Frankenstein Time

Despite the soothing caveats about ethical standards, staving off discrimination and privacy issues, the completion of the so-called human map offers benefits and nightmares in almost equal proportions. Once unleashed, powerful technologies are tough to contain or control. There was lots of megahype chatter about curing cancer, heart disease and aging, but this is now officially Frankenstein time, the era of the "perfect baby" and human quality control. Unfortunately for the world, it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

Responding to the announcement that the Human Genome Project was complete, President Clinton gushed that "Today we are learning the language in which God created life."

Maybe. Or maybe we are just trying to steal his job.

When last seen, almost two hundred years ago, Dr. Frankenstein's monster was heading off into the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. If he's still around, he ought to come back. It's safe now. This is Frankenstein time.

It's hard to imagine many societies more arrogant, thoughtless or poorly equipped to deal with the fascinating, even miraculous Human Genome Project that the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. Although researchers from all over the world worked on the map, the United States is expected to be the dominant force in the project. Politicians and exultant scientists were quick to sound caveats and talk about the need for safeguards and ethical standards, but the fact is there aren't any. And the recent history both of corporatism and technology suggests there won't be any. Powerful technologies unleashed are never easily controlled. What people can do, they will do.

The project itself was announced Monday like an NFL playoff game -- the U.S. might not have thought much about the evolution of genetic research, but it sure loves a high-stakes contest. Headlines all over the country announced that a cure for cancer, heart disease, aging, depression and aging may well be imminent.

There were the crackpot critics spouting obligatory warnings and alarms, but they were given short shrift amidst all of the gee-whiz hype shrouding the announced that scientists from the non-profit HGP and researchers from Celera, a for-profit genetics company agreed to work together on producing the world's first genetic map.

The U.S., the world capital of technological hubris and arrogance as well as the center of global technological development, may be the most unfortunate repository for so much of this research. The U.S. is also the home of many of the corporations that will attempt to profit from it. In the Corporate Republic, every new bit of science and technology goes into mass-marketing, hype, and product development. That's where the human genetic map is heading, for all this week's chatter about dramatically improving the human condition.

There is absolutely no doubt that great benefit will come from the gene map, or that many of its creators have the best intentions. But there are also grim dangers. Unthinking technology is always dangerous technology, and few great scientific projects have ever been rushed to completion with as little public consideration as this one.

No presidential candidate has ever made technology a serious campaign issue, unless it's to warn about sex online or to urge the distribution of V-chips and blocking software to protect children from techno-driven culture. Only a handful of educational institutions in America teach technology well, or even at all, concentrating mostly on keeping kids away from dirty pictures online. Discussions surrounding the ethics of technology are unheard of outside very few academic circles. Only a handful of Americans even know what the genome project is, let alone what it might unleash. Online, 15-year-olds who master Linux boxes think they understand technology itself, and it's curious, often erratic and ominous history. In America, the best minds in the country are holed up in California think tanks dreaming up wireless phones and hand-held computers that access sports scores 24/7 so that fans won't have to bother to turn on the car radio for results or wait two minutes for their e-mail or stock prices.

Fertility drugs are a perfect metaphor for -- and a warning to the world -- of America's insane approach to complicated issues like this one. Critics are quickly dismissed as Luddites or simpletons. In the U.S., couples are applauded for bringing six, seven, even eight children into the world at once even though medical experts warn that such children face grave physical risks and emotional problems. President Clinton, who called the genome map the "most wondrous map ever produced by humankind" was also one of the first people to call up the parents of Iowa's McCaughey septuplets and congratulate them on bringing seven kids into the world, even though the parents admitted they couldn't afford or care for the children they'd given birth to, and whose lives, said doctors, had been put at extreme risk. Dozens of companies plied the family with gifts and money.

The Genome Project goes far beyond anything fertility doctors have tried to accomplish. The map promises to alter and control the nature of life itself, and hardly any Americans grasp what it might do, how it might work, or what kind of changes might be brought about by its use and misuse. The gene project also has mind-boggling financial and other commercial implications.

If it does, in fact, cure cancer and other diseases (it already has helped identify and treat some afflictions), a promise bio-tech and other medical research have been making for years, might it also eliminate other problems and diseases that aren't clear -cut or horrendous, such as depression and some forms of retardation?

Genetic research, warns medical ethicist Leon Kass, will inevitably lead to syndromes like "the perfect baby." The perfect baby, he warns, is the project not of infertility doctors, but of eugenic and genetic scientists. "For them, the paramount right is not the so-called right to reproduce but what biologist Bentley Glass called, a quarter of a century ago, "the right of every child to be born with a sound physical and mental constitution, based on a sound genotype.." To secure that right and achieve the requisite quality control over new human life, human conception and gestation will need to be brought fully into the bright light of laboratory, beneath which the child-to-be can be fertilized, nourished, pruned, weeded, watched, inspected, prodded, pinched, cajoled, injected, tested, rated, graded, approved, stamped, wrapped, sealed and delivered. There is no other way to create the perfect baby."

This scenario has been raised by visionaries like Arthur C. Clarke -- who reminds us that today's cure is sometimes tomorrow's disease -- and in prescient movies like "Gattaca," which foresee the unpredictable consquences of rushing to shape natural life, and the almost sure discrimination that comes from the inevitable use of gene characteristics to identify "healthy" and "unhealthy" characteristics, usually defined by medical and scientific elites and by their employers, profit-making corporations who invariably co-opt science and scientists.

Quality control is the perfect term for some aspects of genetic research. As of this week, quality control is truly possible for humans. Parents invevitably, even understandably, will seek perfect children.

On the national political or civic level, outside of rarified technological or academic elites, we haven't even even begun to discuss the social, cultural and ethical consequences of eliminating certain diseases, traits, addictions and affictions. The most coverage the Humane Genome Project has received in the media was the announcement that it was done, followed by the inevitable mega-hype.

In a nation that has already surrendered many privacy rights to invasive new software technologies, it's reasonable to assume that the genetic characteristics of most citizens won't stay a secret for long once they're screened. As a society, we may soon be able to get rid of obnoxious, anger and dissent along with cancer and heart disease.

Individualism and "wierdness" could show up in the new human map, along with tendencies towards anger, dissent, and bad skin.

