OFFICE MEMORANDUM e STANFORD UNIVERSITY © OFFICE MEMORANDUM © STANFORD UNIVERSITY © OFFICE MEMORANDU

John Morfit, for STAP distribution

To

From

SuBJECT:

Date. September 13, 1976

Joshua Lederberg

Which biological technologies are likely to have the most profound world
impact within the next 10-25 years?
(Preliminary response to Steve Lukasik’s request at last STAP mtg.)

 

There really needs to be an n-dimensional scale to locate the various
contingencies: the dimensions would include the likelihood of an event,

the variance of that likelihood (perhaps expressed in the confidence limits
of the time of its accomplishment), the scope of the consequences, and the
extent to which they would set up differential stresses or advantages in the
world community.

The most likely events are in the development of constructive health and _
agricultural technologies. oo

On the health side the most important developments will concern an extension
of population-control-technology (which has already had important demographic
consequences in the advanced countries) to the point where they provide at
least access and opportunity to population limitation to the LDCs. It is
difficult to predict the actual course of development of population policy
country by country, but it seems likely that an eventual if sometimes grudging
acceptance of the need to limit population growth will be adopted universally.
Countries that aggressively move in different directions may indeed be targets
for concern about their political expansionism.

Parallel to population control we can look forward to continued improvements

in the control of epidemic disease: the most important from a global economic
standpoint are malaria and schistosomiasis. There is considerable uncertainty
about the time required for effective control but a 15 to 30 year outlook is
perhaps a reasonable one. The net result of the successful deployment of these
technologies (and again there are many social and cultural as well as
technological factors!) may give improvements in infant survival that almost
balance population control measures. The net result may - optimistically -

be some reduction in the overall rate of population growth of the LDCs but
unquestionably this will remain at a higher level than in the advanced countries.
It would be important to try to produce a country by country demographic |
projection for, say the year 2000, that includes various levels of optimism
about these technological changes. (The control of these debilitating more
than lethal diseases should have the most positive economic impact on the LDCs.)
Most students of the world population problem have been obsessed by the global
consideration and have given little attention to the specific international
stresses that disparities in population level will undoubtedly unleash.

It may be too optimistic to believe that we can learn the rules of social
technology that may permit more rapid aculturation of currently deprived
peoples - this is a piece of or perhaps embraces the general technology
transfer question - but I do not think this possibility should be thoroughly
discounted. The PRC for instance has shown notable successes in certain areas
along these lines, and I believe one could find a very few successful

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Memo. to File -~2- 9/13/76

experiments among the large number of failures: that go under the label.

"We Don'® Know How". (If you do not know the book by the Paddocks under this

title, I strongly urge it on you. It is a general critique of socalled international
aid programs) . : DAES a iy Ce, . [- hewn atm gh pee ot fect ac xf _. te Hh 8
For most of the LDCs the problem of aculturation of existing agricultural
technology will probably be the major hurdle, so there may not be too much

point.in talking.about the purely technical advances.that are possible in this
realm. There have been several studies of new..food-resources that may become
avallable for tropical countries: (see the NAS.surveys..on. these. questions),

and there -is-little doubt that there could be.an.enormous. technical payoff for

crop development .and.other agronomic studies-in these areas, And we have, of
course,.a vicious cycle, namely that more insightful work on the biological

side that..ceuld.give these technical fruits is discouraged in advance by the
difficulties.of..securing their .social adoption...Conversely, if therefore we

could see.some.successes in.the latter sphere, there would be even more. pragress

on the biological side!

  

BE aay

 

The: northern hemisphere is less constrained by these social factors, and Lam
confident that we will see major advances in the style of agricultural research
and corresponding strides in the applications of new biology for crop development.
Hitherto difficult problems like the adoptation of crop.plants to arid climates,
brackish or.salt water, or.short cold. seasons.will-not.in my. view be. so difficult
to. surmount once there is .an effective.use of modern. findings and. concepts from
molecular and cell genetics. This point. seems.to be well understood in the PRC
(judging. from reports from their Institute. of Genetics); we are beginning to wake
-up.to it.in.this-country.although we have -had.a.sleepy agricultural research
program.for many years; [1 ama bit.mere.at..a.loss right now.to.judge the status
of. Soviet.agricultural research along these lines. This was blasted for a.
generation by the Lysenko disaster, but.for.the past 10. to 15 years I have been
saying that it is on the point of rejuvenating although I do not have a clear
picture of its vigor at. the present.time at.the interface between molecular
genetics.and.crop. development.

