Extinction engineering
A recent article in Technology Review discusses the application of CRISPR technologies to the problem of malaria. The goal is to eradicate a particular species of mosquito responsible for most transmission of the disease. To achieve this goal, genetic researchers have designed a mosquito with a hyper-aggressive extinction gene:
I saw such an invention at Imperial College London. A student led me through a steel door, under a powerful gust of air, and into a humid room heated to 83 °F. Behind glass, mosquitoes clung to the sides of small cages covered in white netting. A warning sign read, “THIS CUBICLE HOUSES GENE DRIVE GM MOSQUITOES.” It went on to caution that the insects’ DNA contains a genetic element that has “a capacity to spread” at a “disproportionately high” rate.
A gene drive is an artificial “selfish” gene capable of forcing itself into 99 percent of an organism’s offspring instead of the usual half. And because this particular gene causes female mosquitoes to become sterile, within about 11 generations — or in about one year — its spread would doom any population of mosquitoes. If released into the field, the technology could bring about the extinction of malaria mosquitoes and, possibly, cease transmission of the disease.
The article goes on to discuss preparations for releasing these extinction mosquitoes into the wild:
The Gates Foundation has said it no longer believes that malaria can be wiped out without a gene drive. “You can’t walk around with a bed net on you all the time. That’s not going to eliminate malaria,” says Randazzo. With a gene drive, “human behavior change is not required.” […]
Randazzo says Gates’s organization is committed to handing over the gene-drive technology “to the African people” and letting them decide. Efforts in this direction are well advanced. Starting in 2012, Target Malaria started developing ground operations in a handful of African countries, training scientists, refitting insect labs, and sending teams to brief local communities. [...]
Will people in Africa want this technology? I spoke to a Kenyan entomologist, Richard Mukabana, who worked on the ground campaign in communities around Lake Victoria. Using posters and diagrams, the teams visited rural areas to explain the idea, often to people who are illiterate. One cartoon used to convey what’s going on shows a blond scientist holding a mosquito cage next to a British flag. The objective of the ground work is to establish a “social license to operate” — a type of agreement, says Mukabana, that’s not written down or tacked to a wall but will have to exist if a gene drive is ever to be released.
Not even most scientists yet know what a gene drive is, or how one works. And describing it to people in the Luo dialect (the language President Obama’s father spoke) is challenging, since the language lacks a word for DNA. Mukabana borrowed words from English and Swahili and used “blood” as a synonym for genes.
Mukabana told me that when people in communities where children are dying from malaria hear that the disease could be eliminated, they’re for it. And if there’s a defender of mosquitoes around Lake Victoria, he didn’t meet one. “People won’t bother with mosquitoes going extinct,” he says.
This is the first time I’ve thought about the politics and ethics of mosquito eradication, and my initial reaction was to be horrified by the weaponized genetics, and deeply skeptical of the political manipulation involved in putting an idea like this into practice. I shared my reactions in a public Facebook thread, which accumulated some push back by proponents of mosquito eradication. After considering the responses and doing some research, I’ve written up notes on the case. By request, I’ve put the notes here for easier engagement.
First, let me state clearly what I think are the key claims behind my skepticism of the proposal:
1) My fundamental concern is introducing hyper-aggressive genes into the gene pool. This seems *incredibly* risky.
2) I’m assuming that extremely risky technologies should only be used in cases where the circumstances demand action and the alternatives are all clearly insufficient. We should not take incredible risks just because we can.
3) The case of malaria does demand action, but it does not seem to demand the use of extremely risky technologies. Alternative technologies are safe and workable, if imperfect.
4) Given workable alternatives, the possibility of *perfect eradication* doesn’t seem important enough to chance the incredible risks.
5) The possibility of “perfect eradication” seems tempting not because it is a clear moral obligation, but rather because it is a symbolic Achievement Award, a flag to be waved and trophy to be celebrated. It affirms our dominion as scientific, technological and humanistic gods.