Along with innumerable medical benefits the genetic map may also create staggering social divisions between people who can afford to use it to manipulate the birth and process -- the child-obsessed, highly competitive Boomers come to mind -- and the vast majority of the world who won't have access to it for years, if ever.

In the U.S., parents spent small fortunes on tutoring and other programs that get their kids into elite schools. What might they do to get their hands on the doctor who has access to the genetic map of the "perfect" kid? Parents with resources will inevitably seek to breed children who conform to particular notions of beauty, intelligence and desirability.

From the perspective of the rest of the planet, it's hard to see why the United States would use this profound new technology wisely and equitably when anyone who picks up any Ivy League school newspaper can find ads offering tens of thousands of dollars for the eggs of brainy blonde preppies.

Much of this genetic information and bio-technology will fall into the hands of new corporatist genetic conglomerates, who already promote conformity and homogeneity and who already wage war against individualism and diversity of expression. Just imagine what will they do with the Human Genome Project, which now gives them the tools to market health, happiness and longevity. What parts of the map will they sell, and to who, and for how much? Who will get access to these research and who won't? And more importantly, how can this information be unleashed in a society which hasn't even seriously considered these issues?

Frankenstein was right when he told his doctor-creator that it was a sin to create things one doesn't take any responsibility for. He was right then, and he's right now, and a lot more timely. The hubris described in Mary Shelley's brilliant novel published in 1818 is a hallmark characteristic of 21st century America.

For all that this research is being hailed as the greatest boon to mankind, it could just as easily become humanity's greatest nightmare. "How dare you sport thus with life?" asks Frankenstein of his creator, who loved technology but was impatient when it came to thinking much about how he was going to use it. The monster never got an answer. Now we're all waiting.

Comments

It occurs to me...

[Phroggy]

...that genetic engineering will be yet another reason for teenagers to hate their parents.

"Agh! My [feature] is too [adjective], cuz you guys messed with my genes! I hate you!"

--

Re:Evolution

[Eric Green]

The problem is that assisted evolution of this sort generally does not increase the robustness, diversity, and long-term survival capability of a species. What you tend to get, rather, are artificial cosmetic "enhancements". Look at the peacock's tail feathers, for example. These have negative survival potential -- the bigger and more brilliant the tail feathers, the more easily the peacock is seen by predators, and the more difficulty the cock has avoiding said predators (because the bigger tail feathers are heavy and cumbersome). Yet sexual selection amongst peacocks favors the males with the biggest tail feathers. The only reason peacocks managed to survive at all was because they faced no significant environmental pressures. Toss in a few dogs, and voila, talk about swiftly approaching extinction!

I suspect artificial genetic selection amongst Americans would favor blue eyes and blond hair. This, however, is also associated with the greatest risk for skin cancer. Blue eyes and blond hair have negative survival coefficient in today's world of Vitamin D supplemented milk, skimpy swim suits, and overall increased UV exposure due to declining ozone layer. Yet I bet you that of the babies who are "genetically enhanced", the majority will end up with blue eyes and blond hair.

-E

Here's the right way:

[gavinhall]

Posted by 11223:

Ok, since nobody seems to understand what this announcement is actually about, here's what it says:

We've managed to successfully disassemble Microsoft Windows. We now have the assembly that makes up the whole of Microsoft Windows in our hands. (Parts of it are missing, and other parts are junk assembly, like the parts that used to control DOS devices but are now almost dormant except for causing the occasional bug).

What can we do with this? Well, we might eventually be able to make Windows into a stable operating system, or even clone Windows from it. Except there's one problem - we don't know enough about the instruction set for the processor it was written for. See, we've been dealing with Z80 assembler all this time and are still having trouble understanding the modern Pentium (I*). So it'll take a while before we can do anything with it.

Translation table: assembler - genome, Windows - human, Z80 - fruit fly, Pentium (I*) - Human genetic process/protiens.

Re:s/human genome project/nuclear energy/g

[Jon Peterson]

Hmmmm. I agree wholeheartedly with Jon on this, and I have not taken the luddite position on any other technologies to date.

The problem is two fold:

1. Genetics involves systems orders of magnitude more complex than the systems involved in nuclear power, space flight or anything else.

2. The problems are not technical ("We're fucked if this power station melts down") but social ("We don't the ability to do this because we will abuse it").

People are greedy. There is good evidence to support the notion that people will knowingly do immense and certain long-term harm to themselves and others in return for fairly slight short term gain. See drug addiction. See smoking. See cheating on you wife with that student. See buying a new dress when you know you can't afford it.

So, we can be fairly sure that if you give someone the ability to have children who are genetically modified to be good at sports, everyone will want to have children like that. No one is too worried about the process going wrong and producing wierd freak psycho killer mutants. Everyone is worried about the process going bang to plan and producing loads of children genetically modified to be good at sport.

It scares the shit out me, anyway.

Now, there are areas where people worry about tech disaster - in particular GM food, where some people think we'll cause some kind of genetic melt down. I tend to agree that there is an element of the doomsayer situation you mention above. However, I also say that we know even less about what we are doing with the genetics that we do with the nuclear power.

However, the real area of concern is not this tech disaster area. It's the social area. This is not a tech problem, it's a social one - but until now it's merely been a hypothetical social problem of interest to philosophers and sci fi writers. But most of all, it's been of interest to almost no-one, and no-one has been thinking about it hard enough. And here we are in a position to start acting on it.

I'm scared, so should you be.

Yesterday, they patented Bismati rice. Idle fuckers.

Re:thoughts on Katz, Eugenics, and such

[Otter]

This was a notch above recent Katz posts. Again, I wish Jon would turn his considerable talents towards the introduction of original thought, however, rather than simply lacing the obvious with witticisms and passing it off as news.

I agree with both ends of that. I have Katz turned off in my prefernces, but when a labmate told me he had written a genome piece, I felt compelled to read it and provide some informed feedback on his thoughts on sexbots or whatever.

My first reaction was surprise that there was nothing obviously stupid on anything he wrote. The second was that there is no real insight or thought, either. He obviously has some preconceived notions (Frankenstein, eugenics, privacy, corporations) and spun it out for a few pages.

