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The Hidden Costs of Saying No

By Freeman Dyson (1974)

One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. -- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790).

1. THE PAST

William Blake lived two hundred years ago, in a time of revolution and rapid change. He was considered crazy by his contemporaries. He stayed at home, patiently etching his poems on plate of copper, while Byron scribbled pages by the hundred and captured the attention of Europe. But everything I shall say an hour was said long ago in two sentences by William Blake.

During the last ten years, in every industrialized country, the general public and the political authorities have become acute aware of the existence of hidden costs. The economists have taught us that industrial and social innovations carry hidden costs that do not appear in the immediate profit-and-loss accounts any individual enterprise. Flood control dams in California cause rivers to carry less sand to the ocean, with the consequence that the width of swimming beaches is diminishing. High-intensity street lights, installed by highway authorities to reduce the frequency of accidents, destroy the quality of the sky over an astronomical observatory fifty miles away. Many examples of hidden costs have become notorious: the sinking of the city of Venice, the smog of Los Angeles, the poisoning of the American eagle by insecticides The public has been awakened to the importance of hidden costs, mainly through the influence of a small number of books. Let nobody say that books have lost their power to persuade in the modern world of computers and television. A few writers gifted with common sense and eloquence, Rachel Carson with her Silent Spring, Fairfield Osborn with his Plundered Planet, Barry Commoner with his Closing Circle, persuaded the people and Congress of the United States of America to count the hidden costs of industrial development. A similarly small and gifted group of writers has done the same for northern Europe. As a result, we now have laws that prescribe a public accounting of hidden costs before any large public enterprise is undertaken.

Several proposed enterprises have come spectacularly to grief during the process of public accounting, and have as a consequence been discredited and abandoned. The most famous project killed by the public examination of hidden costs was the American supersonic transport plane (SST). But the most important effect of the new attitude toward technological innovation does not lie in the small number of big projects that have been exposed to public scrutiny and then stopped. Far more important is the larger number of projects that never come to the notice of the public but die unseen, their proponents discouraged by the expense, delay, and uncertainty that the procedures of public examination impose. For every one power station or oil refinery that is publicly killed, ten others are privately discouraged. The doctrine of deterrence, whether or not it is valid in the strategic sphere, certainly applies in the sphere of technological innovation. After a government kills one thorium-breeding reactor project, nobody has the heart to try to begin another. After one nuclear rocket program has been officially abandoned, young people with brains and imagination turn their attention elsewhere.

I am not saying that the counting of hidden costs is a mistake or that the public indignation aroused by dead birds and dead fish was unjustified. We shall not turn the clock back to the time when everyone was free to dump soot upon his neighbor's garden. Rachel Carson's cry of anguish has made this planet a pleasanter place, not only for birds but also for people. The good that she has done shall not be undone. But it is not enough to count the hidden costs of saying yes to new enterprises. We must also learn to count the hidden costs of saying no. The costs of saying no may be high, although they are often uncertain and intangible. Our existing political processes introduce a strong bias into the consideration of new enterprises. The costs of saying yes can be calculated and demonstrated in a style that is familiar and congenial to lawyers, whereas the costs of saying no are a matter of conjecture and have no established legal standing. We must learn that costs may be tragically real even when they are legally unprovable. We must try to establish processes of decision making that give the costs of yes and no an equal voice. We need to know more accurately the costs of saying no, and we need procedures that allow a more realistic weighing of uncertainties when knowledge is lacking.

One case study, in which the costs of saying no were demonstrated in convincing fashion, was published by Carl Djerassi. Djerassi took the trouble to document his facts carefully, and his conclusions have not, so far as I know, been challenged. His study is concerned with the process of development of chemical birth-control agents. The presently existing birth-control agents are in various ways unsatisfactory, unsafe, or unsuited to the purposes for which they were intended. Djerassi analyzes in detail the costs in money and time which are imposed by government regulation upon anybody who wishes to develop a new agent. The costs apply equally, whether the project is undertaken by an industrial company, a government agency, or a private philanthropic organization. The cost in time turns out to be seventeen years, the cost in money $18 million dollars of 1970 vintage. These are minimum figures, based on the assumption that the various steps in the prescribed procedure follow one another smoothly and that no unforeseen difficulties arise. The figures are presented for work performed under United States regulations, but the conclusion would not be substantially different in other industrialized countries. The large expenditures of time and money are required in order to carry out long-term studies involving large numbers of animals and, in the later stages, human volunteers, to ensure that the product is safe and effective before it is made available for public use.