Albeit.one should factor in the likelihood of .these technological responses

in any world model that sees global economic changes driven by possible climatic
change, which at the moment is speculative,..or by the more obvious shifts in the
cost of energy inputs to agriculture. Even the climate models are too simplistic:
regardless of whether one accepts the temperature effects, one also has to keep
in mind the. distribution of rainfall which is amore complex problem and not
easily predicted. The water resource availability may prove to be an even more
critical consideration than the mean temperature. And there may of course be
efforts.at climate modification that (1) can alter the national impact of the
global model:and.(2) may well become the source of further international conflict.

A number of ambitious projections for health improvements in this country might

be made, and some of them would have significant social and economic consequences.

We might perhaps achieve a lengthening of mean longevity by say. another 5 years
(probably offset by some reduction in the female over male advantage with the
increasing equalization of life-styles). This prolongation of the period after

middle age will undoubtedly exacerbate the social stresses of the “problem of

the older people’. but is not likely to be as large a factor in international

relations as the demographic changes of the LDCs.~(Consider how much more stressful
inflationary transients are the longer Lifespan). To attain even a 5 year prolongation
would imply marvelous successes in the fields of prevention of heart disease and
Memo to File -3- 9/13/76

of cancer but not their total eradication: these are perhaps median optimistic
expectations for the next 25 years.

On the negative side, without attaching a very high probability (that is more
than 25%) a number of possible catastroph es need to be given far more careful
thought than they have been: they include pandemics and crop failures as a result
of global plant disease.

The swine influenza fiasco may. make it even more likely that we will get into
serious trouble when a real villain comes along. Presumably such pandemics would
have much greater impact on the populations of LDCs - with poor health facilities -
than on the richer countries, but there are some circumstances where the
opposite might be true. If for example the virus of hepatitis A were to become
much more virulent, pre-existing immunity in low-health-status countries might
afford considerable protection. In my view, both the national and the world
systems of protection against infectious disease are pitifully inadequate

in the face of any such major challenge. Nor is there any theoretical reason

to believe that such viruses will not evolve and indeed, as already hinted,
improved hygiene itself may set the stage for a broader base of susceptibility
to certain agents.

The current trends of social control of laboratory work on microorganisms —- iwc
which I believe the excitement about recombinant DNA is just a beginning -
will of course tie our hands-even further in the development of effective
responses to these contingencies. The appropriate comment about the Philadelphia
outbreak of "Legionnaire's Disease" has not yet been voiced: the extent to which
it is a testimony to the frailty of our investigative capabilities.

ewil ;
As long as we are discussing such catastrophes we perhaps should mention
contingencies like the release of radioactivity (from nuclear mishaps) or of
poisonous chemicals (like TCDD in northern Italy recently), but on almost any
model of the potential for damage from natural epidemics is many orders of
magnitude more severe. .

Rather similar comments can be made about crop disease: these have been
elaborated in the NAS report on genetic factors in aggravating the susceptibility
of agriculture to disease outbreak.

Finally - although I believe less likely than natural infections - one of course
must also contemplate the possibility of BW with comparable consequences.
Anti-personnel BW is almost certainly the unique province of terrorist or crazy
State activity, but nevertheless can hardly be totally discounted. Anti-crop
warfare, as part of a protracted conflict - like the Sino-Soviet one ~ can hardly
be ignored. The most likely contingencies for the use of such weapons would be

at a time when other events might seems to predispose to revolutionary change;

or as an adjunct to low-level continued hot warfare. The very limited
experimentation by US forces on the use of chemicals to deny guerilla forces in VN
access to food supplies illustrates the setting in which crop diseases might

well be attempted by parties not effectively constrained by current treaty
commitments. Besides the theater implications of such attacks,the possibility of
spillover into the world food supply is of course the gravest concern.
Memo to File ~-4- 9/13/76

The possibility of a clandestine attack upon US agriculture by such means
deserves continued attention as well. Such an attack might be motivated by
general motifs of vengeance or resentment - probably primarily on the part of
some national groups - or might be an effort to deny the nation the economic
advantages of having a corner on the supply of a major grain. On this reasoning
the end of the spectrum that is occupied by cattle and corn would be more
likely targets than wheat. It would be rather easy to introduce hoof and mouth
disease into this country in a way that would entail enormous economic costs

_ that would be born almost uniquely by the country itself. In fact, one could
conceive of such an attack being motivated by nothing more than economic
interests on the part of other countries who have been barred from access to

domestic US markets, many of whom already have hoof and mouth disease in their
own stock. .

P.S. Collection implications;
4s¢ Overhead assets: for northward extension of cropping efforts

w4$@ Literature and other open data reviews: in re sophistication of application
of new genetic methodologies to agricultural problems. (I am waiting
for some existing documents on this theme before formulating possible
commitments to further studies.)

The 1978 Intl Genetic Congress in Moscow may be a major opportunity to assess.
the status of current work in plant genetics. I hope USDA attaches are
encourage to attend overtly with perhaps some briefing and debriefing on
these particular issues. :

Have there been any official exchange visits on these themes?