Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 12

Orycon Schedule!

Where it appears that I will be very moderate, as I am moderating far more often than actually opining…..:)

Orycon is in Portland, Oregon, November 8-10

Reading (Probably from The Diamond Deep!)

Sat Nov 9 10:00am-10:30am

Grant

Political Systems in SF

Sat Nov 9 11:00am-12:00pm

Hawthorne

Why don’t writers get it right?  What to think about when developing local, national, global, and interplanetary governments.  How governments with different cultural values really operate and (fail to?) interact.

I will moderate this session

Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading

Sat Nov 9 12:00pm-1:00pm

Ross Island

Join members of Broad Universe–an organization dedicated to women in genre fiction–for a whole bunch of really short readings crammed into one hour.  Editorial note – there are always REALLY FUN.  You get to hear SEVEN women in short time….and I promise, some will blow your socks off!  Consider grabbing a sack lunch and joining us for this fun panel.

Ann Gimpel, Phoebe Kitanidis, Cat Rambo, (*)MeiLin Miranda, S. A. Bolich, Brenda Cooper, Laurel Anne Hill

Can the USA become a nation of makers again?

Sat Nov 9 2:00pm-3:00pm

Idaho

What’s stopping us? What’s helping us? What do we need to do?

I will moderate this session

300 years from now

Sat Nov 9 3:00pm-4:00pm

Alaska

What will Earth be like?  Will we recognize it?  Will we have left?  Will we have survived?

Copy Machines – Precursor to Replicator?

Sat Nov 9 4:00pm-5:00pm

Idaho

It’s not Star Trek yet, but 3D printers are getting better and cheaper fast.  Higher end machines can do complex multi material objects.  What are the economic and social implications?  Is SF taking note?

Science and Spirituality

Sat Nov 9 5:00pm-6:00pm

Idaho

Are science and spirituality mutually exclusive or intertwined?

I will moderate this session

**** BOOK LAUNCH PARTY FOR THE DIAMOND DEEP, for the anthology RAY GUN CHRONICLES, and for J.A. Pitt’s collection, BRAVADO’s HOUSE OF BLUES *** location TBA

How can we become energy independent?

Sun Nov 10 12:00pm-1:00pm

Alaska

Natural gas powered cars? Cold fusion? Tapping the earth’s core? Compost for energy?

I will moderate this session

Starting from scratch

Sun Nov 10 1:00pm-2:00pm

Idaho

How would you rebuild society from the ground up?

I will moderate this session

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Reading Recommendation – Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

I knew there would be reading time on a recent trip to France and Italy for my mother’s birthday, so I stopped at the bookstore on my way out of SEATAC. I decided to be a reader rather than an author, to grab fiction for entertainment instead of some new way to do research for my Backing into Eden series of blog posts. I failed, on accident.  I picked up Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. If you have been following me awhile, you’ll know I love her books.  I am convinced this is her best work yet.  And it directly relates to my current concern about the environment and our ecosystems.

Flight Behavior is both a work of  science fiction and a fabulous, award-winning literary novel.  My dad and I had a related conversation during the trip about one of our shared favorite works, On the Beach, by Nevil Shute.  I stated that On the Beach is one of the best post-apocalyptic SF novels ever written.  My dad countered that it wasn’t science fiction at all because “all of the science was known.”  In case any of you missed On the Beach, it’s a tale about the end of the world by the hand of man, via nuclear war.

Flight Behavior is about the end of the world by the hand of man, via climate change.  Unlike On the Beach, Flight Behavior doesn’t go all the way to the last death, or even really near that.  Perhaps instead of being post-apocalyptic, it could be considered inter-apocalyptic, or whatever word  would describe a book written about the middle of the slow death of world, a moment just before the tipping point where no change is enough to restore what lived before the change.

Both books are told through the eyes of fairly normal protagonists and deal with day-to-day images of despair and bravery and reflection and beauty.  This makes them far more powerful than the fire and brimstone images that appear in common post-apocalyptic novels and movies.

Back the conversation with my dad.  On the Beach is so good, it makes me cry every time I read it. It was written post-Hiroshima, and is relevant today, if slightly dated.  Both On the Beach, and Flight Behavior are based on science, but in neither case is the science all “known.”  One of the beauties of science is that what we know changes and grows.  But both works rely on real work done by real scientists on truly dreadful topics.  Both are set in the near future (from date of writing) and both are excellent examples of literary fiction and science fiction.

