A Yankee in King Gustav's Court

BOOKS et al.

MEDICINE in Eastern religions. Such Waughian inter- jections made me wonder whether the rural A Yankee in King Gustav’s Court Pennsylvanian had wandered into his present position of chancellor of the University Sydney Brenner of California, San Francisco, by some com- hen I was elected a fellow of a ic accident. But once we get to the last chap- Cambridge College, it took me a ter, where Bishop gives us many insights in- Wshort time to realize that I might to the nature of the scientific enterprise and have also been endowed with a gift of knowl- where he reveals his leadership roles in the edge. Judging by my colleagues, I too should fields of university education and research, be able to discourse on an enormous range of we realize that he is a deeply knowledgeable arcane subjects—15th-century ecclesiastical Image not and serious man who has brought to his in- history, the politics of the Weimar Republic, tellectual work a responsible humanity. cobbled paving, Baroque art, modal logic, available for I urge every student to read How to Win black holes—easily dwarfing my modest online use. the Nobel Prize. They will learn that even knowledge of genetics and if one needs luck to succeed, one can de- How to Win molecular biology. And so velop a sensitivity to lucky situations and the Nobel Prize it is, we learn from this de- have both the courage and the humility to An Unexpected lightful book, with the give back to science and to other people the Life in Science Nobel Prize, although the fruits of achievement. author claims he was never by J. Michael Bishop asked to display this rich Epidemic by Alfred Kubin (1900–1901). SCIENCE POLICY Harvard University source of expertise. This is Press, Cambridge, not an innocent remark, as the news reaches California around 2 a.m. MA, 2003. 287 pp., Which Future the reader will soon learn There cannot be too many people who sit up illus. $27.95, £18.50, on September 4, 2007 that J. Michael Bishop is a all night waiting for such a call, and so it €27.95. ISBN 0- for Humanity? 674-00880-4. man of discerning erudi- generally comes as a surprise to those who tion lightly concealed be- can be found at all. The author’s account of Roger A. Pielke Jr. hind a thin veil of the sim- the phone call and the subsequent events cul- ple country boy who, through a series of ac- minating in the award week in Stockholm n the movie The Matrix, Morpheus offers cidents, made it in the select world of high has many comic moments, and his studied Neo a choice between a red pill and a blue scientific achievement. Notwithstanding its comparison of the Nobel Prize to what ap- Ipill: “You take the blue pill and the story title, the book does not instruct us on how to pears to be a minor achievement in a base- ends. You wake in your bed and you believe win the Prize, an ennobelment sought by ball game sets the tone of the book. Of whatever you want to believe. You take the many but achieved by few. If it is a recipe, it course, I know absolutely nothing about red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I www.sciencemag.org is only one in the sense that one way of doing baseball (having never distinguished be- show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” it is to live the life of Michael Bishop. tween Willie Mays and Willie Sutton) and I In Our Final Hour, Martin Rees elo- Bishop shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for may have misunderstood the significance of quently describes a real-world choice now Physiology or Medicine with his colleague, “hitting a baseball ‘from behind in the facing contemporary society: Do we follow Harold Varmus for their “discovery of the count,’” but the comparison is part of the science and technology where it takes us, cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes.” homespun American guise of the author. hope for the best, and deal with the conse- Their critical finding was that DNA se- Indeed, if we were to provide a Polonian quences? Or, instead, do we believe that the Downloaded from quences corresponding to SRC (“sark”), the classification of the book, it is decidedly risks to humanity presented by advances in gene in Rous sarcoma virus that is required comical-historical in both the autobiography science and technology require a funda- for the transformation of normal cells into and the historical accounts of microbiology mental rethinking of the governance of the tumor cells, were present in the genome of and cancer research. For those, like myself, research and development enterprise? normal chickens. Similar sequences are who read Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters With horrifying descriptions of the found in mammalian genomes, and SRC (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1926) many threats to humanity posed by 21st-century was the first of a long list of genes that have years ago and remember the protagonists as science and technology, the first half of the been shown to produce cancer after their great heroic figures, what Bishop reports book is all red pill. Rees’s survey of perils activity was modified by a mutation. about their lives comes as an interesting sur- includes the terror and error of nuclear Today we all accept that cancer is a ge- prise. John Hunter was said to have given bombs, bioweapons, and laboratory mis- netic disease, and the history of this re- himself venereal disease, and Ignaz takes; the relatively pedestrian—by con- search, in which Bishop played an important Semmelweis, who showed that puerperal trast—Earth-threatening asteroid and hu- role, is the book’s centerpiece. Bishop begins fever was caused by doctors failing to wash man (or nonhuman)-caused climate change; with the telephone call. The Prize is an- their hands, ended up in lunatic asylum nounced in Stockholm at about 11 a.m., thus where he was beaten to death by the atten- dants. The stern Robert Koch, at the age of The reviewer is at the Center for Science and 47, fell in love with 17-year-old Hedwig Technology Policy Research, University of The reviewer is at The Salk Instiute, 10100 North Colorado/CIRES, 1333 Grandview Avenue, Campus Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037–1099, USA. E- Freiberg. They married 3 years later, and she Box 488, Boulder, CO 80309–0488, USA. E-mail:

