Читать книгу Bio-revolution & Futurology - Vladimir Kishinets - Страница 5

Thus, we can state that man is approaching the most important event in his history – the creation of technologies for improving and managing his biological basis. It is easy to understand that no conceivable scientific discoveries and inventions that are certainly waiting for humanity ahead, can not be compared with this in its significance. Therefore, the success in creating biomedicine can rightly be called the greatest scientific revolution.

However, it will not only be a scientific and technological revolution. Its social, humanitarian, and civilizational consequences will be no less grandiose. They are inevitable, because everything in our world – interpersonal relations, economics, morality, politics, law, religion, art, absolutely everything – is ultimately determined by the biological properties of a person and their change is a change in the Foundation of the world order.

It is difficult, for example, even to list the changes in people’s lives as a result of overcoming aging: from the return to work of the mass of rejuvenated pensioners and the acceleration of population growth, to changes in the attitude of future super-long-livers to work, to marriage and family relations, to life and death, to violence, wars, to physical risk, art, entertainment, etc.

No less revolutionary will be the consequences of other areas of biomedicine application.

Problems of the revolution

The final results of this biosocial revolution will be unequivocally positive. It will make people’s lives much more comfortable, safe, and reasonable. However, it will not be without serious problems. It is expected that the processes will be complicated when the inevitable contradiction of new forms of human existence with the previous economic, political, legal principles and mechanisms will require their fundamental, global changes.

The obvious consequence of such a radical restructuring will be a transition period with widespread destabilization of management systems, disruption of economic and production-technological ties. As the analysis shows, it is very likely that this will lead to a special global crisis that cannot be resolved by today’s methods, to a widespread drop in production, a decline in living standards, etc. Only way to mitigate it is to prepare technical, political, and social measures to counteract it in advance.

This will require huge efforts and a lot of time, and much will depend on how timely responsible politicians, scientists, entrepreneurs, and everyone who is able to influence the course of future events will be able to understand their logic and meaning.

It is obvious, however, that the upcoming changes are so non-trivial and go beyond ordinary ideas about the future that it is impossible to understand and predict them without serious scientific analysis…

Revolution today

But biorevolution is not only a problem, even if not so distant, but of the future. Even today, it sets quite specific goals.

The most obvious one is the full activation of biological research. Its main, humanistic meaning is obvious: every day that brings the creation of gene-cell medicine closer is a real saving of millions of human lives.

It also has a political aspect. As information about the priceless benefits of genetic medical technologies spreads, people’s desire to get access to them will gradually expand and strengthen, take the form of a kind of universal ideology, and efforts to create a national biomedicine will become, having pushed aside many other problems, the main criterion for the effectiveness of politicians and States. This will create new factors in domestic and international politics.

They will also affect the economy and business: along with certain problems, new opportunities will open up to meet the changing needs of people and participate in high-tech developments, not only in the field of biotechnology, but also in improving their highly knowledge – intensive tools-physical, technical, information, mathematical, chemical-that require the development of a wide range of natural science and engineering areas.

(By the way, businesses are already reacting quite actively to these opportunities. Abroad, companies have begun to appear EN masse, proclaiming their goal to radically extend human life, and in Moscow, Forbes magazine is preparing a business conference “Investing in immortality”).