George Poste has not only watched scientific fields develop throughout his career; he has often been involved with their emergence. After earning doctorates in veterinary medicine and in virology, Poste was an academic at the University of London's Royal Postgraduate Medical School before moving to the United States in 1972 as a professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the State University of New York in Buffalo and principal cancer research scientist in the Department of Experimental Pathology at the New York State Roswell Park Memorial Cancer Institute. In 1981, he left academia for industry to become vice president and director of research at what was to become by 1989 (after several mergers) SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline since 2001). The company was the first of the big pharmaceutical companies to enter genomics. By the early 1990s, it had become a leader not only in the pharmaceutical industry but in biotechnology as well. Poste stayed with SmithKline for nearly two decades. By the time he left in 1999, he was chief science and technology officer and president of research and development. In 2009, he was awarded the pharmaceutical industry's Scrip Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1999, Queen Elizabeth II honored Poste as a Commander of the British Empire for his contributions to international health care and security. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal College of Pathologists, and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. He has also served as a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has provided service to multiple US government departments in Defense, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. From 2001 to 2009, he was a member of the DOD Defense Science Board and chaired the Task Force on Bioterrorism. He has served on a variety of other biosecurity-related boards and committees, including the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the National Academy of Sciences Working Group on Biological Weapons, the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine Board on Global Health, and the Institute of Medicine Committee on Advances in Technology and the Prevention of their Application to Next Generation Biowarfare Threats.
In 2003, Poste founded and directed the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. Today, Poste is the co-director and chief scientist of the university's Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative, which was established to encourage the creation of new technologies to address challenges in health, sustainability, security, and education. Poste is on Monsanto's board of directors, as well as the Bulletin's Governing Board.
The Bulletin spoke with Poste about emerging threats, innovation, risk, and competitiveness.
BAS: When assessing emerging threats from advances in the life sciences and biotechnology, the Bulletin has reported on two narratives: One is on the biotech revolution, and the other is on the biotech evolution. The former is one that sees us dashing to rapid changes in biotechnology, as well as its dual-use applications. The latter is one that is slower but involves more complex developments in the field—and perhaps more complex threats. Where do you see the field? In a revolution or an evolution?
Poste: I think that both terms apply. The life sciences and biomedicine are now joining the sister disciplines of chemistry, physics, and mathematics in moving beyond just describing phenomena to elucidation of the underlying mechanisms of complex biological activities in diverse life forms—ranging from microorganisms, the most abundant life form on the planet, to the quest to understand what is going wrong in causing human disease. Biotechnology is not directed only towards human and veterinary medicine. There are huge applications in agriculture as a vital technology to improve food production to meet the nutritional needs of a projected future global human population of 9 billion. Biotechnology is also the intellectual vector for the emerging new field of synthetic biology. As we gain more and more understanding of the way nature's own systems work, we can design biomimetic systems that duplicate elements of the elegant designs and functions found in nature. There is the widespread belief that somehow evolution is optimized and has plateaued. It's only plateaued in the context of being optimized against the selection pressures that have operated historically
BAS: How so?
Poste: A gene or a protein, or a particular biological structure or function in a living system, are optimized only in the context of how they have evolved to date. Using the tools of so-called “directed evolution,” it's now possible to produce tens of thousands, if not millions, of slightly different variants of a biological molecule and compare their properties with the original. In most instances, little, if any, functional improvement is made. But due to the large number of variants generated, a few molecules will show the desired gain in function. Directed evolution methods are now widely used in industrial biotechnology processes in which molecules such as enzymes that perform particular chemical functions can be engineered to perform the function much more efficiently, either in terms of speed, lower cost, or both.
As our knowledge of biological design and function expands, together with the capacity to engineer novel functions in living systems, the range of dual-use applications in which the same knowledge can be used for beneficent or malevolent purposes will expand dramatically.
BAS: Science is moving at an extraordinary pace in a very fast-moving world. Do you think that we will be able to harness all that is happening in biology right now and develop adequate biodefense policies?
Poste: At one level, there are certainly many things in which we can be proactive in the identification of new categories of risk and develop appropriate procedures and policies to address them. But biology is so big, and knowledge is expanding so fast, you can't predict every twist and turn that can arise and you are forced into a reactive mode when such surprises occur.
