Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1699086

SYNBIOTICS, ANARCHY OF EXCEPTION AND NECRODEVELOPMENT : Reflexing Knowledge, Power and Politics ARUN G. MUKHOPADHYAY arungm10@gmail.com Independent Researcher (Formerly of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta) INDIA *Revised Version of Authors Presentation at AFRO-ASIAN PHILOSOPHY ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE 2010 University of Mumbai, Kalina Campus, India October 20-23 2010

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1699086

SYNBIOTICS, ANARCHY OF EXCEPTION AND NECRODEVELOPMENT : Reflexing Knowledge, Power and Politics BIOPOWER TO SYNBIOPOWER Emergence of Biology had been hailed by Foucault as the entry of life in history. Classical political theory, based on sovereignty, contract, right and duty, was contested by Foucault with biopower meant to discipline and control the individuals and their bodies(Foucault 2003). Biopower refers to the combination of strategies adopted by the state and various institutions and agencies to constitute and govern the population by forms of specialized knowledge and self-

governing participants. The Biopower in contemporary context comprise of three elements knowledge of vital life processes, power relations that aims at human and the modes of subjectification (Rabinnow and Rose 2006). The politics of life itself shapes how biopower organizes proliferating discourses and thus makes technologically mediated life contested politically. (Rutherford1999).

Twentieth century has ushered in an era of biorevolution. Rediscovery of Mendelian heredity in 1900, Crick and Watsons publication on structure of DNA in 1953 and completion of the first draft sequence of the human genome in 2000 have provided human race with apparently landmark scientific breakthroughs. Post genome biology has changed the focus of proliferation problem from biological or chemical warfare agents as the object of malign manipulation to the physiological target in the human body as the object of attack.(Nixdorff 2005).

The treasure of genetic history and make up of population are becoming an attractive research target for biomedical researchers and pharmaceutical corporations. Sociologist Nikolas Rose, has reinterpreted Michel Foucaults notion of biopolitics, as a new style of thought modeled on genomics that emphasizes Information, individualized risks and individualized variations. Bruce Braun, on the other hand, furthers Roses thinking to reflect on novel implications of classical forms of biopolitics .Braun observes that what is important in terms of an ethics of care of self in democracy may appear to others as yet another expression of empire (Braun 2007). Global health has always been economic opportunity and security-sensitive to United States. It has also been observed to be the moral responsibility of the USA government to address the global heath challenges. Public health preparedness transcends surveillance, war against terrorism and political policy and would provide United States with a much broader exposure to twenty-first century world. There is a strong advocacy for vesting global health leadership in preparedness and health diplomacy to US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (Novotny 2006).

Genetic engineering and subsequently, genomics had emerged early in the United States, primarily because of state-patronage attuned to capitals need. Following the pathway ,de novo synthesis is a new paradigm and a powerful approach to create genomes of various sequences, architectures or designs. Synthetic genomics refers to the laboratory synthesis and assembly of

genomes and their expression to produce cellular life forms whereas synthetic biotechnology refers to the creation of programmable, self-referential, and modular synthetic biological systems. Now for the first time, a genome made entirely from chemically synthesized pieces has been successfully booted up in a living cell at the J. Craig Venter Institute, USA in a culminating effort that has stretched over the past decade (Gibson et.al. 2010).Thus Synbiotics, the total spectrum of synthetic genomics and synbiotechnology could replace genetic technology in a very cost-effective manner. Synthetic Genomics and allied technologies have opened up immense possibilities for vaccines, drugs, hydrogen fuel, etc. and parallel tensions for abuse or inadvertent disasters. The production of synthetic chemicals through biologically mediated processes is increasingly blurring the domains of chemical and biotechnology industries.

GOVERNMENTALITY AND THE ANARCHY OF EXCEPTION

The contemporary omnipresent state of emergency or of exception as Agamben observes, is a modern institution, rooted in the French revolution, developed during the First World War, and reached its zenith by the mid-20th century as the paradigmatic form of government. The legal justification of the state of exception appears to be an ongoing imperative to colonize life itself. Although the outcome of this encroachment is still uncertain as Agamben reflects, it signals the slow disappearance of meaningful political action (Humphreys 2006).

