Adam Garfinkle: What are you and your
co-author, Hank Campbell, trying to accomplish in your new
book?
Alex Berezow: We’re both science writers,
and we’ve noticed that the media likes to paint a narrative
of the Republican “war on science.” We do agree that
conservatives get a few issues wrong, most notably the
members of the religious right-wing who reject evolution, or
those who view global warming or climate change as some big
hoax or conspiracy. However, we do challenge the idea that
progressivism is the “pro-science” ideology, or that the
Democratic Party is “pro-science.” We take this opportunity
to systematically dismantle many of their pet positions,
from their opposition to nuclear power, to genetically
modified foods, and a whole host of issues where we take
them to task.
AG: I found it interesting that you go to
some pains to distinguish between liberal, progressive, and
Democrat, on the one hand, and libertarian and conservative,
on the other. You use a two-by-two matrix, an adaptation of
David Nolan’s device, which is necessary but not sufficient
to lay out the differences. You’re basically saying that
progressives not only tend toward economic authoritarianism,
and liberals do, too, but also toward social
authoritarianism. I think that’s pretty accurate.
AB: That’s right. In some ways, both
conservatives and progressives have an authoritarian streak.
Conservatives want to tell people what to do in the bedroom
or what they can’t put into their bodies. But progressives
want to tell you how to eat, how much salt you should be
allowed to put in your food, whether you can smoke or have
trans-fats in your Oreo cookies. I think there’s a deep
irony in how conservatives and progressives are similar in
this way.
AG: You point out that a lot of people in
the Obama Administration, if not the President himself, are
pushing various progressivist agendas. You seem to be saying
that there are as many anti-science troublemakers on the
Left as there are on the Right. Is that really true? Are
there as many, and do they have as much influence?
AB: Well, among the political leadership,
you’ll see more anti-science Republicans in high-profile
positions than Democrats. However—and this is a very big
“however”— there can be influential ideologies that don’t
come from Washington. Look at the anti-vaccine movement. You
see it on both ends of the political spectrum: Libertarians
say the government shouldn’t be able to force anyone to
vaccinate; others, like Michele Bachmann, think vaccines can
cause mental disability; and people on the far Left who
prefer homeopathic medicine object because vaccines are
unnatural. High-profile non-politicians on the Left endorsed
this, too, notably Bill Maher and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,
who wrote pieces in Rolling Stone and Salon
excoriating the pro-vaccine movement, saying vaccines cause
autism. Maher’s not a politician, but he’s a very
influential leader in progressive culture.
Think of Whole Foods. They sell this idea that their food
is healthier, more nutritious, sustainable and better for
the environment. None of that is true. The point is that
politicians don’t necessarily dictate beliefs. Memes and
ideology pervade the culture, and can become policy.
AG: Early on in the book you talk about
the precautionary principle, which holds that technical
innovations, whether in bioscience or agriculture, must be
determined to “do no harm” before they can be approved. As
you point out, this is very anti-innovative and ultimately
regressive.
It seems to me that if you look at the recent history of
science, there’s good reason to take the precautionary
principle seriously. For example, people in suburban
neighborhoods living amid clouds of DDT and thinking there
was no harm in it. You sort of excoriated Rachel Carson for
The Silent Spring, and there again, though her book
may have been based on bad science, she was trying to get
people to think about things in a different way. People once
thought that cigarette smoking was healthy. There were ads
in Life magazine during the 1950s that feature
famous actresses promoting the health benefits of smoking.
We didn’t even know that cleaning out the water in the 1930s
and 40s would produce a polio epidemic ten years later. So,
there are a lot of things we don’t know about science, and
there are good reasons to pay some respect to the
precautionary principle.
AB: We don’t make the case for throwing
out precaution. We like the idea of having a regulatory
bureaucracy to make sure our products are safe. And for the
most part, they do. Take the example of genetically modified
crops. Products have to make it past certain bureaucratic
obstacles and earn some sort of FDA approval in order to
make it to market. The policy is called “substantial
equivalence.” If the modified food can be shown to be
essentially the same as the non-modified food, the FDA
chooses not to regulate it. But to plant it in the first
place, you need to get permission from the USDA and the EPA.
These are not insignificant hurdles, and I think having the
basic safety check in place is a good thing. We’re not
arguing to just get rid of that.
Rather, we’re going after the principle that until you can
prove something is safe, it can’t possibly be marketed. We
see that as not only inherently anti-innovative, but also
anti-scientific. We can prove that a certain chemical causes
cancer, but we can’t prove that a chemical is safe—it’s far
too open-ended to be a scientific question.
