This is the Way the World Ends

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/how-ready-are-we-for-bioterrorism.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1320145648-K5idnXUdyKqBqlIIQsGvhw

The Bio-Defense establishment’s official position seems to be that a smallpox outbreak would be the worst case scenario bioattack. The article mentions a simulation of such an attack done a few years ago, which concluded that a million Americans would die. Calling this the “worst case” might be right if the simulation were modified to “a genetically engineered smallpox outbreak”—the toll would be higher. No one knows by how much!

Diseases can be “improved” for virulence or communicability or survivability or vaccine resistance or treatment resistance—or, theoretically, any other imaginable traits—by means of genetic manipulations. This has been possible since the 70s. And, today, it’s not even difficult to modify diseases. It is difficult, however, to achieve genetic modifications that will produce desired results. That is, transposing genes within an organism’s DNA, as a mechanical operation, is cheap and easy. Finding out which modifications will “improve” the beast remains difficult and expensive because so many non-linear variables come into play, and precise calculation of their interactions is impossible—the Soviets had to do extensive animal testing to determine what effects various modifications would have when exposed to animal immune systems and the natural environment. So, the worst case might involve a more virulent, more communicable disease not susceptible to conventional treatment, a disease that might kill far more than a million Americans. Even back in the 60s, per the article, before genetic engineering was possible, America had achieved weaponized tularemia (presumably by means of rapid, selective, experimentally-guided evolution) to the point that 50 pounds of it, properly disseminated, would wipe out 60% of a megacity.  

Protection against crude attacks with unmodified agents may well provide a high probability of effective defense for a couple more decades (though something more than a black swan risk is present already). The Muslim world is unlikely to muster anything but amateur-hour efforts within this time frame. Attacks from other quarters are improbable. But, back to the lingering black swans. The thing is, there are multiple black swan risks out there. A sample of contingencies: an accidental release of a bio-agent from a government lab (dozens of governments work on dangerous pathogens, offensively or defensively, and America alone has dozens of such labs), a pathogen developed in an “entrepreneur’s” garage and released, a deliberate release into the environment that escapes intended limits (eg, a controlled test of pathogen characteristics), a government employee deliberately steals, then sells or releases a bio-agent.   

The article discusses the dilemma of whether to focus resources on vaccine defenses or therapeutic defenses. Yet it fails to mention one of the prime determinants of the relative efficacy of these two approaches: the impact of the threat of genetically modified disease agents. Do vaccines against the variola major strain of small pox, for example, have a high probability of success against a genetically modified variant of the disease? And how difficult, in the context of a bio-arms race, would it be to develop small pox variants that would resist a known, stockpiled vaccine? I suspect the answers to these questions, if they’ve been considered and if they’re knowable, are classified.

The article concludes with a hint at the clash between political decision-making processes and cost-benefit processes. What translates into political capital tends to starve ugly, obscure issues until the piper comes round at last. “How to balance the unlikely but catastrophic potential of bioterror with the steady advance of natural disease is one of the most puzzling challenges for biodefense policy going forward.” This is an unavoidable question, except I would say the “steady retreat of natural disease.” The only significant inroads natural disease has made in the last 100 years are those related to poor nutrition—consequent upon mere stupidity (including the stupidity or conspiracy of doctors) and torpor. Natheless, sichlike common health issues, never out of sight and never out of mind, exert great gravitational pull on the common politician.  

Another part of the problem seems to be a matter of bureaucratic influence on policy decisions—like this Fauci genius spending 70% of biodefense funding on common diseases afflicting public health. Fauci is a public health bureaucrat, not a defense bureaucrat—so he spends what he can on public health. Bureaucrats generally fit the mold of defective wind-up toys—little action, no thought. Also, moving up a notch to the political sphere, it’s lovely to discover that Obama has ended centralized direction of biodefense. What we have is a few part-timers in the White House overseeing the program and trying to coordinate multiple mutually antagonistic bureaucracies. Well, I suppose it’s over-optimistic to expect Obama to take an interest in something other than handouts and labor unions.   