Thus contemporary researches to map the genome of different Microbes as well as the human genomes will provide us with information about possibilities for production of new threat agents. Production of such agents would be in violation of existing disarmament treaties on biological and chemical weapons. A modified mousepox virus that kills its victims by wiping out part of their immune system, has been created accidentally by a group of Australian researchers (Jackson et.al. 2001). In 1994, WHO(World Health Organization) Ad Hoc Committee on

orthopoxvirus infections had banned genetic engineering of variola, the insertion of variola genes in other orthopoxviruses, and had required that variola DNA only be provided to laboratories with WHO approval in tightly limited quantities. But this protection will be very limited if synthesis of variola genes is carried out elsewhere. Sandia National Laboratory, part of the US Department of Energy, has initiated experiments with synthesized smallpox genes in order to produce smallpox proteins for undisclosed purposes. Sandia National Lab. did not obtain WHO approval for this research because the US government has taken the position that WHA resolutions do not apply to synthetic, as opposed to genetically engineered variola virus. If experiments with synthetic smallpox DNA continue to take place beyond WHO control, then WHO will lose control of smallpox virus.

WHO draft small pox resolution, January 2007 totally prohibits any research involving genetic engineering of the variola viruses. Sandia National Laboratory of US Department of energy has asserted that WHA has no jurisdiction over synthetic small-pox/variola viruses. Destroying the WHO-authorized collections of smallpox virus in Russia and the United States would not eliminate the potential risks associated with the de novo synthesis of the smallpox virus, or the genetic engineering of an animal poxvirus to render it highly virulent in humans. At the same time, destructionists have a valid point that continued research with the smallpox virus at the United States CDC and Soviet Russias Vector would entail safety and security risks and is likely to provoke growing political controversy. In parallel and with the purpose of fixing a new date for virus destruction, the World Health Organization is currently conducting a major review of variola virus research for presentation to the Sixty-fourth World Health Assembly in 2011. The two countries that retain variola virus do so not for any defensible or essential public health reason. They do so out of exaggerated and unsubstantiated security concerns and mutual suspicions between them.USA and Soviet Russia, making dubious and sometimes cleverly disguised arguments about their own interests and rivalries endangering the global sustainability. In order to prepare for the 2010 major review of the smallpox research program, the U.S. government has asked the Institute of Medicine to update its influential 1999 report on scientific requirements for the live smallpox virus. Committee in its report on the Assessment of Future Scientific Needs for Live Variola Virus,2009 concluded that discovery research to gain greater understanding of human physiology and immunology, while not essential, would require the use of the live variola researchand research with variola proteins could lead to discoveries with broader implications for human health.

Asilomar Conference, 1975 and most other such discussions did not specifically consider the possibility of purposeful malicious applications of genetic engineering which ultimately spawned serious environmental and health crises. More crucially, the limitations of genetic theory and thus much the practices of genetic engineering of crop plants or genetic screening for diseases are evident from the 2007 findings of the US National Institutes of Healths Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project (ENCODE). This unacknowledged issue is a serious problem of public information regarding the status of genetic theory and the nature of the risks engendered in genomic research (Commoner 2009).In USA industry providers such as Integrated DNA Technologies and Blue Heron Biotechnology, which helped lead industry efforts to implement voluntary screening methodologies in the absence of any specific government guidance, are now eager to reduce those standards (Tucker and Perkins 2010). Ultimately synthetic biology is going to be cheaper and easily accessible tools to build bioweapons, virulent pathogens and artificial organisms.

The chemistry-biology interface is mediated through synthetic biology. Obviously, chemical and biological weapons share a unique set of characteristics, weaponization of disease being the common objective. The collapse in 2001 of the Ad Hoc groups efforts to negotiate a legally binding verification protocol reveals the inherent weakness of BWC.. Moreover, during a December 9 2009 speech to the annual meeting of states-parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in Geneva, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen O. Tauscher declared, The Obama administration will not seek to revive negotiations on a verification protocol to the Convention. We have carefully reviewed previous efforts to develop a verification protocol and have determined that a legally binding protocol would not achieve meaningful verification or greater security. The BWC is thus and unenforceable, and states disagree about how to strengthen it. On the contrary, CWC regime is better endowed and much stronger. CWC considers toxic chemicals and their precursors as chemical weapons, except where intended for purposes not prohibited by CWC and where types and quantities are consistent with the purpose. Toxic chemicals through their chemical actions on life processes can cause temporary incapacitation, permanent handicapped on even deaths humans and animals. In such circumstances, it is critically sensible for CWC to cover unequivocally all chemicals regardless of their origin and their method of production and apply General Purpose Criterion to monitor toxins, bioregulators,