Some more comments:

• When Katz writes, "Politicians and exultant scientists were quick to sound caveats and talk about the need for safeguards and ethical standards, but the fact is there aren't any." what he really means is "I'm going to write a warning about the potential misuse of genetics. I don't know if anyone else has thought of any such concerns and I'm not going to do any research to find out, so I'll just write that no one cares." The fact is that Human Genome Project has had an Ethical, Legal and Social Implications division since almost the beginning. (It's only a huge link at the top of the HGP site!) I can tell you, as a genome center scientist, that nothing happens without consideration of ethical issues.
• When recombinant DNA technology was first developed, scientists declared a voluntary moratorium on it until safety procedures had been fully discussed and established. Molecular biology has a unique place in science for displaying that level of caution.
• Despite the hype, there's nothing fundamentally new today that wasn't an issue years ago -- it's just more complete. As usual, it seems clear that Katz doesn't really begin to understand the technology he's insisting is going to bring us to paradise or destruction.
• It took me a while to figure out why the USA topic was used here before coming to lines like "The U.S., the world capital of technological hubris and arrogance.." It's funny -- there's the stereotype that Americans assume that anything here is automatically superior to everyplace else. There are Americans like that, but there are also Americans who assume that the US necessarily outdoes everyplace else in all negatives, that sexism, racism, pollution, greed here are all the worst in the world. What's funny is that both those mindsets come out of the same parochialism and ignorance.

Re:genuine questions

[Otter]

Katz said there are no guidelines or rules on the books. Are there actual rules and guidlines within the project dealing with the issues we are concerned about, or just the questions raised?

Well, first I want to make it clear that I'm not saying, "There's nothing to worry about. Go back to Ally McBeal." There are major concerns that need to be addressed philosophically and legally. My objection is to Jon Katz's assertions that no one is taking these concerns seriously except him and a handful of others. Essentially, he's pushing the stereotype of the scientist as a soulless mercenary nerd with no thought to the consequences of his research. It's particularly galling coming from The Protector Of The Geeks, and particularly galling to see it applied to my friends and coworkers who have just busted their asses for two years to get the genome data into the hands of the public and out of the grasp of Celera.

Anyway, here are the issues I know of:

• Environmental safety - The use of genetically modified organisms and DNA has been regulated since 1973, IIRC. There's a huge looseleaf on my bookshelf with the NIH guidelines. In retrospect, these have turned out to be overly strict by far, but were sensible when they were established. Of course, there's a huge debate about new legislation, especially for agricultural products. I think most of the anti-GMO views are outrageous FUD (and I'm a long-time Sierra Club member) but it's good that people are watching.
• Patents - A favorite Slashdot concern. The situation is a lot less dire than most /. posters think (no, no one will charge you a license to have green eyes) but it definitely needs to be cleared up.
• Privacy/Insurance issues - These are biggies. There is plenty of legislation on these matters already and established activists and lobbies to push new legislation. It's also the major focus of HGP ethical discussion. Remember, though, that there's nothing new here. If all knowledge of DNA evaporated today, we'd still have these same issues.
• Gene therapy and modification - Now we're in Frankenstein territory. It's true that there isn't a huge amount of regulation here (there are federal anti-cloning laws that are relevant). Fortunately we're at least a few years away from it being a practical issue. There are NIH guidelines, a tremendous amount of debate and lengthy reviews for any gene therapy proposals. My impression is that among the policy setters there is an absolute belief that germ-line modification (changing the DNA of sperm or eggs; not just body cells) is entirely unacceptable. I personally don't agree. I don't see why if a particular amino acid is invariant from yeast to 99.999% of humans, it's so out of line to change it for good. But at least that indicates how far off Katz's spectre of real-life Dr. Frinks is.
• 
  
  Seriously, what would/could stop(besides cost & complexity) the next generation of spammers from releasing a gene changing virus (or nanites for that matter) that change your DNA
  
  I've got to think that's illegal under existing US law.
  
  Man, 748 comments so far! No wonder Slashdot keeps running his rants!

The Horror!

[Uruk]

This piece is mostly useless fear mongering IMSNHO.

The human genome project will be handled most likely like any other huge and potentially dangerous human advance. People will first misuse it, they will get burned very badly, and then they will learn how to control it and how to use it in such a way as to benefit them and not burn them.

Think about nuclear weapons, which are much more immediately destructive. At first, nobody really know the extent of their power, and we had to nuke somebody to find out. Nowadays, we're using those advances for nuclear power and nuclear science, and getting by with the advantages and refraining from destroying ourselves. We have for the most part reached a reasonably stable state with nuclear power, EXCLUDING the possibility of crackpot governments nuking everybody back to the stone age.

Same thing with genetic science that may or may not come out of this accomplishment. First we'll fuck up and curse ourselves, then we'll learn, and it will become beneficial. But during the process, Jon Katz will have plenty of material to worry about and tell us about how the world is going down the shitter. (Monsanto branching out into the area of genetically engineering evil corporation's perfect workers, etc.)

remember that when there is a tech advance, (just like computers and the internet) it's not just the "Dr. Evil"'s that get it. So do we. So stop worrying, be careful, and get out there and kick some ass.

HGP - The Tool For The Human Race To Prove Itself.

[Seumas]

God, I can't believe I'm about to sink to the "let's nit-pick Jon Katz" level, but I'm tired and cranky this morning, so . . .

It's hard to imagine many societies more arrogant, thoughtless or poorly equipped to deal with the fascinating, even miraculous Human Genome Project that the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. Is it really that hard to imagine a society less equipped and more dangerous than America to deal with the HGP? Have you heard of a little place called Iraq? How about Iran? North Vietnam? How about, with their horrible record for human rights, China?

Headlines all over the country announced that a cure for cancer, heart disease, aging, depression and aging may well be imminent.

I see . . . So what you're broaching is the view that "We'll start changing people so they aren't different anymore. Geeks won't be geeks anymore (and that means no more stories benefiting off of to oppressed masses of brainy outcasts! oh no!). Not only that, but those individualistic types will no longer have cancer or heart disease -- just another attempt to normalize everyone into a single massive stereotypical American! Egads!"

In the Corporate Republic, every new bit of science and technology goes into mass-marketing, hype, and product development.