Flight Behavior is so multi-layered I want to re-read it again right now.  And of course, since it’s a Kingsolver, it’s also a book full of poetic line by line writing.  I’m tagging it to show up in the Backing into Eden page because it’s very relevant to the work I’m doing with that blog series.

 

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Reading Recommendation: Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts, by Emily Anthes

I finished Frankenstein’s Cat on a recent long airplane ride.  There’s tons of information on the internet, but this is the only book I’ve found so far that deals with the GM animals topic that I’m currently in the middle of a series of Backing into Eden posts about. While I knew about roughly three quarters of the experiments that I put in my lists post, this book pointed me toward the others.  The seeds of the ethics post are there, although only one reference is directly from the book – the concept of “Do no harm.”  If you’re interested in this topic, this is an easy read that covers a lot of the ground at a high level.

It’s also quite accessible.  I like my science that way, particularly when I’m starting out with a topic. The book ranges rather widely across related bits of information with no real conclusions. That’s OK. I kind of think that’s where we are with our newfound abilities to play god with a test tube and a bit of fur or ancient bone.

 

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Backing into Eden Chapter 15: GMO Ethics

In the last post, I simply listed both our traditional and our “new” ways of using animals.  Perhaps I was a little harsh, since humans have treated certain classes of animals like family.  We have even gone so far as to evolve essentially symbiotic relationships.  For example, I wouldn’t want our family dogs to have to live wild.  They don’t have those skills.  On a related note, I read a recent article about how wild animals are adapting to urban environments.  But I digress.  This is a three-post series.  It started with the lists of what we’ve done up to now.  It will end with a post about what we might do in the future.  And this time, I want to talk ethics.

Ethics can provide one framework for finding our way from now to a better future.  They’re no guarantee, but they’re foundational.  In this case, I’m hoping they might guide the direction in which we take our ever-growing ability to tinker with life.

I’m going to address the ethics of GM and other futuristic animals.  The science and the results are different.  For example, de-extinction is different from creating designer pets, and protecting cows (and thus humans) from mad cow disease is different than growing human organs inside pigs.  If you’re lost, refer to post number one, and follow the links.  I’m only going to attempt to talk about ethics within the context of this series, which is all about how we take responsibility for the ecosystem in which we live.

I want to be very specific.  I’m talking about action we take via science to create new animals, to modify or help or de-extinct existing animals, and the use of animals as subjects for experimentation with GM tools for human or animal health or other reasons.  I’m including mammals and insects – and not crops – in my thinking in this post.

I’ve got five points:

The animal must be no worse off

I’d like to see “do no harm’ here, but that’s not possible in this world or the new world.  After all, we eat animals.  Additionally, even this ethical bar will not be possible when managing ecosystems (see earlier chapters that discussed removal of invasive animals – a hard choice, but sometimes one population must be killed to save another).  But in the sense of things we do to animals in the name of science or health, I think we can get to this place.  We can stop experiments that harm animals.  If growing human organs inside of pigs for transplant makes the pigs worse off, we should find another way.  If making a goat with milk that adds in an anti-diarrheal which could save thousands of human children makes the goat no worse off, then that would fit inside of this ethical boundary.  If giving a horse a new gait makes it weak in the spine so it has a short life, we should not do that, but if we can give it a blue mane and it’s no worse off, that’s all right (if silly).  We should apply this backwards to breeding programs as well.  My family fostered a dog that had been bred for its beautiful white coat but came out deaf with epilepsy.  This cruel and legal behavior should not be allowed.  New or changed or even “improved” animals must – at a minimum – be no worse off.  And I far prefer if they are better off.

No animal slaves

You can buy kits now that give you the ability to make cockroaches turn the way you want with a remote control.  Similar research is directed at creating bugs that can be used as spies.  This should not be allowed.  Note that there are PETA positions that suggest we should not own our pets.  This is not what I mean here.  Training a dog or a horse is a good thing, and can be done humanely in a way that allows the animals to make willing choices.  And that’s the difference.  My dog can choose not to sit (and sometimes she does), but military spy bugs can’t choose not to fly in the direction they are told.  They will fly to their death.   That is not a power we should develop.

Operate inside the ecosystem

I truly believe that we are going to be in far more control of ecosystems than we are today.  All of them.  From watching the boundaries of preserves (to save elephants from poaching or allow sharks to mate) to managing the lives of urban wildlife, we’ll be more involved than ever.  Any large-scale change needs to be designed to work inside of the ecosystems we’ll be managing.  For example, the re-introduction of velociraptors should not occur in a temperate forest where we’re also trying to bring back or protect grizzly bears.