Djerassi was not arguing, and I am not arguing, that these strict regulations governing the introduction of new drugs should be abandoned. The regulations came into existence as a result of the public reaction to the Thalidomide tragedy, in which thousands of babies were crippled by a supposedly harmless sleeping pill. Nobody with responsibility for developing new drugs would wish to have another such tragedy on his conscience, and nobody with responsibility for formulating regulations would wish to leave open a chance that it might happen again. In this case the costs of saying yes are so high and so abominable that the regulations must be accepted as a permanent necessity. Djerassi is saying that the practical consequence of these regulations must also be accepted. The regulations mean in practice that no substantially new chemical birth-control agents will become available during the foreseeable future. No companies, and few individuals, will devote themselves to an expensive and elaborate project that will take at least seventeen years to complete and may at any stage be halted and come to nothing. Djerassi argues that it should still be possible to develop new agents under the existing regulations, if the government would give such projects long-term financial and administrative support. Needless to say, the government has done nothing in the meantime to bring such hopes to reality. I draw the following conclusion from Djerassi's study. In the development of new drugs, the price of safety is that large public expenditures are required to do a job that in the past could be done by private industry, and in the future may not be done at all. This is one of the rare cases in which the costs of saying no are not hidden but are almost calculable, as a result of one man's careful work in collecting the relevant facts.

I now return to the supersonic airliner. I do not say that the killing of the SST project was a mistake. There were some good reasons for killing it. Nevertheless, the decision was influenced by calculations of costs and benefits which bore little relation to reality For example, it was argued that the SST would have a large adverse effect on the balance of payments of the United States, because it would stimulate a massive flow of American tourists to Europe, unbalanced by any comparable flow of Europeans to America. This argument may have had some merit, but the calculations that were used to support it have already been made obsolete by the world economic crisis. As often happens in such cases, a cost that could be calculated in dollars and cents was taken seriously by the politicians, even though the precision of the calculation was illusory. Almost all numerical estimates of the long range costs of technological innovations are illusory. In the case of the SST, the most important cost of saying no was the discouragement of future enterprises in aeronautical engineering, many of which have not yet been conceived. This cost may in the long run heavily outweigh the costs that we should have incurred by saying yes. As always, the weighing of intangible costs is a matter of taste and of judgment.

2. THE FUTURE

I consider two problems of the future to be of central importance, namely, climate modification and genetic engineering. It is obvious that any further large expansion of the industrial activities of mankind will cause noticeable changes in the climate of the earth. This fact is often used by advocates of "limits to growth" as an argument for halting further expansion. I wish to argue the contrary view. I see no reason to believe that the present climate of this planet is in any sense optimal. The concept of an "optimal climate" is meaningless, since different people with different ways of life will always have different preferences in matters of climate. It is neither possible nor desirable to choose one particular climate, such as that of Mallorca or Hawaii, and impose it uniformly, upon the whole world. But there are many large areas of the planet, for example the Sahara desert and the Siberian tundra. where some mitigation of the climate would produce substantial benefits. A warmer Siberia and a wetter Sahara would allow a richer life not only for human beings but also for wild animals and plants.

