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Notes -
Alec Baldwin, the Lab Leak, and punishing maximal negligence
Alec Baldwin has been charged with manslaughter. We don’t know the nitty gritty details yet, but let’s consider the following possibility. Baldwin, as someone who funded and produced the movie, was ultimately responsible for choices in hiring. He hired someone insufficiently skilled at risk management on set. In addition to hiring and retaining someone whom a reasonable producer would consider insufficiently skilled, he acted negligently on set through pressure, which led to the death of an employee.
Whatever the actual details, there’s a plausible avenue by which Baldwin has serious moral blame in regards to manslaughter. The details that come out later will obviously dictate whether this occurred, but we can imagine a case in which a producer possesses moral blame for the system of failsafes failing. Importantly, in cases where the risks are high (a gun misfiring), greater care is morally warranted. Our expected duty to exercise care is proportional to the potential of harm.
Following from this example, I assert that we should develop a legal principle to maximally punish anyone involved in catastrophic lab leaks (those resulting in millions to tens of millions of death). [paragraph edited for clarity] We should do this regardless of the material facts of individual responsibility of a lab leak. This is because the risk of leak is of such significance that it belongs to a new category of risk:care ratio concerns. It is the principle of reasonable care and deterrence but amplified to the amount of harm involved. The amount of harm that a Covid leak created (implying that the lab leak theory is true) is more than what inspired the Nuremberg Trials. Playing with genetically modified coronaviruses, specifically enhanced for virulence, constitutes such a threat against the human race that every single person involved should have been made to underwrite their life as a guarantee in case of leak. Not for a lifetime in jail, or capital punishment — the guarantee should have been that the State would use medieval punishment on you for the rest of your life. The scientists who worked and funded and stamped the research should have been so certain that a leak would never happen that they literally stake endless, limitless torture for the rest of their life if it leaked. Only this level of deterrent punishment would befit the level of care required to deal with the potential harm of COVID. I am suggesting a moral principle that would prevent future leaks, applied to future cases, to stave off the risk of leak catastrophe.
If Baldwin, in acting unreasonably in hiring or setting workplace culture, can be responsible for one death, how much more care should scientists who work with virulent viruses exercise? Viruses that will kill 200 million by the end of the century are inconceivably more risky than anything that can happen in normal everyday business life. The risk to care ratio must be maximal because only this level of deterrence is sufficient to encourage a reasonable level of care. The whole point of Law is that foreseeing punishment deters behavior. It’s not just that Baldwin ought to have practiced sufficient care; it’s that everyone in Baldwin’s place should foresee a punishment from failing to exercise sufficient care. Baldwin deserves a punishment in accordance to his level of negligence, and everyone in Baldwin’s position must foresee a similar punishment for similar negligence.
Do you think scientists would still work on virulent chimera viruses if they had to stake endless torture on the possibility that it is leaked? If they wouldn’t, doesn’t this simply prove that research this risky should never be done?
I fully agree. If this work absolutely has to be done, do it somewhere very remote like St. Elba or some similar island. Slap a 3 month quarantine on anything that leaves. Harsh penalties for those who redefine their work so it escapes the broad definitions of what is not allowed. Especially harsh penalties for those who do the most dangerous kind of work - using humanized mice so that their novel viruses is more at home with our biology.
But this work doesn't have to be done. The risk is totally out of balance with the reward. We do not gain much from GoF work. If we create new viruses, do we then create new vaccines for them too? There's a nigh-infinite number of deadly viruses we could create. The root cause is really just bored scientists wanting to do interesting work. Growing and editing viruses is fun, it lets you churn out new papers and demonstrate originality in your research. There needs to be a powerful deterrent to prevent this, preferably a deterrent that encourages defection from within the scientific community. Nobody in Stalin's Russia would dare do 'interesting' political science or economics research, lest they get reported to the NKVD. There needs to be a similar method that lets scientists dob in their comrades to gain status or financial rewards. This would slow research considerably in this field, not at all a bad thing in my mind. Genetic engineering is very dangerous and should be treated with care.
We really are not going to have a pleasant century if we have no concept of institutionalized caution over dangers capable of exponential growth. Biotechnology is only going to get easier. AI is only going to get more powerful. If we don't take these dangers seriously, like we take nuclear weapons, then we will get the fate we deserve.
St. Helena. Elba was the one that wasn't remote enough to prevent a leak of Bonapartism.
Good catch! I get them mixed up.
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