Mind the boundaries

GM and other related technologies are all comparatively new.  It’s important not to set wild and changed animals loose on a wild (if managed) ecosystem without appropriate boundaries and testing.  We would be wise to err on the side of extra caution.  Boundaries are should be designed based on the technology and animal in question.  But they must exist and be enforceable.  This may require tagging and tracking of gene-mod animals, or forced sterilization after they are finished with their work and adopted out (today, some are euthanized, which violates the ethical boundary “the animal must be no worse off.”).  We are not yet as wise as nature, and we may never be.  There are bound to be mistakes, and better models as we learn, and all of the other mess that comes with science.  It’s a good mess, but we need to be sure to clean up after ourselves in a way that honors the lives we touch.

No greed

Animals are generally owned.  I’ve owned at least a hundred in my lifetime, from gerbils to budgerigars to competition horses. Food animals are owned by a farm, then a butcher, then a store, then a restaurant and then whoever eats them.  But I have never owned a line of animals, or a species.  I believe that new animals that are created using GM should not be owned in that way either.  This is a tough one, since a profit motive drives innovation.  This is going to be tough at the court level as well.  Drugs are patented for 20 years, with the option to extend for five more.  Something like this seems reasonable for new creations, except that a standard of care should be added.  For example, if you use GM tools to create a border collie with opposable thumbs, not only would you only have the patent for only twenty years or perhaps twenty-five years, but because border collies are living things, you should also be required to guarantee that the dogs are cared for, tracked (so that you don’t create a wild opposable-thumb border collie to kick-butt in agility) and so that intelligent decision can be made at the end of the patent period.  This is even more important if you make an animal smarter (once more, think of David Brin and the concept of uplift, and then marry that with the animal personhood movement that is starting to hit the courts and which may grant some human-style rights to certain animals).

Conclusion

These are ideas – sparks for conversation.  But they are important sparks.

There is another discussion about whether or not we should do any of this at all.  I’ve never seen us put a genii back in a bottle.  Even large and scary science like nuclear bombs have (at best) been managed.  This – like nuclear physics – is a technology that can bring great good and/or great harm.  Our values and ethics (with a sprinkling of fear) are the core of how we have managed not to spread mushroom clouds all across the earth.  We need the same values, ethics, and fears to deal with new GM world.

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The Diamond Deep is available today

I’m very pleased to announce that The Diamond Deep is out!

The Diamond Deep is about how love and strength and creativity can shine in the face of great power, and about the way that real leaders protect their people.  It’s also about the speed of change.  The core “what if’ for this second story in the duology is “What if you were effectively stranded in a place with little change, while your home culture surfs waves of new technology and expands to fill a solar system?”

Every book takes work – my work for a year and a bit to write and polish, and following that the art and art direction, the book design, the copyedit, the marketing, and I suspect a lot more that I never see.  Pyr and I have together birthed The Diamond Deep, with help from the fabulous John Picacio and a host of others.

I’m really happy that the entire saga is not only done, but also available for people to order.  It’s getting a good start – It’s a Barnes and Noble Bookseller’s pick for October and Romantic Times gave it a four-star review.

Amazon link 

Audible link

Barnes and Noble link

It will also be available at The University Bookstore in Seattle, where I am doing my first post-release reading on October 18th.  If you’re local to me, please come down and support all of the great work Duane does for us in the community.

There will also be a launch party for it at Orycon in early November.  Yes, that’s a bit late.  But I’m traveling, and I wanted to throw a party I can attend!  More on that later…..

 

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Backing Into Eden Chapter 14: Human Use of Animals – Lists

This series is a discussion of how we take responsibility for the birds and the beasts and the fields and the oceans and whatever Genesis left out (for example, the Bible doesn’t mention the atmosphere).  It’s time for some discussion of the future of animals and how we’ll use them.  Yes, that’s blunt. Humans use animals.  This entire post is two lists: traditional human uses of animals and ways we are changing animals via biotechnology.

Throughout this series I’ve talked about conservation, brought up one of my favorite causes (saving the elephants), and worried about both plants and animals in a land use context.  I believe in preservation. Captain Paul Watson is one of my heroes. So is Jane Goodall, and Sylvia Earle.  But now I’m moving from the topics of preservation and conservation into the edges of creation.

This is going to take more than one post.  So without further ado….