I agree with you that Rachel Carson brought about a change
in mindset. Of course we couldn’t spray pesticides
willy-nilly all around the countryside and expect no harm to
come from that. We brought her up because she went about
this in a very unscientific way.
AG: But no one would have read the book if
it had been perfectly scientific.
AB: Right, but as someone who has training
in science, I am a little offended by someone who was
willing to twist the science to create political propaganda.
Scientists don’t talk like that; we don’t sensationalize. We
look at the pros and cons and make a reasonable decision
from there. Anyone who tries to hype things up upsets me,
and that’s why we criticize her in the book.
AG: Wherever there are tradeoffs, wherever
things are slightly ambiguous, which is almost all the time
in a political system, you’re going to get people trying to
manipulate both sides of the bell-shaped curve of ambiguity.
That’s just the way life is. Some of your examples of this
show that you take the precautionary principle seriously
yourself. Farmers feeding antibiotics to animals, for
instance. They do this not just to protect them but also to
fatten them up.
AB: Even doing it to protect them is a bad
idea.
AG: Right, so you’re not against sensible
regulation, but you show how, time after time, politics
trumps “team science”, as you call it. For example, you
discuss how the FDA wanted to do the right thing—for
instance, banning certain antibiotics from being fed to
animals—but were stopped by the pharmaceutical companies
that profit from selling the drugs, and the dairy and cattle
people that profit from fattening up livestock. So you point
to various examples of corporate or plutocratic influence
pushing politics in a direction team science doesn’t like.
That being so, it seems to me that you have to trust
agribusiness quite a lot to say that there aren’t chemical
pollutants that can be scientifically proven dangerous,
though we might not yet know the dangers for a variety of
reasons. I agree with you that organic food might not be
more nutritious, but I do think it might prove in the long
run to be safer.
AB: First, I trust agribusiness, not
because I believe in business blindly but because it is part
of the scientific community. If agribusiness is trying to
pull the wool over the eyes of the scientific community and
is doing something unsafe, eventually it won’t get away with
it. Other scientists in academia or in government
bureaucracies will catch on. That’s partially what happened
with DDT after Rachel Carson came along. The hammer came
down on Monsanto after scientists raised the alarm. I trust
science in general, and that includes industry scientists.
My mentor worked for Bristol-Meyers Squibb for twenty years,
and I considered going into industry, myself.
As for organic foods, a new meta-analysis came out showing
that they do have fewer pesticides than conventional foods,
but both meet the FDA’s threshold for safety. So to say that
organic food is safe is sort of like saying that an SUV is
safer than a sedan. Meanwhile, a new Stanford study, a
forty-year meta-analysis, showed that there’s no significant
difference in nutritional value.
AG: Well, at least when it comes to
feeding infants and small children, it might be reasonable
to be more concerned with the marginal difference between
organic and conventional foods. As I said, there are things
science hasn’t discovered yet.
One of the things that’s really fascinating about the
intersection between culture and science is what scientists
choose to study, and which become popular fields.
Improvements in scientific methodology and instrumentation
have really widened the options, but the various funding
mechanisms drive scientists into researching some problems
more than others. So there are many things we don’t know
much about, because we don’t study them until they bite us
in the ass.
AB: There is definitely a bias toward
medical application, and there was a time after 9/11 and
after the anthrax attacks when if you could tie your paper
into bioterrorism you’d have a much easier time getting
funding. So yes, we always need to be investing in basic
research, because we never know what will come out of that.
A perfect example is the discovery of a bacterium that
lives in hot springs in Yellowstone Park, called Thermus
aquaticus. The enzyme that replicates its DNA is now
one of the primary enzymes used in all molecular biology for
PCR—polymerase chain reaction. It’s also one of the main
enzymes used in gene sequencing. That came from basic
research, from just sticking a finger in a lake to see what
was there. That led to the genetics revolution.
AG: There’s a lot of fortuity in science.
A lot of people have the view that first there’s a
scientific breakthrough, and then it’s extended into some
more specific understanding of natural forces. And then come
engineers and technologists who create applications for it.
Just as often, if not more often, it works the other way
around.
AB: There are researchers who stumble onto
something unexpected, and then boom—they’re off into the
biotech sector to start a new company.
AG: The point of this is that all the good
scientists I’ve ever met are humble people. They know how
much they don’t know. We don’t know enough, really, to make
categorical pronouncements about what’s safe or isn’t safe.
