What the Future Holds
RUDIN, MARCIA
What the Future Holds Improving on Nature: The Brave New World of Genetic Engineering By Robert Cooke Quadrangle. 248 pp. $12.50. Reviewed by Marcia R. Rudin "One egg, one embryo, one adult...
...While Berg's letter shocked and divided his colleagues, it led to the February 1975 Asilomar Conference and to the National Institute of Health's guidelines for genetic research carried out with its funding...
...With a comprehension of the secrets governing cellular growth would come the possibility of wiping out or preventing cancer...
...Along the same line, we could have microbes tailored to produce wine, digest sewage (a process that, as a side attraction, could provide a limitless source of energy), and extract ores dissolved in solutions...
...Ananda M. Chakrabarty at the General Electric research center has already developed one that, since it devours oil, could clean up oil spills...
...Reviewed by Marcia R. Rudin "One egg, one embryo, one adult normality...
...A 1974 letter written by Stanford University's Dr...
...They [the fears] are not without reason...
...Within one or two generations, its practitioners will have the power to control or arrange cellular gene structure...
...Who will determine which programs should be undertaken and in what order...
...On occasion, he necessarily lapses into technical jargon and complex reasoning to make his points...
...We can't go back...
...The genetic revolution will have a staggering impact on industry, too...
...Progress...
...Moreover, genes programmed into cells might carry unwanted information along with the wanted...
...Thus Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, written in 1932...
...Indeed, the threats are so serious that scientists themselves some of them the very people involved in these experiments have organized to warn the scientific community and the public of the incipient dangers...
...It's more a matter of technology now than of science...
...Paul Berg, and published in several scientific journals, called for a worldwide moratorium on genetic engineering experiments...
...Making 96 human beings grow where only one grew before...
...The research has been done, the results have been published...
...Who will set the standards and procedures...
...For one thing, bacteria will be built to perform specific tasks...
...How can we guarantee that this new technology will be used for the greatest benefit of the greatest number, rather than for the profit of a few individuals or industries...
...Robert Cooke, science editor of the Boston Globe, states the reality bluntly in this book: "Genetic engineering the shuffling, mixing and matching of unrelated genes, life's most basic set of blueprintshas arrived, like it or not...
...From eight to 96 buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult...
...Yet nobody would have even dreamt at the time that something beyond "Bokanovsky's Process" was close at hand A new nonfictional science of genetic engineering...
...Only a few more important steps, and a number of lucky breaks now stand between man, a product of evolution, and man, the would-be creator...
...Cooke cannot provide answersit is doubtful whether there are any but he effectively highlights...
...Besides the matter of safety, there are serious ethical questions that must be dealt with...
...Cooke, for instance, points out that "some viruses carry genes capable of transforming normal cells into cancer cells...
...And, as for cloning, there is the possibility that we might wind up with Hitlers rather than Schweitzers...
...Dr...
...But a bokanovski-fied egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide...
...On the negative side, the greatest risk we face is the escape of harmful microbes deliberate or, more likely, accidental creationsfrom the laboratory into a world that has no defenses against them...
...We could, for example, cure horrible genetic diseases such as hemophilia, Tay-Sachs, diabetes, sickle-cell anemia, and mongolism (there are a total of over 2,000) by inserting new genes into defective cells or by removing the excess genes that cause the disorders...
...Convinced that the world is on the brink of a "New Genesis," Cooke seeks to make the lay public aware of its enormous potential for good and evil...
...the basic issues: Who or what is going to be considered normal in genetic screening programs...
...Much of the despair of our times stems from the realization that at last, after all of the toil and all the invention, all the savagery and all the genius, the enemy is 'us.' Our deepest problems are now 'made by man...
...Robert Sinsheimer, chairman of the biology department at the California Institute of Technology and, according to Cooke, an early and "outspoken advocate of caution in genetic manipulation experiments," summarizes the quandry: "We have, over the past few centuries, achieved a very considerable mastery over our physical world, and many are less than pleased with the new insights into the bases of life A growing mastery over our biological world And that includes us And many are terrified at the prospect...
...And the ultimate question: Even if we can improve on nature, do we, Cooke asks, "have the right to change, even by accident, the basic conditions we inherited with this planet...
...And the book would have benefited from an editor capable of eliminating the sometimes grating repetition of basic information...
...Further, scientists might succeed in redesigning the human body to function more efficiently, building organs and parts that would not be rejected by its immunology systemperhaps even fashioning new means of reproduction...
...they will be able to redesign living things and conceivably create unheard of species...
...Cloning, or creation from the genetic information carried in one cell, has already been done with plants and animals, promising a plenitude of superior grains and animal herds...
...By increasing the neurons in the brain, or managing to preserve those currently lost through aging, we could increase our mental capacity...
...Do we really need to be told three times within the space of 10 pages that a new hybrid of plant and animals recently fused by geneticists is called a "plan-timal...
...It has not been employed for fear of harm to the environment...
...This, plus novel kinds of food and food production, including grains that yield their own fertilizer or can be grown in factories without sunshine and soil, could one day put an end to hunger...
...Geneticists could also transform paper into sugar, produce medicines more quickly and economically, and manufacture pesticides that will not damage the environment...
...Overall, though, Improving on Nature is a lucid treatment of a subject that can be fascinating or frightening, depending on whether its positive or negative aspects are being explored...
Vol. 60 • September 1977 • No. 18
