire clearing, hunting, fishing and land-use changes from forests to fields, change the nature of our planet much stronger than modern technologies which ecologists fear.
Undertaking scientific research means embarking on an open-ended inquiry, based on measurable facts. Thus ecological scientists (i.e. those academics dealing with ecology) often find themselves in opposition to ecologism. One of the most respected ecological scientists in Germany, the Munich professor of biology Josef H. Reichholf, published a pamphlet (Die falschen Propheten – “The false prophets”) in which he defended his academic field against the hostile takeover by the ecologist movement. He writes that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do good science in a climate of alarmism. He claims about ecologism that it had developed into a religion-like lifestyle which more and more tells us what to do and what to leave. But for many of these commandments there is no reasonable cause. The borders between justified concerns and esoteric humbug have long disappeared. Buzzwords like “GM-free”, “free of chemicals”, “nuclear-free” no longer require a factual foundation but have become more dogmas which are contrasted to the problems of technological and scientific progress.
In Europe, where sufficient food and sustenance is produced for the populations, what might once have been crises in production, creating famines and threats to our very survival, have now become crises of meaning. Food is often no longer seen as something that we need for our nutrition, but, as in the religions of old, is endowed with psychic power. For a devout Muslim it may be enough to observe the month of Ramadan and to avoid alcohol and pork; for the average middle-class European the obsession with food has become a full-time occupation. The list of taboos, prohibitions, warnings, recommendations and diets might even ask too much of the most devout followers of the Koran. The ecumenical essence of all ecologist food rules can be summed up in the following way: natural is better than artificial, vegetable products are better than animal products, and the less processing involved the better. Yet none of these commandments stands up to scientific scrutiny.
The Greenpeace campaign against so-called Golden Rice is an especially frightening example of the scientifically unfounded fetish for ‘natural’ food. Golden Rice is a new rice variety which is enriched with Vitamin A. This could help millions of people around the world who suffer from Vitamin A deficiency, a deficiency which often leads to blindness and even death. Two German GM scientists, who developed this rice, have donated their discovery to small farmers in developing countries. But eco-activists have opposed both the product and the donation for fear that it could lead to a greater popular acceptance of GM food in general.
The world view of these groups was called “Green Thinking” by the Dutch environmental historian Wybren Verstegen. It rests on subjectivist pillars, built into the prevailing zeitgeist: man is always seen as the consumer and perpetrator, never as the problem-solver and creator. On the contrary, mankind is thought to be a “cancer” and a burden to nature.ii Technological innovation is rarely regarded as the solution to problems, but is rather seen as their cause. Ever faster technological and economic development is a problem which must be slowed, if not halted. The market and its agents are viewed as destructive and predatory actors who can only wreak havoc on the welfare of the public. In their place the ecologist mindset seeks a more natural “balance” – even though nature is in reality dominated by permanent evolutionary change.
The cynical attitudes towards science and technological progress are most readily apparent in the current debates about embryonic stem cells and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Never in the history of science have scientists been so quickly transformed into pariahs as in the public debates around embryonic research in the first years of the new millennium.
So what is it all about? After the insemination of the egg by the male sperm a handful of tiny cells develop: the early stage of an embryo. The minute cell cluster measures less than 0.1 millimetres. In other words: hundreds of these early embryos would find space within a single drop of water. Scientists would like to use some of these so-called embryonic stem cells to develop new cures for a number of diseases. They hope that one day they will be able to replace destroyed brain or bone cells which would make it possible to effectively fight diseases like multiple sclerosis and perhaps even produce organs for transplantations. Surveys in the US have calculated how many people could benefit from this stem cell research: 58 million heart cases, 30 million auto-immune cases, 16 million cases of diabetes, 10 million cases of Osteoporosis, 8 million cases of cancer, 1.5 million cases of Parkinson’s disease.
PGD has a different goal. This is about diagnosing potential conditions in egg cells that have been artificially fertilized in a test tube prior to implantation into the mother. In this way the embryo can be tested for the existence of hereditary diseases. In cases in which a severe disease or deformity can be expected, the parents can then be given the choice to decide for or against a pregnancy. This invokes difficult questions about the ethical status and the dignity of early human life. Does human dignity begin the same moment that an egg cell unites with a sperm? Or does it begin when the fertilized egg cell has found its place in the uterus? Or does it begin when the embryo begins to develop its own nervous system?
