New Routes to the Indies

Some odd piece of technology is often the key to hazards, mystery and adventure in the great stories we remember long after our first encounter with them, from the Trojan Horse to Aladdin’s lamp.  In James Clavell’s classic 1975 novel, Shogun, the protagonist John Blackthorne, an English sailor, obtains a small pilot book that contains Portugal’s most closely guarded secret – the route around Africa to the Indies and to Japan.  Following it, Blackthorne winds up shipwrecked on the coast of Japan, where he takes part in some of the pivotal events of Japanese history; he spends his life there recognized as a  hero, who is remembered even today by a street named for him in Tokyo. For Shogun is actually a fictionalized account of real history, with real consequences.

One of the consequences was the eventual emergence of an expansionist Japanese empire 300 years later into a western world previously hidden from it, and a result of that was World War II.  Fortunately, time and distance had prepared the world for such encounters, and the results were eventually fortunate both for Japan and for the western world.  Not just Blackthorne’s fortunes, but his venture’s worked out well.  But such good luck is not always guaranteed.

The science world is dealing today with another such pilot book, in this case a journal article by a Dutch scientist funded by our own National Institutes of Health describing in detail the laboratory procedures for creating an air-borne form of an avian flu virus previously proven deadly but containable in its natural form.  A similar article has been published about a Wisconsin study, again funded by NIH. Supporters claim another victory in the eternal quest for knowledge, and proclaim it a milestone along the road to a universal vaccine; critics warn that this could lead to world-wide, man-made epidemics that could ravage all humanity.  Either way, this event, along with how we deal with climate change, could be pivotal in the history of the 21^st century, and perhaps of humanity.

It took 300 years for Japan to complete the transition from hidden treasure to expansionist empire. The Pandora’s Box of atomic energy has been contained for 75 years because theoretical knowledge must be combined with practical ability to build complex equipment in order for proliferation to occur.  In both instances, time has permitted the natural evolution of ways to deal with the consequences of the human urge to seek out and publish esoteric knowledge. The problem is that the procedures in the journal article can apparently be followed in any reasonably well-equipped laboratory. Success by two different sets of experimenters in just a few years is testimony to that.   In addition, the experiments themselves can lead to further highly dangerous viruses, beyond just avian flu, that could ravage all humanity, or toward universal vaccines.  We have, in effect, opened a route to a new world of the genetic engineering of pandemics which could be used either for cure or for our own extermination.

The problem also is that Pandora’s Box is impossible to close.  Portugal could not forever hide the route to Japan, the U.S. could not hide the secrets of atomic weaponry, and we shall not be able to censor the procedures for virus manipulation.  Just the knowledge that successful procedures exist will by itself generate imitators.  A rapid search for alternative approaches is underway.  Senate committees are looking at possible policies regarding funding of “dual use” research that can lead to both good and evil, but that has already been proven ineffective for control of chemical warfare and atomic weaponry.  I’m sure international conventions will be proposed and possibly adopted, but terrorists most likely to seek such technology will not be likely to pay attention to that.  Rapid development of a “pandemic preparedness” regimen has already been proposed, but many dark shadows are built into that concept; at the least another level of post-911 intrusive security could emerge, or even worse, the formulation of a mass quarantine and triage hysteria like that which accompanied the bubonic plague. Back then, entire villages were quarantined, with no entry or leaving allowed, and people simply left to die.  In our global village, such approaches will be useless, but nonetheless proposed.

One thing is clear.  The funding for research into anti-virus technology must be stepped up.  Promising advances have already occurred in the ongoing research interaction between genetic engineering and nanotechnology, and these should have their funding built up.  The gap between “pilot book” and consequences has drastically shortened, but so have our response times.  Once again the route has been opened to a new world, and, like it or not, we must enter.