What scientists fear

"Now, we are all sons of whores", such has been the reaction of the American physicist Kenneth Bainbridge attending the first nuclear firing. On the occasion of the 70^th anniversary of Hiroshima, Le Monde (7 August 2015) has asked researchers from different disciplines: "in your discipline, do you feel that researchers might have the same feeling?”

Robots killers and crash of cybersecurity

This theme is the order of the day in robotics with an open letter signed by 18000 researchers requesting the ban on autonomous weapons capable to select and combat targets without human intervention.  It was one of the signatories of this petition, the Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek who replied and confirmed his fear of killer robots: "We are at a time where we are witnessing a convergence of different technologies : big data, machine learning, robotics and the internet". He  considers that the application of these technologies to war could lead to weapons  capable of reacting independently much faster that any human could, and  trigger a new weapon race and an uncontrollable situation: "when arrays of machines will obey to secret algorithms, no one can predict the outcome of a conflict and the impact on the civilian world.

Yes, but oddly, it seems to me that there is also in this a campaign promoting roboticians: "We are the most dangerous”. However, this threat has long been identified since it was theme of the famous Kubrick movie  Dr. Strangelove ; the disaster occurs because the Russians have adopted an automatic response system (the Infernal Machine) - a scenario inspired by the mathematicians working on the theory of games, particularly Von Neumann.

Michele Mosca (cryptographer) points the danger of cyber attacks of a new genre that would be allowed by the capabilities of code-breakers quantum computers. «Not only a vast amount of private information (health, financial situation) would lose their confidentiality, but global and critical systems would be annihilated: the global financial system could be paralyzed, energy infrastructures would become vulnerable, one could imagine air and rail crashes...» In cybersecurity circles, , people say that there will be a cyberequivalent of Pearl Harbor. "These dangers are preventable, said Mrs Mosca, but it is essential that individuals express their desire for cybersecurity and compel Governments, public bodies and private organisations to worry.

Editions of gene, screening and Super-viruses

Curiously, biologists, for the most part, seems optimistic and without much fear for their disciplines. Dr. François Jacquemard, who directs the Center for prenatal diagnosis of the American Hospital in Paris, claims that the DNA technology advances allow much safer prenatal diagnostics, make them available much more widely for the benefit of patients and the disappointment of the Cassandras. «We should  not restrict access to new opportunities to improve health, our common good»,. Simply health authorities have to do their job of evaluation and resist pressure from industrialists to put everything to market as fast as possible. We can  «bet on intelligence and humanism and free initiative».

 Emmanuelle Charpentier co-decouvreuse of a highly promising, precise and efficient  gene edition technique ( sounds better than genetic modification !) (CRISPR-Cas9) merely stated that "new discoveries are always accompanied by new responsibilities", but that the benefits of the edition of genes for scientific research and human health are extremely important. However, using clinical manipulation of the germinal line in humans (i.e. cloning to treat, or hereditary improve an individual's genome) "could be very problematic, and this issue is currently at the centre of an ethical debate”. No cloning panic, then ! Only the virologist Wayne Hobson expressed a real fear: that genetic engineering is used to make microbes or viruses, most dangerous, most deadly or more transferable: "the world of microbes is sufficiently dangerous. There is need to add. In some laboratories, these handling were made, with success, to make e.g. transmissible to humans a virus of avian flu". The scientific community has responded by asking that such research should not be published and subject of a moratorium or even a ban.

Memory manipulation

In short, a very good idea as this survey of Le Monde, and as now, too often in the press, a very good idea spolied by haste and lack of resources. It deserved much better than these few platitudes, more in-depth discussions, more stakeholders, exchanges, reflections, more space and time  - a missed opportunity for scientists to interact with the public and to publicize their hopes and their concerns.

To conclude, my own fear: manipulation of memory. We know now to identify the memory trace in the brain left by an event, and can manipulate this memory. Thus, at the MIT, Tonegawa et al., awakening the memory of a painful stimulus tied to a specific place through an optical fiber, have managed to link it to another location; the mice  then manifested their fear when placed in a neutral or even nice location, where they had suffered no pain.. In  CNRS, Benchenane et al. have managed to block the registration of a painful memory and, at the same time stimulating a brain region linked pleasure, have changed the memory associated with the place: instead of avoiding the place wehre they had received painful stimuli,  the mice preferred to go there ! Technically, no big gap between mouse and man...

Last note: for a positivist, any change is not a progress. It is a progress only if is the development of the order (Auguste Comte) , i.e. if it comforts natural evolution.  If it allows an increase of knowledge, leads towards a more efficient, intelligent and moral world, if it confirms the evolution of our societies out  of the theological and metaphysical stages (military and revolutionary) towards a positive, industrious, peaceful age, if it helps the evolution towards  better and more extensive cooperation on a human scale, in connection with greater specialization of functions.  Obviously, research on super contagious and more deadly viruses does not meet this condition.