Fixing your genes
Duke Scientists have successfully mapped about 200 genes that are often "silenced" in humans - one of the copies fails to turn on when the other gene fails, resulting in a genetic deficiency.
The scientists further found that many of these genes prevent conditions like cancer and obesity.
I'm all for turning these back on. Give me the gene therapy that corrects my suppressed genes, and give it to my babies please. Make me as fully human as possible here, please.
I'm interested to see what J. Morg and Hans will think about this. On the one hand, I can see them arguing that this sort of therapy is just restorative - on par with wearing glasses or taking antibiotics - and so acceptable. On the other hand, knowing Hans's disdain for allow technology to change his life, and J. Morg's assertion that frustrating physical ailments are the only thing left that give life meaning it seems like they might not like it so much.
So, have at it boys - what do you think?
posted by RJ @ 12:49 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I'm all for it too. I can hear those opposed saying something like "playing God" in their argument against, but that's a silly argument. God creates and sustains from nothing, and "toggling" genes is only manipulating the physical structure of the world available to us.
Anyhow, maybe that's a straw man argument.
Redness - it is an interesting article, but nothing too new in my mind. It doesn't say we have figured out how to change or re-activate any of these genes yet, nor whether they are the right ones effecting the 'disorders' mentioned, like obesity. Obesity? How about the cause of that being laziness and lack of self-discipline? I know there are exceptional cases of genetic obesity, but I have no desire to start labeling these things disorders while removing homosexuality from the disorder list. Sounds like genetic determinism to me which is moving in a bad direction, morally.
IF (and this is a big if) we can manipulate these genes, I am naturally suspicious and hesitant to do so. We also have a gene in us that is switched of which grows a tail, by the way. Who's to say if that shouldn't be turned on? Who makes these judgments on what is the "right" genes for on and off switching? It's all fun and games with the tail one, but the obesity one is different. Not to mention that bi-polar disorders and other mental disorders have led to some of the greatest minds and artists. I will let J. Morg play the significant suffering card if he desires (I am in agreement with him) but I will continue to play my "Machine god" card on this stuff. I think there is a point where fixing genes is not the same as wearing glasses or getting laser eye surgery, which I am not in favour of and would never get. But the last is debatable, the second is not and the first should not be in my book either. Messing with genes in this way seems a lot like cloning to me and THAT is playing god, if we have any definition of the idea (obviously we can't create ex nihilo, but don't forget that God is no deist only creating at the beginning, is he not also the providential guider of all events?).
In general I don't think we need to be working harder to make our lives better, I think we need to be thinking more about making them meaningful. Let's get meaning back before we worry about 'physical' manipulation. Right?
Hans - read the article, if you haven't. The genes in question are genes that are turned on in normal humans. Everyone has two sets of genes - one from mom and one from dad. When one of those fails in some area, the other is supposed to "turn on" and compensate. In the cases in question that hasn't happened - Mom's "don't get bladder cancer" gene is damaged and Dad's never turns on, so your risk for bladder cancer is much higher.
Well, rather than having ethical problems with something like this in theory (I think you are right that this is generally a therapeutic intervention that is corrective of a legitimate deficiency), I mostly have a problem with it in practice. My concern – and this is generally my concern with technology and specifically with modern medicine – is a purely practical one that has two stages for me:
1. The sort of research that produces this type of knowledge is necessarily based on a reductive, materialist account of human beings. Analogies, metaphors, and examples can tell you a great deal about the implicit commitments – moral, philosophical, aesthetic, and so forth - people have. Listen to the analogy given by the head scientist of the project:
“Jirtle compared it to flying a two-engine airplane with one engine cut off. If the other engine quits, the plane crashes. In genetic terms, if one tumor-suppressing gene is silenced and the active one breaks down, a person is more susceptible to cancer.”
What does that tell you? Well, it tells me that he basically understands human genetics and their expression in a mechanistic fashion. The machine is only a good analogy for the human body and it’s genetic “code” (another bizarre analogy) if you already have a commitment to understanding the data in question as essentially mechanistic. Now, I don’t want to argue with the science of this (I’m not a scientist so what do I know. However, an extremely compelling account from Evelyn Fox Keller in “The Century of the Gene” does raise some serious doubts about this model), but just to note that this is all pretty shoddy philosophical underpinning for high-order biology to proceed on.
