“For computer scientist Rob Clarke, the days are becoming increasingly uneasy at the Embudo Population Institute as its recently hired director pushes forward on a new contraceptive virus.”
Contraceptive viruses are a human creation made possible by the engineering techniques of modern biology, and were developed with the goal of controlling so-called pest species. Scientists add a modified gene to an existing virus so that it possesses an altered form of a protein that is also present in the egg coating or sperm of a targeted mammal. When the virus infects a member of that species its body mounts an immune response to fight it. At the same time, however, it also activates that same response against its own eggs or sperm and prevents fertilization.
The idea of creating a contraceptive virus to control human population is, to say the least, controversial. In a way it is similar to another controversial idea, that of blasting aerosols into our upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space in an attempt to slow global warming. In both cases we have created huge problems through our uncontrolled use of powers given to us by science. Rather than change the ways we are accustomed to using those powers, however, we now hope that science can radically change complex systems and free us from the consequences of our behaviors. What, one might ask, could possibly go wrong?