etc. and their biologically or synthetically produced analogues and components. Thus effective review and oversight of dual-use life sciences research require a mechanism insulated from powerful political interests. In addition, the oversight process must be based on a common set of guidelines for identifying and assessing dual-use experiments and results that could pose serious risks for international health and security. The verification regime set out in CWC is the most complex and ambitious in the history of multilateral disarmament. It has an enforcement mechanism-the Organisation for Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which is clearly engaged in not only the public but also the private sector. The OCPW can recommend sanctions against violators or can bring an issue to the Security Council if more robust enforcement measures are needed.. Nevertheless, some major gaps in the verification regime threaten to undercut the treatys ability to achieve its potential. Not only is the planned safety net full of holes, but little is known about how the national authorities are discharging their verification obligations. CWC does not provide for the international monitoring of compliance with a number of important treaty obligations. The CWC will lack credibility as long as member countries have the scope to cheat on their basic obligations with modest risk of being detected and held accountable (Tucker 2007).

DEVELOPMENT OF NECRODEVELOPMENT

In his classic paper Development of Underdevelopment (1966),Andre Gunder Frank observes that that economic development and underdevelopment are the product of the same historical process. The capitalist expansion and development throughout the world simultaneously generate and sustain both economic development and structural underdevelopment. The notion of the development of underdevelopment within the framework of world system opens the way to third-worldist ideology. In a subsequent complementary work, Frank(Frank2001) elaborates on how the structure, process and transformation of the "single world-wide system," generate the new wealth and poverty of nations. The negative consequences of economic expansion forge multiple social inequalities along with irreversible ecological consequences. But the treadmill of production literature fails to notice the role of the military and underestimates the environmental consequences posed by militarism. For the treadmill of production, quest for profitability and market share explains the hastening of the human impact on the environment. Arms

races and geopolitical competition drive the escalating environmental impact of militarism. Of course,the centre of gravity or the source of strength forcontemporary militaries is the industrial support base. The term treadmill of destruction probes into the perilous legacy of military expansionary dynamics that result in the creation and deposition of toxins in the environment. Contemporary research and development on weaponry are purposely designed to poison the environment manifesting the pervasive role of treadmill of destruction.

The malign deployment of knowledge-power may be meant for justifying the rule of the exception by pathologizing others as the bare life of homo sacker. Human security threats to teeming millions of bare life in real world are very much existential. Post-genome breakthroughs in life sciences have provided the knowledge for systematic weaponization of pathogens and natural toxins. Contemporary biowarfare is thus a deliberate public health threats which, along with natural pandemics, have potential to endanger human livelihood at a catastrophic scale transcending national borders. Thus Bio-power and necro-politics have been observed as two sides of the same coin (Mbembe 1997). The series of experiments with human genome sequencing have connected the creation, modification and improvement in disease-causing agents. The focus of proliferation has shifted from biological agents as the object of malign manipulation to the physiological target in the human body as the object of attack.The US Food and Drug Administration has formally approved the heart failure drug BiDil in 2005. BiDil is the first drug ever to be approved to treat heart failure in `self-identified black patients'. BiDil's development apparently opens up an evergreen pasture that exploits race to gain regulatory and commercial advantage(Kahn 2008). But more crucial is its necropower to promote a regeneticization of racial categories in society at large.Thus synthesizing ethnic weapons may not be far behind. Ynestra King (King 1997, cited in Charkiewiewicz 2009) had characterized the end of 20th century as ...a massive renegotiation of power, knowledge, and the ownership of life from the molecular to the planetary. Fertility, labor, natural resources can all be rationalized and controlledall part of the managed and manageable brave new worldnature, and the unruly masses,., are monitored and managed as never before.Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their masterpiece Empire(2000)observe that as capital has become more abstract, fluid and globally mobile, defying time and space, human life has become increasingly subjected to webs of information and technology.

