X-Message-Number: 15369
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: "Designer People"
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 12:40:33 -0800

From:

http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2001/0101feat1.html

COVER STORY
Designer People
The Human Genetic Blueprint Has Been Drafted, Offering Both Perils and 
Opportunities for the Environment. The Big Question: Are We Changing the 
Nature of Nature?
By Sally Deneen
Princeton University microbiologist Lee M. Silver can see a day a few 
centuries from now when there are two species of humans--the standard-issue 
"Naturals," and the "Gene-enriched," an elite class whose parents 
consciously bought for them designer genes, and whose parents before them 
did the same, and so on for generations. Want Billy to have superior 
athletic ability? Plunk down the cash. Want Suzy to be exceptionally smart? 
Just pull out the Visa card at your local fertility clinic, where the elite 
likely will go to enhance their babies-to-be.

It will start innocently enough: Birth defects that are caused by a single 
gene, such as cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease, will be targeted first, 
and probably with little controversy. Then, as societal fears about messing 
with Mother Nature subside, Silver and other researchers predict that a 
genetic solution to preventing diabetes, heart disease and other big killers 
will be found and offered. So will genetic inoculations against HIV. 
Eventually, the mind will be targeted for improvement--preventing alcohol 
addiction and mental illness, and enhancing visual acuity or intelligence to 
try to produce the next Vincent Van Gogh or Albert Einstein. Even traits 
from other animals may be added, such as a dog's sense of smell or an 
eagle's eyesight.

What parents would see as a simple, if pricey, way to improve their kids 
would result, after many generations of gene selection, in a profound change 
by the year 2400--humans would be two distinct species, related as humans 
and chimps are today, and just as unable to interbreed. People now have 46 
chromosomes; the gene-enriched would have 48 to accommodate added traits, 
Silver predicts in his aptly titled book, Remaking Eden.

We may already be on the path to change the very nature of nature. If you 
think it's a far-off prospect best left to future generations, think again. 
On June 26, 2000, with much fanfare, scientists with the taxpayer-supported 
Human Genome Project (working with the private Celera Genomics of Rockville, 
Maryland) announced that they had completed a working draft of a genetic 
blueprint for a human being. Many details still need to be filled in before 
scientists can build a human from scratch.

Sequencing the human genome requires identifying 3.2 billion chemical 
"letters" located on the 46 coiled strands of DNA found in nearly every 
human cell. While researchers now know the order in which DNA is arranged on 
the chromosomes, they haven't identified all those chemical "letters," which 
contain the instructions for making the proteins that comprise the human 
body. About half of the genome sequence is in near-finished form or better; 
a quarter is finished. The 15-year project is to be completed in 2005 at a 
budgeted cost of $3 billion, though some of that tax money is spent on other 
genomic research.

While the implications for longevity, health insurance and discrimination of 
this milestone achievement have grabbed media attention, the ramifications 
for the environment--good and bad--haven't.

An Accelerating Timetable

How soon will all this happen? Silver believes that by around 2010 parents 
will be able to genetically ensure their babies won't grow up to be fat or 
alcoholic, and by 2050 arrange to insert an extra gene into single-cell 
embryos within 24 hours of conception to make babies resistant to AIDS. It 
is already possible to insert foreign DNA into mice, pigs and sheep. The 
obstacles to inserting them in humans are mainly technical ones. At this 
point in human knowledge, it could lead to mutations. Several techniques are 
under development to try to avoid that, however.

"For the near and midterm future, we're looking at science fiction. You'd 
have to be terminally reckless to do that type of human engineering on 
people [with what we know now]," argues law professor Henry T. Greely, 
co-director of the Program in Genomics, Ethics and Society at the Stanford 
University Center for Biomedical Ethics.

To change a baby's eye color or hair color within a fertilized human egg 
"would be a very expensive and dangerous proposition for such trivial 
purposes," says Dr. Marvin Frazier, who fields human genome questions as 
director of the Life Sciences Division of the U.S. Department of Energy's 
Office of Biological and Environmental Research. "It is also my opinion that 
this would be wrong," he added, "but that will not stop some people from 
wanting to try."

As for manipulating intelligence or athletic ability, Frazier says it will 
take scientists many decades to figure out how to do it. These particular 
traits don't rely on one gene, but on all genes. They also rely "to a 
significant degree" on nurture instead of nature. Even when scientists 
figure it out, "It is likely that to achieve the desired goals would require 
a lot of experimentation, which translates into many hundred or thousands of 
mistakes before you get it right." That means, Frazier says, "a lot of 
malformed babies and miscarriages."

