Ron Fouchier and the end of the world.

Will Ron Fouchier’s curiosity and, it seems ego, end the modern era? Dr. Ron Fouchier is a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. He is also the creator of, most probably, the most deadly virus ever seen on Earth.

Ron Fouchier has mutated the bird flu, H5N1, into an airborne form, that transmits easily from host to host – and would do so, too, in humans. If his virus were ever to be released into the world, it would kill 50 to 60% of all who caught it: billions of people would die. Civilization itself might fall, in the chaos and terror of such a pandemic, in which simply breathing the air, breathed out by another, some distance away, would be enough to kill.

Apparently, it took, we are told, just five mutations, to change ordinary bird flu – which kills over 50% of those infected, but rarely transmits between people – into an easily transmissible airborne version, that spreads as easily as any other flu – but which is up to 30 times as deadly as the Spanish flu of 1918, which only killed 2% of those it infected.

Truly, this virus is a potential doomsday weapon. Yet, it is held in a special room at the Erasmus Medical Center, in Rotterdam. Should it ever be leaked, billions could die as a result. Richard H. Ebright, a bioweapons expert at Rutgers University commented that there had been hundreds of unintentional leaks of potential bioweapons from US labs – and regarding airborne H5N1 he opined: “It will inevitably escape and within a decade”. Should it ever do so, Ron Fouchier would become the most destructive person in human history. His work would have killed billions of people.

There is only one justification for the kind of work Ron Fouchier has done. That is if this work leads to a means to defeat this illness and prevent it ever becoming a pandemic. However, now that he has created it and spoken of its details at public meetings, it is likely that others will recreate the work. As similar viruses are created elsewhere, the chances of an accidental or deliberate leak escalate. The race, therefore, is now on, between those who would defeat this potential pandemic, and those who would unleash it, accidentally or deliberately.

Oftentimes, it seems that modern man does not have long in this world. We have the intelligence to create powerful technologies, but not the wisdom, as a race, to use them wisely. Ron Fouchier’s work could lead directly to the downfall of modern civilization. Were 60% of people to die, days after being exposed to no more than a sneeze, I very much doubt whether the fabric of civilization would hold – it would rupture into utter terrified chaos.

The real danger of Ron Fouchier’s H5N1 work is that now all the world’s terrorists and unhinged haters of humanity, will know that it is possible to create an airborne H5N1 – by simply announcing that, he has ensured that many others, around the world, will try to do so. Even if these groups don’t deliberately release it, simply by working on it, they greatly increase the chances that it will be released accidentally. Then again, there are foreign powers who might consider releasing such a virological agent. What might North Korea, for instance, do with such a virus? Would they consider it reasonable to lose 60% of their own population (which they don’t seem to have much love for), so as to kill 60% of the rest of the world? Some unstable nation, somewhere, might make that calculation and make a fateful decision.

The onus is now on Ron Fouchier and all the virologists familiar with his work, to create a vaccine against H5N1, or to derive some other means of defeating it. If this is not done, the time might come, after the modern era, when the name Ron Fouchier is remembered for all the wrong reasons.

I am struck by the hint of a self-satisfied smile that seems to adorn all photos of Ron Fouchier that I have seen. I am not sure whether I am reading him wrongly or not – but he does seem to be rather impressed with himself. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be potentially responsible for the death of 60% of humanity and the fall of the modern era – yet that is precisely the potential of the work he seems so smug about.

Now, that you have made the virus Ron, you have a responsibility to learn how to defeat it. Only then would you truly deserve a self-satisfied smile. Only then, will humanity be able to relax, before its impending fate.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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On the non-appearance of the future.

Where did the 21st Century go? By this, I mean, where is the 21st Century futurists and even everyday scientists and technologists, promised the world, in my childhood? None of it ever happened.

I look around, for signs of the technological prophesies I not infrequently read as I was growing up...and it just isn't here. We don't live in a world of flying cars (the ultimate cliche of a future that will probably never happen, since they may always be just too dangerous); we don't live in a world of permanent space colonies, or holidays on the moon; we don't live in a world of vast life spans of virtually immortal humans - in fact, all the most interesting predictions of the future have just never happened. Instead, we have got the mobile phone: just great.