AB: That’s why scientists will say, “We
think it’s like this, at this time” or “the evidence seems
to be pointing in this direction.” That’s not how
politicians talk. They say, “This is going to kill you!”
AG: In the book you try to identify the
essence of the progressive idea, and you have four criteria.
One is the notion that everything natural is good;
everything unnatural is bad.
AB: That’s kind of the root of the organic
food movement.
AG: Another criterion is the relativist
idea that a scientist’s view is worth no more or less than
anyone else’s on a given subject. That seems to contradict
the insistence of progressives that theirs is the party of
science. How can you invoke the authority of science and at
the same time relativize it?
AB: I would love to see a poll that
examines whether liberals or progressives are more likely to
use alternative medicine. It’s interesting because Western
medicine has a pretty solid, proven track record. We do
evidence-based medicine, we find disease, we use Koch’s
postulates, we see what causes the disease and we create a
vaccine. That’s how small pox was eliminated. Alternative
medicine practitioners aren’t interested in evidence.
They’re more interested in how the person feels after
treatment. They’ll say that Western medicine offers one way
of looking at a problem, but there’s also acupuncture, and
hot rocks and herbal tea, or crystal pyramids. That’s an
example of what we mean by “scientific relativism.” We see
that as very dangerous.
AG: A long time ago one of my professors
was fond of the phrase “uninvited guests.” Up until the
1950s, Americans and Western Europeans were Whigs in how
they thought about moral progress and material progress
walking in lockstep. No one thought much about the downsides
of technology. But then, all of a sudden, we have the
“uninvited guests”: the DDT phenomenon, pollution,
environmental degradation, the tragedy of the commons. I
think the authority of science began to take a licking at
that time. As you point out, by now it has gone way too far.
It’s one thing to be humble, to say that science doesn’t
know everything, that it’s selective in its attention—fine.
But to say that crystal pyramids are as good as going to a
cardiologist—you’d have to be a nutbag to think like that.
AB: In the last chapter of our book we
list the 12 main issues facing science policy in America.
Regarding the uninvited guest, we ask what kinds of things
we can foresee that might be problematic. One of these
concerns bioethical implications. We could possibly clone
human beings, for example. Is that something we want to do?
AG: Did you hear about the scientist at
Kyoto University who recently created a viable mouse egg out
of stem cells, which then produced mice?
AB: Another good example. What happens
when you take human embryonic stem cells and inject them
into a non-primate blastocyst? That’s a legitimate
scientific question. Do we want to do it? I’m not one to get
my philosophy from movies, but I do like the quote from Jeff
Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park: “Your
scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they
could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
AG: Well, that’s the precautionary
principle again—but this time in the philosophically sound
sense of the phrase.
AB: We also talk about technical ethical
problems. We will soon have the technology to sequence the
genomes of every person on the planet. Should we? Should we
sequence the genomes of unborn children so that we can abort
them if they’re not perfect genetically? Facebook has given
us the ability to spy on millions of people.
AG: There’s also the grey area rapidly
emerging between medical treatment and enhancement.
AB: Right. Most people would probably say
it’s okay to fix a gene in utero that would cause cystic
fibrosis. But what if a parent doesn’t want the child to
have blue eyes?
AG: Yes, and it’s a slippery slope from
legitimate diagnostic and interventionist, almost cosmetic,
fixes. The line between those things is dim and getting
dimmer. That’s troubling.
AB: In chapter 12 we discuss the subject
of corporations patenting human genes. It’s an unresolved
issue that needs further discussion. You could write a whole
book just on that. I don’t know where I come down on this. I
understand the need for intellectual property—without it I
couldn’t have written this book. At the same time, science
is a little bit different. It needs to be more open. People
need to have access to information that’s not proprietary,
and I don’t know how to put a balance between those two.
That’s something, I guarantee, that will occupy the courts
for the next twenty or thirty years.
AG: I think that American culture leads us
to be too cavalier. We can invent something, market and sell
it, and always think about the consequences later. There’s
only been one example in American history when we didn’t do
that. That was in 1946, when the Atomic Energy Committee was
founded. Some people, apparently, thought nuclear energy
wasn’t something we should just let the market handle. I
think that biotechnology today is as portentous, for good or
for evil, as nuclear energy was then. I think we need some
kind of institution to at least collect statistics about who
is doing what in this field. We don’t even have a database.
