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The Hunkapiller Syndrome
This could be called the Hunkapiller Syndrome.
In the coming years, if he's lucky and gets better lawyers, Bill Gates is going to have a lot to say about software. Michael Hunkapiller is going to have a lot to say about humanity -- who's born and who isn't, who recovers from disease and doesn't, what kind of information we receive about our own lives and futures, and those of the people we care about.
Yet Gates is a household word, a much-hyped Millenial "visionary," a metaphor for the rise of computing and the new, allegedly global economy. But few outside the exploding genomics industry can identify Hunkapiller.
It was Hunkapiller's company, PE Biosystem, that designed the high-speed DNA sequencers used to unravel the human genome. And it was Hunkapiller who set up Celera Genomics (Celera sells genomic information) which, using 300 of the new meahines, was sequencing the human genome years ahead of the publicly financed Genome Project. In the same way Cisco created many of the systems that run the Net, PE Bioystems (about to change it's name back to Applied Bioystems) has become the leading supplier of equipment for the genomics industry, seizing at least two-thirds of the market for gene sequencers.
Despite one's celebrity and the other's low public profile, analysts often compare Gates and Hunkapiller. "Indeed, customers and competitors often refer to PE as the Microsoft of genomics equipment," reported The New York Times recently, "not only because of its commanding position but also for what they see as its aggressive tactics."
Great. The man responsible for the rapid evolution of the Human Genome Project is being likened to a person branded a predator, monopolist and a liar by a federal judge.
But in corporatist America, these traits are considered inevitable in a successful executive, if not actually admirable. With some notable exceptions, few express doubt publically that gene-marketing and sales should fall into corporate hands, unregulated by science or government.
Gene testing and mapping are proceeding far ahead of humanity's ability to prepare for it or consider it. As testing becomes increasingly common, individual humans are already overwhelmed by social, moral and philosophical questions. Researchers at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have recounted how a woman who'd had ovarian cancer was tested for recently-isolated breast cancer-related gene mutations, mostly for the sake of her two adult daughters. But when she told them she tested positively for the cancer gene, her daughters were so upset they stopped speaking to her.
The Times reported earlier last week too that a young man in Washington State called his genetics counselor with a guilty conscience: several months earlier, he told her, he'd made a sperm donation. And while he knew he had an inheritable syndrome that causes heart trouble and, often, early death, he hadn't mentioned that to the sperm bank. Troubled, the counselor called the sperm bank and found that there had, indeed, been successful pregnancies with the man's sperm. She offered to counsel those families but doesn't know whether the sperm bank even passed along the information.
These anecdotes suggest all kinds of genomic dangers, from honest mistakes to medical mishaps to genetic terrorism. All of which, as genomic manipulation becomes accessible and common, could make their way into fertility clinics and sperm banks and into the general population.
Other complex issues are already arising from genetic research -- parents seeking "perfect baby" are being given the option of avoiding the conception of children with certain illnesses. On the surface, this is a significant escalation for humanity in the war against disease, yet there has been little public discussion of the moral and ethical considerations. Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants.
When the Genome Project was heralded in a White House ceremony, the President and others suggested the gene map would soon eradicate cancer, heart disease, even aging. And genomics surely will help cure and control disease. But this revolting hype has distracted the media and public from focusing on the host of Frankenstein-like issues the genomics industry will soon uncork.
This arguably makes Dr. Hunkapiller one of the most important men in the world, since his company controls most of the machinery that makes such mapping possible. It's hard to argue that Gates, for all his billions, will have a fraction of his influence. Cornering the code of the human genome is the kind of monopoly that makes Gates look like a street-corner vendor.
pronoblem
Do we remember Philo T. Farnsworth, the man who invented Television (Patent No. 1,773,980)
NO!
The credit goes to John Logie Baird, presumably because he was more charismatic in his presentation!
Farnsworth died in 1971, hardly recognized for his contribution to Television, or fusion research.
It's tragic to me. Did you know Farnsworth even
had prototypes of COLOR TV in the late 20's? How
long did it take to catch up with that? That's a good decade before color film even!