BAS: Do you think the threats of synthetic biology are overplayed by government?
Poste: In most instances, many of the claimed dangers, even if theoretically valid, are not yet matched by the ability of current synthetic biology methods to make them a reality. This will, of course, change as current technology matures and additional new technologies emerge. Biotechnology and synthetic biology are obviously highly relevant to the spectrum of biological threats and for the development of countermeasures against infectious agents, whether of natural or nefarious origins. What is often not appreciated, however, is that new insights in biology open up new avenues for dual-use abuse in terms of new categories of chemical weapons. As science maps the molecular circuitry of each cell type in the body to better understand what goes wrong in disease, the same information can be used to design chemical agents to target and disrupt these circuits. For example, think about the implications of how new chemical agents that eliminate fear or, conversely, induce paralyzing fear, could be used.
BAS: Do you think that the United States applied the lessons that it learned from 9/11? How would you grade the United States on applying those lessons?
Poste: The challenges posed by terrorism and asymmetric warfare are well understood by the Department of Defense and the intelligence and counterterrorism communities. However, in the specific context of biodefense preparedness, I think we are dangerously close to getting an F grade, and at best a D, for the lack of major accomplishments over the past decade. Given the investment of tens of billions of dollars in biodefense research and development by the US government since 9/11, the returns have been pretty miserable. We remain highly vulnerable to bioterrorism, as well as epidemics of natural origin caused by agents for which we don't have countermeasures. Many of the government agencies that took those billions after 9/11 have failed to achieve their stated deliverables. In common with many aspects of contemporary governance, there is no accountability for such widespread failure. It's a travesty.
BAS: What do you think is needed to improve intelligence assessment of the bioweapons threats and policy?
Poste: I don't think the principal knowledge gaps reside in intelligence assessments and threat monitoring. There will always be the potential of some rude surprise. The more important shortcomings lie with the scientific communities, both inside and outside government. Again, why has there been so little progress in addressing known threats despite vast financial investments? The problem stems from a failure to mobilize the broad range of cross-disciplinary technical capabilities required to develop countermeasures and to offer suitable incentives to big pharma and the biotechnology industry to participate, since they represent the only source of experience and expertise to create new countermeasures.
BAS: Laura Kahn, one of the Bulletin's columnists, writes a lot about One Health, which focuses on an approach that goes beyond the health of humans, and includes the health of animals and the ecosystem. Why is this approach necessary now?
Poste: It is essential. We can't treat human health and public health initiatives in isolation. It requires a more sophisticated approach to reflect the complex inter-dependency of human health and the health of animal and plant populations and the critical importance of the stability and sustainability of ecosystems on infectious disease patterns. Most of the so-called emerging infectious diseases [EIDs] which have affected humans in recent decades are zoonoses—namely, bugs that are present in an animal population and then successfully infect people. A proficient global public health system therefore requires comprehensive biosurveillance for rapid detection of EIDs and how they are transmitted to people from their animal hosts.
BAS: What are recent examples?
Poste: HIV/AIDS is the most dramatic recent example of a zoonotic EID. SARS was a bullet dodged a decade ago. Let us hope that a near relative of the SARS virus, MERS-CoV [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus], now emerging in the Middle East, also fails to emerge as a global threat. The greatest zoonotic threat probably still resides with the constant mixing of genes from human and animal strains of influenza around the world that at some point will again generate an influenza strain with pandemic potential and high virulence comparable to the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. In short, the term ‘One Health’ reflects the recognition that global public health is more than just the health of humans. Achieving this goal will require a more holistic perspective that integrates human health, animal health, and ecosystem health.
BAS: And what do you consider the biggest challenge in biosecurity?
Poste: Urbanization in the developing world as a source of EIDs. We are seeing the rise of large urban megapoli in Southeast Asia and South America. These cities have high population densities, often without adequate public health infrastructure and, most important, they are expanding rapidly into surrounding virgin eco-terrains with exposure of humans to previously unknown animal infections with zoonotic potential. But urbanization is just one aspect of the need for better understanding of how anthropogenic influences affect the spread of infectious diseases. These include the need to understand how deforestation, contamination of water sources, and the depletion of finite environmental resources will impact current and future patterns of infectious disease. How will climate change influence the distribution of infectious disease by changing the geographic range of vectors such as mosquitoes and other disease transmission vehicles with adverse outcomes for the health of humans, animals, and plant populations? These issues reinforce the importance of a strategic focus on ‘One Health’ and the need for better integration of the triad of human health, animal health, and ecosystem health.