The terminology and the fury of the opponents to stem cell research are frightening. On the one hand, they play down the most severe diseases: “The imperfect man. The right to be not perfect” was the title of a German exhibition in the museum of hygiene in Dresden in 2001. On the other, the chance of healing diseases is reduced to the status of a “vague promise”. Of course, it is not clear whether scientific research will deliver the results that are hoped for – but that is a truism in every kind of experimental research. But history shows that even when direct progress on the problem under investigation fails to be forthcoming, other possibilities are often thrown up along the way. It was precisely such a spin-off which helped Carl Djerassi to develop the contraceptive pill. The argument from uncertainty is less an argument against genetic research itself than a mindset which dominates contemporary culture’s attitude towards scientific research and innovation in general.
However, those who oppose stem cell research all of a sudden discover a sense of certainty when they come to construct the scenarios in which the potential for unintended consequences are explored. The fantasies of some scientific show-offs, often driven by personal and business interests, are always taken at face value, no matter how far away they are from reality. The scientific avant-garde is accused of following perverted pipe dreams – consider the dystopian fantasies of super-humans in the discussion of cloning. At the same time actual and severe physical and mental disabilities are portrayed as something human, natural and normal. “Man does not have a right to be born healthy. Behind this is the wish for a better Hitler,” said 96 year-old Erwin Chargaff shortly before his death in 2002. Chargaff, the biochemist, philosopher and author remains one of the favourite opiners of today’s opponents of scientific and technological development. “They bungle human beings, they manipulate the genes – there is the danger of a molecular Auschwitz. … The natural scientists are the Taliban of modern times,” argued Chargaff.iii
The scientific use of stem cells is raised to the level of embryonic mass murder in many debatesiv; in other horror scenarios we frequently hear about “designer babies” and a new “genetic underclass”. All this is very far-fetched. The modest progress we have made with the new possibilities for diagnosing illnesses are light-years away from the actual possibility of producing human beings of desired characteristics. Given the actual state of technological development, the debate about designer babies is about as relevant as the question of whether traffic on the moon ought to drive on the left or on the right, said the Nobel Prize laureate for Medicine Christiane Nüsslein-Vollhard.v Yet the voice of such reasoned discussants are normally drowned out in the current debates in the public sphere.
Stem cell research and PGD have led to a curious coming together of the most diverse groups (feminists, liberals and right-wingers). Feminists who once devoted their political energies to the fight for abortion rights have transformed themselves into equally vehement pro-lifers; liberal clerics, who once took a progressive stance on social debates, have almost begun to take the position that life starts before the act of procreation; right-wing extremists who speak in a language of blood and purity find themselves united with the anti-capitalist mentality of the anti-globalisation movement. And all of them are united in their desire for more laws, moral rules and selective bans for research and technology.
Considering the daily practice in bedrooms and hospitals the argument seems strangely detached from the realities of life. Artificial fertilization, contraception and abortion happen on a daily basis – thousands of times. Selection is another of life’s constants: every day, every hour, within human beings, through human beings, in nature, in all spheres of life. The contraceptive coil, for example, involves a process that is generally accepted and often used: a couple has sexual intercourse and produces an embryo which is prevented from being implanted in the uterus and, therefore, dies. Looking at abortion, which many opponents of PGD have accepted (and some even fought for), then the fight against PGD and embryonic stem cell research must seem even more absurd and contradictory.
The arguments against stem cell research and against PGD show a profound mistrust of the individuals and their capacity to take control of their lives. It paints a picture of a society ravaged by untrammelled individualism and reckless in its hedonistic pursuit of ego satisfaction. In this mindset the risk of leaving complex decisions about their own lives to individuals themselves is seen as far too risky. Individuals are thought to be incapable of making morally responsible choices about the application of controversial technologies.