A Pivotal Moment

To University of Washington professor Phil Bereano, among others, now is the 
time for all of us to talk with friends and colleagues to hash out the 
ethical and societal implications of this Brave New World. Do we really want 
to commodify people? Could it be a Pandora's box? Unfortunately, the box may 
already be open: Many nations have banned genetic engineering on humans, but 
the United States has not.

"If scientists don't play God, who will?" said supporter James Watson, 
former head of the Human Genome Project, speaking before the British 
Parliamentary and Scientific Committee in June.
"The key question is not whether human [genetic] manipulation will occur, 
but how and when it will," says a confident Gregory Stock, director of 
UCLA's Program on Science, Technology and Society in a report entitled, "The 
Prospects for Human Germline Engineering."

Meanwhile, a long-anticipated September report by the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) surprised some observers by failing to 
call for a ban on making inheritable genetic changes in humans--that is, 
genetic changes that would be carried on by progeny. Indeed, while the 
report says that such research "cannot presently be carried out safely and 
responsibly on human beings," it also leaves wiggle room. "Human trials of 
inheritable genetic changes should not be initiated until reliable 
techniques for gene correction or replacement are developed that meet 
agreed-upon standards for safety and efficacy," says report co-author Mark 
Frankel, director of AAAS' Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law 
Program.



Noting the public outcry after the cloning of Dolly the sheep--which raised 
the possibility of cloned human beings--the report stresses the importance 
of public discussion about genetic research before major technical 
innovations occur. So instead of a ban, the report suggests "rigorous 
analysis and public dialogue."

But there's no shortage of opposition to human engineering. The San 
Francisco-based Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies 
seeks, among other things, to alert a largely unwitting public to what is 
going on. "It really is a nightmare vision," says Rich Hayes, who 
coordinates the campaign from his Public Media Center office. "Once we start 
genetically re-engineering human beings, where would we stop? We should have 
the maturity and wisdom to ban the modification of the genes we pass to our 
children."

Designer Genes

The futuristic notion of choosing a child's genes from a catalog can 
certainly capture the imagination. Just as parents today enroll their 
children in the best possible schools and pay for orthodontics, the parents 
of the future--perhaps in a few decades--would be able to choose from an 
ever-increasing suite of traits: hair color, eye color, bigger muscles and 
so on.

Maybe they'd like to add a few inches to a child's height. Or improve a 
kid's chances at longevity by tweaking inherited DNA. Or ensure a resistance 
to viruses. Neighborhood clinics could, by appointment, insert a block of 
genes into a newly fertilized egg. As one cell broke into two, then four, 
and so on, each cell would contain the new traits. And the child would pass 
on those traits to all subsequent generations. Who could blame parents for 
going for this?

But to Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York 
Medical College in Valhalla, New York, the effect on human biology could be 
analogous to transforming wild areas into artificial areas, or wild food 
into artificial food.

We "might be changing people into products--genetically engineered 
products," says Newman, who also is chairman of the Human Genetics Committee 
for the Council for Responsible Genetics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
"That's something that's opened up by the Humane Genome Project."

"We believe that certain activities in the area of genetics and cloning 
should be prohibited because they violate basic environmental and ethical 
principles," Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder and Physicians 
for Social Responsibility Executive Director Robert Musil said in a 1999 
joint statement. "The idea of redesigning human beings and animals to suit 
the primarily commercial goals of a limited number of individuals is 
fundamentally at odds with the principle of respect for nature."

Proponents and critics alike envision a future in which those who can't 
afford gene enrichment will be relegated to second-class citizenship. "As 
far as I'm concerned, this thrill we have about the future will end up being 
one big elitist ripple," says Beth Burrows, director of the Edmonds 
Institute, a suburban Seattle nonprofit institute that works on issues 
related to environment, technology, ethics and law.

The Green Dimension

And what about the environment? Burrows says several important questions 
arise about genetic tampering: What are we creating? How will it affect the 
natural world? What will be the effect on evolution for each species 
involved? How will it change feeding patterns, or food for other animals? 
Without understanding interactions, she says, "We may do some extremely 
stupid things. If people are concerned that there was such a severe backlash 
against genetically modified foods, I think they haven't seen anything 
compared to the backlash when we are able to alter the human genome in 
significant ways--even insignificant ways," says Burrows.