Yes. This is called "capitalism". Not always a bad thing; sometimes a very terrible thing. Nevertheless, capitalism provides the fuel for these projects to be undertaken. The shear manpower and resources for this project would not ever be available unless those directly involved were to somehow benifit. Certainly, no scientist involved would have offered his or work wholly pro-bono! It would be nice, albeit impossibly Utopian, if some government agency or big corporation, out of the goodness of their heart, offered to setup and maintain a massive storage database of data from the HGP, free to all who wished to use it, but someone has to be responsible for providing services. As long as there is some public consensus and watchdog association formed to watch over these commercial entities and their use of the HGP information, then things should work out well. Let the HGP information be widely and cheaply available (sort of like putting freeware on a CD and charging a minimal cost so that you don't go broke paying for the media on which the software is provided) and let people and companies, within reason, do with that data as they wish.

might it also eliminate other problems and diseases that aren't clear -cut or horrendous, such as depression and some forms of retardation?

What the...? What isn't clear-cut about depression and retardation? These aren't things people look forward to their children having. Nobody says "Gee, I want to have a daughter who suffers from life-long clinical depression and cuts on her forearms with razor-blades, gets involved in abusive relationships to satisfy some masochistic thirst and get hooked on prescription pills!". Likewise, nobody ever hopes that their child will be born with mental retardation. 'Retardation' is not at all an uncertain word. It has a very clearly understood negative connotation. You certainly wouldn't (shouldn't) terminate a pregnancy because of retardation, but what if you had the means to prevent that from occuring and you could bring your child into the world healthy?

There is no connection between bringing physically "perfect" people and mentally "enhanced" people into the world through means of genetic alteration -- and bringing someone into this world who doesn't have heart-disease, cancer, retardation, clinical-depression or even psychopathic tendencies (although the last one may be stickier when you really think about it, in depth).

Anyway, the point being that there are alterations in genetics which are very certainly just to enhance a person -- others are to bring them into the world healthy so that they can have the same right to a life that anyone else should. The limit I see a need to place (if we do need to place any kind of limit on anything?) would be on enhancements to make you stronger, faster, smarter, prettier, more outgoing, than you otherwise would have been. In other words, if you were going to be born with a geekish personality, there should be no alteration before birth that would lead you to, instead, be some popular jock that everyone will fall in love with. However, if you were going to be born with a geekish personality and you were going to have severe asthma, chronic-depression, alchoholism, and (perhaps because your mother smoked, drank or did some narcotic during pregnancy) a major deformation, such as no right arm -- I think it should be an absolute right, if not moral obligation, to provide you the "medical attention" pre-birth (or even pre-conception?) to alleviate these things.

I know, some of what I'm saying sounds a little freakish and too much like social-engineering. I'm not sure that I couldn't or wouldn't change my mind on many related issues, but to me, these seem to be very valid and reasonable suggestions or concerns.

Allowing someone to be brought into the world in sound physical and mental health is unrelated to bringing a "perfect child" into the world. We need to shrug off these seemingly religiously imposed concerns that make us feel as if any change we offer goes directly against nature or 'god'. We have to do what we have to do and if nature or 'god' sees fit to bring a child into this world with major limitations, there is no reason we should not afford the service to remove those unfair limitations. Again, we're talking major things like sight, hearing, walking. A far cry from changing hair color, eye color or voice.

In a nation that has already surrendered many privacy rights to invasive new software technologies

What about a nation that has surrended absolutely all personal traits and deficiencies to being "Gods whim" or "the way nature intended it"? I say fuck nature. We have the power and the tools in our grasp to help people. To help the world. Yes, there are risks of exploitation, as there are with everything. But that should be no reason to completely avoid this, like some kind of ethical plague. HGP does have the potential to be the greatest salvation of (and by) mankind. We risk people who will use it to make the perfect blonde-haired, blue-eyed model, but we also have the ability to alter our species to the point where much of the ocean, high altitudes, other planetary atmospheres and such are compeltely tolerable. There is nearly nothing that we will not have the power to do, so long as we have the judgement to prevent the instances of obvious misuse. Nonetheless, it is out there and if someone whether or not it is ever misused or how we control it, it cannot be put back in the back. The mapping exists and will forever be available.

it's reasonable to assume that the genetic characteristics of most citizens won't stay a secret for long once they're screened.

Well, gee, because privacy laws suck and more rights are given to corporations than individual humans, let's just do away with anything that we can not afford to give privacy to? The problem then, isn't the mapping -- it's the privacy. Point the gun at the right target!

As a society, we may soon be able to get rid of obnoxious, anger and dissent along with cancer and heart disease.

Bah. As a society, we've been trying to do this forever. Where has it gotten us? Look at the variety of geeks, jocks, super models and what have you. There's more variety in people and personalities than ever before. Besides, just because we can genetically alter people, don't you think that there has to be some way that nature -- should we screw up too much -- will fight back? Chaos is a funny thing. Genetically weed dissent and anger out of the human being and I bet it reappears, like a fungus between your toes that you can't quite scrub away.

I'm not in favor of the possibilities of wiping out human emotions -- any of them. In fact, but for extreme chronic and deadly depressions, I'm even greatly against any chemical/drug treatment of it. So you can see how I feel elsewise.

On a side note, genetic modification could sometimes be a good thing, Jon. Perhaps a little more tendancy toward 'perfection' would have given you the natural urge to run a spell-check on this article to catch all of the double-words, typos and miswordings (it's Human Genome Project, isn't it? Not Humane Genome Project?). I thought you were a professional writer?!

I agree with much of what you've stated here. There are great risks and dangers and potentials for exploitation of this information. This is not a limitation of science, the information itself or of right and wrong -- or even of nature or religion. Any harmful or, likewise benificial, results of how the HGP data is used will reflect the quality of the human race. If we have a propensity to destroy ourselves, HGP will serve to do that for us. If we have the overwhelming desire to create a "perfect race" that self-destructs, that too will happen. If we have the want to build bio-engineered humans that can go terraform planets, we will. And if we want to rid the world of disease and offer humanity greater chances in life, we will also do that.

Whatever is done, will be a marker of the wisdom and need for humankind. What we do with this will determine what our value is and ever was -- as well as whether or not we deserve, as a whole, a future in this world. It might turn out wonderful or it might become a disaster, but it certainly isn't going to "go away".