AB: I would disagree in that biotechnology
is very difficult. In graduate school I gave a presentation
on bioterrorism, and at the time I took the viewpoint that
if a terrorist gets a hold of a biological weapon and
modifies it to be deadly, we’d be in a world of hurt. But
when it comes to modifying pathogens, nature has already
done it for us. The bubonic plague, which wiped out a third
of Europe’s population, is resistant to a couple of
antibiotics, but not all of them. It depletes the body of
iron; it can mask its outer membrane so that the body’s
immune system can’t even see that it’s there. And if you
inhaled it, it could kill you within 24 hours.
Smallpox wiped out 500 million people in the 20th
century alone. And we won the fight with our vaccination
program. So I’m now less concerned about someone getting a
bug and modifying it when mother nature has shown that she
can do this far more efficiently than we can.
AG: I’m not as sanguine about this as you
are. There’s a small probability it would happen, but if it
did it would be truly calamitous.
AB: I am more concerned about someone
finding a bug that has been sequestered—say, smallpox—and
then releasing it. But that’s not what biotechnology is.
AG: That’s true, but I think that when
people worry about weapons proliferation in conjunction with
terrorism people almost always talk about nuclear weapons.
But those are far more difficult to build, more expensive,
harder to conceal and transport. Biotech, on the other hand,
makes weapons that are much easier to conceal and deliver.
AB: I don’t take that perspective, though
I did at one time. I’ve been convinced the other way around
on this. The nastiest, deadliest bugs we can imagine have
already been invented by mother nature. If someone gets a
hold of one of those and releases it, that’s a problem. But
the idea that someone can be more clever than billions of
years of evolution? I’m not buying it.
AG: To move to one last question, there
have been several different structures devised over the
years for conveying science advice to the President and the
Executive Branch. A variety of advisory panels have been
created and disbanded, and different Presidents have used
them in different ways. There are science advisers all over
the government, including the State and Defense Departments.
But as far as I know there’s no design function here. No one
has stepped back and noticed that the scientific environment
is changing, and the way that the government needs to
understand and use science for the public good is changing
along with that environment. There has not been a systematic
evaluation of the personnel structure of scientists in the
government for at least half a century, or of the role of
advisory committees in the private sector, or of
public-private partnerships. My sense is that there’s a
misalignment between what the government needs to do, on the
one hand, and how it uses scientists, on the other. So I’m
interested in your thoughts about how out of whack this is.
AB: I’ve never actually thought about
that. It’s a great question. My political philosophy leans
more toward small government. So the idea of increasing
bureaucracies is something I instinctively recoil from. But
I have been thinking that perhaps it’s time we had a
Cabinet-level science and technology position. Maybe we
could eliminate some other one we don’t need. If I were
President, I could see merging the Departments of Labor and
Commerce together, or putting Veterans’ Affairs under the
aegis of Health and Human Services. Then you could have a
Department of Science and Technology as the core advisory
body to the Executive Branch. The NIH, the EPA and the FDA
could then be under its control. As it is, they’re all
scattered around.
AG: We have what I like to call
“incremental feudalism” in the government structure.
AB: Right, no one likes to give up turf.
AG: It’s all related to congressional
oversight. You can’t get anything changed unless you
propitiate Congress. For example, the FDA handles drugs and
food (all except meat, which the Department of Agriculture
does) for no real reason. That’s just how Teddy Roosevelt
happened to have it set up. This arrangement has become
quite dysfunctional.
AB: And why are there three different
organizations—EPA, FDA and USDA—working on the same GMOs?
AG: We’re lucky there are only three.
Count the number of spigots from which foreign aid comes
out—there are 16 of them. And then, at the end of the Bush
Administration, we just created a new Undersecretary of
State position to manage all the spigots. The point is that
there’s a connection between the policies we want to be bold
and innovative about, and the government delivery systems in
place. You can’t get new policies with old structures.
AB: Could we imagine a President making it
a priority to reorganize the Federal bureaucracy?
AG: I’ve thought a lot about this since my
time in government. One way to go about it is to create a
Cabinet-level department. The second way is to create a
permanent interagency group, and the third way—the least
efficient way—is to create a science czar, which isn’t too
different from what we have now.
AB: That would be what John Holdren does,
right?
AG: Yes, but he doesn’t have budget
authority. His budget authority and responsibilities aren’t
aligned. This President hasn’t used his science adviser
particularly well, and neither did the previous one. But
“team science” should be alarmed, because this is way off
the radar; we’re not thinking about it at all.
AB: That’s a good point. Until this
discussion, I had never heard anyone speak at length about
this issue.
AG: Well we need scientists to help think
this through. And you’d be one of them, because you’re
young, smart and not inured to old ways. Anyone who reads
the book will be able to see that—and I hope lots of people
do read it. Thanks.
