The courage to fail

I remember a wonderful documentary series on the TV tilted “The Courage to fail”. It described the history of heart surgery and showed that the almost narcissistic arrogance of the pioneer surgeons, drove their progress, and that it had been necessary to take huge risks with patient’s lives in order that their techniques and procedures could be developed.

Western societies drive the world along in terms of technological evolution. For centuries , scientific progress has been in the hands of Europe and America and with every step forward, someone has been prepared to take a risk. Jenner risked the life of James Phipps and his own reputation in his demonstration of the first Vaccination, John Hunter infected himself with syphilis in order to show that it was a disease in its own right, Marie Curie accelerated he death in her search for Radium and so on.

The newspapers would like us all to believe that the new particle accelerator, due to be switched on again this year will, create a black hole into which we will all vanish, and maybe it will. In the end would it matter? There would be no-one to sue and no protesters to complain about it.

The world sits on the brink of a food shortage. It may not seem likely as we see our own population getting fatter and fatter, but there are occasional reminders in the form of footage of children starving to death in far flung regions of Africa, where a farmer’s productivity is at the whims of weather and whatever insect pest happens to be in abundance that year.

Somehow in this century, food production must be increased by 50%, and that is a monumental task. We do however have the technology to do something towards increasing food productivity and giving the African farmer a helping hand. GM plants can solve some of the issues producing more and in some cases better foods than we have ever had before, and yet, the very mention of GM brings out the protesters like wasps at a jam sandwich picnic.

All that we eat has been the product of genetic manipulation anyhow, where, by selective breeding of livestock, we have produced plants and animals that are geared up to feed us and provide for other needs too. GM is not new, it is largely the sensationalization of the process by the tabloid press that has generated the fear that stems from the ignorance of the masses.

Risk taking has become a rarity. Health and safety regulations and exponential growth in the population of lawyers means that we all walk around on eggshells, afraid to step away from the path. That way lies stagnation and disaster.