Robert Anton Wilson was a writer (The Illuminatus Trilogy is his most famous, though I confess to not having read it), whom I once read of in an interview. He was convinced, in the early 1970s that he would live for hundreds of years (I believe he estimated 400 years, as "average" in what was to come), given the "pace of technological development", then current. Well, guess what? Robert Anton Wilson died in 2007 at around 75 years old. Optimism is not enough to make the future happen: it needs a lot of concerted work, too, work that just isn't being done.

Robert Anton Wilson was not alone in his belief. A lot of very smart people also had similarly optimistic views about the future. They looked at the pace of change in their own lives and then made what they thought were fair estimates of future progress, based on that. Even Nasa thought, in the seventies, that they would have permanent space colonies, by now. Perhaps they should have read the kind of disclaimer that investment funds generally have: "Past performance is no guide to future returns." Indeed, the past is no guide to the future - for between one and the other, anything can happen - or nothing at all.

Looking at my own life, I note rapid technological change in the first twenty years - and then not a lot of change in the second twenty. It is as if, all over the world, scientists stopped doing science and technologists stopped doing technology, once I came of age. Indeed, there is some truth in that. They have stopped doing science and technology in the same way. There is less basic science now and more short term research aimed at immediate products. There is less risky, open-ended research and more conservative research that isn't really research (it is called development, really). So, in a way, Man seems to be pulling away from the future, where once we were rushing towards it. My views on what is happening in technology are based on personal observation - and on discussions with people working in large technological concerns: a basic summary of their discussions (which I shall detail more at another time) is that not a lot is happening. The "future" may not happen at all, given what I have learnt - or, if it does, it will be a lot later than it would have needed to have been.

There are still futurists at work, making great promises about the future that all of us, who are middle-aged (I hate that term) or younger, shall live to see. One of them is Ray Kurzweil. He is predicting superhuman machine intelligences in twenty years time, believing that a computer will pass the Turing test (be indistinguishable in thought from a human) in 2029. He also believes that by 2050 radical life extension will be possible, making humans effectively immortal. His other ideas including augmenting humans with machine intelligence to make us into "superhuman cybernetic organisms".

I am not sure I like the future Kurzweil portrays. It sounds like a future that would distort what it means to be human, should it ever occur. After all, if your thinking is being done by a machine implant, are you really human anymore? What have you become?

Looking at Ray Kurzweil's predictions reminds me very much of Robert Anton Wilson's predictions of three decades before. They are very similar in time frame, too. Both are looking ahead two or three decades and seeing an utterly changed world that will bring them everything they have ever dreamed of. Yet, the future has a stubborn habit of not happening according to plan. Robert Anton Wilson is dead - so, too, might Kurzweil be (he is 60) before his dreams come true.

Robert Anton Wilson spoke of space migration (it hasn't happened); intelligence increase (it hasn't happened) and life extension (it hasn't happened). In a sense, Wilson's vision is a better one for Humanity - for Wilson's vision did not include the diminishment of Man, implicit in Kurzweil's view that machines will surpass us.

I, personally, hope that Kurzweil is wrong about machines and right about life extension. I fear, however, that it might be the other way around (the worst possible outcome).

Whatever the future may hold, it is unlikely to happen as readily as Kurzweil believes. There is much work to be done to make his dreams come true - and the drive forward, in creative science, is not what it once was.

I think the best thing to do, in the face of futurists who paint amazing visions of the future, and the reality that such predictions have proven wrong in the past, (though they might not in the future!) is simply to look at the world as it is and not to expect more from it, than that. Yes, things will change. Yes, new things will come to pass. But, you know what...I think it is all going to take a lot longer than many people imagine. So, we might live to see Kurzweil's future. However, it is more likely that we will live to see Kurzweil's passing.

We are almost a decade into the 21st Century and it is nothing like what was promised. I wonder whether the "future" will ever come? When it does, will it at all resemble the prophesies of the futurists of today?

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Teresa Hsu, Singaporean Supercentenarian

Yesterday, my wife Syahidah, my son Ainan, 7, and I, went to meet the oldest living Singaporean.

It was a curious meeting. Teresa Hsu has a stated age of 110 years old. Officially, there are only 78 such people in the world. 71 of them are women and 7 of them are men. I do not know whether she is one of those officially listed. She herself says she came from an era before documentation, so we are reliant on her, for verification.