2. Not only does this lead to bad (not to be confused with inaccurate, nonviable, or ineffective) science, but it leads to a way of thinking about human beings (and about being humans) that’s wholly unsatisfying. Again, I turn to examples with RJ’s comment:
“'I’m all for turning these back on. Give me the gene therapy that corrects my suppressed genes, and give it to my babies please. Make me as fully human as possible here, please.”
Because science/medicine is a legitimate institutional source of knowledge in the modern world and because it largely operates on a reductive, materialist model of science, we largely begin to think in reductive, materialist terms. We now begin to think that allowing for the full expression of our genes has something to do with being human. We understand being human as essentially similar (or identical?) to being homo sapien.
A kind of soulless, virtueless, nihilistic reductionism in our way of thinking about what it is to be a human (the sum of our genetic make-up?) and what it means to flourish as a human (good health and adequate genetic expression?) kills more people than bladder cancer or diabetes.
That’s what I have an ethical problem with: the way it reshapes our thoughts about and accounts of what it is to be human and what we can strive for in the pursuit of flourishing. That is the heart of my critique of modern medicine. It has very little to do with “playing God” or anything like that, it is that the engine that keeps modern medicine going destroys any rich notion of being human, which relies on virtue, myth, love, imagination, suffering, dependence, and so forth.
Heidegger exhorts people to “dwell poetically.” One might say that Jesus exhorts people to “dwell sacramentally.” I would argue that modern science and medicine exhort people to “dwell biologically.” Take your pick, I’ll take mine.
So, what would you do if your next check up included your Dr. asking you what you were doing to live a full life - what you were reading, how much time you were spending with your family, how much time you were investing in meaningful relationships, etc., and then at the end he said, "oh, by the way - we've discovered this new thing that will lower your chance for bladder cancer by turning on some suppressed genes. Can we give it to you?" Would you take it? I sure would.
I agree with everything you're saying here - the idea of holistic "wellness" is more important than just keeping the machine running. Science itself shows time and time again that a person's thoughts, moods, intentions, and general sense of meaning and fullness are probably the strongest contributors to staying healthy - stronger even than exercise and proper nutrition.
I think you're selling the scientists and doctors a little short here. A little. They certainly should advocate a return to a more holistic approach to health that focuses on taking care of yourself, and currently they don't. Instead they do just focus on the machine - the mechanics of keeping you running - and trust that you'll worry about the rest. From that perspective, don't you think you're being a little harsh? Just a little - not tons. It's not like the scientists doing this gene research are trying to propogate nihilism, right? They're just used to being the guy who keeps the machine running - not someone you'd trust to tell you about how to be human in the more perfect sense, but just how to keep your human body functioning at it's best.
I think many doctors would agree with you - they'd probably not prefer to be treated like mechanics. As long as they are though, I think we should expect them to talk like this, and not fault them for it.
Redness, I did read the article, but it was late and I must have misunderstood what it was getting at. On a second reading I think the issue is more benign than I first expected, it might turn out to be just like glasses.
My only concern with the issue and genetic involvement in general is somewhat linked to Josh's critique, although not so narratologically centered. Josh is making an excellent case for the fact that modern science and medicine is engulfing us in a incoherent and inhuman framework or narrative with which to understand ourselves and the world. I think there is certainly a strong case to be made about this; the Newtonian revolution has done a great deal, a great deal of harm to humanity.
But even before the narrative question in my mind is the metaphysical question: What is a gene? I just don't know if anyone has really thought this through. The essential question in my mind is "How is a gene related to you", where you is taken in its full ontological-existential sense (Josh, I will see your Heidegger and raise you one!). My hunch is that the gene has a lot more to do with "you" than a defective retina. I would like to see some metaphysical reflections done concerning this relation/connection before moving ahead with anything like this, even if it is much more 'tolerable' than what I was alluding to before.
Josh may think it is impossible to do a metaphysical reflection on genes because of incommensurate narrative structures and he might be right, but I might be a little more optimistic about it. Just a little more though. But I don't hear anyone doing and thinking about that serious question and until then I think we need to slow it down a bit. Otherwise I think Josh is right and we are simply treating human beings as mere machines.
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