Page 92 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

Viral assassin

Leith Mauker was quick to fill the awkward silence following
Fred Feghootsky’s presentation.
“Sorry, folks, but my next work-in-progress also involves
conflict of the nasty sort. War will be ended by humans when
humans are ended by war. We happen to be living at least part of
our lives in a semi-peaceful period, during which contemplation and
conjuration of hypothetical future bellicosity is an activity pursued
in armchairs. Science has been enlisted in both real and imaginary
battlefronts for quite a while, from explosives to poisons to
electronics. Science fiction has the unfortunate habit of being just a
few years ahead of actuality in the application of cutting-edge theory
and its applications in weapons technology. I should think if we
were too far ahead we would risk being mistaken for writers of
fantasy and magic—I will not invoke Arthur C. Clarke here
concerning that fact: it has become a commonplace.”
“No, what interests me is the apparent advance in civilized use
of the means of destruction, from leveling whole cities and making
piles of skulls to so-called smart weaponry designed either to
minimize civilian casualties and property damage or to selectively
target key opponents in carefully planned strikes. The pros and cons
of the rules of engagement and their observance in the breach is not
my topic, either. We have not come so far that we cannot revert to
as barbarous a state as you may care to imagine. I want to
extrapolate a few trends to anticipate a new means of assassination
that would fit the definition of a precision-guided munition.
Research has given us a look at the inner workings of the genetic
code and its expression in organisms now living and long dead,
from the humblest single-cell bacterium to the mighty dinosaur. At
the same time it has become possible to insert and remove genes,
giving us the power to create new organisms based on existing
models. This ability, like any tool, can be used for good or evil. Our
immunity can be boosted by such inventions and interventions—or
it can be crippled. That much is already known.”
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