Do we remember Nathan Stubblefield as the inventor of radio? NO! Even though he demonstarted a wireless telephone in 1885! He demonstrated it to
large groups in 1892, and people were impressed.
Bear in mind, Marconi was 17 in 1892...
In 1902, Stubblefield even demonstrated ship-to-shore voice radio.
He died in 1928, broke, and obscure.
Granted, Marconi's contributions to broadcasting went far beyond the proof-of-concept type of work
that Stubblefield did, but...
Stubblefield and Farnsworth were hackers.
Marconi and Baird seem to have had much more
"suit appeal."
Examples abound in the history of technology.
Look at Tesla and Edison. Theremin and Moog.
Jobs and Gates.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The difference between Hunkapiller and Gates is that no one envisions a world with a gene sequencer on every desktop!
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the usual panicky arguments about parents getting together at a clinic to meet with a genetics specialist to start their own private Master Race(tm) are completely silly.
While this type of clinical treatment, when it finally becomes available (if ever) will be a legitimate and wonderful thing for, say, couples with infertility problems or severe heritable genetic disorders who want to have children, I just do not see how:
Will EVER replace the more traditional method:
- In.
- Out.
- Repeat as necessary.
Which is much less expensive and lots more fun for the couple.Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Isn't sequencing the Human genome the equivalent of dumping the ROM's? Don't we now have to understand all the details of what it means, which, it seems to me, is orders of magnitude more complex? I'm sure a lot of progress can be made by twiddling bits and seeing what breaks (in the lab, or with lower organisms, I wouldn't expierment with people!), but isn't there a lot more to do (i.e., decades of work) before we become Gattaca?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The gap between the rich and the poor sucks. Welcome to a Capitalist society. We killed millions of people in WWI and WWII so we could have a capitalist system.
No. We killed millions of people so that we could have a Democratic system, rather than a fascist one. Democracy was supposed to insure freedom. Now capitalism has evolved to the point where it is threatening that freedom, and people are beginning to realize that run-away capitalism is not mandated by our Constitution.
I'll spend my money and make my kids smarter, better, and quicker. This is the way it is, has always been, and always will be. You're kidding youself if you think otherwise. It just so happens that genetic engineering is the ultimate expression of this phenonomon. We've got lots of problems in society as is; This isn't the biggest. Might it be 100 years from now? Maybe. But I'll make sure my offspring have every advantage I can give them in that world, the same as my parents did for me, and the same as their parents did for them.
Selfishness and greed. Makes one wonder if the human race deserves to survive.
We need to stop thinking about what is best for individuals or for their progeny, and start thinking about what is best for the race as a whole. There are too many things looming on the horizon that can destroy us in toto for us to be squabbling about advantages for the individual.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
One response is that it's wrong for the same reason that olympic athletes aren't allowed to use performance enhancing drugs -- if some do, then all must in order to compete effectively.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
i mean, you can make the connection if you really want to, but to me, it's a bit of a stretch.
nobody can 'corner the human genome market'.. that'd be like saying you can corner the market the recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
first of all there's a million ways to make a cookie, and the directions for doing so are already available everywhere.
this guy may have the corner on (de?)sequencing machines, but so what? i'm no lab rat, i don't really care. this is a much smaller market than gates goes after, cornering these small markets is not uncommon. if you do some looking around you will find lots of niche software companies that have their respective areas relatively cornered, and i'm sure the same is true for these kinds of mechanical applications.
i think it was just a slow week for jon and he had to try to come up with something sensational, but i think this one was a failure
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
Reminds me of a Monthy Python song:
"Every sperm is sacred,
Every sperm is great,
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate."
And that is exactly what is wrong with the current state of genetic engineering. Already, we see on a limited scale the separation between the haves and the have-nots in the world of computing. The white-middle-class-computer-programmer group by far has a huge advantage in life (not that other groups can't succeed; they just have more obstacles). Do we really want a world where those with money are smarter, faster, stronger, and healthier than those without?
Get off your high horse. We do this now and we've done it for centuries. I have better health care, better education and better resources than the people down the street because my parents were educated and have money. I don't want to think about how much all those books cost or how much I spent on computing gear. How much does post secondary education cost in the United States of America, especially the 1st tier stuff?
