En ikke-biolog vil nok stille sig tvivlende overfor, om det kan gå så galt. Desværre må jeg konstatere, at mange af mine kolleger er så ukritisk teknik-begejstrede, at det er fuldt ud muligt.
Som med A Handmaids Tale beskriver Atwood ikke hvad der vil ske, men hvad der kan ske. Herunder belyser hun nogen af udviklingens ubehagelige træk.
A Handmaids Tale var historien om de fanatiske nærmest fascistiske højreorienterede amerikanske religiøse bevægelser. I mangt og meget er det jo Bush-regimets grundlag. Men bogen er ikke en beskrivelse af Bush-regimet. Opfat Oryx and Crake på samme måde som en fremtidsvision, hvoraf nogen elementer desværre bliver til virkelighed.
Forleden var der i Sveriges Radios P1 ved 8-tiden et interview med en dame, der skulle være moder til Sveriges første "reservedels-barn". Hun har to børn med en arvelig sygdom, som kunne repareres med en transplantation fra en uden det pågældende gen (eller var det en med det manglende gen). Nu skulle man lave IVF (altså befrugte et æg i laboratoriet) reparere den genetiske fejl, lægge det op i hendes forberedte livmoder og lade hende føde barnet, som normalt efter en IVF. MEN MENINGEN MED BARNET VAR, AT DET SKULLE LEVERE TRANSPLANTAT TIL SIN STOREBROR.
Det er den holdning, der gør det resultat Atwood beskriver muligt - og dele af beskrivelsen (men hvilke) sandsynlige.
Og Atwood har helt set bort fra de yderligere ubehageligheder, der ligger i anvendelsen af biologiske teknikker i krigsførelsen. Jeg tænker helt konkret på udslippet af anthrax-bakterier omkring tiden for 9/11. Jeg tror, at Atwood har tænkt i den retning også.
Man kan heller ikke undlade at tænke over, at Donald Rumsfeld sidder i bestyrelsen for det firma, der fremstiller/fremstillede Tamiflu.
Der er nogen af Atwoods visioner, som virker helt ude i hampen. Jeg vover at sige det om gnaveren, der lever af drivremme. Men kun for så vidt netop som den skulle leve af dem. Den kunne bruge dem som redemateriale. Noget kan man forudsige i biologien, in casu at gnavere skal også have proteiner og vitaminer. Men ellers er biologien mere opfindsom end menneskehjernen !
Man kunne sige med Crake, at Verden hele tiden har været et stort ukontrolleret eksperiment. Og vi har masser af erfaringer med utilsigtede konsekvenser. (Kaniner i Australien, o.s.v.).
Det man skal huske, er, at mennesket er biologisk tilpasset til
1. det klima vi har på jorden nu,
2. den biologi vi har på jorden nu.
Vi tåler ikke ret store forandringer heri. Der er altså ikke plads til alt for mange eller alt for store utilsigtede konsekvenser. Det er vel Atwoods - uudtalte - budskab.
Atwood har opfundet en ny forbrydelse - hvor længe endnu får vi lov til det. WTO har jo vidtgående forbudt os, kollektivt at afvise bestemte produkter, f.eks. af hensyn til sundheden, miljøet el.lign.
Læs bogen. Tænk selv videre. Og lad os så prøve at stoppe - eller i det mindste bremse - galskaben.
Suppose you make your money out of drugs and procedures that cure sick people, or else - better - that make it impossible for them to get sick in the first place."
"Yeah?" said Jimmy. Nothing hypothetical here: that was what HelthWyzer actually did.
"So, what are you going to need, sooner or later?"
'More cures?"
"After that."
'What do you mean, after that?"
"After you've cured everything going."
Jimmy made a pretence of thinking. No point doing any actual thought: it was a foregone conclusion that Crake would have some lateral-jump solution to his own question.
"Remember the plight of the dentists, after that new mouthwash came in? The one that replaced plaque bacteria with friendly ones that filled the same ecological niche, namely your mouth? No one ever needed a filling again, and a lot of dentists went bust"
"So?"
'So, you'd need more sick people. Or else - and it might be the same thing - more diseases. New and different ones. Right?"" p. 255
"'HelthWyzer," said Crake. "They've been doing it for years. There's a whole secret unit working on nothing else. Then there's the distribution end. Listen, this is brilliant. They put the hostile bioforms into their vitamin pills - their HelthWyzer over-the-counter premium brand, you know? They have a really elegant delivery system - they embed a virus inside a carrier bacterium, E. coli splice, doesn't get digested, bursts in the pylorus, and bingo! Random insertion, of course, and they don't have to keep on doing it - if they did they'd get caught, because even in the pleeblands they've got guys who could figure it out. But once you've got a hostile bioform started in the pleeb population, the way people slosh around out there it more or less runs itself. Naturally they develop the antidotes at the same time as they're customizing the bugs, but they hold those in reserve, they practise the economics of scarcity, so they're guaranteed high profits."
"Are you making this up?" said Jimmy.
"The best diseases, from a business point of view," said Crake, "would be those that cause lingering illnesses. Ideally - that is, for maximum profit - the patient should either get well or die just before all of his or her money runs out. It's a fine calculation."
"This would be really evil," said Jimmy.
"That's what my father thought," said Crake.
"He knew?" Jimmy really was paying attention now.
"He found out. That's how come they pushed him off a bridge.'" p. 256
Tanken om, hvor det profitable marked er, indgår bevidst i den farmaceutiske industris planlægning, se Angell. Og Tom Lehrer's sang illustrerer, at det har den gjort længe.
"A miniature rodent containing elements of both porcupine and beaver had appeared in the northwest, creeping under the hoods of parked vehicles and devastating their fan belts and transmission systems." p. 261
"The Street is circular; in the island in the middle, a clutch of shrubs, unpruned and scraggly, flares with red and purple flowers. Some exotic splice: in a few years they'll be overwhelmed. Or else they'll spread, make inroads, choke out the native plants. Who can tell which? The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experiment - the way it always was. Crake would have said - and the doctrine of unintended consequences is in full spate." p. 275
""Understandable. It was on brainfrizz: inciting to violence, membership in a banned organization, hampering the disseminatton of commercial products, treasonable crimes against society. I guess that last was the demos she was in. Throwing bricks or something. Too bad, she was a nice lady." p. 345 [Min fremhævelse, OJ].
"I've seen the best confidential Corps demographic reports. As a species we're in deep trouble, worse than anyone's saying. They're afraid to release the stats because people might just give up, but take it from me, we're running out of space-time. Demand for resources has exceeded supply for decades in marginal geopolitical areas, hence the famines and droughts; but very soon, demand is going to exceed supply for everyone." p. 356
"This appears to be a supervirulent splice. Whether it's a species-jumping mutation or a deliberate fabrication is anybody's guess." p. 406
Orla Jordal, 2007
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