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 301 12 SEPTEMBER 2003 1483 B OOKS ET AL. and the fanciful, nanotechnology-spawned one’s perception of the importance “gray goo” and particle physics experiments of space colonization for preserv- with the potential to rip apart the space-time ing humanity. fabric of our universe. Each of these phe- Second, trying to “slow science nomena has the potential to threaten human down” may simply be folly. Invoking civilization on Earth. In Rees’s view, the risk Freeman Dyson, Rees implies that of such a catastrophic end is higher today the costs of “saying no” to science than ever before and is still growing. would greatly exceed the benefits of What could have been highly complex doing so, because we would have to and arcane descriptions of threats are ex- forgo many wonderful positive con- tremely accessible, to a large degree because tributions society receives from re- of Rees’s adept and frequent allusions to pop- Image not search. From this perspective, instead ular culture’s catastrophist movies and books. of taking action to slow down science The author’s success reminds us of the criti- available for and technology, we should instead cal lens that thoughtful fiction provides for online use. learn to deal better with their conse- comprehending novel policy issues related to quences. In several places, Rees sug- science and technology. gests that the favored course of many After reviewing the various perils fac- basic researchers (perhaps including ing humanity, Rees observes that “the himself), would not be to “say no” to surest safeguard against a new danger science but to depend on a “special would be to deny the world the basic sci- responsibility” of scientists. This is ence that underpins it.” Placing the respon- perhaps one reason why he earlier ar- sibility for making such decisions on gued for the opposite position: deci- groups “far beyond the scientific commu- sions about the governance of science nity,” he asks whether such dangers might and technology should not be left be “reduced by putting the brakes on po- solely in the hands of a research com- tentially threatening science and technolo- munity hungry for resources and fo- gy and even renouncing some areas of sci- Escaped so far. cused on advancing knowledge. entific research completely?” increase the chances of avoiding global ca- Last, the book is centered not on alter- Rees does not seem entirely comfortable tastrophe? If we wanted to slow science and native responses to the potential for global on September 4, 2007 with a direct answer to this question. Before technology down how would we do it? Who catastrophe but on developing a justifica- reaching the Epilogue, he seems to have for- would decide? How might governance of tion for space colonization. In an earlier gotten his earlier call for the public to re- the science and technology enterprise book, Rees wrote that reducing the vulner- strain science, and he instead evolve in ways that favor de- ability of humans to catastrophe provides places responsibility with the Our Final Hour sired outcomes and reduce “the strongest motive for pursuing a pro- scientific community alone: A Scientist’s Warning; the prospects of catastrophe? gram of manned space flight” (1), and Our “Experimenters should be cau- How Terror, Error, and Serious discussion about Final Hour develops this theme. It is thus tious in ‘pushing the envelope’ Environmental Disaster such questions would seem a no surprise that he reserves some of the www.sciencemag.org of science; even if there were a Threaten Humankind’s logical response to the con- book’s strongest language for his critique case for putting the brakes on Future in This Century— clusion that human society of the International Space Station, which some research, a moratorium On Earth and Beyond faces real risks to its sustain- he calls the “most expensive artifact ever could never be effectively en- by Martin Rees ability. But exploring these constructed” and a “turkey in the sky.” forced worldwide.” questions would take us fur- Although Our Final Hour would have Rees’s argument takes a Basic Books (Perseus), New ther down the rabbit hole been more satisfying had Rees engaged sharp turn (toward the blue pill) York, 2003. 238 pp. $25, than Rees goes in Our Final some of the profoundly perplexing policy C$39. ISBN 0-465-06862-6. challenges facing the governance of science when he asserts that “the quest Hour. Thus the book offers Downloaded from for alien life is perhaps the Our Final Century very little for those who hope and technology, Rees is not alone in calling attention to the consequences of the potential most fascinating challenge for The 50/50 Threat to to enhance our collective twenty-first-century science” for catastrophe in the 21st century (2). In The Humanity’s Survival ability to grapple with the and shifts his focus to the need risks facing us in the 21st Matrix, as Neo considers the red and blue William Heinemann, London, pills Morpheus warns him: “This is your last for humans to move beyond our 2003. 238 pp. £17.99. ISBN century. There seem to be earthly confines. A solution to 0-434-00809-5. three reasons why he avoids chance. After this, there is no going back.” the threat of humanity’s extinc- uncomfortable questions about Rees concludes on a similar note. Of the tion, he suggests, will result the governance of science prospects for humanity’s survival into the “once self-sustaining communities exist away and technology and makes the giant leap to distant future or sudden extinction, he sug- from earth—on the Moon, on Mars, or freely space colonization as a response to the po- gests “the choice may depend on us, this cen- floating in space—our species would be in- tential for global catastrophe. tury.” Thanks to Our Final Hour we are now vulnerable to even the worst global disasters.” First, Rees apparently discounts soci- more aware that we are confronted by such a Humanity survived the 20th century ety’s ability to forestall the inevitable choice. Do we take the red or blue pill? without nuclear Armageddon, in part due to global catastrophe. He has predicted, good fortune (as Rees reminds us), but in through the Long Bets Foundation (www. References no small part because of governance longbets.org), that “by 2020, bioterror or 1. M. Rees, Our Cosmic Habitat (Princeton Univ. Press, processes employed, decisions made, and bioerror will lead to one million casualties Princeton, NJ, 2001). 2. A. Lightman, D. Sarewitz, C. Desser, Eds., Living with the leaders empowered. How might we now in a single event.” Such a fatalistic view of Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human

marshal policies, decisions, and leaders to our future on Earth undoubtedly elevates Mastery (Island Press, Washington, DC, in press). CREDIT: LEONARD DE SELVA/CORBIS

1484 12 SEPTEMBER 2003 VOL 301 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org