No, I'll bloody well spend money on my kids, and I'll be damned if anyone tries to stop me, or tries to tax away my advantage. Do you think that the poor schmuck on the street gets the same medical attention you do when HE has a heart attack? Where do you live?
The gap between the rich and the poor sucks. Welcome to a Capitalist society. We killed millions of people in WWI and WWII so we could have a capitalist system. I'll spend my money and make my kids smarter, better, and quicker. This is the way it is, has always been, and always will be. You're kidding youself if you think otherwise. It just so happens that genetic engineering is the ultimate expression of this phenonomon. We've got lots of problems in society as is; This isn't the biggest. Might it be 100 years from now? Maybe. But I'll make sure my offspring have every advantage I can give them in that world, the same as my parents did for me, and the same as their parents did for them.
..don't panic
It's called fecundism, and it is a pretty big issue for a lot of religious groups, particularly the monotheists. Most religions that embrace fecundism have their background in being the tribal god of some specific group of people. The commandment 'be fruitful and multiply' has a lot of meaning for a tribe that may be in careful equilibrium with a lot of other groups. A change in breeding rates could be the difference between holding onto your land or going extinct due to conquest or assimilation. Unfortunately, most of these doctrines have never been updated for a modern world where the size of the population can eventually exceeed the ability of the planet to provide resources. A religious scholar recently wrote a letter to the Pope protesting his stance on contraception based on the ideas of fecundism being the root for much church rhetoric on the issue. He also brought in the perspective of non-fecundist religions (Buddhism was the example he used) as an alternative view of the role of human reproduction. I doubt it would sway the Pope, but it is in interesting read in Tricycle if you're interested.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
That might even be worth saving up for
And that is <b>exactly</b> what is wrong with the current state of genetic engineering. Already, we see on a limited scale the separation between the haves and the have-nots in the world of computing. The white-middle-class-computer-programmer group by far has a huge advantage in life (not that other groups can't succeed; they just have more obstacles). Do we really want a world where those with money are smarter, faster, stronger, and healthier than those without?
IMHO, this is one place where the government <b>must</b> step in and subsidize it when it happens, possibly according to tax bracket or something similar. Gaps between the haves and have-nots are acceptable in computing, but when it comes down to a matter of life, the government has a duty to step in and make it equitable, just as they have a duty to license car drivers.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
While I can't think of anything good coming out of pagers squealing and cell-phone conversations in restaurants, libraries and theaters, I think that embryonic prenatal genetic testing can do nothing but good. People will get children with better potential rather than the luck of the draw. Knowledge of the way that certain genes work is all but certain to lead to ways to work around defects; if you can administer a drug to cut the expression of genes on chromosome 21 in the developing embryo and fetus, Down's Syndrome (caused by a redundant chromosome 21) could disappear! That's just one example.
Trying to prevent us from knowing ourselves at the genetic level, and using that knowledge, means throwing away every possible benefit in addition to (maybe) holding off the ills. You can look back into history and see what previous attempts to stop the clock would have done; how would you like a shirt to cost a week's wages? That's what you're voting for when you mindlessly oppose all change. Opposition must be targeted to real problems or it will be neither credible nor effective.
Work for a better world. Vote with your offspring.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The reason why hunkapillar (or whatever is name is) is less famous than the evil Bill is because you can't buy a sequencer in a supermarket. Since the general public has absolutely no use of a sequencer why should they care about this bloke?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
An excellent response. I would just add that if eugenics == Nazism, then our society badly needs to throw off the fascistic fetters of our incest prohibitions. In the distant past, our ancestors noted that close relatives who mated tended to have messed-up children. But now our 21st-century enlightenment enlightenment reveals that this was because of bad combinations of genes -- you know, those things it's immoral to tamper with to make a better life for your children.
In fact, every time we are attracted to an intelligent or beautiful individual, we're hearing a genetic call to SELECT good genes to pass on, improving the survival potential of our own. But large chunks of that attraction are also due to the environmental aspect of child-rearing, as well as our own developed intelligence and preferences, so it would be desirable even if inheritance were a total crapshoot.
