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Heredity and Humanity
anexilus sent in this essay by the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He discusses genes, nature and nurture, and tries to allay fears that Gattaca will come to pass. Good reading.
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"The notion that science alone holds the secrets of our existence has become a religion of its own. The faith of Dawkins and others in biology seems even greater than the faith of the simple believer in God. Science is the proper way to understand the natural, of course; but science gives us no reason to deny that there are aspects of human identity that fall outside the sphere of nature, and hence outside the sphere of science."
While the rest of the article was first-rate, I have to wonder what the authors were thinking when writing the above. Whether they realize it or not, the authors are falling back on that classic logical fallacy that religious groups everywhere have used to argue the creation side of the creation/evolution debate: "there is no evidence for your argument, so mine must be correct."
Science is about what is observable, and to their credit, the authors admit this in the very next paragraph. But to state that a decision to believe only in the observable is tantamount to an act of "faith" is silly. Science is about observation. When you decide that something may never be observable (i.e. because it may be "supernatural"), you bias yourself beyond repair.
It isn't "faith" to believe that our behaviors are a result of complex natural phenomena--it is a refusal to place credence in that which is unobservable, and therefore undefendable. And *that* is the exact opposite of faith.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Not to worry - _Gattica_ won't come to pass. That's comforting.
Too bad that the author forgot to discuss this with the health insurance companies. These profit-maximizing entities are already going hell bent for leather toward requiring all kinds of genetic tests, and filtering out people based on the results of those tests.
So what, you say? Haven't insurance companies always screened for, say, family history of heart disease? The answer is that although they attempted to screen, and developed some broad exclusion categories, the practical impossibility of actually tracking and classifying health information about millions of individuals meant that, in practice, individual screening did not occur.
Today, with massive collection of personal information and interconnected databases, the situation is quite different. "Mr. Jones, this is your insurance agent. Your supermarket discount card shows that you purchased two cases of beer this week. As a result your car insurance rates are going up $50. Please send payment by this afternoon or your policy will be cancelled".
And now we have genetic mapping. The author says its only one part of the picture. Great. Then why are the insurance companies so intent on preserving their right to collect and classify based on this information?
Given that in the U.S., you are either part of a group health plan, or you are pretty much doomed to die a slow death from lack of treatment, genetic screening is essentially a death sentence for many people who in the past would have been invisible in group pools.
But don't worry - this information can't be used that way.
sPh
The notion that science alone holds all the secrets of our existence has become a religion of its own. The faith of Dawkins and others in biology seems even greater than the faith of the simple believer in God.
From Richard Dawkins' book: River out of Eden, pp.31-33
There is a fashionable salon philosophy called cultural relativism which hold, in its extreme forms, that science has no more claim to truth than tribal myth: science is just hte mythology favored by our modern western tribe. I once was provoked by an anthropologist colleague into putting the point starkly, as follows: suppose there is a tribe, I said, who believe that the moon is an oldl calabash tossed into the sky, hanging only just out of reach above the reetops. Do you really claim that our scientific truth--that the moon is about a quarter of a million miles away and a quarter the diameter of the earth--is no more true than the tribe's calabash? "Yes," the anthropologist said. "We are just brought up in a culture that sees the world in a scientific way. The are brought up to see the world in a nother way. Neither way is more true than the other." [...]
Western science, acting on good evidence that moon orbits the earth a quarter of a millions miles away, using western-designed computers and rockets, has succeeded in placing people on its surface. Tribal science, believing that the moon is just above the treetops, will never touch it outside of dreams. [...]
Science shares with religion the clain that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and the cosmos. But there is where the resemblece ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
-rt-
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** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Having said that, I strongly believe that I'm who I am because of my experiences, but perhaps that's just my genes making me think that way...
My point being: real scientists need to jump in and help these poor folks because they really could use the help.I mean who's never heard the argument that goes something like "I know God exists 'cuz flowers are purty"?