The idea that an artificially created ecology can be richer and aethestically more pleasing than a natural one is a present highly unpopular. The fashionable belief is expressed by the writer Barry Commoner when he states as a basic law of ecology: "Nature Knows Best." Commoner is able to present an impressive collection of horror stories to support his opinion that human alteration of a natural ecology leads inevitably to deterioration and disaster. But there are also some impressive examples to the contrary. I spent my childhood years in rural England, and I frequently return there for a few days of rest and spiritual renewal. At any season of the year you may find in rural England an ecological harmony of extraordinary richness, with a great variety of species of plants, birds, and animals. This ecology is unusually robust, surviving without obvious damage the assaults inflicted by a high density of human population and industry. It is a community of species in which ecologists and poets can equally rejoice. But nothing in the ecology of rural England is natural. The natural state of England was a rather uniform expanse of forest and swamp. Almost everything that now exists there is artificial, created by people who were not afraid to turn wilderness into village, cropland, and pasture. There are no laws of nature that forbid us to create an artificial ecology as varied and as beautiful as that of rural England, either in the central Sahara or on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. To do this will require a long time, great quantities of energy, and knowledge that we do not yet possess of the long-range consequences of our actions. When we have acquired the knowledge and power to modify climates according to our taste, we shall be exposed to great dangers at the same time as we reap great rewards. There is no reason why a prudent fear of the dangers should cause us to deny the possibility of the rewards.

A look at the past history of the earth's natural climate gives additional grounds for optimism concerning the feasibility of producing desired changes without disastrous side effects. It is known that about five thousand years ago the climate of northern Europe and Asia was milder than it is now, and the variety of indigenous plants and animals was greater. Mixed forests grew far to the north, where now only conifers can survive. In roughly the same period the rock paintings of the central Sahara show herds of giraffes, which are vivid evidence of a climate wet enough to support trees and grass over a wide area. We have no idea how and why the climate in these two widely separated areas deteriorated, or whether the changes in the two areas were causally linked. It is improbable that changes on this scale and at so early a date were strongly influenced by human activities. But our ignorance of the mechanisms of climatic change is so profound that all theories of causation are pure speculation. What we can say with some degree of certainty is that five thousand years ago a climatic regime existed which was in some parts of the Earth more hospitable to living creatures than the present regime. It is possible that some comparatively modest human intervention, applied with adequate understanding of the consequences, would result in the restore tion of the regime that existed naturally in the past. This possibility should be a source of hope to mankind. A wetter Sahara and a warmer Arctic could mean a doubling of the area of the planet suitable for productive agriculture. A hungry world should count the cost before saying no to such possibilities.

The second big problem of the future is genetic engineering. The most important technological advances of the next fifty years are likely to come from biology and not from the physical sciences. Within less than fifty years I expect that we shall have achieved a mastery of the fundamental processes of living organisms, as complete as the mastery we now possess of the processes of physics and chemistry. A mastery of biological processes will imply, among other things, the ability to produce microorganisms with enzymatic machinery tailored to our needs. Chemical processes carried out by systems of enzymes generally proceed with higher efficiency, higher specificity, and lower wastage of material, than processes carried out by conventional industrial methods. We can expect that the development of microbiological technology will revolutionize the production of food, the conversion of coal and crude oil into clean fuel, the concentration and reduction of ores, and the handling and recycling of waste materials. Each one of these revolutions will have profound effects on the conditions of human life. All of them together will change the world in ways that we can hardly imagine. When I use the phrase "genetic engineering," I am referring to this future industrial revolution based on artificially produced microorganisms. I am not speaking about genetic engineering applied to human beings, since that is a separate problem with unique dangers and more dubious rewards.

The human rewards resulting from a massive development of microbiological genetic engineering may be very great. We canexpect that almost any organic material, from sawdust to sewage, may be converted quantitatively into clean fuel and other useful chemicals. We can expect to evolve techniques of "indoor farming" that will allow abundant production of food in all parts of the globe. We can expect the overall style and appearance of industry to change in an aesthetically desirable direction. Oil refineries need not stink, mine dumps need not despoil the earth, and people who work in factories need not drive to homes twenty miles away to find clean air. A second industrial revolution, based on biological technology, may largely undo the evil effects of the first industrial revolution based upon steam and coal. These are some of the rewards that genetic engineering appears to offer to us.