Consider also that not passing on genes -- even in the form of killing an already-fertilized egg -- isn't just stopping a potential individual from existing. If it were, the argument that "life with an incurable disease is better than no life at all" (what bioethicists call the "gift of life" argument) might be convincing. But these parents will probably have another child, one which might not have the genetic ailment. In this case, you might as well say that having the first child would have been depriving the second of life!
- Michael Cohn
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
The costs... well, costs per sequenced base pair are certainly lower, but if you don't sequence a whole genome and don't have a sequencing service handy, manual sequencing is much cheaper and works just fine, thank you. The reason is, that sometimes you just don't want to sequence hudreds of thousands of bases, you just want to see whether you got the right PCR product, whether your mutagenesis worked, what organism does a certain sequence come from. Sometimes? No, not sometimes. Most of the time for most biology labs *those* are the primary reasons for doing the sequencing.
Besides, the method hasn't changed greatly over past few years. I mean, the chemical reactions. They are good, fast, reproducible and applyiable both in automated sequencers and when sequencing manually. But -- come on. Sequencing is not science. It's boring. It gives you basis for scientific work, but that's all. "Landing on the moon", my foot. V2? Not even V2. I don't thing there is a good metaphor for that. After all, it is collecting a really huge amount of data without knowing it. Like, before the Polish broke the Enigma, they had to collect some encrypted messages -- and that's what the genome projects are all about. In our case, the principle of the code seems to be partly known, but the one-time keys have to be broken each day de nouveau. Here the metaphor ends, because finding a working model of a genome complete with the proteome and transcriptome and regulation will be... well, let me put it this way: I wonder whether it will be possible to finish it before the end of the next century.
Cheers,
January
Jon Katz is an idiot.
Its not their fault they don't know about issues not properly covered in the mainstream media.
I can't stand when people sit there and say something along the lines of "What won't Bill Gates come up with next." First, that supposes that he is something that he's not, which is the guy doing the bulk of the programming. Second, it discounts that there is anybody else working at all in IT. Third, it discredits the hard working people at M$, (yeah, I'm a linux advocate, but they must be doing something over there).
People don't concentrate on what's useful or good tech, they'd rather look at eye candy and what M$ tells them to. They don't think about actual technological issues. They seem to forget that when they were kids, they had to go through a boot sequence and didn't have a mouse, now it's "too hard" to even type anything ("Why can't I just click?").
This is more than just technology though. Politics, school systems, sex, drinking, religion, it's all obscured and commercialized and nobody does any real thinking anymore. People say that AI has to behave intelligently, be sentient. I say that most people don't have those qualities, and I could simulate them. I can predict EXACTLY how most people around me will react to anything to the point where if I was manipulative enough, I'd always have my way because I'd just write down a set of instructions and talk the right talk.
It's not just technology, people don't want to think anymore.
We're all different.
Eh...
One day my children will look back and laugh at the "300 Gene sequencers should be enough for anyone" statement.
I find the Hunkapiller - Gates analogy a little spurious. As mentioned in passing in the NY Times article, the analogy with IBM of the early 80s is a little more appropriate.
PE Bio's equipment is very popular and most labs that sequence use PE equipment. And... unlike Gate's product, Hunkapillar's product is good. PE Bio does have a near monopoly in the sequencer market, but... sequencers from other companies have a reputation of unreliability (this may not be true, this may be in the past, but the perception exists nonetheless). Is it still a monopoly if the best (or perceived best) equipment has the lion's share of the market?
As for the FUD over genetic testing in Katz's editorial . . . Hunkapillar has no control whatsoever over that. The output of sequencers or other genetic analysis machines is fairly useless until analyzed. If this analysis is done on a Windows PC, do we then blame Bill for genetic discrimination . . . or if the analysis is done on a gnu/linux box do we blame RMS or Linus?
Hunkapillar's interest in Celera gives him some control over genetic information . . . but PE Bio sells their machines to anyone and those machines are entirely out of Hunkapillar's control as soon as they leave the factory.