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

--Gerontion

Chesterton

I have recently been reading one of those rare writers who is almost unfailingly amusing, G. K. Chesterton. He does suffer from certain weaknesses--namely, a native superficiality that he attempts to conceal through speed and color of thought, a determined philosophico-religious dogmatism to which only his extraordinary intellectual energy can lend the illusion of life, a frequent casual dishonesty of thought that follows naturally from his first two faults and which leads him either to mischaracterize the ideas and arguments of his opponents or, when he cannot find a way to make their ideas look ridiculous (for example, refuting an argument that labs are fine hunting dogs by tossing them in a shark tank), to simply ignore them. Yet, few writers had such tremendous energy at their disposal; and, strangely, in spite of his Catholic commitments, he had a very supple mind. Also, his ready wit fashions forth brilliant streams and waterfalls of figuration. A writer might well profit from aping his stronger strains, if apeable they be. T.S. Eliot accorded this man one of the oddest and, in a way, insightful criticisms on record. He claimed Chesterton had "too many ideas" and that they were a crutch used to support and mask an inferior mind. The comparison Eliot was making in this connection was to Henry James, a man who had no ideas according to Eliot, but who was not the less "the most intelligent man of  his generation." I wonder whether Eliot understood what he was saying--he may, in part, have been right, but I wonder if he understood how and why. James was that intelligent (being one of the few writers into whose head I have not been able to clamber), and did have an amazingly unschematic mind, but Chesterton may actually have been more intelligent than his works indicate--his ideas were more in the nature of a moral burden he dragged all over creation and uncreation than crutches to carry him on. It is not that Chesterton is necessarily less intelligent than James, it is that he is less honest. James was more like a religious hermit or an aesthetic mystic, Chesterton like an orthodox preacher or politician--the one seeks only the truth because he need only persuade himself of what he discovers, whilst the latter must dabble in the disingenuous to justify the ways of institutions to men, and may have to lie to persuade other men to believe what he believes is the truth. By the way, Nietzsche, an exact contemporary of James, combined the qualities of genius, an undogmatic, even anti-dogmatic temperament, and a fluency with many ideas. Nietzsche beat Chesterton at his own game--with James the competition is much less direct. James specialized in representing the intelligent, civilized mind and the interactions of several such in course of a narrative. This required a different sort of expertise in psychology from that which Nietzsche evidenced. James also knew much more of the art and history of fiction in general. But philosophy was a realm James left almost untouched, whereas Nietzsche philosophized as a way of life.

 

 

A couple of Chestertonian instances:

 

 

First, on how Marxist materialist interpretations of history are dehumanizing: 

 

THE SUN WORSHIPPER


There is a shrewd warning to be given to all people who are in revolt.
And in the present state of things, I think all men are revolting in that
sense; except a few who are revolting in the other sense.  But the warning
to Socialists and other revolutionaries is this: that as sure as fate, if
they use any argument which is atheist or materialistic, that argument
will always be turned against them at last by the tyrant and the slave.
To-day I saw one too common Socialist argument turned Tory, so to speak,
in a manner quite startling and insane.  I mean that modern doctrine,
taught, I believe, by most followers of Karl Marx, which is called the
materialist theory of history.  The theory is, roughly, this: that all the
important things in history are rooted in an economic motive.  In short,
history is a science; a science of the search for food.

Now I desire, in passing only, to point out that this is not merely untrue,
but actually the reverse of the truth.  It is putting it too feebly to
say that the history of man is not only economic.  Man would not have any
history if he were only economic.  The need for food is certainly
universal, so universal that it is not even human.  Cows have an economic
motive, and apparently (I dare not say what ethereal delicacies may be in
a cow) only an economic motive.  The cow eats grass anywhere and never
eats anything else.  In short, the cow does fulfill the materialist theory
of history: that is why the cow has no history.  "A History of Cows" would
be one of the simplest and briefest of standard works.  But if some cows
thought it wicked to eat long grass and persecuted all who did so; if the
cow with the crumpled horn were worshipped by some cows and gored to death
by others; if cows began to have obvious moral preferences over and above
a desire for grass, then cows would begin to have a history.  They would
also begin to have a highly unpleasant time, which is perhaps the same
thing.

The economic motive is not merely not inside all history; it is actually
outside all history.  It belongs to Biology or the Science of Life; that
is, it concerns things like cows, that are not so very much alive.  Men
are far too much alive to get into the science of anything; for them we
have made the art of history.  To say that human actions have depended on
economic support is like saying that they have depended on having two legs.
It accounts for action, but not for such varied action; it is a
condition, but not a motive; it is too universal to be useful.  Certainly
a soldier wins the Victoria Cross on two legs; he also runs away on two
legs.  But if our object is to discover whether he will become a V.C. or a
coward the most careful inspection of his legs will yield us little or no
information.  In the same way a man will want food if he is a dreamy
romantic tramp, and will want food if he is a toiling and sweating
millionaire.  A man must be supported on food as he must be supported on
legs.  But cows (who have no history) are not only furnished more
generously in the matter of legs, but can see their food on a much grander
and more imaginative scale.  A cow can lift up her eyes to the hills and
see uplands and peaks of pure food.  Yet we never see the horizon broken
by crags of cake or happy hills of cheese.