6) The possibility of affirming our dominion as gods makes the chance of incredible risks seem tolerable, but this is an incredibly unethical and self-serving justification for taking extreme risks, and it violates premise 2.
7) Finally, the biggest cause of preventable death is failed or non-existent social and political infrastructure. Poverty and corruption. Billionaires experimenting with extremely risky genetic engineering in vulnerable populations is a great example of the kind of poverty and corruption that is responsible for many more deaths than malaria. It is ultimately poverty and corruption, and not the mosquito, that is the root cause of these preventable deaths. Taking on extreme risks to treat a symptom while reinforcing the root cause is unethical, and a violation of 2.
I think the key issue at stake in this thread is claim 4. The primary objections from proponents of eradication in the FB thread is that the risks are unlikely, and significant work has been done to contain them. These arguments all address claim 1. The suggestion is that as the risks are better contained, the possibility of perfect eradication becomes more enticing.
I don’t find any of these attacks on 1 convincing or sufficient to reject 4. On the contrary, I find them suspiciously deflecting, which is why I think my argument for 4 needs elaboration with claims 5–7. My argument demands an explanation for why otherwise well-meaning people would entertain the possibilities of adopting extreme and unnecessary risks.
One suspicious deflection is concern over the well-being of the mosquito. The first thing you see when searching “mosquito eradication” on google scholar are several successful programs eradicating mosquitoes with good old fashioned bug spray, nets, and targets programs eliminating stagnant water and other hazardous conditions. These techniques have brought malaria deaths to historical lows. Killing mosquitoes is great, and we’re pretty good at it. But the risks and ethics of killing mosquitoes is not the same as the risks and ethics of introducing a hyper-aggressive extinction gene into the wild. The extreme risk concerns the hyper-aggressive extinction gene, not the plight of mosquitoes. So any argument about the low risk of eliminating mosquitoes seems to me a red herring.
More directly, Joshua argues casually that if we’re worried about some negative consequences of the hyper-aggressive gene, we can always CRISPR up some handy solution and pat our hands clean after a good day’s work. This argument is extremely suspicious. A few hours of research (see bibliography below) suggests to me that the ecological consequences of introducing these genes into wild populations is not well understood. The extinction gene also acts fast (11 generations!), and there’s no guarantee that we can craft a solution within the timeframes required to halt some dramatic unforeseen consequences. More importantly, the regulatory frameworks for ensuring these procedures are handled safely and responsibly are not in place, either in the United States or in the African countries being targeted for experimentation. The suggestion that any potential problems with genetic engineering can be solved with more genetic engineering seems patently overconfident, a technologist fallacy. The tools in question are brand new, and the methods for safety testing and control are not anywhere in place.
The lack of clear safety procedures makes me *incredibly* suspicious of the Gates foundations rhetoric of “the African people”, as if they are in a position to give informed consent in this experiment. Andrew objected that my argument reflects someone who is not directly impacted by the disease. That’s true, but that doesn’t imply that the people directly affected are in a position to make better or more informed decision. Andrew’s comment suggests that the populations affected are more likely to take extreme measures and ignore safety implications for the sake of eradication. In other words, the appeal “the African people” is a dodge at the fact that there aren’t safety protocols for ensuring this experiment is carried out humanely in the first place.
Again, if the threat were extreme enough, maybe at this point we still say “fuck it” and try to somehow science our way out of this mess with an Aerosmith soundtrack blaring in the background. But no one has yet established that the threat is worth the risk. The arguments so far have been entirely to the effect of “we can do this, it won’t be so bad, it’s what the people want”. The implication of these arguments, which is made explicitly, is that any skepticism or resistance is somehow contrary to the spirit of technological progress and humanity generally.