The trajectory of humankind from the primitive to the modern world has been a continual attempt to emancipate herself from the forces of nature. There is nothing natural in the fact that humankind has succeeded in doubling average life expectancy in the course of the last century. The motivation has not been avarice, just as the result has not been a movement ever closer to the apocalypse. Rather, we have taken increasing control of our capacity for reproduction, and in so doing, we have increased our freedom from the realm of necessity.
The most important question to ask is: who owns ethics? We often hear the argument that ethics must not be sacrificed to the arrogance of a few scientists in their pursuit of glory. Ethical objections have to be taken seriously, everyone believes. The unspoken premise which underlies the discussion is that only the opponents of stem cell research, only those seeking greater restriction and ever more caution from technological developments, can claim to have ethics on their side. On the other side those who support more research and greater freedom to pursue scientific and technological developments are accused of being driven by profit or career ambition, or even worse, the most terrible sin of all, the pursuit of scientific curiosity for its own sake.
There is, we can agree, a legitimate ethical debate to be had about the moral status of cell clusters from which, under certain conditions, a human being can develop. But there is equally an important ethical possibility that emerges when we manipulate nature and in so doing increase our possibilities for treating illness and curing disease. The pro-technology, pro-science attitude is rarely presented in its ethical dimension. Indeed, many debates around science and technology are presented in a similarly one-sided way. For example, it is uncritically assumed that animal testing is ethically dubious; but what about the ethical value of animal testing. And what about the moral case for genetic engineering? What about the moral case for nuclear technology?
Attempting to get to grips with contemporary society’s cynicism around science is not something that can be done simply by posing scientific facts against prejudice and insecurity. It is beholden upon scientists and commentators to present the positive arguments for scientific experimentation and technological progress: arguments which must be developed at the level of morality and ethics, politics, and scientific possibilities.
A serious discussion means accepting that both proponent and opponent are sincere in their beliefs. But in current debates about science the possibility of “healing the sick” is immediately undermined by the fact that it is a pharmaceutical company developing a therapy. There is a false dichotomy in the current discussion that the pursuit of profit cannot go hand-in-hand with the pursuit of life-improving technologies and life-saving therapies. But without profits, of course, much of the research that goes on could not be funded. In the absence of any real social debate about the rights and wrongs of the market, opponents of scientific developments need only cite commercial interests in order to close off the possibility of a balanced debate.
The scientific developments that have brought humankind from primitive to modern society have contributed greatly not only to our increased longevity, but to our improved wealth and standard of living, to our freedom to control our lives and to our knowledge about the world. Progress in all these areas has occurred at a breathtaking pace in the past few decades.
We often hear that these rapid developments have failed to make us happy; indeed, the opposite. Opinion polls regularly show that a majority of people thinks that things are deteriorating and that civilisation is on the brink of decline. The American environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook argues that a sense of wellbeing is much like prices on the stock market: it cannot be measured against how things have been in the past but only on what you expect for the future. Contemporary society’s insecurity with science is an expression of a far greater insecurity about how we understand the present, and about how we might come to face the future. Science cannot solve this problem. On the contrary, a more positive attitude towards humanity’s scientific and technological possibilities will much depend upon whether or not we come to take a more optimistic attitude towards the future. Whether or not we are able to develop a more rational attitude towards science remains an open question at the moment. If we do not, it may be that we allow the paralysing pessimism about science and technology to be transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We believe a different future remains open. Beginning to develop a more confident debate about science is an important start to opening up a more optimistic vision of the future.
__
i Interview with Carl Djerassi, http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/
everyday_life/personal_accounts/PA.0009/.
ii A typical example is Dave Foreman’s statement “Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We’re not the brain, we are a cancer on nature.” in an interview with Harper’s Magazine, April 1990, pp. 40-46.
iii Stern magazine, Interview with Erwin Chargaff, 15 November 2001.
iv See, for example, TIME Magazine, Baby, It’s You! And You, And You…, 19 February 2001, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/
article/0,9171,999233-1,00.html.
v Interview with Christiane Nüsslein-Vollhard in Der Tagesspiegel, 26 September 1999, http://archiv.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/26.09.1999/
ak-ws-me-47621.html.
Copyright © 1996-2011 Dirk Maxeiner and Michael Miersch.
All rights reserved.
