The Meddlers

From his Simian ancestors, man has inherited an insatiable itch to meddle with his surroundings. There is a straight and unbroken line of evolution between a cageful of monkeys in the zoo, and the Atomic Energy Commission in the Pacific.

Now, a certain amount of meddling is an excellent thing; it laid the foundations of experimental science and of modern technology. But the intelligent meddler must abide by a few common-sense rules, of which the most important are:

Though these rules have often been broken, in the past it seldom mattered; for the damage was confined to the meddler and his immediate vicinity. This is no longer the case; the consequences of meddling are now global, and will soon be astronomical.

I have no wish for my typewriter to add to the literary fallout on fallout, but my first example has to be the Bravo explosion of March 1, 1954, which showered radioactive coral upon the trawler Lucky Dragon – miles outside the "safety zone" confidently established by the meteorologists. In many ways, this event set the pattern for the future; those responsible were embarrassed, and hurried to compensate the injured, but showed no particular signs of remorse. Too bad about those fishermen, but little sacrifices like that have to be made for the "safety" of the free world.

Then followed the long dialog of hypocritical self-interest between the U. S. S. R. and the U. S. on the subject of bomb testing, each claiming the right to contaminate the Earth in pursuance of its policy of massive suicide. As a result, every living human being is now appreciably more radioactive than his grandparents – with incalculable effects upon all the generations to come. Contrary to some science-fiction writers, fallout will not produce a crop of monstrous mutants; extreme variations from the norm have little chance of survival, and less of reproduction. But it will produce an endless series of minor defects, illnesses and premature deaths which, all told, will add up to a staggering sum of human misery.

Two centuries ago Nathan Hale might regret that he had but one life to give for his country; today's patriots must ask themselves how many genes (and whose) they are prepared to give for theirs. And although the U. S.-U. S. S. R. pact on bomb testing is a welcome step toward sanity, who can say how much damage has already been done?

Quite apart from fission products, our modern world is drenched with chemicals which did not exist ten or twenty years ago. Almost all of them – DDT and the other insecticides, penicillin and its related "wonder drugs" – involve some degree of risk. In most cases, we accept these risks willingly; penicillin has saved thousands of lives for every one jeopardized by allergic reactions – pets and people may have been poisoned by DDT, but it has eliminated typhus and malaria from whole countries. No one but a madman would deny these benefits, yet we must never become complacent and overconfident. Rachel Carson's strident warning, in Silent Spring, was necessary, even if exaggerated – though E. B. White saw the danger years before, in his unforgettable The Morning of the Day They Did It. That satirical fantasy, now rapidly coming true, described a world where the chemists had made agricultural products so plentiful – and so toxic – that everyone had to take regular injections to counteract the lethal effects of food.

The terrible thalidomide disaster has alerted everyone to such dangers – for the moment. It has been pointed out that if thalidomide had been developed in the United States, instead of Europe, "the marketing techniques of the pharmaceutical industry, which can saturate the country with a new drug almost as soon as it leaves the laboratory, would have enabled thalidomide to produce thousands of deformed infants." (Helen B. Taussig, August 1962 Scientific American.) The United States escaped this catastrophe by good luck and Dr. Kelsey; next time, it may not be so fortunate.

For there will be a next time – though no one knows where and when. The price of safety, as of liberty, is eternal vigilance. The people to watch are those pharmaceutical firms out for a quick buck, and the defense scientists out for a big bang.

Not that nuclear explosions and chemical and pharmaceutical contamination are the only global nuisances committed, or attempted, in the name of security. Perhaps you never heard about Project West Ford – the bright idea of MIT's Lincoln Laboratories to put a third of a billion tiny radio antennas into orbit. When they learned about it, the world's astronomers reacted with near-unanimous violence, protesting that this cloud of minute satellites would interfere with many types of fundamental research, for an indefinite period to come. Despite an appeal by the International Astronomical Union to the U. S. Government, the experiment went ahead in October 1961. The first attempt failed, but success was achieved in May 1963. There are rumors of other launchings; a recent issue of the authori-tative space journal Astronautics comments on an unexplained U. S. Air Force satellite with these ominous words: "It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Air Force is quietly placing additional dipoles in orbit."

The most controversial, and widely criticized, of all space experiments took place in mid-Pacific on July 8, 1963, when – despite a series of launching mishaps that would have discouraged less devoted experimenters, the AEC and the Department of Defense detonated a megaton bomb 200 miles above Johnston Island. (Sociological note: In the press releases, it's always a "nuclear device." I say it's a bomb, and I say the hell with it.) Once again, there had been a chorus of protests from scientists all over the world; once again, the objectors were made to appear alarmists by bland official statements. There was not the slightest risk, everyone was as (concluded on page 168)Meddlers(continued from page 103) sured, that the Van Allen belts, which had been around for several billion years, would be blown up within five years of their discovery.

Well, the belts are still there, though somewhat groggy. The confident calculations were out by a factor of ten, possibly a hundred. (The argument is still in progress.) Three artificial satellites, placed in orbit at enormous expense, were promptly silenced by the unexpectedly powerful blast of radiation. One of them happened to be the very first British-built satellite, kindly launched only a few weeks earlier by the U. S. Space Administration as part of its well-intended program of international cooperation.

I can only mention in passing (and passing is what we may well be) such coming attractions as the neutron bomb, Laser Heat Rays, and the really virulent diseases that the biological warriors will be able to design, when the genetic code has been cracked and we can create organisms that nature never imagined. One would expect such activities to cause trouble; but unfortunately, even "harmless" experiments, on the scale at which we are now operating, may lead to most peculiar and obscure disasters. For example:

The only thing that protects you from a painful death by acute sunburn is a thin layer of ozone, 20 miles above your head. The amount involved is very small, but it almost completely absorbs the Sun's lethal ultraviolet rays. Now, in the course of our space experiments, we are dumping enormous quantities of exotic chemicals into the upper atmosphere — quantities which, in some cases, will exceed the amounts of gas already there. This is contamination with a vengeance and no one knows what its results will be. A generation from now, that ultraviolet may start leaking through the ozonosphere roof, and we'll have to move underground ...

Where is this going to lead, as our powers over nature — but not over ourselves — continue to increase? If we extrapolate the present trends in technological megalomania, arrogant ignorance and national selfishness, this is the type of press release we may expect from the Pentagon, round about the year 1990:

As there has been much ill-informed criticism of the U. S. Space Force's proposed attempt to extinguish the Sun by means of the so-called Blackout Bomb (Operation Pluto), the following statement is being issued to reassure the public.

The experiment is based on the discovery by Spitzer, Richardson, Chandrasekhar and others that the injection of polarized neutrinos into a certain class of sunspot can start a chain reaction, which will cause a temporary quenching or damping of the solar thermonuclear process. As a result, the Sun's brilliance will rapidly decrease to about a millionth of its normal value, then recover in a period of approximately 30 minutes.

This important discovery has grave defense implications, for a potential enemy could utilize it to make a surprise attack on the United States under cover of artificially induced darkness. It is obvious, therefore, that for its own security the U. S. must investigate this phenomenon first, and this can be done only by a full-scale experiment.

Though it is appreciated that Operation Pluto will cause temporary inconvenience to large numbers of people — a fact deeply regretted by the U. S. Government — the defense of the Free Solar System permits of no alternative. Moreover, the benefits to science will be enormous, and will far outweigh any slight risks involved.

The numerous protests raised against the operation by foreign scientists are ill-founded, being largely based upon inadequate information. In particular, the attacks launched by Lord Bernard of Jodrell and Sir Frederick Hoyle appear to be inspired by political rather than scientific motivations. It is felt that their views would be altogether different if the United Kingdom possessed vehicles capable of carrying suitable pay loads to the Sun.

As these critics have suggested that the Sun's recovery time may be of the order of years rather than minutes, a full study of the blackout process has been carried out by the Los Alamos Phobiac computer. This has shown that the risk of the Sun remaining extinguished is negligibly small, though the actual figure must remain classified.

Nevertheless, to explore all possibilities, the U. S. Government has commissioned the well-known firm of independent consultants, Kahn, Teller and Strauss, to make a study of the situation should the Sun fail to return to normal. Their report — to be released shortly under the title Economic and Other Effects of a 24-Hour Night — indicates that, though there may be a difficult transition period, the community will soon adapt itself to the new conditions. These may, in fact, be advantageous in many respects; for example, the enormous stimulus to the electrical supply and illumination industry would remove any danger of a recession for years to come.

The protracted absence of the Sun would also render useless the Soviet Union's announced intention of increasing agricultural production by tilting the Earth's axis so as to move Siberia into the tropics — a proposal which has rightly aroused the disapproval of the civilized world. Should Operation Pluto have unexpected aftereffects, there will, of course, be no tropics at all.

The United States Government, however, is confident that no such mishaps will occur, and is proceeding with the operation in full consciousness of its global responsibilities. It will not be deflected from its plain duty either by uninformed criticism, or such temporary setbacks as the recent destruction of the planet Mercury by the premature detonation of the first blackout device. This accident has been traced to a piece of chewing gum in the inertial guidance system, and all necessary steps have been taken to prevent its recurrence.

Farfetched? I'm not so sure. For a long time, many of us have been wondering why certain types of stars occasionally blow up; and just recently, astronomers discovered an exploding galaxy. By the standards of the Universe, our meddling may turn out to be pretty small-scale stuff.

But we're certainly working hard at it; and the best, I'm afraid, is yet to be.