The ideology of neoliberal market fundamentalism has forged a catastrophic nexus of governments and corporations that leave no room for a no-war zone. (Banerjee 2009). Achille Mbembe in his book On the Postcolony: On Private Indirect Government (2001) stated, regarding the proposed accomplishment of co-property between capital and power in the time of globalization, and taking into account specific conditions of environmental exploitation and warfare in Africa, that while war tactics in Africa are quite rudimentary, they still result in human catastrophes. By necropower, Mbembe refers to a sovereign power that is set up for maximum destruction of persons and the creation of deathscapes that are unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead (Grzinic 2009).

German sociologist Ulrich Beck ( Beck 1995), notes that scientific and technological breakthroughs have made societies capable to overcome many dread diseases, but the Cold War powers had nurtured old diseases and even developed new ones. Fear of natural diseases has lessened, but anxiety over the power of the mighty and enigmatic have increased manifold. Biopower thus is the power to rule over life, to take it at will, as it is no longer a productive force but a destructive meeting of body and violence. Thus it is not surprising that the rhetoric of development , civilization and social welfare has been flourished since five centuries back, carry within itself the very explicit interest of capital, which subjugates new territories and finally colonizes them(Grini 2008).

TRANSCENDENCE TO KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

It is thus more crucial to communicate the intentions of the scientist and to minimize various potential conflicts of interest. Thus self-governance of synthetic biology would be more fatal when the autonomy of science has been almost eroded by treadmills of production and destruction endangering life and environment (Hooks and Smith 2005).In the absence of clear communication about the rationale for synthetic genomics and synbiotechnology experiments, the scientific community has to justify their public legitimacy which may be

grossly hampered by overestimating our current ability to control biological processes at the organismal level(Cho and Relman 2010).

There is an opportunity for authentic interdisciplinary work to take place that does not just follow the scientific research, but interacts with it. The presence of a socially committed scientific community capable of transcending the necropolitics of funding sources and to reflect and disseminate the deploymentality behind sponsoring their Synbiotics researches is most crucial. This is made more likely because social scientists are being involved in synthetic biology at the upstream end, when the research is in its early stages. This binary pathway of technology development is revolutionary in comparison to traditional ELSI studies.Distinguishing between appraisal and commitment in the context of social choice of technology, Andy Stirling (Stirling 2008) argues for efforts both to understand and to affect progressive change. The social scientists can explore the normative assumptions that lie behind the choices in opening up of an emerging technology. Implicit assumptions perceived by the social scientists may differ from those of scientists/technologists. This reciprocal reflexivity is very much desirable to usher in a new set of expectations about synthetic biology (Calvert and Martin 2009). The co-evolution of science and society critically requires the synergy of contextualization, production of socially robust knowledge and the construction of narratives of expertise usually in conflicting and controversial forms. The desired reciprocity enhances how public understands science and equally science understands the public appreciation of scientific efforts. This enhanced mutual understanding enriched by a vision accomplished by science re-thought. Inherent uncertainty about the future state of knowledge engenders scientific potential. It is thus essential to explore beyond the knowable context of application to the unknowable context of implication (Nowotny et.al.2001). Janus Hansen (Hansen 2009) praises this novel point of view as a stimulating perspective in legitimizing techno-scientific innovation socially, but critiques that the diagnosis sustains some conceptual deficits, which impedes the ability to highlight on cross-national variation in a systematic manner.

Discourses naturalize the specific ways of thinking and normalizing certain ways of doing things. Knowledge networks serve the interests of contemporary hegemony and symptomatic of the war of position. But such a coalition of networks can also strengthen anti-hegemonic projects(Stone 2003). In On the Postcolony(2001), Mbembe calls for investigations on the genesis

and constructs of necropolitics to visualize an egalitarian world-view. Foucault teaches that all problematizations are historical, contingent and structured by power relations and that, therefore, the tools of genealogy can be useful as we seek insight into the options put before us. Foucauldian wisdom reminds us that the dominant configuration of knowledge and power is not inevitable and further reflections can change it (McWhorter 2009). The politics of life, apart from a question of governmentality and technologies, is also of meaning and values (Fassin 2009). Thus if the values and political implications underlying the debates on synbiotics do not ensure how to protect the society, we can refuse to accept their imperatives and develop alternative epistemology and strategy. This would be definitely a steady step towards radicalizing governmentality.

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