BAS: You have said that “catastrophe is the only way in which an overly comfortable and complacent society begins to understand the need to change.” Can you discuss?
Poste: Unfortunately, I think that this is a truism about the human condition throughout history. At one level, the aspiration of any society is the quest for the stability that comes with physical and economic comforts, education, health, and protection against existential threats, crime, and violence. Yet, paradoxically, such comforts often erode vigilance in recognizing and responding to new threats. The insidious creep of complacency increases societal resistance to the need for change. I think we are now witnessing the effects of these forces in the United States. We have become enormously complacent about our competitiveness in multiple industries.
BAS: What do you mean, exactly?
Poste: Too many in US society are now far removed from any understanding of the complexities of the world in which they are living. They are cocooned from the types of risks and threats that confronted US society before World War II and during the Cold War. People are told by lawyers, politicians, and the media that zero risk is achievable. This is absurd. The media achieves greater ratings by stoking controversy and conflict rather than constructive reporting of the creativity and innovation needed to produce advances in technology that society increasingly takes for granted. The net result is a society in which government fails to act proactively to address looming threats and retreats from complexity. If we were to have a major epidemic, whether courtesy of Mother Nature or as a result of a deliberate terrorist attack, we have such massive gaps in our preparedness and public health capabilities and insufficient medical countermeasures to address many types of biothreat the scale of the widespread dislocations in routine day-to-day life could pose major threats to civil order.
BAS: Take the accident at Fukushima. The Japanese population was kept—and appears to still be kept—from the risks associated with nuclear power. Then a disaster happens, and the first question is: Why didn't we know about these risks? How would you begin tackling risk communication?
Poste: As pointed out earlier, people have been deluded into thinking that they can have zero risk. Every new technology carries risk. The more important issue is how do we evaluate risk and implement appropriate safety protocols and regulatory oversight? But if you have a general public and policy makers who are uniformed, incapable, or unwilling to invest the time to understand complex issues, you have a major problem. That's the unfortunate reality today. We now have a society in which everyone wants to drive their cars but then gets indignant about an oil-drilling platform blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. A blowout was a known potential risk with this type of advanced technology. I'm not knowledgeable enough to assign the probability of such an event. But after 60 days of leakage the president of the United States says, “Plug the damn hole,” as if it were as simple as that. At the same time we can watch live TV footage of remarkable robotic marine submersibles operating thousands of feet down in the ocean manipulating valves with the dexterity of surgeons. But no one comments on how extraordinary these technological feats are. No one is apparently stunned by the fact that solving the BP Horizon blowout problem required drilling a vertical pipe through thousands of feet of rock strata and then to branch sideways to hit the original drill pipe. The Deepwater Horizon problem was solved with some of the most sophisticated engineering on the planet. Yet all we heard from the politicians and the media was who's to blame. There may have been negligence in this incident, but the bottom line is that to drill for oil at that depth is always going to be risky and that at some point a major failure would occur, just as it did with another advanced technology platform, the space shuttle. It again brings us back to the central issue that society is increasingly cocooned from risk while assuming that advances in technology can be routine and devoid of risk.
BAS: But there seems to be a fear by industry to communicate fully those risks because of the perceived public response. Has society become weaker at digesting information or has industry's ability to effectively communicate or converse weakened?
Poste: I think that all these forces are at work. When a major incident occurs, there should be as much transparency as possible. Yet there will always be unknowns and surprises in large-scale disasters. This is the civilian equivalent of the military's “fog of war” challenge in which unexpected events inevitably surface that alter the best-laid plans. But the need for effective communication tools and transparency does not reside solely with corporations. Any major incident of consequence will involve government response and resources. Sophistication in messaging is critical in minimizing the public concern and maximizing trust. Without attention to these two cardinal issues things can quickly get out of control.
BAS: Such as?