Ways we have historically used animals:

Sacrifices
Product testing
Aphrodisiacs
Gladiator-style fighting
Sport hunting
Helping us hunt
War
Spying
Guarding
Carrying messages
Science
Show
Sports
Pets
Protection
Clothing
Materials
Medicine
Food
Pollination
Transportation

Now that we have new tools available via decoded DNA, a bit of math, and a pipette, I’ve found many specific examples of animals we’ve changed.  The historical list probably didn’t need any explanation, but I’ll add a short blurb and a link for everything on the GM list:

Replacing a lost pet (Remember Missyplicity? Clone your beloved Fido and ease your suffering)
Creating new kinds of pets (Glofish anyone?  A hit in pet stores now)
Uplift (ever read David Brin?  Take an animal and sprinkle in human brain cells.)
Growing organs that can be used in humans (really, for transplant into people)
New foods (Salmon that grow faster than traditional fish, cows that produce human breast milk, more)
Research (clones/testing for other GM processes/ more…)
Insect/ Machine crosses (Once more, so far, actually for war.  But maybe future pollinators)
Restoration of extinct species (Jurassic Park?  But really, this is serious science)
Protecting animals from disease (prion-free cattle that can’t get mad-cow disease)
Pollution testers (Fish that glow in the presence of pollutants.  Bomb sniffing mice.)
Greening up (Food animals that are easier on the ecosystem)
Medicine (goats that produce human medicine in their milk)

I’m sure I’m still missing a lot of examples from this list.  if you have something I missed from either list, please add it in comments.

There are generally barriers (physical and legal) between most of these GM uses and the rest of the world.  But not all – the Glofish that you can easily buy at Petco are a GM product.  Some of the experiments I’ve linked to above have already been cancelled, and the GM animals euthanized.  Some are about human health, some about science, some about commerce. A few are (sort of) about the animals.

Humans are not going to stop experimenting.  Not unless we wake up tomorrow and discover that some handy aliens have come and dropped a pill that changes basic human nature into all of our water supplies.

I don’t have time inside of Backing into Eden to explore all of things on either of these lists, but I will look at why we might want to use GM animals in the future and how we might create an ethical framework for doing so.

———-

This time there’s no linking section.  After all, I gave you links above!  But I am going to recommend a book: Frankenstein’s Cat by Emily Anthes. I’m reading it.  Grab it and read along with me.

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The Anarchist’s Cookbook

This is banned books month.  So I decided to talk about the first banned book I ever owned while it was banned….The Anarchist’s Cookbook.  Please check out the post at Write all the Words and comment that you’ve been there.

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New story out in Halloween anthology

I have a fresh “High HIlls” story out in a just-released anthology, Halloween:  Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre, edited by Paula Guran and published by Prime Books.  This is a great book to pick up as fall settles in around us and the nights get dark more quickly…..

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Backing into Eden Chapter 13: GMO Plants

Backing into Eden is not about how we are going back to the garden, but rather about how we need to re-approach the garden of the Earth armed with all we have learned and to actively care for what wildness and what nature we have left.  It’s about how we need to take responsibility.  That means using the tools of our current age, which include drones and nanotechnology and genetic modification and excellent design and big data.  I cannot imagine that we can solve tomorrow’s problems (or even today’s problems) with yesterday’s tools.  One of today’s tools is genetic modification of food crops and other plants.

A number of people who I respect have written articles and chapters in books that support GMO crops. These include leading environmentalist Mark Lynas, author of The God Species: How the planet can survive the age of humans, and Ramez Naam, author of The Infinite Resource: The power of ideas on a finite planet.

Other people (who I also respect) are strongly against GMO food. Even a short trip around the internet turns up a huge and deeply-fearful anti-GMO movement.  In fact, for the last few years, almost every casual acquaintance that I talk to is quick to vilify GMO foods.

I set out to research what I could.  I found no scientific articles that supported the fear. I didn’t find any conclusive evidence that there are any significant problems.  None.  I’ve found plenty of scary articles, but not one study that actually demonstrated real harm. I have come to the conclusion that GMO’s are almost certainly safe for humans to consume as grown and distributed so far.  Asds appear to use more roundup, which gives Monsanto a double-win).

I  did see some things I don’t like or trust, including Monsanto’s lobbying practices. For example, some GMO crops have reduced the use of more toxic pesticides (although bT corn fields appear to use more roundup, which gives Monsanto a double-win). I agree with the assertion that there are things we can’t know yet and that there might – might – be long-term consequences we haven’t seen yet.  But I actually came across more lies and half-truths coming from the anti-GM side than the largely silent pro-GMO side (largely in the form of pretty simple “Monsanto is evil” comments and un-supported ties between GMO corn and the death of bees and butterflies, GMO corn and obesity, etc.).  Also note that what Monsanto has done in agriculture is not terribly different than what any tech company in my world (I’m a CIO by day) has done to protect their own products and intellectual property and income streams. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and I’m not about to go out on a limb and cheer for Monsanto right now, but a little perspective might be in order.