Apparently, Celera announced they intended to reap huge profits from selling licensing fees to access human genome information, apparently contravening their agreement with the Human Genome Project, and they didn't bother to indicate in their statements concerning expected future profits that the HGP is dedicated eventually to making all this information public.
What Celera had in mind was a system rather like Westlaw, where they would essentially hold intellectual property rights over the human genome.
Anyone in their right mind would oppose this fascist, I. G. Farben-under-Hitler-type company from holding some sort of monopoly on the human genome.
The three classes of stockholders suing Celera were understandably pissed, but the lawsuit has brought out some interesting information concerning this frankly evil corporation.
"Starting with Tokyo first," he added.
I've heard that said about male pattern baldness, which is particularily distressing.
I mean, I've neither got male pattern baldness (my grandfather died last year, 98 years old, with a veritable mop of white hair), nor do I have any known congenital or inherited predisposition to any diseases. Maybe I speak from a position that I don't fully understand. But come on, let's enjoy those little human failings and vulnerabilities we have. They're what make us interesting.
Having said that, I have a nose bigger than Pinocchio, Cyrano De Bergerac and Nicholas Cage. Combined. In fact, when I'm tired, its sheer mass upsets my center of gravity and makes me fall over. When I sneeze, it's a seismic event; it makes the San Andreas' worst look like a mere sniff. And the expelled winds will remove even the most tenacious trailer parks from any piece of southern Florida real estate. If I breathe deeply inside a car, I can implode the windshield.
And ya know what? I'm cool with it. While I have a very aerodynamic profile, I'm a good looking guy, though I'd never be one of the world's Brad Pitts or John Kennedy Jrs. And for that, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I'm not that good looking, because if I were, I think people might be afraid to approach me, or might brand me a snob. On the other hand, I'm glad I'm good looking. My nose is the division between the two; I've been asked for autographs by people who thought I was either Wil Wheaton or Jerry O'Connell, and, in fact, when I'm facing someone straight on, I look very much like the two of them combined. A quick turn of the head, and they give me a phone number but cease to ask for autographs.
(The other great advantage is the propositions I get in bars. I'm 6'4", and women come up to me. They stare at my nose the way men stare at breasts. They take a look at the size of my hands, then look at the size of the shoes I'm wearing, then look at my nose from as many angles as they think they can without me noticing. Of course, I always notice. A couple of times, I've been asked directly just how big I am... You know. So, things that we perceive as detracting from our appearance aren't necessarily a liability.)
I'm glad to be me, with all my strengths and weaknesses; things that genetic alteration could have changed perhaps at the press of a button in the future, things that would now require immensely painful plastic surgery. Who cares? I am who I am; I'm grateful to be who I am.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
But because we humans are so goddamn different, we need to contemplate the issue forever. Why? Genetics is something that we control for our benifit, but when we do, we are simply acting as an agent of evolution. We have the power to remove those undisirable from the gene pool, just like animals do by choosing who they mate with. Why is this any different? Do we not belong to the same kingdom? Do our actions present any different options than those posed by evolution?
Suppose we wish to make a minature human, about the size of my arm. We can do it with genetics, or we can do it the same way we created a Chiuaha from a wolf. No genetics necessary.
Most of the people fall into the trap of the "human chauvinist pigs" - when we create something, it is different than when "nature" creates something, because we are not part of nature. It's somehow "dirty" and "unnatural". Well, so is your pet cat or dog.
Just because we have the power to create does not make us dirty, or unnatural. We simply wield the power of evolution the same way that nature wields it. It is not wrong, unless you believe that we are "different", which is a morally immature opinion.
"Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants."
:)
I vote "Yes."
It us understandable to be surly sometimes.
I see a lot of uncorroborated stuff here. Hunkapiller is just like Bill Gates? Hunkapiller is managing the future of the human race? Please.
Of course, this is another article which is meant to raise our hackles and get us ticked off about another subject. Give the Human Genome Project time to really do some work before we decide that "Hunkapiller Syndrome" is totally evil and on it's way.
You really want to get ticked off, read the history of nuclear power and radiation. You'll see the stupidity and viciousness that came through that.