UCLA's Gregory Stock agrees the impact of human genetic modification is 
profound, but he likes it. "This technology will force us to re-examine even 
the very notion of what it means to be human," he wrote in a recent report. 
"For as we become subject to the same process of conscious design that has 
so dramatically altered the world around us, we will be unable to avoid 
looking at what distinguishes us from other life, at how our genetics shapes 
us, at how much we are willing to intervene in life's flow from parent to 
child."

Ignacio Chapela of University of California at Berkeley is troubled by still 
other implications the Human Genome Project may bring for the natural 
world--including plants engineered specifically to produce human proteins, 
and pigs produced to have antigens that are more human-like in a quest to 
help humans. To Chapela, a professor in the Department of Environmental 
Science, Policy and Management, the concept, say, of using chimpanzees as 
surrogate mothers for human embryos is "abhorrent--degrading for 
chimpanzees, and for humans, as well. I think what we're talking about is a 
very deep understanding of what it means to be part of an intricate web of 
life, and why we have boundaries between species." To Chapela, proponents 
see the world as a sphere smeared with mix-and-match DNA. "Evolutionarily, 
it makes sense to have boundaries," he says, "and we're just willy-nilly 
breaking them down."

A Brave New World

None of these developments will occur in a vacuum; great advancements in 
robotics are also expected, portending a trend toward the melding of man and 
machine in a quest for greater human longevity--to age 110, 130 and beyond. 
UCLA's Stock dubs this new human/machine "Metaman," a "global 
superorganism." If it seems like mere musings stolen from a science-fiction 
film, consider this bit of reality: In March, Berkeley researchers announced 
that they had invented the first "bionic chip"--part living tissue, part 
machine. Eventually, such chips and circuitry could help in the development 
of body implants for treating genetic diseases such as diabetes.

"It's a key discovery because it's the first step to building complex 
circuitry that incorporates the living cell," mechanical engineering 
professor Boris Rubinsky, who created the device with a graduate student, 
said afterward. "The first electronic diode made it possible to have the 
computer. Who knows what the first biological diode will make possible?"

UCLA's Stock isn't concerned about the effects of human genetic engineering 
on nature. "Even if half the world's species were lost, enormous diversity 
would still remain," he argues in his 1993 book, Metaman: The Merging of 
Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism. "We best serve ourselves, 
as well as future generations, by focusing on the short-term consequences of 
our actions rather than our vague notions about the needs of the distant 
future If medical science develops an easy cure for cancer, [nuclear] wastes 
may not be viewed as a significant health hazard after all. If robots can be 
employed to safely concentrate and reprocess the radioactive materials, they 
might even be valuable."



Not so fast, says another architect of the modern world, Bill Joy, the 
father of Java software and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Joy posits with 
some feeling of guilt that "our most powerful 21st-century technologies are 
threatening to make humans an endangered species." In a celebrated article 
in Wired magazine last year, Joy blamed the possible extinction of humans on 
a few key causes, including genetic engineering and robotics. Artificial 
intelligence should match that of humans within 20 or 30 years.

To combat the perceived inevitability of this Brave New World, Marcy 
Darnovsky, a Sonoma State University instructor who works with the 
Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies, calls for 
three things: First, a global ban on inheritable genetic engineering on 
humans; second, a global ban on human reproductive cloning; and third, an 
effective and accountable regulation of other human genetic technologies.

Burrows says we need to be pondering such weighty questions as: Do we really 
want to merge with machines? "There are tremendous--awful--choices to be 
made," she says. "It's very risky to have these discussions because they're 
about common values. The subject is difficult, painful and easily avoided. 
But we have to stop focusing on the science and think of ourselves as part 
of an ecosystem."

Chapela is also worried about the lack of civic discourse. But the advocates 
are talking, particularly among themselves. At a Berkeley conference, one of 
them, Extropy Institute President Max More, stood before the crowd and read 
an open letter to Mother Nature:

Sorry to disturb you, but we humans--your offspring--come to you with some 
things to say:

You have raised us from simple self-replicating chemicals to trillion-celled 
mammals;

What you have made us is glorious, yet deeply flawed;

We will no longer tolerate the tyranny of aging and death. Through genetic 
alterations, cellular manipulations, synthetic organs, and any necessary 
means, we will endow ourselves with enduring vitality and remove our 
expiration date."

Other proponents are more sober, and include Nobel laureate scientists. 
"This is no 'marginal' movement or way of thinking," Chapela says. "The 
group advocating human re-engineering includes extremely powerful, 
influential and wealthy people. So don't expect them to roll over easily or 
soon."

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15369