I think GMO foods need to be regulated, tested, and introduced slowly.  I’d love to see a non-GMO certification like the organic certification programs, and to see ingredient labels specify the GMO ingredients – we have  right to know what’s in the food we’re buying.

We do need to demand care.  Development of transgenic plants  is an area where it would be possible to make mistakes, maybe even big ones.  But that doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore our knowledge in this area, or that the genii will even go back into the bottle should we try to stuff it in.

And it’s a genii with some power; one we might want on our side.  Big mistakes are possible, but so are even bigger payoffs which we may desperately need.

The idea of improving on nature is not new, and not even recent.  We’ve been changing plants throughout history through a variety of techniques.  We will – and should – continue to do this.  But transgenic crops are different.  That’s what makes them powerful.  Golden rice is a GMO staple which was developed to counter a dangerous vitamin A deficiency.  It was not created to make money; it was created to improve health.  Vitamin A could not have been inserted into this rice using old tools.

Not only is it time to stop vilifying Monsanto for its very existence (while remaining watchful and even noisy about the things we don’t like), but it’s also time to separate how we feel about this technology from how we feel about big agribusiness.

We should consider GMO plants one of the more powerful tools in a full toolbox.

I can easily imagine a time in the future when we are going to need even more sophisticated genetic modification abilities.  Between the twin pressures of population growth and climate change, we  probably need to grow crops in new places with different conditions, or even in the same places with different conditions.  We may need to make plants hardier, or to make them survive with less (or more) water.  We may need to make them hyper-capable of photosynthesis.  Hiding our heads in the sand is not the best way to prepare for this. Instead, we should be working hard and fast to ensure a strong testing framework and we should be funding university research and non-profit efforts to use this technology for good.

I did a little brainstorming.  Ways we might use transgenic crops in the future include:

Trees built to store more carbon than current forests
Wheat that can grow in a desert and survive a monsoon
Wheat that people with gluten allergies can eat
Pine trees that are resistant to the bark beetle
High yields on almost any food plant

or even
A plant with a sugar flower, a perfect protein berry, and carbohydrate leaves.

In my research journey on GMO’s, I found a lot of negative storm with no substance, and many reasons to support this technology while remaining cautious and watchful.

Note – I am sure I haven’t seen all of the research (pro or con).  Please feel free to link to articles that contain actual information on any side of this argument.

Links for further reading and research….

GMO’s are not the cause of colony collapse:

Sick Bees – Part 18E: Colony Collapse Revisited – Genetically Modified Plants, scientific Beekeeping.com, Randy Oliver http://scientificbeekeeping.com/sick-bees-part-18e-colony-collapse-revisited-genetically-modified-plants/

A key environmentalist changes his position:

Time to Call out the Anti-GMO Conspiracy Theory, Mark Lynas, April 29th, 2013:  http://www.marklynas.org/2013/04/time-to-call-out-the-anti-gmo-conspiracy-theory

A food safety doctor suggests GMO’s could be bad, but there are far worse things:

GMO Foods: A potentially disastrous distraction, Dr. McDougall’s Health and Medical Center, August 22st, 2013 http://www.drmcdougall.com/2013/08/31/gmo-foods-a-potentially-disastrous-distraction

WHO weighs in with a FAQ

World Health Organization website, 20 Questions on genetically modified foods  http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en

Other articles on GMO Safety:

The Evidence on GMO Safety, Ramez Naam, April 28th, 2013:  http://rameznaam.com/2013/04/28/the-evidence-on-gmo-safety

Monsanto v. Monarch Butterflies, The Genetic Literacy Project, Sarah Fecht, March 25th, 2013: http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/03/25/monsanto-v-monarch-butterflies

A hippie’s defense of GMOs:  WHy genetically modified food ins’t necessarily a bad thing, Saul Of-hearts, Slate, July 25th, 2013:  http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/07/a_hippie_s_defense_of_gmos_why_genetically_modified_food_isn_t_necessarily.html

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Congratulations to John Picacio

I’m very pleased that John Picacio won the Chesley Award for Best Cover Illustration – Paperback Book for his fabulous cover art for “The Creative Fire.”  Here’s a tiny bit about the award from the ASFA website:

“The Chesleys have long been internationally acclaimed as the most prestigious awards in the field of fantastic arts. These awards are nominated and decided upon by the members of our community, the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists.”

 

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