And yes, the whole thing makes me as 'uneasy' as it probably makes most people. As cool as this is, there are so many unknowns and areas open to abuse. We'll have to wait and see what happens . . .

(Sorry, like I said, I was in a nit-picking mood. I can't believe I sunk so low as to be so critical to Katz... Hell, I usually like the guy and think everyone else is being a perpetual dick to him... Oh well. I'm a bad, bad boy... Maybe I need some genetic alteration...)
---
seumas.com

Oh no.

[Signal 11]

Oh no, we've created a monster - a self-referential loop.

Malda: Hemos, bring me the brains!
Hemos: Yeees maaaster.
Malda: *squish* Gosh, there wasn't that much there, you sure you got the right brain?
Hemos: Yeah, bird brains.. right?
Malda: Fool! We'll use it anyway, though.
* Malda casts feign life.
Katz: *groan*
Malda: It's alive! IT'S ALLLIIIVVVEEE!
Katz: .. socio-economic effects by the post-columbine third-wave era in ecopolitical dogmatic...
Malda: Uh oh. Ego^H^H^HHemos, quick, activate the lameness filter!
Hemos: Yeeesss maaaster.... *gurgle*
Katz: SEXBOTS new paradigm shift think outside the box...
Malda: HURRY!
* CLiCK! *
Slashdot Audience: Hey, when are you gonna fix Katz?
Malda: Ask me about it again and I'll delay fixing him by 24 hours!

And there you have it.. now we have a frankenkatz on slashdot writing about frankenstein. Wonderful.. slashdot creates infinite katzian loop, film at 11.

Re:Poorly equipped, huh?

[UncleRoger]

I read that bit about "it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society" and immediately thought of my grandparents who died in a concentration camp in Germany. What was the name of the Nazi "scientist" who did all the experiments on the Jews? Mengele? I guess Katz thinks he would have been a better choice for having control of this information.

Of course, Nazi Germany is not the only such example, just the first that springs to my mind.

I do agree that our (US) culture is hardly ready to handle such technology -- it will be abused and perverted and so on for financial gain. In fact, it already has, by the media.

What dismays me most about Katz's inane comment, however, is how easily he dismisses other eras and cultures that were so much more repressive. Nazi Germany, certainly, should never be forgotten -- would my father be in a nursing home, the victim of multiple strokes, if he had grown up in a normal household with his parents and two sisters instead of an orphanage in a foreign land?

There are others as well, though. I'm sure that the southern whites would have loved to be able to breed the fight out of their slaves a couple hundred years ago. Even today, I'm willing to bet there are a lot of folks in China who would love to be able to make sure they only have male children -- but I guess that's better than abandoning or even killing female offspring.

Jon Katz seems to be no better than the popular media he mocks -- he takes a superficial look at something and makes his pronouncement and sits back to congratulate himself on a job well done.

In this instance, however, I have to speak up. I have personal experience with the results of a culture that would have been far worse at dealing with the Human Genome Project. And, I'd like Jon Katz, and others, not to forget it so blithely.

Re:And in further news...

[bughunter]

Well, it really is a shame that the Third Reich is still associated with human artificial selection, and that anything that even faintly smells of Eugenics will be demonized, especially in W. Europe, I'm guessing.

Readers of Heinlein and other authors, and fans of RPGs like Traveller, Robotech, etc., know better -- that it's just another tool. But try arguing that to Bible-waving Fundamentalists, or to already paranoid oppressed minorities like homosexuals, Sufis, or Jon Katz.

Fortunately we have a new name for the practice of designing our offspring: "germline engineering." Hopefully it doesn't immediately scare the average Celica-driving Joe. First impressions count.

Really, it's probably too early to begin actively trying to engineer human evolution - for example, they just discovered recently that the mutation causing sickle-cell anemia also provides resistance against malaria. Eventually we will learn enough to engineer better children, or even tailor them for futures as lunar colonists or subterranean arcology dwellers. (Lord knows I have a few specifications for an engineered mistress lying around somewhere.) But if we tinker too soon, too ignorantly, we run the risk of winning the ultimate Darwin Award -- extinction.

In other words, the rule against self-modifying code still applies!

Re:different

[daviddennis]

I think people are a bit more diverse in their desires than you imply, and in the end problems like this should be self-correcting - once the plastic blonde sons decide they don't like the plastic blonde daughters, we'll be back to some kind of diversity.

But wouldn't it be fabulous to breed out obesity, which - as far as I can tell - has caused nothing but health problems and misery?

Certainly this process is going to be driven by parents, not marketers, so I don't fear a lockstep future of Microsoft-loving drones (at least to the extent this does not already exist :-( ). Many people would rather have a thinking kid than one that sits down, watches the tube and consumes all the time. I know I certainly would.

I predict most people will desire a combination of their own attributes with genetically engineered ones. If we all wanted to find perfect kids, then we'd be searching the adoption agencies for those that struck our fancy instead of making them on our own.

I don't think any parent wants a dumb kid, so I would assume the population would grow smarter overall. Maybe too smart for its own good; smart people are often puzzlingly bad at things morons do perfectly. Perhaps in the future knowledge workers will be a dime a dozen, and a good janitor will be priceless.

If I wanted a child in this brave new world, I would take my genes + my wife's genes and have the combination checked and altered to prevent obesity, alzheimers, autism and other unpleasantness. I think that's the way most people will go in the end, and I'd argue it holds little danger.

D

----

Re:Poorly equipped, huh?

[Detritus]

It was a joint operation of the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command. Most of the civilian casualties resulted from the RAF night incendiary bombing of 1945-02-14 and the resulting fire storm. See this web page for the details.

