As scientific breakthroughs go, some people are comparing the mapping of the human genome to landing a man on the moon. I don’t. I want to say a few words on behalf of the moon.
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As earthshaking scientific breakthroughs go, it’s hard to beat the first moon landing. It has even become part of our language. Whenever we want to spur someone to action, we say, “If we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we [fill in the blank]?”
Metaphors are important to us in life and, as metaphors go, the genome is going to have a hard time beating the moon. For one thing, we can see the moon. By contrast, the moon has more poetry for us unscientific types.
Imagine, for example, the following exchange:
She (softly): “Oh, isn’t the night sky beautiful?”
He (tenderly): “Yes, there’s a full genome out tonight.”
No, most of us will never see a genome. We will only see what genomes do and even that’s not entirely clear yet, even to genome scientists.
Coverage of the breakthrough Tuesday was wall-to-wall. CNN cut into its daytime broadcasts so often and with such feverish excitement you might have thought O.J. Simpson was back in court.
Yet, just about everyone agrees that the Human Genome Project still is a long way from completion. In fact, this genome map is only a “draft” of a map, which means it is full of errors to be corrected and omissions to be filled in later, sort of like the last computer software I purchased.
It will be years, perhaps even decades, before we see any of the hoped-for miracle cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and just about everything else that ails us.
As metaphors go, a better comparison than the moon landing is the splitting of the atom.
Nuclear research has given us a valuable source of energy. It has also raised the stakes of war and put the ominous cloud of nuclear annihilation over our heads. Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of a mushroom cloud on the horizon.
Similarly, the decoding of the human genome holds great promise, but it also holds great peril, depending on how it is used.
For example, we have to avoid the “Gattaca” syndrome, named for the futuristic 1997 movie in which Ethan Hawke suffers job and human-rights discrimination simply because his eyesight and other aspects of his genetic makeup are less than perfect.
President Clinton has urged Congress to pass legislation that would ban such genetic discrimination in the workplace and in insurance coverage. In the meantime, he has issued an executive order barring such discrimination by federal agencies. Some 34 states have passed various anti-genetic discrimination measures, but in 26 of those states insurers still can discriminate against customers based on the genetic makeup of their relatives.
But the hazards do not end there. Genetic research also is haunted by scientific curiosity about possible links between genes and behavior. The prospect of catching and treating potential homicidal maniacs and other violence-prone individuals before the violent behavior begins is tantalizing.
But, after many years of convincing ourselves that environment has more to do with human behavior than genetics do, the new era of genetic research runs the risk of nudging our prejudices back the other way.
What is to be done, for example, when neighbors happen to find out, after analyzing someone’s hair cuttings on the barber shop floor, that a family in their community carries the “violence gene”? Can the family be sued for refusing to take medication, even though none of them has done anything wrong?
One conference on links between genes and criminal behavior was disrupted at an Aspen Institute retreat by demonstrators in 1995. “You can’t hide,” the demonstrators chanted. “We know you’re pushing genocide.”
And, if that argument leans too much toward liberal politically correctness for you, consider the flip side of the argument, that criminal or civil defendants might use their genetic makeup to excuse their misbehavior. Judges soon could be struggling with such questions as what genetic information is valid and whose privacy rights are more important in adoption cases.
So, it is just as well that genome science has a long way to go. So does our ability as a society to deal with it. Genes explain a lot, but they don’t explain everything. Science has shown us that environment, role models and ultimately our personal choices mean more than anything else to determine our successes or failures in life.
We should understand that much by now. Or does somebody have to draw us a map?
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