Do any of you shop by catalog or the Internet? It is really wonderful! Without even leaving your home you can buy just about anything. Some Internet stores even allow you to design your product, picking the color, style, specific features all to make the item tailored to your exact taste and needs. You want a shirt? OK. How long should the sleeves be, what collar shape do you like, what fabric, buttons, size and cut? Once you have decided, the order goes to the manufacturer and your shirt is made, just for you. You get the exact combination of features that please you in a way that ready made, off the shelf shopping just can't match. What a concept! Of course, isn't that what the free market is all about – giving the consumer what he wants? There seems no limit to the ingenuity used in the never-ending quest to provide the consuming public with more innovative products.
Under the circumstances, none of us should have been so surprised at James Watson's dream. Watson made his mark as a very young scientist at Cambridge University in 1953. He and Francis Crick identified the molecule DNA, the building block of our genes. Not since the mid 1800s when Austrian monk Gregor Mendel first described the rules of inheritance by using pea plants from his monastery garden had there been such a significant and groundbreaking discovery in the area of genetics. So many things that we take for granted, such as prenatal amniocentesis to find birth defects, forensic DNA fingerprinting, genetic engineered medicines, foods and chemicals, are all fruit of Watson and Crick's seminal work.
So what is the granddaddy of geneticists's dream? Now that the entire human DNA genetic code has been mapped out, Watson envisions creating the perfect, ideal person. In a recent address to the Gairdner Foundation in Toronto he outlined the exciting future for human perfection that genetics can now offer us through "genetic enhancements". He dreams of the day when parents, or even just a woman alone, can select which genes to add to her future child's DNA. Want a smart kid? Want 6 inches extra in height? Why hold back, make that 10 inches! Want a virtuoso pianist, a mathematical genius, a pro tennis player, a stunning beauty? Just order up the right genes. Want to get rid of all those pesky smokers, just add the non-smoking gene. How about those politically correct attitudes, like altruism, compassion, environmentalism and non-discrimination? Shouldn't all the new people have a double dose of those? Wouldn't it be nice to get rid of all those handicapped parking places? OK, no more handicapped people. Make-a-kid or Kids-R-us web site catalogs are sure to come up with a vast array of "enhancements" to choose from. Make a shirt; make a kid – what's the difference? Sound great? Watson thinks so and he is not alone.
It all sounds very frightening to me and I am sure I am not alone. Watson has fears too but his biggest fear is that society will let their petty concerns stop them from forging ahead with this technology to make people perfect. I suppose I should look on the bright side. This approach is certainly better than how it has been attempted in the past – killing those who didn't make the grade. We already use genetics to prevent those with defective genetic material and identifiable diseases from being born. Now we can take the next step and design people with the right features. No more Hitlers, no more Stalins, no more Mansons! How about child with the syphilitic, tubercular deafness inheritance? Out he goes! Ooops, that was Beethoven. Or that child who will become insane? Out he goes! Too bad Van Gogh. Imagine the advice that the genetic engineer would have given Mr. and Mrs. Hawking? Sorry Stephen. Maybe they would have been given the option of having a Stephen that did not have Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis but still have his genius. In fact, just for good measure, they could have added in a little more and maybe even have him play the clarinet or like brussels sprouts. Would this still have been Stephen or some other person?
This perverse idea assumes that we can be segregated into different features that are independent of each other and interchangeable. It is based on the false idea that our mind, character, emotions, and physical function and qualities are not interconnected, intertwined and interdependent. We are an ecosystem and each part of us is connected to and affects all others. Watching a butterfly flit around in a forest is not the same as seeing it in a box at the museum. Maybe Beethoven's talent was connected to his tubercular inheritance. Maybe it is not possible to produce Starry Night and the Sunflowers without the periodic episodes of insanity that plagued Van Gogh. How are we to judge? Who are we to judge?
Most everyone would ask the obvious question – what is a perfect person anyway? Who would decide? Do we really want the same society that has vilified, ostracized and condemned those individuals who make unpopular personal choices, such as smoking or eating fatty foods, to have the power to genetically design people to their liking? "For the good of society" has been the clarion call behind too much horrifying abuse already, even without such a powerful tool at anyone's disposal.
If ethical arguments land on deaf ears, as they do in many scientific circles, and if the political arguments for individualism and freedom fail to move, as they do with many social planners, maybe self-interest will serve to wake us up. With the power to design a human, it is unlikely that any parent would choose anything but the top of the line in qualities. Do we really want a monoculture of statuesque, square-jawed, perfectly formed, multi-talented geniuses with all the right attitudes and opinions, who never spend a day home from work with a fever? What if in the design, one little known gene is left in the mix, and later is found to be the weakness for a terrible disease. After all, we can't know everything about what each of the millions of genes do. Recall what happened to the potato monoculture in Ireland in the mid 1800s.
Biologically and evolutionarily speaking, monoculture is a bad thing. Think about how far the amoeba has gotten – not many Hall of Famers or great artists from that crowd. Sexual reproduction, as opposed to simple cell division, is responsible for the enormous advance in species development. It allows for the recombining of genes, mutations and genetic experiments of new styles of organisms. New genes representing new and adaptive ideas for attributes could then be tested in the great laboratory of Nature to see what worked and what didn't, thereby slowly advancing different species. It is in that rough and tumble world of diversity and random chance of genetics and mutation that all our qualities have come about. Do we really feel we know enough to stick our finger in that pie?
For those who think we do know enough, consider thalassemia, a debilitating and deadly genetic blood disorder that affects many Africans and their descendents when the gene is inherited from both mother and father. How many would disagree with removing the recessive gene for thalassemia? Wouldn't that be a great boost to humanity? It might seem so – at first. Although having the two recessive genes produces the disease, having only one gene for thalassemia and the other gene normal only makes the person a carrier without manifestations of the disease. Carriers have an inordinate resistance to malaria, which is quite a useful thing in Africa. Undaunted, the scientists might argue that they could take out the thalassemia gene and put in a gene to make the person resistant to malaria, thereby having the best of both. I suppose that would work, yet that misses the point. This is just a simple example hinting at the connections between genes and their functions, the trade offs and unexpected consequences of gene interactions. What other interconnections are there that are not so obvious? What will we unwittingly be sacrificing when we replace something we don't want with something we do want? Much of the DNA is occupied with genes whose only function is to regulate, activate or inhibit other genes, and there are genes that regulate those. Go ahead and put in a gene for height, but don't forget to tag all those hundreds of regulator genes whose activity contributes to the final product. Now we don't even know what 90% of all the DNA material is used for, so how can we think we know enough to alter any of the rest? As we learn more about the complexities, interactions and inner workings of our DNA, we may then be able to take wiser action, which may include the realization that it is better to leave it alone.
Being human is more than just walking around in a disease free, perfect body, having a personality free of annoying habits and idiosyncrasies with the ability to resist all temptations while living a perfect life. In fact, not having those things is what makes being human the interesting, varied, spontaneous and endlessly fascinating experience it is. Thinking we can outdo God and Nature and be perfect also seems to be a part of being human. Do we really think that this time it is going to work? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it best in the words of his near perfect character, Sherlock Holmes, "When man attempts to rise above Nature, he usually falls below it." How far will the fall be this time?
November 9, 2002
Linda Johnston, MD, DHt, (send her mail), a graduate of the University of Washington School of Medicine and certified in Homeopathy by the American Board of Homeotherapeutics, is in private practice in Los Angeles. She is the author of Everyday Miracles: Homeopathy in Action.