She is an alert, witty and apparently amiable person. Throughout the talk she laughed frequently and I found myself laughing, too, at her unexpected jokes. That she could have retained such a strong sense of humour so long was refreshing to witness. Ainan was very interested in seeing her - for he is not unaware of the rarity of one of such an age. However, he kept fairly quiet throughout and just listened to the adults speak.

She was of modest height, her skin was relatively unwrinkled, being less so than many aged people I have met - and she had a full head of silver hair, which she showed no signs of losing. She did not seem so old as one might expect, looking perhaps no more than 80, or so. I have seen younger people, who looked older.

Her memory for her early life was very clear, being able to tell stories of her childhood and early working days, with clarity and ease. What, however, was also clear, was that her memory for recent events was not so fresh: she had seen a friend of mine the previous day, but evidently struggled to remember the details of the meeting, somewhat. That, however, was not surprising, given her age. In general, she was very together, and responsive and able to discourse at length and interest about her life.

She was born in China to a poor family. At 16, her mother tried to arrange a marriage for her - but, so opposed to this was Teresa Hsu, that she ran away from home, to live in Hong Kong. There she made a living cleaning floors while, in the evening, she studied secretarial skills, becoming a stenographer in due course.

In time, she made her way to Singapore where she acquired a primary school level education at a Convent school at the age of 27. Later on, in her forties, she moved to the United Kingdom, where she trained and practised as a nurse. In her sixties, her sister gave her a large sum of money, which she used to found a home for the Aged (next to which she lives to this day) - and purchase some flats for the elderly to live in.

She has since worked to help the elderly poor have a better life, raising funds for them - and assisting them with food donations.

What secrets of longevity does she have? Well, I would say that key to her continued health this past century, is her ever present laughter. She laughed many times throughout our meeting, finding humour in most things. Then again, she confessed a love of ice-cream - which points to taking pleasure in the senses. Indeed, when asked whether she had ever had children, she remarked: "No. You see if I had had four children, I would have had to share my ice-cream five ways.", she then laughed.

We talked for two hours in a room surrounded by books of all kinds. There are over 2,000 books on those burdened shelves. Her recent reading has included Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - as well as Dan Brown's entire oeuvre including the Da Vinci Code. She particularly enjoyed that - and was unable to put it down until she had finished it.

She has no truck with the modern world. She cannot use a computer. She does not watch television. She uses no modern electronic devices, referring to them as "boxes".

When I asked her about what life was like before the airplane, she said: "Simpler", but then was interrupted by her constant companion, Sharana Rao, before she could expand. He had the loudest bass voice I have encountered in my life and would repeat everything we said, so that she could understand, being as she is, rather hard of hearing. (The lower frequencies would tend to dull last - the higher frequencies being lost first, so this makes sense.)

She has practiced Yoga, for much of her life (about the last forty years or so) and, indeed, Sharana is a Yoga teacher and osteopath, himself. He looked rather biblical with a long flowing white beard - and spoke with great intensity. In all they made an interesting pair.

Ainan enthusiastically relayed news of his meeting to his brothers: "110..." he began, as he entered the house, explaining his visit to them. To a 7 year old, I suppose, such a number seems vast indeed. To me, though her life is long, it is not eternal. Even 110 seems too short a life, to me!

One day, perhaps, 110 will become a common age but at this time, the ratio of non-supercentenarians, to official supercentenarians, is 77 million to one. Those are long odds for anyone aspiring to live for 110 years or more.

It was a strange meeting. For Ainan is a rare scientific child prodigy - and she is a rare centenarian. Both are exceptional in different ways. Ainan is the youngest of his kind - and she is the oldest. There is a kind of poetry in that.

I hope Ainan remembers the day he met the oldest living Singaporean - and that it gives him a better perspective on life and its possibilities.

I think it was a rich lesson for him, to meet someone reputedly born in the 19th century. The time for when such meetings are possible is rapidly passing. By the time Ainan is adult, there will be no more representatives of that era, remaining. Yet, when Ainan is an adult, he will be able to recall the day he met such a one - and listened to her jokes.

It was a worthwhile visit - and we are thankful to Teresa Hsu and Sharana Rao, for affording us - and Ainan the privilege.

Long may she live.

(If you are interested in learning more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged 7 years and eight months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and one month, or Tiarnan, eighteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)