Genetic Experiments: New golden age or Pandora’s box?

This is an Inquisitor column from 6/16/1976

The University of Michigan regents recently coughed up $300,000 to finance experiments in genetic recombining.

“Genetic recombining” is the process of fiddling around with a living creature’s most fundamental building blocks, rearranging them to make new, or mutated, life forms.

Genes are the basic components of heredity.  If you have genes for blue eyes, for example, you’ll have blue eyes.  If a mother carries a dormant gene for color blindness, which doesn’t become activated in females, her sons will be color-blind.

The Michigan experiments seek to take genes from one species and implant them in another.  So far they’re only doing it with bacteria.  When one generation of microbes is implanted with a gene from another species, the next generation will be born with the other species’  traits in addition to its own.

This is a highly abstruse operation.  If you take a gene from disease-carrying Germ A and implant it in harmless Germ B, Germ B’s “children” will also be harmful, just like germ A.

This is a jim-dandy idea.  I’ve always felt we didn’t have enough diseases in the world already.  Cholera, leprosy, plague, yaws, yellow fever–they’re all old hat.  We need a bunch of new ones.  After all, if the doctors succeeded in curing all the old diseases, they’d have nothing left to do.

Naturally, supporters of the gene-implantation program claim that the research will lead to major breakthroughs in medicine.  I suppose it could.  They might even be able to invent a new super-germ that attacks cancer cells.

They might also invent a few whoppers for which there will be no known antidotes.

But the idea is fascinating, especially when you consider its future applications to people.

“Human nature” has been a stumbling block to reformers, revolutionaries, tyrants, exploiters, and educators for a long time. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could decide just what that nature should be, instead of leaving it up to blind heredity?

Think of the new human “types” scientists could create:

Politicians who can talk out of both sides of their mouths;

Two-faced husbands and wives;

White men with forked tongues;

Dancers with two left feet;

Reporters with noses for news;

Teachers with eyes in the backs of their heads, who can watch over unruly students and write on the blackboard at the same time…the list is endless.

Of course, these types already exist as metaphors, but wouldn’t it be great to have them exist for real?

The only major problem lies in determining who shall have the right to decide how our genes are to be manipulated.  Somebody will have to take the responsibility.

We could leave it to the scientists, whose idea it was in the first place.  With their rich understanding of human needs and aspirations, their famed tolerance for human failings, their reverence for human traditions, and their willingness to admit that somebody else might know more than they do, scientists are ideal candidates for calling the genetic shots.

But we must not overlook our elected representatives, either.  Surely the New Jersey Legislature will have something to say about it if genetic engineering comes to our fair state.  Their masterful handling of such complex issues as school funding, mass transportation, and tax reform cannot help but inspire us to confidence.  Compared to these problems, deciding the biological future of humanity should be a can of corn.

Nor should the heads of large corporations and advertising agencies be left out.  Surely they would want to help design a new breed of human–a secure, self-sufficient type who won’t need any costly manufactured aids to get through life.  Once the supermen come into existence, most of the business magnates can retire to contemplative ease.

Parents will also want a voice in the decision.  Most parents will adore children who are obviously more intelligent and handsome than themselves, who may outgrow parental advice at the age of seven and progress to achievements never even imagined by mom and pop.  Parents will enjoy the challenge of trying to keep up with their 10-year olds.

We should also consult the teaching profession.  Right now teachers take charge of a child’s education from kindergarten on up through the senior year of college.  This span could certainly be compressed if we produced more healthy, well-behaved, and intelligent children.  In the future we might need only half the teachers we have today.

Ultimately, the future shape of the human organism will be left up to a collective decision.  Everyone of any importance will contribute.

That’s the beauty of our pluralistic society: you have a lot of cooks to stir the broth.  Russian geneticists might implant their citizens for traits like passivity, conformity (think what they could do with lemming genes!) and brute strength to raise a generation of unthinking pawns for their rulers to push around as they please.  But in a pluralistic society, no two groups of influential people will want to order the same kind of pawn.

Yes it looks like man is on the threshold of a new golden age.  It should be a wonderful experience, and it should happen in our lifetimes.

If a new strain of super-flu, courtesy of the University of Michigan, doesn’t get us first.