I’m not a reactionary against technological change lmfao. But my engineering ethics classes have plenty of cases where scientists and engineers dramatically underestimate risks. This case resembles some discussions from my geoengineering unit. For instance, stratospheric aerosol injections are likely to be cheap and effective, and lots of modeling work has been done to evaluate the risks. If things get much hotter, it is likely that a motivated actor can take unilateral action and expose vulnerable populations to the risks that actor deems tolerable. In my lectures, I keep returning to the fact that we don’t have the international political or legal infrastructure for managing a global crisis like climate change, or for making decisions about geoengineering projects with potentially catastrophic global impact. Similarly, here it seems like the ethical issue is that Gates is acting unilaterally on a problem he believes he can solve from the lab. We do not have the procedures in place for collectively deciding, either locally or globally, whether these genetic experiments are in our best interests. So when Gates is pushing this project, he’s doing it simply because he thinks he can, on his own moral authority. He’s a humanitarian vigilante.
To be clear, I’m not accusing Gates of having malicious intentions or a vicious character. The central vanity and egoism I’m criticizing is endemic to the cultural neoliberalism in which Gates participates. Gates is a great philanthropist and clearly wants to do great works that leave a lasting legacy. “Eradicated malaria” would certainly be an historic achievement, and he sees a pathway to that achievement with the latest technologies, and he feels morally justified in doing so. The rest of us living vicariously through these billionaires will get to celebrate these achievements, there will be headlines and parties and TED talks for months.
And look, I totally get why we’d spend billions of dollars to create a big machine to find the higgs boson “just because we can”. But genetic engineering experiments like this can have very steep downsides that deserves serious caution. I don’t see anything about the malaria case that suggests it must be eradicated *now*, and not, say, 20 years from now when the science is better understood and the legal and political frameworks for safely and fairly managing this kind of operation are more securely in place. Existing techniques (nets etc) continue to chip away at malaria casualties, which are already at historic lows. The only reason not to wait a few decades is to make sure Gates is around to see it happen in his lifetime. I’m not sure the urgency of Gates’ mortality is sufficient justification for taking on existential human risks. I think it’s important to point out how these ulterior motives (eg, god-like technological dominion) distort the evaluation of risk. I don’t think my claims 5–7 are tangential, I think they directly explain why the proponents find the case more compelling than they ought to, and serve to deflate some of the moral authority driving the proponent rhetoric.
A final comment about tobacco use. It was not the point of the comparison was to say that we should focus on other problems instead of malaria. The point was to demonstrate the hypocrisy in the pronouncements of our “moral obligations” to conduct risky genetic experiments, and then turn around and shrug our shoulders at preventable issues that impact many times more people, but which have even the slightest political or economic complications. The people claiming that we would have eradicated malaria already if it affected white populations are wrong, and tobacco is a clear example. Tobacco kills nearly as many people in the US each year, but we don’t stop it because it is extremely profitable and can’t be fixed by throwing money at it.
Eradicating malaria is the proponent’s goal not because it is morally obligatory, but because it is politically viable given that it doesn’t address whatsoever the underlying institutional failures that result in many times more death and suffering. In fact, it is these very same institutional failures which create the conditions in which it is possible for someone like Gates to conduct experiments in the wild with hyper-aggressive extinction genes (keep saying it!) without procedural oversight. It seems like our primary responsibility in all these cases is to correct institutional failures. This obligation will also directly address malaria and poverty and tobacco deaths and a thousand other causes of unnecessary human suffering besides.
A short bibliography on mosquito eradication:
Fang (2010) Ecology: A world without mosquitoes. Nature 466, 432–434.
A general discussion of the eradication debate.
Alphey (2014) Genetic control of mosquitoes. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 2014. 59:205–24
Technical discussion of the genetic techniques being used, including reports from field experiments.
Caplan et al (2015) No time to waste- the ethical challenges created by CRISPR. EMBO rep, 16: 1421–1426. 2015
Basically a call to arms for ethical and policy frameworks for regulating the use of the gene drive, which discusses the mosquito case directly.
Taning et al (2017) CRISPR/Cas9 in insects: Applications, best practices and biosafety concerns. Journal of Insect Physiology.
This is a recent document that reviews the ethical concerns and makes some concrete policy proposals.
