Designing a future that works for all
Biotech is not inherently neutral, but we can design it to be fair
With the coming of every technological revolution lies the promise of a better life for everyone. The Industrial Revolution led to lower prices, more goods, and improved wages. The Scientific Revolution of the 20th century dramatically increased the quality of life by providing vaccines and cures for many diseases, the discovery of new forms of energy, and the development of industrial chemistry that provided new materials for the manufacturing of thousands of products. And most recently, the Digital Revolution provided great access to information and knowledge, allowed mass communication worldwide, and democratized access to a great number of resources.
Nowadays we are at the dawn of an incoming Biological Revolution which promises to be the most important technological revolution to date, impacting all areas from health, food, climate, manufacturing, and much more. But even with all the hype from bioenthusiasts, the tons of research coming out every year, and the billions of dollars being poured into biotechnologies, there’s still the other side of the coin we need to consider.
Yes, technological revolutions usually leave society better off than they were before them but that’s never without some collateral damage. The Industrial Revolution, for instance, was the catalyst for massive growth in population thanks to the overall improved quality of life that technology brought1, but at the same time, it allowed child labor, inhumane working conditions2, and was also the catalyst for a surge in global greenhouse gases emissions that continues to this day3.
In the case of the Biological Revolution, the primary concern is usually related to biosecurity and the misuse of biotechnologies to deliberately cause harm. Also, there are worries about the ethical considerations of using technologies like CRISPR for human enhancement or the ecological consequences that the use of GMOs might bring. But there’s something missing.
The general assumption is that technology is by itself neutral. It can be used either for good or wrong and the outcome depends on the person or group who handles it. Yet, history has shown us over and over that this is not entirely true.
Biased from the start
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.
― Martin Heidegger
Biases are to humans what color is to a rainbow. They are a inherent to people and even though we become conscious of them, we never totally get rid of them. Our biases shape the way we think and ultimately the decisions we make. Furthermore, biases are shaped by the context, culture, and values that surround us.
This means that when a technology is conceived or designed it will ultimately be a reflection of these biases. They may be unconscious or unintended by the people who created that technology, but in the end, they are there.
Let’s take for example a seemingly harmless piece of technology: a bridge. During the early to mid-20th century Robert Moses was the urban planner for the New York metropolitan area4. He was responsible for most of the iconic looks of NYC as he constructed parks, highways, tunnels, and much more. Yet the urban planning and the design of infrastructure were heavily influenced by Moses's racist views. This can be seen in bridges that were purposefully designed to be low so that buses wouldn't be able to pass through them, only cars. Since poor minorities are the ones that most commonly use public transportation, this would keep them from reaching Long Island's beaches, allowing only the rich enough who could afford a car to pass through5.
Now, let’s take a look at what we could consider somewhat of a more unconscious bias: a racist soap dispenser that only works for white people. I seriously doubt that the people who developed the automatic soap dispenser purposefully designed the device to only work for white people. Instead, what most probably occurred is that the dispenser was designed under the fair assumption that if you send a beam of infrared light from an LED, this will reflect on the user’s hand and send a signal to the mechanism to dispense the soap. The thing is that the designers didn’t take into account the whole spectrum of people that would end up using the dispenser, including people with a darker skin color who absorb the light instead of reflecting it.
The bottom line here is that technology is not neutral by design. It comes with biases and flaws that are a direct result of their creator’s context, values, and even the things they unpurposefully omit. Ultimately, when considering the uses and applications of a technology, we should also take into account human bias, and the responsibility and context of the designer since technology will always bring burdens along the blessings whether we want it or not6.
Also, the greater the impact of a technology, the greater its negative consequences will be.
Who will nature serve?
Ok. Now back to biotech.
The bio world also has it’s fair share of examples where biases, values, and context have shaped the use and/or design of a technology:
The overrepresentation of white individuals during the clinical trials of the COVID vaccine7.
The fact that most of the sequenced genomes (>75%) we use in the research of human health and diseases are from white individuals8 of European descent9 even though this ethnic group only represents 16% of the global population10.