Poste: Just think about what would happen in a major cyber attack that resulted in the breakdown of the supply chains for delivery of food and other essentials, the dislocation or collapse of electronic financial systems, and the disruption of critical services such as health care; these are just a few of the more obvious examples of how societal stability would be tested. Is government ready or able to provide the level of transparency needed to reassure a panicked population in these circumstances? What are people going to do under these circumstances? Some people will behave magnificently. Some people will be paralyzed by fear. Others will use it as an opportunity for theft and violent predation. You will witness the full spectrum of positive and negative human behavior if something on this scale were to happen.
BAS: Can we improve?
Poste: Of course, I think that the core challenge in understanding many aspects of how technology shapes contemporary society is that people have come to expect instant answers to complex problems, and that new technologies should not have risk or cause personal inconvenience. Elected legislatures are now trapped in having to adopt short-term political populism for re-election rather than engage proactively in the detailed analysis of complex problems that have significant longer-term consequences. The “kick the can down the road” philosophy is alarmingly prevalent in too many public policy debates about difficult and unpalatable problems. The same limitation applies to the need for boldness and vision in industrial R&D.
BAS: How so?
Poste: You have to be a very brave chief executive today to defy Wall Street. The tyranny of “meeting the Street's expectations” has eroded industrial innovation. Corporate leaders must now be more concerned about maintaining their immediate stock prices and the delivery of quarterly earnings to meet the expectations of the financial markets rather than being able to, or have the courage to, commit to long-term investments that may reduce immediate earnings but will ensure long-term competitiveness and corporate survival. Something went badly wrong, probably beginning in the mid-to-late-eighties, when we transitioned the primacy from those who “make and bake the pie” by creating real products and services to dominance by a financial sector that merely “cuts and rearranges the pie.”
BAS: As an innovator, you certainly see the world in a different way than most of us. For you, what are the most notable developments in biotechnology, global health, or military technologies that you find impressive?
Poste: There are too many to cover in this interview: antibiotics, vaccines, and other medicines; genetically modified crops; novel materials and composites; the Internet; mobile devices; robotics; drones and other unmanned vehicles are just a few. I think that over the next quarter-century, advances in medicine, driven by biotechnology, and the convergence of biomedicine with telecommunications, electronics, sensor networks, and advanced computing, will dramatically increase quality of life and probably longevity.
BAS: Anything out of that list that worries you?
Poste: The one issue that does still worry me is that we are at risk of being asleep at the switch in mobilizing to meet the challenge of global infectious diseases. The rise of antibiotic resistance amply illustrates the consequences of ignoring the obvious. The evolution of resistant bacteria in response to the selection pressure of antibiotic therapy was an entirely predictable problem. But because of the delusional belief that the battle against bugs had been won thanks to the impressive successes achieved by antibiotics between 1950 and 1990, the economic incentives for industry to search for new antibiotics were eliminated. The current lack of new antibiotics to overcome resistance to older antibiotics is a problem of market failure, not a technical failure. We now face major gaps for the next 10 years in our capacity to deal with drug-resistant organisms because we failed to assess long-term consequences. This vulnerability, together with the emergence of new infectious disease threats, is the one downside I see in an otherwise very positive trajectory for future innovations in medicine, agriculture, and environmental sustainability.
BAS: And in agriculture?
Poste: We will see, and need, ever greater productivity increases in food production and to protect crops against infections and pests. If climate change evolves as projected, then the engineering of crops with greater drought and heat tolerance will also be important. Similarly, the use of synthetic biology to optimize the microorganisms that reside on the root systems of plants will offer an additional pathway to improve yields and to reduce the need for fertilizers, with the accompanying benefit of reducing the agricultural waste run-off problem caused by nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers. Parallel biotechnology-driven advances in animal husbandry will be equally important in meeting global food needs. It is also important to remember that agriculture is one of the largest users of water. New innovations will be needed to ensure the sustainability and quality of global water supplies.
BAS: Technology?
Poste: Automation, miniaturization, and electronic connectivity between more and more devices to create the so-called “Internet of Things” will dominate the coming decades. We already see the start of these trends in our smartphones and other mobile devices, which perform an ever-expanding array of functions. Wearable sensors will be increasingly important in the remote monitoring of our health. But, as we've seen in recent publicity about the role of the National Security Agency in monitoring personal Internet and telephonic linkages, the rise of massive networks of sensor-derived information about individual health and individual and collective human behavior has profound implications for personal privacy and security.
