Introduction
It is the year 23 PB (post biotechnology) and 2076 in that old reckoning that few of us use these days.
Most historians of my generation, born long after the discovery of the DNA double helix, realise that rehashing the events of the now banished biotech era involves not only struggling to conceptualise how our collective past became so destructive but also understanding our own personal journey through the minefield of seductive ideas. A process of seeking to understand the social dynamics and the scientific cul de sacs that became so careless of life. A process of recognising the utter yet casual criminality of supposed medical practice and synthetic food production that nevertheless gripped the popular imagination.
For the next generation of historians, and for what is left of humanity, the signs of those troubled times—the so-called technocrat takeover, the fate of the dissenting few who refused to participate in the biotech dream, the numbers injured beyond repair or perished—do not represent any shared memory.
Therefore to reconstruct and reinterpret events, we need to consider not only the chronology and the decisions of those leaders fated to lead nations into oblivion but also reference the personal writings of those affected. The individuals who suffered, the despair of those overtaken by events beyond their control, and the bloody-minded determination of an elite few to enforce biotechnology through to its bitter end—a process that sanctioned any lies and condoned any coverups, no matter how large or obviously at variance with the facts.
It is these voices, contained in whatever written records are still preserved, that reveal what was known or suspected during the turmoil and growing fear. They also reveal the total blindness of almost the entire human race to the potential final outcomes of gene editing. Prevented from accessing critical and open discussion, people were subjected to entirely novel genetic interventions without adequate information. In partial ignorance or under pressure, they resigned themselves to participation, many even did so proudly and joyfully, but all were about to be confronted with a horrifying reality.
Hidden Laboratories and Cloaked in Secrecy
The biotech era began in 1953 AD, just a few short years after the carnage of the second world war. At the time, and for more than forty years, no one imagined that the curtain was rising on another deadly period of loss of life. Curated in hidden laboratories and cloaked in secrecy, the interwoven threads of life were being unpicked and reassembled into other alien shapes.
Critical to understanding the suicidal rush to collective annihilation that characterised the later periods of the 100 years of biotechnology experimentation is the realisation that our genetic makeup is just one side of the coin of life. The other was our own consciousness, which implied all that makes us human—empathy, self-reflection, discrimination, morality, truth, sanctity, and a sense of collective destiny. Mind and body are inextricably linked. All this was naively put at risk to satisfy the quasi-God-like meddling creative aspirations of the biotechnologists, the insanely profitable pharmaceutical lobby, and the power-hungry advocates of a new world order. How they brought the world to its knees and all but destroyed civilisation (if indeed it ever existed) is the subject of this history.
It is chilling to read the contemporary chronicles of the times and realise that physical ill health and the failure of intelligence crept up on the participants, unrecognised at first until it was almost too late. Hardly anyone understood that the cornerstone of the stability of higher human abilities and health was so fragile, so dependent on the absolute integrity of the human genome—a miracle of a finely balanced structure with a virtual infinity of interconnections capable of defying the second law of thermodynamics, the law of universal decay.
Longevity Suddenly Became Rare
As genetic editing became a pastime of humanity, noble sentiments, creative intelligence, and altruistic impulses, which depended on genetic structure, gradually declined and gave way to crudity, anger, violence, myopic vision, dullness, confusion, and callous disregard for consequences. Essential physiological homeostatic feedback loops, organ systems, reproductive processes, and the immune system failed to function as they did in the past, even among the young. Longevity became suddenly rare.
Despite warnings from a few, the vast majority failed to investigate or confront what we naively think today should have been obvious. They remained uninformed, or some deliberately silent, safe in the knowledge that they were swimming with the current. We forget what it was like to live with the relentless saturation advertising, the control, the censorship, the distraction, and the peer pressure which penetrated every crevice of society. These conveyed the understanding that biotechnology was heralding a glorious future. It was the right thing to do. Inevitably, far from being helped, the injured were gaslighted and told they were taking a hit for the team.
The global awakening to danger that occurred in the last decade of the biotech era is now well known to all, etched in our collective memory. The loss of the continuity of life is still raw. The struggle to salvage safety and protect our genetic heritage is now the bedrock of our creed. We pulled back from the brink, but we had already paid a heavy price.
What would have happened if we hadn’t acted just in time to halt biotechnology completely can only be guessed at. It is unimaginable now at this safe distance of years. The story of how we won back our health and sanity can now be told with the wisdom of hindsight and through the words of the participants, victims, perpetrators, and truth-sayers.
Chapter One…..
Of course, all this is fictional in an imagined future, but the extreme risks of biotechnology are real and well-known to science even today.
Guy Hatchard, Ph.D., was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID, a food testing and certification company (now known as FoodChain ID).
Guy is the author of Your DNA Diet: Leveraging the Power of Consciousness To Heal Ourselves and Our World. An Ayurvedic Blueprint For Health and Wellness.