Monsanto developing GMO seeds resistant to pesticides only to end up extorting the same farmers it was supposed to help and become a monopoly that controls the world’s food supply (80% of U.S. corn and >90% of U.S. soybeans are grown with Monsanto’s seeds)11.
Biomanufactured insulin increasing in price 600% in the last 20 years12 even though technology has only improved, allowing for a vial of human insulin to cost between $2.28 and $3.42 to produce13. All a planned effort by the oligopoly of companies that control supply to increase profits at all costs, knowing that it's a matter of life or death to people and they will ultimately pay whatever it costs.
I believe this is the real dark side of the Biological Revolution. Yes, most likely biotechnologies will have more of a positive impact on society that anything else. But if we fail to recognize the hidden biases and interests behind the use of biotech, its promises will only benefit a handful of people.
What happens if we allow biomanufacturing to develop under the values, culture, and biases of current extractive capitalism?
We could potentially produce as many as 60% of the physical inputs of our economy using biology14, but what if a few corporations end up capturing this technology, whose ultimate goal is increased profit and share value?
Biotech promises to increase longevity and cure all types of diseases, but what if living forever is only accessible to the billionaires of the world, and new drugs are only for diseases affecting the most privileged population?
The Biological Revolution won’t make miracles by itself, it depends on the people that build it, and it’s our responsibility to guide it through a new system that values firsthand people (from all backgrounds and places) and the planet, otherwise bio will only become a tool to perpetuate the status quo.
Integrating all voices into the equation
So how do we build a Biological Revolution that takes everyone into account, minimizes the influence of biases, and ultimately delivers a better future for all? I owe you that one for now.
I don’t think there’s a definitive answer but a starting point would be to allow distributed access to biotechnologies (including knowledge, infrastructure, and ultimately the products/services that the bioeconomy delivers). This would prevent bio from becoming a centralized technology in a few rich-economy countries and widening the already big inequalities.
The great thing about biotechnologies is that they enable local economies15. And as more people from all over the world join the Biological Revolution, the more diversity of thoughts and contexts we’ll have to minimize the risk of biases tilting the benefits of biotech towards a particular segment of the population. Ultimately each community can adapt the technology for it to serve their particular necessities, but only if they have access to it in the first place.
Another key point would be to integrate responsibility as a fundamental part of the technology design process. In her TED Talk, Cristina Zaga talks about the principles to design tech responsibly16 which include:
Assess the values of your technology. Including your own values and the ones of the people you are working for and with.
Analyze the impact of the technology before you bring it to society.
Bring all voices during the design process.
Assess the power structures impacting the technology, as well as the privileges and economic drives behind it.
Design technology for social justice and equality.
Design for diversity and inclusiveness.
Fortunately, the Biological Revolution is already starting to take these principles into account. A great example would be the iGEM Competition, where thousands of students worldwide develop synthetic biology projects that solve a local problem in their community. Teams are required to assess responsibility from the conception of their project, including possible biosafety hazards and the impact it will have on all stakeholders.
Of course that responsible design and globalized access won’t completely avoid the misuse of biotechnologies. Again, all technology comes with both blessings and burdens. Yet, they set the path that enables a more sustainable and equitable world for all.
There’s no doubt that the world won’t be the same after the Biological Revolution, and this is only the beginning, so we better design it to be fair.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/modernization/Population-change
https://www.britannica.com/story/the-rise-of-the-machines-pros-and-cons-of-the-industrial-revolution
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=~OWID_WRL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/05/887386869/how-transportation-racism-shaped-america
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNAMGa5ouwA
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8875029/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27366979/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867419310025
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-019-0394-y
https://fortune.com/2014/06/26/monsanto-gmo-crops/
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/12/1122311443/insulin-costs-increased-600-over-the-last-20-years-states-aim-to-curb-the-price
https://www.businessinsider.com/insulin-prices-could-be-much-lower-and-drug-makers-would-still-make-healthy-profits-2018-9?r=MX&IR=T
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/the-bio-revolution-innovations-transforming-economies-societies-and-our-lives
https://centuryofbio.substack.com/p/atoms-are-local
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIhxl9MF9-0