Re:Wow. What a load of...
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Planet Gattaca
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I just can't take it anymore. I've been watching these Katz pieces over the past few weeks and I have finally reached my threshold. As a molecular biologist, I feel compelled to inject some sanity. Katz reminds me of the people in the 50's who were afraid that computers were going to put people out of work and rule the world...when in fact, they have spawned the one of the biggest economic booms in the history of the world.
It will be a LONG time before scientists create an entire gene (proteins and all) completely from scratch. All they do now is move pre-existing genes from one organism to another. This is essentially something viruses have been doing since day one. Except, instead of doing it at random, humans have a rational process to achieve a certain result. The result may not always be noble, but technology is always what humans make of it. Nuclear science gave us nuclear power plants but also warheads. There's always a price for technology.
As for the GATTACA scenario, I agree there are issues with people knowing your genes. Especially if an insurance company is going to deny coverage becase you have a gene that predisposes you to colon cancer or something. However, you need to consider the possibility that if technology is good enough to detect the cause of a disease, treatment for it is not far away. Abstract things like intelligence are extremely hard to figure out. There are just too many interactions. So, the notion that we are going to have this biological class system is quite frankly, laughable.
Designing your own children is REALLY far off. Society is not ready to deal with all the birth defects that would ultimately result from a procedure such as this. Stuff goes wrong in lab all the time. Those of you that code, just imagine if every syntax error was a deformed kid. The two situations are roughly similar. I would say that the solution to this problem is a simple one. A law banning all lab-induced heritable changes to the human genome for at least 20 years. This makes it possible to treat individuals with specific genetic disorders, but assures that the DNA they give to their kids has not been tampered with, aside from normal levels of mutations and genetic variation. At this point, the benefits to changing the human genome do not outweigh the problems.
Finally, Dr Venter's artificial organism isn't THAT big of a deal from a social standpoint (though it is scientifically impressive). Biologists routinely add genes to bacteria all the time. So now they are deleting some. What's the difference? It's still the same bacterium, with some of the genome chopped out. Again, to create a totally artifical form of life from scratch (with new proteins and all) would be a mammoth undertaking. One that will remain elusive until we solve the protein folding problem.
I would submit that if anyone feels so strongly about the social and biological implications of the human genome project, he or she is free to boycott any cancer cures that arise from the data it provides.
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It will be a LONG time before scientists create an entire gene (proteins and all) completely from scratch. All they do now is move pre-existing genes from one organism to another. This is essentially something viruses have been doing since day one. Except, instead of doing it at random, humans have a rational process to achieve a certain result. The result may not always be noble, but technology is always what humans make of it. Nuclear science gave us nuclear power plants but also warheads. There's always a price for technology.
As for the GATTACA scenario, I agree there are issues with people knowing your genes. Especially if an insurance company is going to deny coverage becase you have a gene that predisposes you to colon cancer or something. However, you need to consider the possibility that if technology is good enough to detect the cause of a disease, treatment for it is not far away. Abstract things like intelligence are extremely hard to figure out. There are just too many interactions. So, the notion that we are going to have this biological class system is quite frankly, laughable.
Designing your own children is REALLY far off. Society is not ready to deal with all the birth defects that would ultimately result from a procedure such as this. Stuff goes wrong in lab all the time. Those of you that code, just imagine if every syntax error was a deformed kid. The two situations are roughly similar. I would say that the solution to this problem is a simple one. A law banning all lab-induced heritable changes to the human genome for at least 20 years. This makes it possible to treat individuals with specific genetic disorders, but assures that the DNA they give to their kids has not been tampered with, aside from normal levels of mutations and genetic variation. At this point, the benefits to changing the human genome do not outweigh the problems.
Finally, Dr Venter's artificial organism isn't THAT big of a deal from a social standpoint (though it is scientifically impressive). Biologists routinely add genes to bacteria all the time. So now they are deleting some. What's the difference? It's still the same bacterium, with some of the genome chopped out. Again, to create a totally artifical form of life from scratch (with new proteins and all) would be a mammoth undertaking. One that will remain elusive until we solve the protein folding problem.
I would submit that if anyone feels so strongly about the social and biological implications of the human genome project, he or she is free to boycott any cancer cures that arise from the data it provides.