by CKR
After the detonation of two nuclear weapons over Japan ended World War II, funding for physics was assured. New particle accelerators came on line every few years, and quarks and gluons and other submicroscopic energy packets were discovered. The logic was that Einstein’s energy-mass equivalence equation, together with discoveries of radioactive elements, had made the development of atomic energy possible. Further investigation of the nature of matter might provide better ways of producing electricity or making weapons.
Physics has provided many discoveries since World War II, the transistor and the laser being the most useful and ubiquitous. But, while particle physics has provided insights into the structure of matter and the origin of the universe, it has yielded few practical applications. It’s not possible to run history again; we can only guess how those billions of dollars might have been spent and how things might have turned out differently.
It may be just as well that the direction that seemed so fruitful in the glare of that new energy source didn’t give practical results. Pundita’s Heisenbergian Guru has it wrong. You can’t beat the equivalence of mass and energy for weapons. Anything better would have been exploited for ego and financial reasons, not to mention nationalism. There are good technical reasons why we don’t have laser weapons or gamma-ray lasers or gluon fission. Maybe someone will be able to exploit string theory to unwind those dimensions suddenly, POW, or to concentrate gravity, but it won’t be soon.
A letter signed by 758 biologists addresses what may be a similar situation developing in biology. The 4 March Science has a large article about it, and the letter itself is published in that issue. It’s available by subscription only, so here’s a similar article.
The scientists’ concern is that funding for research on diseases that are extremely rare in humans but might be used in a biological attack—tularemia, anthrax, plague, glanders, melioidosis, and brucellosis—is being increased, while research that is likely to provide benefits for more people is losing funding.
Fourteen new laboratories are being built with the highest containment for work on the most dangerous organisms. Much of the research will have to be done in these laboratories, causing a centralization of research similar to that required by particle accelerators in physics.
The article in Science asks
Does biodefense deserve all this money?
One answer in that article:
Dealing with a bioterror attack isn’t rocket science, [Abigail Salyers of the University of Illinois] says, and a powerful public health system and an effective communication strategy are the best preparation.
Not mentioned in the articles or the letter is that intensifying research on possible weapons agents can be the other side of developing them for use. This is a poor signal to send to the rest of the world. The United States formally gave up the development of biological weapons under Richard Nixon.
An argument for increasing spending on biowarfare organisms is that more generally applicable discoveries may come from them. Some have already. But that same argument applies more strongly to research on the diseases that kill millions.
Congress’s appropriations for medical funding have always been driven by their personal fears; funding for the diseases of middle-aged prosperous men has always been popular. Fear is driving the shift to weapons agents. Let’s hope that the biologists’ letter can provoke a broader view.