These are the possible rewards. But there are also dangers. And in recent years my biologist colleagues have been thinking more about the dangers than about the rewards. A group of leading microbiologists under the chairmanship of Paul Berg recently issued a statement calling attention to the dangers involved in the use of newly discovered techniques of manipulating DNA molecules. Berg's group not only called attention to the dangers but called upon all biologists to abstain from certain types of experiment that were judged particularly hazardous. The hazardous experiments involve the grafting of alien genes into the genetic apparatus of bacteria that might afterward escape from control and infect human populations. I have no competence to assess the magnitude of the danger involved in these experiments. I accept the view of the experts that the danger is real and serious. Once again we must respect the caution of scientists whodo not wish to take any risk that they might inflict a new Thalidomide tragedy upon babies yet unborn. But the tone of the Berg statement leaves me with a feeling of dissatisfaction. The statement is written as if the only factors to be considered were, on the one hand, the danger to society involved in certain experiments, and on the other hand, the professional interest of a few biologists in doing the experiments The cost of saying yes to these experiments is a risk of a disastrous epidemic disease, the cost of saying no is a minor setback in the professional careers of a few scientists. When the balance of costs is presented in these terms, the inevitable conclusion is a negative one. Any biologist performing such experiments is automatically judged to be selfish and irresponsible.

Unfortunately, the experiments now judged dangerous lie close in technique and concept to experiments that would be required for the development of a genetic industrial technology. The prohibition of the dangerous experiments may imply the postponement of an industrial technology that is of crucial importance to mankind. This is the hidden cost of saying no, a cost that the Berg statement ignores. The Berg statement includes a proposal for an international meeting to be held next year to "further discuss appropriate ways to deal with the potential biohazards of recombinant DNA molecules." It is to be hoped that the international meeting will consider not only the hazards of these molecules but also their promise for human welfare. Not only the costs of saying yes but the costs of saying no. The most useful outcome of the international meeting would be the definition of two clearly separated classes of experiments, one class carrying danger to human populations, the other class carrying no visible danger but still promising to unravel the complexities of structure that must be understood before genetic engineering will become a reality. It is as important to encourage the second class of experiment as to discourage the first.

3. SUMMING UP

I have looked at four problems of the regulation of technological development, two from the past and two from the future. From the past came Djerassi's study of the regulation of chemical birth-control agents, and the downfall of the American supersonic airliner. From the future came climate modification and genetic engineering. These four examples suggest some general conclusions.

In each case two stubborn facts of life make it difficult for political authorities to reach wise decisions. The two facts are the unpredictability of technology and the inflexibility of bureaucratic institutions. Technology has always been, and always will be, unpredictable. Whenever things seem to be moving smoothly along a predictable path, some unexpected twist changes the rules of the game and makes the old predictions irrelevant. Quantitative factors that are predictable are outweighed by qualitative factors that are unpredictable. To take an example from the past, which I owe to Leon Cooper, a nineteenth-century development program aimed at the mechanical reproduction of music might have produced a superbly engineered music box or Pianola, but it would never have imagined a transistor radio or subsidized the work of Maxwell on the physics of the electromagnetic field which made the transistor radio possible. In the future, genetic engineering will have a major impact on agriculture and industry all over the world, but the impact will come in unexpected ways and will certainly not follow the path that I have predicted for it. Yet human legislators act as if the future were predictable. They legislate solutions to technological problems, and they make choices between technological alternatives before the evidence upon which a rational choice might be based is available. It often happens in technological development that one design turns out to be decisively better than its competitors, for reasons that could not have been predicted in advance. There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures. The governmental authorities in all countries have to learn the lesson that Blake etched on a plate of copper 180 years ago: "You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough."

The other lesson that we have to learn is that bureaucratic regulation has a killing effect on all creative endeavor. No matter how wisely framed and well intentioned, legal formalities tend to become inflexible. Procedures designed to fit one situation are applied indiscriminately to others. Regulations, whose purpose was to count the cost of saying yes to an unsound project, have the uniintended effect of saying no to all projects that do not fit snugly into the bureaucratic system. Inventive spirits rebel against such rules and leave the leadership of technology to the uninventive. These are the hidden costs of saying no. To mitigate such costs, lawyers and legislators should carry in their hearts the other lesson that Blake has taught us: "One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression."