Thanks for writing this post, I 100% share your sentiment and appreciate the depth with which you’ve explored this topic, including some of the political considerations.
Here are some other potentially-relevant case studies of people doing similar-ish things, trying to make the world a better place while navigating touchy political fears related to biotech:
The “Enhanced Games” is organizing an alternative to the Olympic games where doping and other human enhancement technologies will be allowed. Naturally, they try to put a heavy emphasis on the importance of human freedom, plus some random criticisms of the way the existing Olympics are organized. But what I thought was especially striking was the way they leaned into social-justice-y rhetoric: “science is real”, “stop exploitation”, and even their logo is a dead ringer for the famous “equality” logo of the LGBT rights movement. For an antimalarial gene drive, I think a similar approach could work well (at least for winning the support of Westerners) -- leaning into rhetoric about postcolonialism and how the gene-drive initiative represents the people taking charge of their own destiny instead of waiting for western aid/charity (bednets, vaccines, etc) that hasn’t been sufficient. (Charter Cities are in a somewhat similar situation, where it’s very important for them to convince people that this is an empowering way of advancing human liberty while helping the developing world, rather than some kind of conniving neocolonialism intended to disempower people.)
The C4 Rice Project has been operating for a long time, working towards the dream of engineering rice to more efficiently photosynthesize and thus boosting yields around the world.
The Far-Out Initiative is hoping to trial gene editing to reduce animal suffering; their website has some interesting FAQs and in general the project has the same “activist genetics lab” vibe that a mosquito gene-drive lab might strive for.
Same deal for the project to revive Woolly Mammoths—the awesome documentary “We Are As Gods” is basically a PR campaign for the righteousness of this cause, and a good portrait of a similar movement which is farther along in the PR pipeline.
Genomic embryo-selection companies like Lifeview and Orchid Health are also interesting in this context, although since they don’t have to convince regulators or the wider public, they are keeping a lower profile for now. There are also some essentially stealth-mode groups who are investigating enhancements to the current state-of-the-art in embryo selection. These groups would be less interesting in terms of learning from their PR campaigns (they have none), but it might be helpful to study how they build a skilled team, raise funding, etc.
Some further questions I have about the political and theory-of-change considerations:
I think it could be helpful to explore a more detailed breakdown of who exactly might be opposed, and for what reasons. And then try and figure out which of these sources actually matter the most / are the most real! For example:
Maybe the people of a developing country will be opposed, because they just find GMOs scary / would be worried about being bitten by a GMO mosquito.
Maybe neighboring countries will be opposed because they’ll see it as an imposition on their sovereignty that an important decision (even if the decision is just… curing malaria, lol) is being taken without their input.
Ordinary citizens and activists in the west might be opposed mostly because of some kind of “neocolonialism”/social-justice concerns, or mostly because of environmental concerns (removing mosquitoes might disrupt the environment), or mostly because of FDA-style biomedical caution and fear of GMOs.
Elites in the developed world might be concerned from a perspective of international diplomacy and norms—sure, THIS unilateral genetic engineering project will have amazing consequences, but will it end up net-negative if it encourages OTHER unilateral actions in the future that are more harmful? (Feels similar to the sentiment against climate geoengineering or human genetic editing.) What could be done to ameliorate this concern?
Is there some way that a gene drive could be framed as partially accidental, or an inevitable by-product of some other necessary action? Sometimes you need a good excuse to do something good for the world… I am thinking of situations like:
Geoengineering experiments are still very taboo, but a recent UN regulation reducing sulfur dioxide emissions is unintentionally warming the earth and also giving scientists tons of data about the efficacy of future SO2-based climate interventions.
Similarly, fertilizing the oceans with iron to fight climate change is considered taboo. But it might be easier to argue for fertilizing the oceans with iron in order to help sperm whale populations recover, since sperm whales once naturally helped iron cycle through the oceans but our own human actions caused their populations to decline. (Fighting climate change would thus just be an “accidental” benefit of helping the sperm whales.)
In the malaria gene-drive case, the best possible headline is probably always gonna be “unanimous international agreement reached to release gene drive!” But as a second-best option, “truck carrying mosquitoes for gene-drive study crashes, thousands of GMO mosquitoes released, scientists very apologetic!” is DEFINITELY preferable to “rogue bio-activists publish manifesto, release thousands of GMO mosquitoes”. And it might even be preferable to something like “president of Ghana, citing failure of western aid and the hypocrisy of colonial powers, unilaterally begins GMO drive”.
I’d also note that, although most prevalent in africa, malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases are common throughout the tropics. So although africa might be ideal from an impact standpoint, getting a project off the ground in southeast asia or central america is also worth considering, if the politics are more favorable / if it would be easier to set up a genetics lab there!
I like your idea of exploring “a more detailed breakdown of who exactly might be opposed, and for what reasons. And then try and figure out which of these sources actually matter the most / are the most real!”
>Same deal for the project to revive Woolly Mammoths—the awesome documentary “We Are As Gods” is basically a PR campaign for the righteousness of this cause, and a good portrait of a similar movement which is farther along in the PR pipeline.
Thanks for writing this post, I 100% share your sentiment and appreciate the depth with which you’ve explored this topic, including some of the political considerations.
Here are some other potentially-relevant case studies of people doing similar-ish things, trying to make the world a better place while navigating touchy political fears related to biotech:
The “Enhanced Games” is organizing an alternative to the Olympic games where doping and other human enhancement technologies will be allowed. Naturally, they try to put a heavy emphasis on the importance of human freedom, plus some random criticisms of the way the existing Olympics are organized. But what I thought was especially striking was the way they leaned into social-justice-y rhetoric: “science is real”, “stop exploitation”, and even their logo is a dead ringer for the famous “equality” logo of the LGBT rights movement. For an antimalarial gene drive, I think a similar approach could work well (at least for winning the support of Westerners) -- leaning into rhetoric about postcolonialism and how the gene-drive initiative represents the people taking charge of their own destiny instead of waiting for western aid/charity (bednets, vaccines, etc) that hasn’t been sufficient. (Charter Cities are in a somewhat similar situation, where it’s very important for them to convince people that this is an empowering way of advancing human liberty while helping the developing world, rather than some kind of conniving neocolonialism intended to disempower people.)
The C4 Rice Project has been operating for a long time, working towards the dream of engineering rice to more efficiently photosynthesize and thus boosting yields around the world.
The Far-Out Initiative is hoping to trial gene editing to reduce animal suffering; their website has some interesting FAQs and in general the project has the same “activist genetics lab” vibe that a mosquito gene-drive lab might strive for.
Same deal for the project to revive Woolly Mammoths—the awesome documentary “We Are As Gods” is basically a PR campaign for the righteousness of this cause, and a good portrait of a similar movement which is farther along in the PR pipeline.
Genomic embryo-selection companies like Lifeview and Orchid Health are also interesting in this context, although since they don’t have to convince regulators or the wider public, they are keeping a lower profile for now. There are also some essentially stealth-mode groups who are investigating enhancements to the current state-of-the-art in embryo selection. These groups would be less interesting in terms of learning from their PR campaigns (they have none), but it might be helpful to study how they build a skilled team, raise funding, etc.
Some further questions I have about the political and theory-of-change considerations:
I think it could be helpful to explore a more detailed breakdown of who exactly might be opposed, and for what reasons. And then try and figure out which of these sources actually matter the most / are the most real! For example:
Maybe the people of a developing country will be opposed, because they just find GMOs scary / would be worried about being bitten by a GMO mosquito.
Maybe neighboring countries will be opposed because they’ll see it as an imposition on their sovereignty that an important decision (even if the decision is just… curing malaria, lol) is being taken without their input.
Ordinary citizens and activists in the west might be opposed mostly because of some kind of “neocolonialism”/social-justice concerns, or mostly because of environmental concerns (removing mosquitoes might disrupt the environment), or mostly because of FDA-style biomedical caution and fear of GMOs.
Elites in the developed world might be concerned from a perspective of international diplomacy and norms—sure, THIS unilateral genetic engineering project will have amazing consequences, but will it end up net-negative if it encourages OTHER unilateral actions in the future that are more harmful? (Feels similar to the sentiment against climate geoengineering or human genetic editing.) What could be done to ameliorate this concern?
Is there some way that a gene drive could be framed as partially accidental, or an inevitable by-product of some other necessary action? Sometimes you need a good excuse to do something good for the world… I am thinking of situations like:
When an accidental freezer failure during covid vaccine distribution actually resulted in giving lots more people the vaccine, because it helped doctors get around onerous verification requirements about who was allowed to get one.
Geoengineering experiments are still very taboo, but a recent UN regulation reducing sulfur dioxide emissions is unintentionally warming the earth and also giving scientists tons of data about the efficacy of future SO2-based climate interventions.
Similarly, fertilizing the oceans with iron to fight climate change is considered taboo. But it might be easier to argue for fertilizing the oceans with iron in order to help sperm whale populations recover, since sperm whales once naturally helped iron cycle through the oceans but our own human actions caused their populations to decline. (Fighting climate change would thus just be an “accidental” benefit of helping the sperm whales.)
In the malaria gene-drive case, the best possible headline is probably always gonna be “unanimous international agreement reached to release gene drive!” But as a second-best option, “truck carrying mosquitoes for gene-drive study crashes, thousands of GMO mosquitoes released, scientists very apologetic!” is DEFINITELY preferable to “rogue bio-activists publish manifesto, release thousands of GMO mosquitoes”. And it might even be preferable to something like “president of Ghana, citing failure of western aid and the hypocrisy of colonial powers, unilaterally begins GMO drive”.
I’d also note that, although most prevalent in africa, malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases are common throughout the tropics. So although africa might be ideal from an impact standpoint, getting a project off the ground in southeast asia or central america is also worth considering, if the politics are more favorable / if it would be easier to set up a genetics lab there!
I like your idea of exploring “a more detailed breakdown of who exactly might be opposed, and for what reasons. And then try and figure out which of these sources actually matter the most / are the most real!”
It reminds me of “Is that your true rejection?” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TGux5Fhcd7GmTfNGC/is-that-your-true-rejection
>Same deal for the project to revive Woolly Mammoths—the awesome documentary “We Are As Gods” is basically a PR campaign for the righteousness of this cause, and a good portrait of a similar movement which is farther along in the PR pipeline.
Unfortunately, on this one the hype has outpaced the science. See: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ihq24ri5g5svwwmjx/why-i-m-skeptical-of-de-extinction