In the movie Gattaca, the premise is a future world in which humanity has been divided into two classes, the genetically engineered (the superior class) and those who are “natural.” The plot has to do with a Natural trying to pass as one of the engineered people.
I was thinking recently that another kind of dark future division may be just as likely.
Throughout the history of our species (and before), we have lived in a sea of microbes, and our biology reflects that – from the microbes that live in great numbers in our mouths and throats to those we depend up on to help us to digest our food to the complex design of our immune systems, and so on.
The problem is, this “natural” mode of being also, until relatively recently, entailed extremely high levels of entirely natural death to disease (an estimated 30 to 50 percent child mortality rate in the European Middle Ages, for example). It is a hard truth that, as Darwin or Malthus or one of those 19th century naturalist boys first observed, it is the cruel way of nature that every species generates far more offspring than can ever survive into adulthood. That includes or used to include humans.
For the last century we lucky residents of advanced-industrial countries have lived comparatively free from fear of contagious bacteria, without really having to limit our activities in the microbe-infested world. However, our antibiotics are and will continue to lose their effectiveness, both through inevitable natural selection and because of our stupid squandering of these treasures by, for example, feeding them to our livestock.
It is possible that we will continue forever to discover new antibiotics and keep one step ahead of the evolution of harmful microbes, but it seems pretty likely we won’t. (In any case it’s not looking too promising so far, with the emergence of drug-resistant TB, staph, salmonella, etc.)
Even in a re-contagized world, mortality rates would not be likely to equal those of the Middle Ages because of our far greater understanding of how germs work. On the other hand, in the past couple of generations we’ve gotten used to a pretty low level of risk, and we won’t tolerate much of it. That is why there has been so much media hype over things like pandemic flu (which previous generations didn’t bother to retain in their collective memory despite millions of deaths in 1919) and West Nile virus. A lot of people will go to great lengths to protect themselves the first time we again encounter a truly widespread bacteria that is a) deadly, b) casually transmissible, and c) not treatable by antibiotics.
Then, as more and more bugs evolve back into real threats, fearful people –- legitimately fearful people –- will find themselves living with masks, cleaning routines, isolation habits, and general sterile living. Aided by ever greater technological sophistication, we might increasingly drift apart from the kind of free and open lives humans have always lived –- gamboling in the forests, walking in the fields, playing in the dirt, exploring the cities. Other people, feeling that separation intensely, will probably decide to take their chances and live freely among the bugs.
So that may turn out to be the true bifurcation -– a split between the bubbled and the unbubbled. If the split were persistent enough, the two groups would even evolve differently over time, with the higher mortality of the unbubbled leading to greater innate resistance while the bubbled would become more and more fragile and dependent upon their technological bubble. They might also evolve different social characteristics –- the bubbled living with much greater social stability due to low mortality but dependent on the unbubbled, perhaps, and the unbubbled living with greater freedom but also the instability of high mortality.
Anyway, that’s the sci-fi vision I had recently. In reality, I think everyone will probably end up with some combination of high-tech protections, and just sucking up the greater risk. (It is also possible, of course, that some new medical technique, aside from antibiotics, allows for permanent conquest of the bacterial threat).
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