So far the cow (who has no history) seems to have every other advantage.
But history--the whole point of history--precisely is that some two legged
soldiers ran away while others, of similar anatomical structure, did not.
The whole point of history precisely is: some people (like poets and
tramps) chance getting money by disregarding it, while others (such as
millionaires) will absolutely lose money for the fun of bothering about it.
There would be no history if there were only economic history.  All the
historical events have been due to the twists and turns given to the
economic instinct by forces that were not economic.  For instance, this
theory traces the French war of Edward III to a quarrel about the French
wines.  Any one who has even smelt the Middle Ages must feel fifty answers
spring to his lips; but in this cause one will suffice.  There would have
been no such war, then, if we all drank water like cows.  But when one is
a man one enters the world of historic choice.  The act of drinking wine
is one that requires explanation.  So is the act of not drinking wine.

 

 

 

Second instance, Quixote sets out from La Mancha to find La Mancha:

 

 

 

TOLSTOY AND THE CULT OF SIMPLICITY

The whole world is certainly heading for a great simplicity, not deliberately, but rather inevitably. It is not a mere fashion of false innocence, like that of the French aristocrats before the Revolution, who built an altar to Pan, and who taxed the peasantry for the enormous expenditure which is needed in order to live the simple life of peasants. The simplicity towards which the world is driving is the necessary outcome of all our systems and speculations and of our deep and continuous contemplation of things. For the universe is like everything in it; we have to look at it repeatedly and habitually before we see it. It is only when we have seen it for the hundredth time that we see it for the first time. The more consistently things are contemplated, the more they tend to unify themselves and therefore to simplify themselves. The simplification of anything is always sensational. Thus monotheism is the most sensational of things: it is as if we gazed long at a design full of disconnected objects, and, suddenly, with a stunning thrill, they came together into a huge and staring face.

Few people will dispute that all the typical movements of our time are upon this road towards simplification. Each system seeks to be more fundamental than the other; each seeks, in the literal sense, to undermine the other. In art, for example, the old conception of man, classic as the Apollo Belvedere, has first been attacked by the realist, who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a creature with colourless hair and a freckled face. Then comes the Impressionist, going yet deeper, who asserts that to his physical eye, which alone is certain, man is a creature with purple hair and a grey face. Then comes the Symbolist, and says that to his soul, which alone is certain, man is a creature with green hair and a blue face. And all the great writers of our time represent in one form or another this attempt to reestablish communication with the elemental, or, as it is sometimes more roughly and fallaciously expressed, to return to nature. Some think that the return to nature consists in drinking no wine; some think that it consists in drinking a great deal more than is good for them. Some think that the return to nature is achieved by beating swords into ploughshares; some think it is achieved by turning ploughshares into very ineffectual British War Office bayonets. It is natural, according to the Jingo, for a man to kill other people with gunpowder and himself with gin. It is natural, according to the humanitarian revolutionist, to kill other people with dynamite and himself with vegetarianism. It would be too obviously Philistine a sentiment, perhaps, to suggest that the claim of either of these persons to be obeying the voice of nature is interesting when we consider that they require huge volumes of paradoxical argument to persuade themselves or anyone else of the truth of their conclusions. But the giants of our time are undoubtedly alike in that they approach by very different roads this conception of the return to simplicity. Ibsen returns to nature by the angular exterior of fact, Maeterlinck by the eternal tendencies of fable. Whitman returns to nature by seeing how much he can accept, Tolstoy by seeing how much he can reject.

Now, this heroic desire to return to nature, is, of course, in some respects, rather like the heroic desire of a kitten to return to its own tail. A tail is a simple and beautiful object, rhythmic in curve and soothing in texture; but it is certainly one of the minor but characteristic qualities of a tail that it should hang behind. It is impossible to deny that it would in some degree lose its character if attached to any other part of the anatomy. Now, nature is like a tail in the sense that it is vitally important, if it is to discharge its real duty, that it should be always behind. To imagine that we can see nature, especially our own nature, face to face, is a folly; it is even a blasphemy. It is like the conduct of a cat in some mad fairy-tale, who should set out on his travels with the firm conviction that he would find his tail growing like a tree in the meadows at the end of the world. And the actual effect of the travels of the philosopher in search of nature, when seen from the outside, looks very like the gyrations of the tail-pursuing kitten, exhibiting much enthusiasm but little dignity, much cry and very little tail. The grandeur of nature is that she is omnipotent and unseen, that she is perhaps ruling us most when we think that she is heeding us least. "Thou art a God that hidest Thyself," said the Hebrew poet. It may be said with all reverence that it is behind a man's back that the spirit of nature hides.