Robotics is another fascinating field that will provide important innovations in diverse industrial sectors and widespread applications in security and defense. One of the most urgent public policy issues will be in managing the impact of robotics in displacement of the current manufacturing workforce. This has serious social-economic and political consequences, all the more so in that those most at risk of displacement are those with the least educational and economic resources. Similarly, the arrival of drones on the battlefield has started the debate about the ethics of automated weapons. We will witness more and more applications of robotic systems in the future calculus of military affairs and an accompanying growth in dual-use dilemmas.
BAS: In terms of innovation, though, the United States isn't the leader anymore. In fact, the 2012 Global Innovation Index puts the nation at number 10. As a leader and innovator yourself, do you think that the United States has lost its edge or competitiveness?
Poste: It's difficult to generalize. The United States is still a remarkably innovative nation. But it no longer enjoys the clear leadership in every field of technology that it once had. In part, this is due to inevitable closing of the competition gap as other countries invest in infrastructure and education. Aspiration is an enormously powerful catalyst for innovation. On the other hand, I think a case can be made that the United States is at risk of losing the boldness and vision that characterized all aspects of US research in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and to become merely content with timid incrementalism. The Cold War, and the perceived existential threat, was a powerful catalyst to drive radical technology innovation funded by federal support of the national laboratories and universities. This enormous investment was harnessed to achieve unmatched US military superiority and, equally important, these investments launched entirely new industries and novel technical capabilities in areas such as semiconductors, telecommunications, computing, aerospace, and biotechnology. We don't have that same sense of an existential threat today, even though most of those who participate in, or interact with, the national security and defense communities are under no illusion that the world is not still an extremely dangerous and volatile place.
BAS: Do you get a sense that American policy makers value innovation?
Poste: I think that there has been a dangerous and progressive decline in the understanding of how innovation occurs by politicians and across government agencies. But this deficiency cannot be attributed solely to legislative shortcomings. Any political decision that is portrayed by the media as posing any form of risk, no matter how small or unlikely, generates a barrage of media commentary ever eager to promote sensationalism, inflame and highlight political divides, and give voice to anti-technology activists. It is therefore easier for politicians to duck difficult issues and focus on uncontroversial, cosmetic short-term salves. The evil twin of Wall Street is equally culpable in this retreat from boldness. The term ‘patient capital’ is at risk of becoming an oxymoron. Success in the financial services sectors is increasingly driven by the need for constant churn in stocks without reference to legitimate changes in corporate valuation, and new computational algorithms are deployed to achieve ever faster trading to leverage short sales and arbitrage for quick bucks without any tangible contribution to productive creation of goods and services or support corporate investment in new capabilities. The worst words any CEO can hear today are “did not meet Wall Street's expectations.” This has a chilling effect on innovation. It has a chilling effect on the willingness to be bold. It forces C-suite executives to retreat to timidity and pursue incremental improvements in current products rather than embark on ambitious, transformative strategies.
BAS: Usually people ask: What keeps you up at night? But I think that we have already answered that question. So, then, the question is: What gets you up in the morning?
Poste: First of all, I do sleep very well. Despite its challenges, America is still unmatched in its capabilities and remains an optimistic nation. I think anyone who is in science and technology also has to be an optimist because you are constantly wrestling with complicated problems with the belief a solution will be found. Every day something happens that makes you say, “That's pretty smart; wow, that's impressive,” whether it be the activities of colleagues in one's immediate environment or in what you read or see others doing. In this context, the reward for a successful career in research transcends optimism. It is a privilege to witness the activities of people around the world who are creative, innovative, and trying to shape a better society. But a better society also demands a robust defense against the nihilism of those who seek to destroy these freedoms; the freedom to aspire, to enquire, to explore, to challenge the status quo. These have been, and remain, essential catalysts in driving innovation. Despite the myriad positive and productive elements of the research endeavor, it is crucial that we remain vigilant about how our current way of life could all too easily be disrupted.
Irrespective of the contour of threats and opportunities that may unfold in the coming years, one thing is clear. History teaches that innovation demands boldness. Boldness demands the courage to challenge the status quo and not accept the claustrophobic embrace of complacency. Wow still matters.