The Forces and Means Employed by the Allies in the Bombing of Dresden:

23. In the Dresden bombing attacks of 14-15 February 1945 the American Eighth Air Force and the RAF Bomber Command together employed a total of 1299 bomber aircraft (527 from the Eighth Air Force, 722 from the RAF Bomber Command) for a total weight, on targets, of 3906.9 tons. Of this tonnage, 1247.6 tons were expanded by the Eighth Air Force, 2659.3 tons by the RAF Bomber Command. The Americans employed 953.3 tons of high explosive bombs and 294.3 tons of incendiary bombs--all aimed at the Dresden Marshalling Yards. The British employed 1477.7 tons of high explosive bombs and 1181.6 tons of incendiary bombs--all aimed against the Dresden city area.42 The American aircraft used H2X (radar) bombing method, with visual assists, and the British used the marker and visual method.43

Man's audacity

[Dissenter]

How dare you sport thus with life?" asks Frankenstein of his creator, who loved technology but was impatient when it came to thinking much about how he was going to use it.

So here we finally arrive at the pinnacle of man's audacty.

"Today we are learning the language in which God created life."

So we really think that we have caught up to God? Are we so small minded that we think that there is nothing more to learn here? Before I'm flamed right off the face of the earth let me say that there is no way that I'm trying to speak against medical and genetic research. The advancements that we have made here are amazing and I wouldn't want to be without them, but when leaders come forward and compare our understanding with diety I have to question it. At least God has something to show for his knowledge. We have nothing to show for it. What is understanding if there is no tangable result? Can we prove that our "Road map to the future" isn't just taking us down a path to destruction? It seems that we've given ourselves a bit too much credit this early in the game. Where are the results?
Dissenter

It's what *WE* do with it

[Badgerman]

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems that in the current technophilic age we can find a thousand articles with one theme: "we're too dumb to handle technology" which really means "those Other People are too dumb to handle technology." I'm afraid I find this article falls under that category, despite my respect for the "Hellmouth" series.

Life is going to be what we make it and technology is a tool. We can worry about it and wring our hands - and that makes us no different than people working on censoring the internet or banning linking, it makes us busybodies who complain.

Or we can latch onto it and make it work. We can make sure we embrace the technology so that there isn't going to be a division between users and ourselves.

Or we can complain about how dumb/dangerous The Other is.

Me, I'm chosing to take control of my own life. Barbelith.

And in further news...

[Shotgun]

Smarter, faster, stronger animals eat the smaller, weaker and dumb ones.

Computers have changed society, and some people don't like it.

If we create technological artifacts, some people will discover how to use it to their own advantage. And then they might possibly (oh my god) USE IT TO THEIR OWN ADVANTAGE!!

History has shown that the first society to take advantage of advances in technology will dominate those that do not or are slow in the uptake. If the US dives headlong into this, you may not like the result, but if history is the best oracle the US will dominate.

Re:And in further news...

[Spasemunki]

Please don't take this as 'The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth', but the cycle of life is a complex system, it would be arrogant and I believe ultimatly stupid for us to tamper too much with it at our present level of technology.
Perhaps a better way to say it is that the diverse and robust shall inherit the earth. Intense specialization and uniformity allows an organizsm to take advantage of a certain niche with great success. But when that niche is endangered or eliminated, the organism goes with it. Witness that organizms with the ability to both sexually and asexually reproduce usually reproduce asexually in times of abundant resources, and reproduce sexually when the situation becomes less certain. What things like the sickle cell/malaria link show vividly is that a diverse population that includes unplanned 'defects' in their genetic code has a much higher survivability than a genetically uniform population. When conditions change, a diverse population has higher odds of being able to withstand the change, because odds are somebody is going to have that one gene that lets them get by and carry on the line. Spending too much time guiding humans towards a specific ideal is nearsited, because it is based on the assumption that our needs and situation will not appreciably change in the conceavable future.

"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

Re:All well and good

[Russ Nelson]

When have parents ever *not* sought perfect children??
-russ

Re:The reasons why - please read, Jon.

[Adam Knapp]

I'd like to point out to everyone here that _assuming_ that selection of individual genes someday becomes possible and more importantly legal, we still will not be able to create "perfect" children. Most of the common imperfections that you see in people are in fact not strictly imperfections but more like "qualified advantageous mutations".

For example, a common blood disorder in Africans, sickle-cell anaemia, in only problematic when you have a pair of genes for that trait. When you only have one gene it provides immunity against malaria. Also, Schizophrenia and certain other mental disorders have been shown to have strong links to creativity and intelligence. Genetically enhancing breast size by increasing the amount of estrogen produced would have side effects of enhanced risk of cancer. Significant height enhancements would bring about increased risks of heart failure.

What I'm saying here is that many, if not most, of the changes a parent might want to make to their child are not without tradeoffs. There is no prefect child.

As for more innocuous changes, I also find it hard to believe that suddenly everyone would choose to be blonde hair and blue eyes. Most parents want their children to look like them.

The problem that I see is not a new one. Insurance companies look at your parent's and grand-parent's health histories _right_now_. While people are usually not refused coverage based upon their histories, they do have to pay higher premiums. A child born with the genes for MS would find it very hard to get insurance if genetic testing was common.

Re:A long slippery slope down to Hell

[w3woody]

You probably also believe the quote is "money is the root of all evil", when it's actually "the love of money is the root of all evil."

My point being that it's not knowledge which is evil. It's the use of that knowledge, unchecked by ethics or morality, which is evil. Just because you can read on-line how to build an atomic bomb doesn't make you an atomic superpower. And just because you can read on-line how to murder someone and get away with it doesn't make you a hit man.

Science can be a tool for good in our society when it allows us to better ourselves and become closer to Heaven,...

It is not the role of Science to bring us closer to Heaven. It is the role of Science to help us understand how the material world around us appears to work. It is the role of Religion to bring us closer to spiritual perfection. I'm sure you'd probably be very upset if you walked in on your Priest or Preacher using an electron microscope to dissect the Bible.

Yet these "scientists", having already condemned decent Christian morality as being "backward" or "superstitious",...

Many scientists are Christians. Most others profess a belief in God or in a divine spark or a higher power that transcends this material plane. It's difficult to condemn yourself.

What some scientists do condemn is not Christians or Christianity, but the very small few who are in fact backwards or superstitious because they don't understand what Science is about--and attempt to condemn all of Science as a force of Lucifer or somesuch.

Science can be a tool for good in our society when it allows us to better ourselves and become closer to Heaven, but there are things which just aren't meant for people to understand, let along attempt to tamper with.

Of course there are things that man are not meant to understand, but instead must take on Faith. Anyone properly grounded in the underlying philosopical systems which drive the Scientific Method knows this.

