Author Archives: Tom Lewis

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Scientists are frantically applying wrenches to human cells in order to install improved traits and defeat disease. It is not going well, and never will.

It was a privilege to be able to hear about the latest research into a particular neurological affliction at a small seminar in Maryland a few years ago. The audience consisted of people who suffered from the affliction, and their families. The speaker was a neurologist who had gained national prominence for his expertise and research on this particular disorder. His presentation was upbeat for a discussion of a malady that has no known cause, no cure, and few effective treatments — all doctors can do is manage the symptoms, which vary widely from case to case. But he stressed the many research programs under way to find at least a treatment for the disease, maybe one day a cure, as he sought to give hope for improvement to people who do not now have any.

What he talked about most was genetic research. The gene associated with the disease has been identified, he said, and any day now scientists will learn how to shut that gene off and perhaps cure the disease.

That’s what he said, the gene “associated” with the disease. I’m sure what everybody in the room heard was, the gene that causes the disease. Anyone can find out whether they have the gene with a simple test — a test that costs $3,000, and which no insurance policy covers.

But you’d know, right, and you’d be poised to join the stampede for the cure as soon as they got the “genetic engineering” right.

When the seminar was winding down, I asked the good doctor two questions that told me everything I need to know about genetically-manipulated cures. Continue reading →

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A perfect illustration of the fallacy underlying the false promises of gene therapy: that you can work on an organism as if it were a machine.

(*From the Burt Bacharach musical “Promises, Promises.)

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times: the best because of what we are being promised, by the loudest and most persistent voices of our culture, blaring from every screen; the worst because what we are actually getting as fulfilment of those promises is crapified beyond belief.

The promises come thick and fast. We are soon to be whisked around our town houses and country estates, totally safe and completely at ease, by driverless cars and pilotless planes. We won’t have to work because robots with artificial intelligence — which is so much better than the real thing — will do our menial jobs for us and cater to our every whim, whether it be dinners of hummingbird tongues or machine sex. (What’s that? You think I’m exaggerating the sex part? You don’t know about the sexbot Samantha, who among other things is being taught how to say, “No, stop!” to amorous approaches that are too rough or too boring? Google it.)

These promises are being made by people who are being paid lavishly to keep the promises coming. They are executing a kind of bank shot — they don’t really care if we believe their promises, they just want to get us talking about them, to create that essential “buzz” of interest that attracts grant money to the universities, investor money to the initial public offerings, bank money to the underleveraged, crypto money to the bare-faced maniacs. The process was illustrated recently by a near-perfect example. Continue reading →

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The good news is that with modern technology there’s no such thing as a run on the bank, because the bank doesn’t spend your money, it vaporizes it.

We were proud to be early adopters, back in the day. For example, I was the first editor at the enormous publishing company where I worked to own a personal computer — an Osborne with a four-inch screen and a storage capacity of a massive 64k worth of text, as I recall. I was among the first in my family to own a smartphone, and delighted in its capabilities. When it came to online banking, depositing checks with my phone, paying bills automatically and electronically, I was way out in the vanguard, and happily so.

I have always been a terrible typist, who with my manual typewriter often ruined an excruciatingly picked-out page with a misplaced digit on the last line, one who used gallons of whiteout. A day. Not only did the computer eliminate the agony of the misdirected fingertip, it invited me to play with alternate words and phrases, to see without penalty how different constructions would look on the page, and these were gifts beyond price for a struggling wordsmith. The phone, too, delivered value way beyond its price, acting as my navigator, internet browser, e mailer, entertainer and oh, yeah, it could make phone calls.

I have written elsewhere about how updates have nearly ruined my computer and smartphone. But more than that, the spread of technology oncology (more aptly christened by the folks over at Naked Capitalism “the crapification of everything”) is strongly suggesting to me that, as habitual early adopters, it is time for us to do a 180, as the pilots say.   Continue reading →

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He made “Don’t Tase me, Bro!” a national meme. But computer updates are way more terrifying.

The other morning when I turned on my computer it was not my computer, it was a complete stranger. It demanded a password, which I had never used. My desktop icons were gone, my preferences obliterated, many of my links disabled. My lock screen no longer displayed my favorite family picture. My default browser was now Microsoft’s Edge instead of Google’s Chrome, my default email was now Outlook instead of Gmail, on and on. More importantly all my file folders, including one containing a fairly complex tax return in progress, were gone. When I clicked on the shortcut to the tax return it locked up the computer. Continue reading →