BTW - hey, Jon, if I want to seem tons smarter then everyone else, I too, can come up with a name no one has heard of and try to make people feel dumb. It's a bad tactic - don't use it.
A lot of editorializing, here. It would be nice to hear from someone inside that industry on what this company and person are like, and how much of this is Slashdot-headline-fodder and how much of the MS/PE comparison is valid.
Any hard facts?
Actually, aside from fixing up little things like health, I can see do-it-yourself-genetic-engineering becoming popular primarily through COSMETIC application.
The first time someone comes up with a pill with a retrovirus in it that changes your natural hair/eye/skin color, they're going to make billions, genetic engineering will become a widely accepted reality in "fashion conscious society", and the Klu Klux Klan will have a mental meltdown trying to apply their standards of racial purity to a population trying out new "looks" every other week...
Qouth Mr. Katz:
"This arguably makes Dr. Hunkapiller one of the most important men in the world, since his company controls most of the machinery that makes such mapping possible. It's hard to argue that Gates, for all his billions, will have a fraction of his influence. Cornering the code of the human genome is the kind of monopoly that makes Gates look like a street-corner vendor."
This is point where the whole comparison breaks down. Hunkapillar isn't a corporate man; he's a scientist. Gates wants power and influence, and Hunkapillar wants knowlege. It's a different quest. In fact, check out this quote from a Fox News article (Venter is Hunkapillar's business partner):
"Venter says it's not a gene monopoly he's after, but information. In fact, he plans to publish all the company's findings on the genome. By immediately publishing their work, Venter and colleagues intend to make the base knowledge of the human genome unpatentable."
So, they're trying to open source the human genome, not embrace and extend it! This represents a totally different mindset, and simply cannot be compared to Gates' capitalist obsessions.
-- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
So, this guy has an inheritable syndrome that causes heart trouble, and feels that its wrong to pass on these genes.
I take it he also felt that it was wrong that his parents should have conceived him, since he would have had a much more thorough life if he had never existed.
I am a firmware engineer in Applied Biosystems (formerly PE Biosystems). I was one of the people who developed the 3700 DNA analyzer, as well as a a couple of other instruments before this one.
Mike Hunkapiller is my boss's boss's boss's boss. Four levels. Compare to HP, Microsoft, or even Sun, and you will find that this is a very flat structure.
Hunkapiller sits in 2nd floor on one of the "Bay Towers" (the first two buildings you see on your right as you come west across the San Mateo bridge). In the floors above him are the software development and software product test teams. He sits in a cubicle, along with everyone else. He eats lunch in the cafeteria.
Those groups are going to move out of those buildings and onto the main campus (next to it), yielding more space for our neighbour, Inktomi. Instead, Applied Biosystems has just bought some property in Pleasanton. Mike Hunkapiller is currently lobbying for, and seeing if it is possible, for those people who live in the East Bay and want to work there to move to Pleasanton, and the remainder to stay on the main campus in Foster City.
You get the point. He has fostered a very informal, casual, and respectful culture in this company. People are allowed to enjoy themselves and to be Nice. :-) I.e. trusting, creative, personable. (Except IT, of course). The last employee survey showed that we had one of the highest motivated work force anywhere.
If he was Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison, or even Craig Venter (of Celera), he would be a lot more ego-driven. The company would be made into an image of his mind. We would have a lot more procedures, "employee agreements", and a lot less fun.
I have friends working both in Microsoft, Oracle, and Celera. I know what I'm saying here.
Sorry if I sound a bit exaggerative here. I do really like people like Hunkapillar, and there are plenty of them here. Even if they are a dying breed in corporate America at large.
Yes, Applied Biosystems dominates the market for DNA analyzers. It always has. That has nothing to do with "monopolistic practices" or such rubbish. Mike Hunkapiller, Leroy Hood, and a couple of others, invented electrophoresis scanning. The company has always had the edge, and always made the best equipment. People here want to do a good job. And it certainly has the best field support apparatus.
So, sorry JonKatz, but your sensationalist huff-puff upsettedness about the world (and anything that sounds like a suitable target for your "corporate America" label) is probably best applied to your own pidestal.