However, anyone who knows how Science works knows that these area which man must take on Faith are clearly delimited--things such as the nature of God, the existance of the supernatural, or the nature of the Infinite. It's not that performing scientific experiments on God is Evil--it's that Science, properly defined, clearly says that it cannot explain these supernatural elements. Hense, supernatural.

But to decide that certain material inquiries into certain concrete elements such as the nature of the Human Genome is evil: these are not the pronouncements of God. I don't see "Human Genome Project" mentioned anywhere in the Bible.

No, it's man (specifically, certain "christians" such as yourself) who pronounce certain material lines of research as evil. And as we all know, man is fallable.

Are you so confident in your faith that you believe you can speak for God Himself?

I have extremely little patience in people who fail to understand Jesus's words about witnessing. I have very little patience in people who profess to be "christian", but whose loud "trumphet calls" of "faith" essentially boil down to bashing others. (Jesus Himself had something to say about people like you who do this sort of thing: and it ain't all that good.)

And I have very little patience in people who create strawmen (such as your demonstratably false presumption that scientists are not religious) in order to advocate their own political agenda disguised as a communication presumbably from the Mouth of God Himself.

I pretty much agree...

[dbarclay10]

With all this, but I'd like to raise a few more points. I'm all for Free software, and open development, but I almost think the Genome project was too open. Had it been done in the cold war era, the various governments involved would have kept their mouths shut. There'd have been no drooling politicians nor ravenous corporate CEOs waiting for its completion. The world would have been a better place for the knowledge, but it would have been an even better place for the control based on that knowledge. You see, I have the ability to build a nuclear bomb. It'd take me some time and effort, but I *could* build it. Except that I have to fissionable material. It's kept under tight lock-and-key. Now, all these gene-splicers are available commercially. I'll have the knowledge. What's left from someone building a virus to end all virii? Heck, what's stopping someone from making a puppy with softer fur, that end up carrying the virus that ends all virii?

My two-and-a-half cents

Dave

FUD

[eries]

Katz has just released his first piece of FUD against a competing technology.

Poorly equipped, huh?

[d-man]

Unfortunately for the world, it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal
with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

Yeah, too bad that 1940s Germany didn't get a hold of this information.

Try the decaf, Jon.

Evolution

[Chairboy]

If you think about it, genetic engineering could be see as the logical next step in evolution. Because of the nature of evolution, the 'perfect baby' isn't necessarilly going to be the fittest that survives.

One way or another, the cat is out of the bag, so within our lifetime, we may be able to catch a glimpse if this 'mutation' is beneficial to us as a species, or if it has doomed us to genetic homogoniety.

On the positive side, now I can name my first kid Khan...

thoughts on Katz, Eugenics, and such

[MattW]

This was a notch above recent Katz posts. Again, I wish Jon would turn his considerable talents towards the introduction of original thought, however, rather than simply lacing the obvious with witticisms and passing it off as news.

That said something jumps out from reading the article: there's a big difference between eugenics and genetic enhancement. The fact is, there are a lot of significantly disadvantaged people in the world. They lack the intelligence, or possibly even general health and well-being, to compete in and contribute to society. Nothing is so humbling as to step back and realize that no small measure of your own success is due to gifts given you in a grand game of chance, which you did nothing to deserve. Genetics gives us the chance to equalize the luck of birth for all people. This cannot be inherently bad. Or, to romanticize it less than Katz: if you know 1 in 100 babies with be born with genes for a removable genetic defect which will render them retarded, what is the greater ill -- to fix their genetic code, or to birth them and claim, "Everyone is acceptable"?

I'm not preaching unacceptance. I believe everyone's life has an equal inherent value. But what a person derives from their own life is largely contingent upon their blessings, or lack thereof, of genetic chance. To give everyone a chance to start equal should appeal to people on every part of the political spectrum. And this is the best way, of course, by raising up the less fortunate through a "miracle" of science, rather than by handicapping the more capable, which is a popular theme in today's world.

As a final thought on that first observation, society needs to require responsible parents for such children. If you add genetic enhancement to the mix of poor, ill-equipped parents without time to raise their children, society may find itself in the midst of a boom of genius criminals, and one person I respect has observed to me before that it is much easier to destroy than create. For those of the security vein, the observation was it is considerably easier to penetrate a system than to truly secure it. Similarly, it is easier to destroy life than to protect it, and rushing ahead of ourselves by over-enhancement may mean our own destruction. We may end up with the power to create our own mad scientists, as it were, and sadly, as often as they are romanticized to go hand in hand, moral responsibility does not accompany scientific prowess.

In the end, you simply cannot ignore the benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of this ambitious research. You cannot turn back the clock -- you cannot unsplit the atom, make the world flat again, or place the Earth at the center of the universe. And that said, you cannot undiscover our genes. The reason Gattaca was so poignant was not only the warning it gave, but the certainty many felt upon seeing it that society would face that moral dilemna.

It is now up to all of us to see we make the right choices for everyone, take moderation to heart, and use technology responsibly, while guarding against those who would abuse it.

Every technilogical breakthrough is like this

[Nissyen]

Since the discovery of fire and the wheel (both of which have been used to good and evil) every technological breakthrough has had both wonderful and disasterous consequences. Everything we discover can be used for both good and evil. Should we stop making breakthroughs and abandon research all together?

Hell no!

The discoveries are neutral, and we're the ones who make good and bad uses of these discoveries. Unfortunately some people irresponsibly pervert our best intentions, and though unfortunate, I do not see this ending any time soon. However, I believe the benefits of research outweigh the bad consequences derived from it, and far outweigh the consequences of abandoning research on any subject.

Say what?

[jalefkowit]

Unfortunately for the world, it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

Um, no it isn't:

• Nazi Germany
• Stalinist Russia
• Any ethnic-cleansing-happy Balkan state

See, that wasn't so hard. If there was a Nazi state today (say, if Hitler hadn't been dumb enough to invade Russia), it would be hard to imagine anything worse than that state having the genome map -- instead of murdering Jews and Slavs and Gypsies and homosexuals and the other "inferior races", they could just engineer them out of existence with the force of the state behind the "genetic cleansing" effort, rather than just personal decisionmaking. Compared to that, I'd say the U.S. is much better prepared to handle this new technology!

