ENOUGH

For those who are tired of having nightmares about the threat to civilisation posed by Fundamentalist terrorism, this book offers a new horror to worry about. Uncontrolled molecular biology may be a greater threat to the future of humanity than any jihadi seeking martyrdom. While most popular attention has been has been concentrated on genetically modified agricultural crops, McKibben points out the vastly more worrying experiments that have been carried out on animals. Germ line engineering means inserting new genes into the chromosome in order produce a genetically new body. The genes need not even come from the same species, thus mouse genes have been inserted into pigs to produce animals with less objectionable manure, and jellyfish genes have been inserted into fish to make them fluorescent. There is no reason why the techniques that work with fish and pigs should not work with humans. McKibben dismisses all the arguments that the prospect is just science fiction. The distinguished 20th century biologist J.B.S. Haldane thought it would be 1,000 years before genetic manipulation would be possible. He was 960 years out. Progress in the last few years has been exponentially rapid. It is theoretically possible to insert genes for height, for large musculature, and extra blood cells so as to breed a race of better athletes. If genes for I.Q could be isolated, they could be inserted as well. McKibben gives a chilling list of scientists who think that not only is this possible, but desirable and inevitable. This is what the future of the human race will be. Like space shots, or the first sea voyages by coracle, there may be many casualties at first, but this is the direction of progress, and progress cannot be stopped. McKibben wants to draw a moral line, but he draws it across a complex field with some attempted precision. Defective genes that cause inherited diseases can be eliminated by somatic gene therapy. Repairing the genetic inheritance is one thing, producing a new genetic inheritance by germ line engineering is the other side of the moral line, along with cloning that would produce an individual who is an identical copy of another. The use of stem cells taken from an embryo is exactly on this line. The decision depends on whether an embryo is considered to have human rights. The objection to germ line engineering is that is destroys human dignity. We would not be ourselves, we would be the product of the biological engineer just as a computer or a car is the product of the silicon chip engineer or the automotive engineer. And like the computer or the car this year's high I.Q. human will be outdated by next year's model. Should we do whatever we can do? It is perfectly possible drive at 200 m.p.h. along the public highway, but should we do so? Are there moral speed limits to the progress of science? McKibben is desperately anxious to impose them, and slightly pessimistic of the chances of success. As long as we regard human beings as no more than complex physical structures, the objections to re-engineering these structures seem rather weak.