And iff you haff doubts about our genuine motifation to help mannkind, vee haff very effektif mezods off deelink witz you. Ve vill just allter your genes to make you look like ze monkey you are.
Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants.
Great idea, Jon. Not everybody should be healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive? Are you saying that we should deliberately create sickly, miserable, idiotic, ugly people -- just to AMUSE the lucky ones? Are you saying that if we have the technology to make people's lives dramatically better, we should withhold it from some of them to add a little "flavor" for the rest of us?
I don't know who would resign their children to the fate of being the 21st century equivalent of circus freaks and court jesters -- but maybe you'd like those to be your kids, Jon.
-IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Other complex issues are already arising from genetic research -- parents seeking "perfect baby" are being given the option of avoiding the conception of children with certain illnesses. On the surface, this is a significant escalation for humanity in the war against disease, yet there has been little public discussion of the moral and ethical considerations. Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants.
First off, I won't get into the fact that sequencing genes is nothing more than effectively counting them. I'm not a genomics wizard but my Dad is (albeit Plant genetics, but, hey). It's an important first step, but this is more akin to the V2 rocket launches by Germany than it is landing on the moon. I suspect this is why nobody has heard of Professor What's-His-Face. That, and he's not the world's (2nd?) richest man, so your comparison sucks, Katz. IMHO, Biologists are too concerned with drawing pictures than looking at ways to engineer life, which is where this research is going. Bacteria are wonderful little machines, as are plants, and their power will be harnessed.
What I'm interested in is why people freak out when you concider applying this to your kids. The obvious one is to concieve many children - fertilize a lot of eggs - and then sequence the genomes and see what good 'ol mother nature did for you. I'd sign up for this in a second; I would not think twice (nor would my current SO) about aborting a clump of cells that is going to have a miserable existance, albeit by my standards, but I'm the one creating that life, not your diety of choice. YMMV.
The best comes when you think about a latter step; Changing the genes of your kids to make them better (tm). Looks don't bother me; The kids can look like their old man, he obviously found a mate. What about intelligence though? Contrary to popular belief, it's hundreds if not thousands of traits that combine to make a good whatever(Engineer, in this case). If I could give an edge here, I will. You're fooling yourself if you think this technology can be stopped, too - because it'll be done in some country, because there's a lot of interest in this.
I've always wondered what would make up for man stopping natural evolution - we're too successful, and it's too slow. I always thought eventually AI would come into the picture, but with the possiblilty of being able to engineer our genes in the next 25 years, maybe government will be bright enough to let us make choices for how we want our offspring be.
Mind you, this tech isn't going to be cheap. But, I'd rather leave my kids improved genetic code (resistance to Cancer, maybe?) than a big chunk of money when I die. That might even be worth saving up for.
Kudos.
..don't panic
First thing you have to consider when making such analogies is that the market of PE and Microsoft is very, very different. It is a little harder to fool a scientist then it is to fool someone buing a home computer. You know, you tell one of them scientist fellas "this is 100% better" and he asks you what did you use as a negative control and where did you submit the paper with the detailed descriptions of experiments. And when you tell him, he actually goes to the library to read the paper, and maybe repeats one or two of the experiments, usually demanding a trial period for your machine or a sample of the chemicals. (Some even say, they do not buy chemicals at all, with all that company representatives in the house. But I'm digressing.)
You keep in mind your goal, you stay in touch with other people using the same techniques, you read a lot. My institute bought recently a quite expensive machine for so-called real time PCR; there are three companies producing such machines, and PE is one of them. Getting opinion, testing the machines, reading etc - I even was to two workshops - took a couple of months before we bought the PE machine. Funny thing is, it had definitely the worse marketing: everybody seems to know about another one, by Roche, which is called LightCycler, and has a mega-cool design, crossed with some piece of a futuristic ST device. PE machine is computer-ivory, takes more space, looks very old-fashioned and you can hardly spot any advertisments for it. It is not much better then the other one and definitely has some weak points (software, for example, is very crappy), but it seems much more -- reliable.
