Science's Critics of Crichton Miss The Point

Michael Crichton warns “we should not play with things we don't understand". His science may not be spot on, but it doesn’t have to be. There are plenty of dreary examples that support the notion, for examples:

- cars
- cellphones
- food processing
- genetic engineering
- nuclear weapons

Do we worry about cars? Do we notice the negative impact of the technology, or are we bowled over the glitz, the image-payoff, the feel-good factor? Do we stop to count the cost of fatalities caused by our driving habits. It’s over 1 million dead a year, and 20 times that number who suffer permanent disability. That’s a holocaust. That’s a war.
Same with cellphones. Do we care that it probably causes brain tumors, and disrupts the abilities of insects – such as bees – to do their thing?
Do we care that margarine is one gene separate from plastic? Yet according to ‘science’ it actually lowers cholesterol (Eureka – it’s healthy!)
Does genetic engineering have an impact on the genes and hormones of our bodies? The Dutch are now the tallest nation in the world? Why? Hormones in the fish they consume. Growth hormones.
Nuclear weapons. We’ve built them. And we all know: “we should not play with things we don't understand".

We gamble with the wellbeing of our species and others, every day we indulge in the technology of the first example. Technology is not the enemy, but Crichton’s stories resonate with popular and widely held beliefs that people have not been able to maintain common sense when ego’s come into play. Cars feel good to drive, we look good in them. That appears to matter more to us than blue skies, birds and bees, healthy human beings in a healthy world.

Michael Crichton warns “we should not play with things we don't understand". We’re playing games with climate change. Enough said.

clipped from www.nanotech-now.com In Crichton's stories, the scientists are mad--all but one who moans about how "nature will find a way" and "we should not play with things we don't understand". In the real world, it's the other way around. We won't have nanobots for years, maybe decades, but scientists have already written a code of practice, the "Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology," that would prohibit anything remotely like what Crichton has invented. And because evolution doesn't work as magically as Crichton portrays it, scientists probably wouldn't even be tempted to release evolving nanobots; in real life, the swarm would have been destroyed almost immediately, and so would never have had a chance to improve itself. (You can find the Foresight Guidelines at http://www.foresight.org/guidelines/current.html)