Unfortunately, that's exactly the argument used by this author: "God must exist because humans are purtier than slugs." Every time I see this argument, I am blown away by the arrogance of it. Man exists, therefore God must. Surely Jehovah, or Allah, or Shiva, or Zeus or Odin would rain fire on any human haughty enough to make God's existence contingent on his own.
For example, it was announced that there was a 98% similarity between chimpanzee DNA and human DNA. So one preacherman made the point that a watermellon is 98% water and a cloud was 100% water and that proved the scientists wrong.
Then he went on to point out that cars have evolved and changed over the years, but it was because there were people behind the change...cars don't evolve by themselves, so, therefore, neither do animals.
My point being: real scientists need to jump in and help these poor folks because they really could use the help.I mean who's never heard the argument that goes something like "I know God exists 'cuz flowers are purty"?
1) Because we don't know what we're doing yet. Tamper not with forces you don't understand.
2) We don't even understand the map fully yet. Yeah, that little bit of genetic code that could get rid of Type 2 diabetes in 8.3% of the people suffering from it could also increase their chances of developing some form of cancer. If you can't understand the instructions, don't mess with the recipe.
3) Education and genetic engineering are far different then you pre-suppose. Education is really nothing more then memorization of existing facts. You "learn" that 2+2=4. You "learn" what verbs are. Genetic engineering, on the other hand, is changing the basic building blocks of life to suit a "whim". A whim not to have diabetes, or to have green eyes, or whatever.
Now, I'm not a neo-Luddite. If there were a safe way to genetic engineer things so I didn't need glasses, didn't have asthma, and didn't stand a decent chance of getting some sort of cancer within the next 25 years, I'd go for it. But at this point in the game, not even the people who actually what the hell they are talking about are ready to take that step. AFAIK, they're still in the 'experiment on white mice' stage. Look at the sheep clones, for one example. The clone is genetically as old as the original, and right now they can't fix that. Do you really want anyone playing with human genetics at this stage where we still don't undertand it?
Yes, I realize that everyone, to some extent, practices their own genetic manipulations in the dating/marriage scene. But it's one thing to marry that cute redhead so your kids can have red hair. It's another thing entirely to try and alter DNA without knowing for absolute certain what will happen.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Because we don't know what we're doing yet. Tamper not with forces you don't understand.
That sounds like a surefire recipe for holding back progress... :) If people had never decided to play around with things they didn't understand, science would be in a sorry state.
Sure, we need to be careful, but we shouldn't lose out on an opportunity because there's a one in a million chance something will go wrong. After all, what are the odds of that happening?
To add to this article, remember that even though human genome mapping has been considered complete, reports have since been released indicating that there just isn't enough genetic matter there to effectively map all human characteristics, and that there most be something else that contributes. It might be some of the latent DNA sequences that are considered to be trash, or something else within the proteins themselves. All of this adds up to some pretty big arguments should any of us enounter "gene prejudice."
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Hopefully I'm not pulling all of this out of my caboose. What I learned in highschool is that DNA is a blueprint. That's all I learned about it. I did learn about Gregor Mendel (read the article if you need a refreshing on who I'm talking about) and I couldn't figure out how such strict rules about dominant and recessive genes could produce the variety of species we have.
If dominant and recessive genes really were so binary in nature (D | R = D, R | R = R, D | D = D, etc) then unless there was more imbreeding going on, all recessive genes would've eventually gone away and we would all be the same.
Alas, like the article says, this isn't the case. It is a rather horrifying thought that everything can be known about you through your DNA. It is also a rather upsetting thought that all of your choices that you make in life could be pre-determined by your DNA. Tests do show (as stated by the article), however, that a persons environment has a large affect on how s/he turns out.
It is for this reason that I think of DNA as merely being a blueprint. Just like the blueprint to a house, you can view it and see how it is supposed to be, but the houses environment plays a large role in how it turns out (method used to prevent water from coming in the basement, type of roofing used, etc.).
The Moo went "Cow!"