Designer kids, superathletes, and genomic cures - Brief Article

Whole Earth, Summer, 2000 by Pw

Designer kids, superathletes, and genomic cures

Genomics--the science of describing and manipulating mitochondrial and chromosomal DNA--has changed the global economy and will soon change every human life. DNA diagnostics will permit earlier interventions; genetically influenced diseases and infertility will become easily treatable by transfering genes into the body or spray aerosols. Treatment will substitute for defective genes, turn damaging genes off or helpful genes on. New biological-warfare weapons and genetic correction of undesirable human behavior are foreseeable realities of the Brave New Medicine.

In the not-too-distant future, you may read out your genome and create a "virtual genetic self" on a computer. This in silico self can pre-test drugs to see if they will be effective, and at what doses. Since 25 percent or more of the drugs now taken do nothing for particular individuals--and some cause horrendous side effects--the virtual self will save you money, speed recovery, and perhaps save your life. This is pharmacogenetics: investigating the individual responses of genetically variant humans to different drugs. It is but one of the new "life sciences" businesses spawning health care tools, patents, dreams, and IPOs.

Here's more of the future:

* By 2025: Coming soon, your physician will advise whether to re-engineer your embryo, or to rely on gene therapy after the kid is born (e.g., to eliminate the symptoms of sickle-cell anemia).

* By 2040: Designer kids will provoke legal nightmares. Should governments or doctors limit gene-engineering your kid's embryo? Is this a private issue, choosing your infant's sex, IQ, blue eyes, or production of extra red blood cells so he/she cart excel as a long-distance bicyclist? What's the line between can and should? And anyway, how many genes can you change and still say it's your child? Is a designer embryo carried by a surrogate mother still yours?

Children born in the next twenty years will probably be the last to play in the casino of random assortment of genes. Will your great-grandchild in 2075 become a futurist-hippie outlaw and go natural?

By 2050: The court system will gain new power, maybe sentencing a criminal to redesign his behavior with gene therapy instead of jail time. Or a psychiatrist may insist: Drugs won't work, you must treat your chronic depression with gene therapy. Gene lobotomies.

But genomics cannot be the techno-materialist Total Answer to the desire for a rich and happy lift. Only 2 percent of all diseases, for instance, can be directly traced to a single gene mutation. All the others have complex origins combining environment (including uterine environment) and multiple gene influences. Even now we can diagnose many genetic diseases by amniocentesis and chorionic villus samples, but most of these cannot be cured.

Finally, what genomic information will remain confidential? Will your total DNA profile be available to insurance agents, employers, your church, mosque, or temple?

--PW

Researchers are developing a variety of techniques for introducing healthy genes into patients' bodies. The method selected depends on factors such as the nature of the disease being treated and the size of the gene being transferred.