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What could be more natural than wanting a healthy beautiful baby? Has there ever been a time in history when parents, even in the midst of disasters and despair, did not wish to be delivered of a healthy child? And who wouldn’t want to have a son or daughter who was as smart as Einstein, as athletic as Michael Jordan, and as attractive as … well, name the person whose looks you find most appealing? What could be more natural?
But this deep-seated drive when linked to the onrushing train of genetic medicine is creating a trend that will shape—both literally and figuratively—the future of our species. You haven’t heard of this? It is not surprising. The linkage and its implications have almost no place at the table of the public conversation. Here are just a few examples of what I mean:
Quietly in a laboratory in Vancouver, Robert Holt, head of sequencing for the University of British Columbia’s Genome Science Centre, is working to create the first made to order life form—what is being called “synthetic life”—a microbe.1 Dr. Holt is part of a project led by Craig Venter, former head of Celera Genomics, the private firm that mapped the human genome in 2000. Dr. Venter makes it clear that he and his team have no intention of stopping with microbes. Putting aside for the moment the profound implications of creating a life form from scratch, I mention this principally because, as Dr. Venter says, “We’re going from reading to writing the genetic code.”1
While Holt and Venter are finding out how to write our genetic code, Drs. Elizabeth Fisher at the Institute of Neurology and Victor Tybulewicz at the National Institute for Medical Research in London have perfected a technique for successfully transplanting human chromosomes into mice. It is a breakthrough holding the promise of transforming medical research into the genetic causes of disease. The mice were genetically engineered to carry a copy of human chromosome 21, a string of about 250 genes. About one in a thousand people are born with an extra copy of this chromosome, which causes Down’s syndrome. These genetic studies will help scientists also discern which genes are responsible for a wide range of medical conditions prevalent among people with Down’s syndrome, including impaired brain development, Alzheimer’s disease, heart defects, leukemia, and behavioral abnormalities.
Many have hailed the work, but critics question whether such research does not push the envelope of genetic manipulation too far, blurring the boundaries that define what it means to be biologically human. And this is but one in a wide range of research efforts.
During just the past two years, researchers have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA, and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk. Quite apart from the implications this research holds for the human species, this intermingling contains another nightmare scenario that some geneticists and medical ethicists have begun to take seriously. What if, by adding human brain cells, a human mind somehow got trapped inside an animal brain? That the Legend of NIMH came to life.
Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
March 2006 (Vol. 2, Issue 2, Pages 106-108)