And that's the point about PE. They have a good opinion due to two things. First, the know-how: they are good at it. Technical support which I encountered was always exactly what the name says it is, and the workshop was excellent (however, that by Roche was not bad either, and definitely much more splendid). The other one is, the machines are really, really good. We have one PCR machine that has been working without any problems for the last ten years. A whole genome was sequenced with that single machine (admittedly, the genome is about 3750 times smaller then the human genome, but 1996 it was the seventh or so genome sequenced). PE PCR machines are quite expensive, so now we are using two by Eppendorff, but if we had that dough...
On the other thing, they are agressive, definitely. And I hate that thing with Celera, which is, IMO, the worst way of doing science. And I don't like anything that is set out only for money (as opposed, for example, to the university, which is set out only for making lives of some grown-up childrens more interesting and buy them more toys. Like, for example, a real time PCR machine). But PE is far, far away from being a monopolist, and the quality of their products is very high. So they are as far from MS as it is only possible for a large, international company (international? did I say international? You want to hear something about MS polish language support?).
Best regards,
January
this kind of uninformed writing (in journalism and advertising alike) was despised enough by hackers that they invented an acronym to classify it -- FUD. the posts that are represented here, with talk of "perfect babies" and "playing God" and such foolishness speak of a community that obviously is not armed for rational discussion of a serious issue.
there was a good quote by oppenheimer in james gleick's book "Genius", to the effect that as a scientist, he had to believe that to know was ALWAYS better than not to know, even when that knowledge was dangerous. "god created this world, not us" (saw this in a post a bit down). if god created this world (i'm not arguing either way), i doubt that he wanted us to sit here and live in self-imposed ignorance.
it is true that as we probe deeper into the heart of nature, we progressively become more of a danger to ourselves. but with this loss of innocence, we become closer to finally being masters of our own lives, and to really understanding our place in the working of all things.
"perfect babies" (i also saw this post elsewhere). you know, you perform your own kind of genetic engineering when you pick a mate with whom to breed -- selected for physical and intellectual attributes which you hope to preserve (albeit in a crude, haphazard kind of way) along with your own traits in subsequent generations. to be able to augment that kind of selection with the ability to delete disease causing genes -- that's great.
sure, there will (eventually) be people who blow a considerable amount of money making their children into blonde-haired, blue-eyed (there is nothing wrong with blonde hair and blue eyes) little volleyball players, but really, for every three or for dozen of those children, someone with real vision is going to have a child who is genetically predisposed for intelligence, wit, and compassion. and against even a handful of such children, those "perfect babies" don't stand a chance for survival. And aside from all of that, my guess is that most people will still elect to reproduce the old fashioned way.
Oh yeah... about the article itself. Having the genetic sequence is like having a billion page book that is written at odd patches in french, spanish, german, bengali, english, and swahili; and worse yet, the book actually contains about one million different storylines, the sentences of which are all woven in and around each other. We have no way of understanding or using this information, and the common conception that there is some gene that controls this or that feature of a person is just plain wrong. for a bare handful of traits, this is true; but many genes code in different combinations with many other genes for widely disparate information, the grouping of which often seems lacking in serious rhyme or reason. And the interpretation of all of that kind of information will take more than superfast computers -- it will take decades of cleverly designed experiements and careful research.
so everyone quit whining and stewing, read that copy of "Future Shock" one more time, and work on teaching yourselves and your children to live responsibly in a world where you might have to have questions about yourself answered that you wouldn't even think to ask. We should work on making ourselves worthy of this kind of power, rather than fearing it, because it is inevitable.
Stop making these people out to be cartoon villains or heroes. The real answer to your question is that being famous is irrelevant to issues of public concern. You seem to be saying that fame or infamy is a measure of one's importance to society. While it may be true that infamous people are well-known, the actual reasons for their infamy are far more important than their 'top-of-mind' rating in focus groups. As others have pointed out, genetics has been widely discussed for several years. People are already aware of the issues -- they only need data to help them understand the risks and benefits of genetic engineering, and you haven't provided any. If you think Hunkapiller should be more famous, perhaps you should get him an agent.