[meteorite-list] Martian Microbes (Was: Life's Rocky Road...)

From: Kelly Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:44:12 2004
Message-ID: <3B2856CC.4B3313D8_at_bhil.com>

Hi, List,
    David's right about the actual danger (close to, but not, zero). But
he's not thinking like a politician (probably a good thing, most of the
time). Martin, "maybe" bureaucrats are thinking about covering their
posteriors? Bureaucrats scarcely have time to think about anything else!

    It being such a cosy little solar system, if we find a microbe on
Mars, if it has DNA, how are we going to tell whether it was a "native
Martian" microbe or the descendent of a terrestrial microbe? How
different does that DNA have to be? My guess is that it'll be an
archebacteria that fits right into the rather broad range of DNA
variation we already see here on Earth. So, if it's like a possible
terrestrial species, does that mean that terrestrial species may have
come from Mars long ago? Or that Martian species may have come from the
Earth long ago? Or that they were seeded on both planets from a common
source? Will it have ribosomal gene 16S? (and a million other
questions). You don't think finding life will end the arguments, do you?
That's just the beginning.
    Containment is a political, hence social question, not a scientific
one. As for costs, it isn't new facilities. There are plenty of
ultimate-grade biohazard facilities in existence already, most of which
currently contain little critters 1000 times nastier than anything we'll
ever find on Mars or Tau Ceti Five, for that matter. Remember,
initially, we imposed biological isolation for folks that visited that
pest-hole, the Moon. It's already established policy for new worlds.
Shouldn't surprise anyone we'd do it for Mars.
    Besides, if we don't do containment, and a technician falls
seriously ill, and we're not sure why, so we isolate him and all his
co-workers, and CNN "notices", then... Then, there will be nation-wide
panic, a windfall for tabloid printers, nothing else on broadcast TV and
cable news 24-7, the market will drop 2347 points, bureaucratic heads
will adorn spiked posts outside the White House fence, because the
occupant of that White House will feel very insecure and very unhappy
indeed.
    Even if eight days later we find out it was a non-testable variant
of viral mennigitis acquired by eating imported strawberries, there will
lots of unhappy authority figures. Surely a few million dollars is worth
it to save them (and us) from that terrible stress? I'm sure they think
so...
    You may have noticed that the common man has gotten a lot less happy
with science in the last fifty years or so than he used to be. He's
afraid we're going build a leaking nuclear power plant in his backyard,
force him to eat genetic monster tomatoes, clone him, give him cancer by
transmitting electricity over wires or a brain tumor from his cell
phone, melt the ice caps and drown the planet into Waterworld, send
messages to alien monsters via SETI and cause an invasion, and then
there were all those nuclear bombs he had to live with (still does) for
so long... He probably remembers those cases of necrotic Strep. a.
infections that spawned the headline "Killer Germs Ate My Face!" over
some pretty gruesome pictures.
    Maybe he'd be happier if we put all our Martian rocks in some real
tight baggies and didn't keep opening them up in the spacecraft on the
way back home. We do want to keep him happy, don't we? I can assure you
that our leaders want to keep him happy. I hate to say this about
politicians, but they could be right...

Sterling K. Webb
Received on Thu 14 Jun 2001 02:16:44 AM PDT