Of course, there are serious ethical and philosophical issues at stake with this new technology, as there are with all new technologies. But Katz's hyperbole is a little bit out of proportion to the stakes at hand, as per usual.

-- Jason A. Lefkowitz

Blah blah blah...

[swordgeek]

"...but this is now officially Frankenstein time..."

Cool! What does a time/era/moment in history have to do to get "official" status? Maybe I can get next year officially declared "daemon time."

More generally, it's funny how Jon writes such scary, dramatic, button-pushing stuff about 'media megahype.' Maybe he's not heard that old parable about the pot and the kettle.

Really ?????

[Lowther]

Unfortunately for the world, it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

I am British. And I can imagine a few .....

UK under Margaret Thatcher - she would live on forever

Germany in the mid 30s - the Aryan dream ...

Ceaucescu's Rumania

Any culture who values children of one gender over the other

Mr Katz is being a little harsh on the US. Nowhere in this world is perfect.

Every new step in technology is fearful

[drinkypoo]

When "man" (which I will use as a term for humankind, thank you) first gained an understanding of how to control fire. I'm betting the first application was weaponry. One of the most famous wheeled vehicles is the chariot, a vehicle (primarily) of war. Splitting the atom led to the fiery destruction of two significant cities in a certain very nasty war.

Today, nasty things are still done with all three of those inventions/discoveries. Arson, self-immolation, flamethrowers and deforestation are all carried out through, what a shock, controlled fire. How many people are hit by cars somewhere in the world every day? And nuclear accidents are generally accepted as reducing the quality of life for a great many of the earth's residents, human and nonhuman alike.

They've also brought us great advances in the way we live our lives, from easy transportation (And all that that brings), to cooking food, to being able to run your microwave and your clothes dryer at the same time. These are all things that we take for granted. Today, no one (Or at least, almost no one) suggests that the discovery of how to control fire is a bad thing; It makes our very way of life possible.

Any technology can be misused, and generally is. The issue is how we will misuse it. I'm a lot more concerned about death by nuclear fire than engineering people for desirable facial characteristics, because you can't engineer someone's brain with it. While there is a great deal of debate on the subject, the common consensus is emotional development occurs throughout life, long after your genes stop their most puissant magic.

We can achieve a great deal of good with genetic engineering, and we already have. Tampering with the genecode is just another step. Like any other advance in technology, it will be used for "good", and for "evil". I think it's safe to say that it can and will be used for the wrong reasons, but I also have a certain amount of faith in human indignation which leads me to believe that by and large, it can become just another part of our lives.

This does raise ethical questions, as people have mentioned repeatedly before me. I do believe however that they will boil down to christian "science" vs. medical science: Is it right NOT to tinker with the genes for, for example, downs syndrome. Mark my words: When such a debate comes up, a (possibly bad) science-fiction writer will write a book in which a "person with downs syndrome" saves the city/state/nation/planet/universe/etc, sort of like that Star Trek movie with the whales. Who knows, maybe it'll even become a made for TV movie. "Sci-Fi channel presents: Not without my genes, starring Chris Elliot".

Seriously though, we have problems today with whether not taking your child to the doctor is faith or abuse, and it can only get worse with the advent of gene tampering. Let's say your child is going to be born with some horribly crippling illness; Is it faith or abuse when you refuse to change them because they are cranked out according to god's plan?

Personally, I'm hoping that within my lifetime we start tinkering with genes (IE, retroengineering) for purely cosmetic reasons, so I can ditch the body hair I don't need, and maybe kick my metabolism up a notch or two so I can keep my weight down. It wouldn't hurt to be able to re-engineer for longetivity, a lack of hair loss, and a lower occurence of split ends, either.

Re:The reasons why - please read, Jon.

[jayhawk88]

Consider now that almost 50% of our nation is creationist, and you can expect the majority of them to consider that a sin. Then take the rest of the religious types in the nation. A large portion of them will consider that wrong. Most of the rest will think it wrong to manipulate anything but things that are *obvious* disease.

In the light of this discovery, I can't help but think of works such as Brave New World or Gattaga. The initial danger won't be perfect children: it will start small and grow from there. Initially, parents will be able to screen all types of genetic diseases. Then, perhaps they are allowed to choose cosmetic things (eye/hair color, height, weight, build). Yes, environment plays a big role in things like that, but much of it is genetically determined. Many parents will be opposed to this, but undoutedly some would take advantage of it. If the results were successful, healthy children, more and more parents would try this, until it perhaps became the norm.

Eventually, many parents won't have any trouble building their children like so much object-oriented programs. This was explored in Gattaga: what then happens to those children who are still created naturally? If your an insurer, would you give the lower rate to someone who is guarenteed to not have any genetic disorders (heart disease, diabeties, etc), or the one your not so sure about? What about if your an employer, and one applicant is guarenteed to have no desire to take drugs, while the other applicant is natural born, so who knows?

Do you *honestly* think that the government won't pass laws that say that you can't be discriminated on by basis of genetics, the same way they did with race, sexuality, gender identity, age, etc?

And of course, discrimination based on race, sexuality, gender, identify, or age NEVER happens in America now, does it? Please, wake up. Besides, genetically enhanced people really could have an advantage over others. It might be possible to make a person faster and stronger, with higher IQ's and faster reactions. Discrimination laws have always been based on the idea that someone of a different race/sex/etc is capable of performing equally well as another in a certain job, but what if that isn't true when dealing with natural/engineered people?

I'n not trying to condem the Human Genome project here, but I do agree with Katz: extreme caution is needed when dealing with this subject.

Expectant parents already perform quality control

[yankeehack]

Quality control is the perfect term for some aspects of genetic research. As of this week, quality control is truly possible for humans. Parents invevitably, even understandably, will seek perfect children.

Great hyperbole, but "quality control" as you define it, already happens today in the forms of ultrasound scans, amniocentisis, and other prenatal testing.

Try harder

[Golias]

...it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

Iraq
Albania
Libya
North Korea
Haiti
Cuba
Brunei
Laos
and the list goes on and on...

You have resorted to wild hyperbole before, John, but this time you are just being silly.