I know that the TV and movie industry would never sacrifice accuracy for melodrama, just like I wouldn’t sacrifice clarity for sarcasm.
That’s why I know from watching fictional courtrooms that in real life it must also be true that sometimes the judge will direct a jury to disregard certain information that has been presented.
I’d really like to know how that works out. I’m sure there are procedural ways of ensuring that logic isn’t built on something that is struck from the record, but I’m also sure that the information in question is not forgotten by the jury. I’d bet that by instructing them to disregard it, the judge is also ensuring they will never forget it. How do they do at remembering it but compartmentalizing it away from all the other evidence that they are to consider?
I am interested in this because I am interested in human kind’s ability (or rather lack there of) to put genies back in bottles and walk away. I don’t think we can do it, and our progress through history depends on the answer (okay, that’s melodramatic, but I think it is accurate, too).
The Backstory
There is an amazing new technology that is driving the world of genetics forward at breakneck speed right now. There is possibly no field of study more exciting at this time. Science fiction is turning into science faster than normal. Way faster. The new technology is called CRISPR.
You think you want to know what CRISPR stands for. It stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. So let’s just call it CRISPR. Even calling it CRISPR is an inaccurate short form, but that’s an error I’m willing to make.
CRISPR is like a bacterial immune system. It takes chunks of DNA from viruses and makes little DNA scissors to cut up DNA when it sees exactly that kind of DNA. So when that kind of virus attacks the bacteria, CRISPR will grab onto the virus’s DNA and cut it up. Since viruses are essentially a little bag of DNA, that does a good job on the virus. Bacteria wins.
Where this gets interesting to the average non-microbiologist is that this can be given any DNA target we want and it will go cut that out of the DNA. Think of all the genetic diseases in the world. Think of something that could cut those problem genes out.
CRISPR has a very high probability to impact you or someone you know in very dramatic ways in your lifetime.
But hold on. It is relatively new. Medical stuff takes time – lots of time. There are invariably set-backs. There are cautious steps up the foodchain. There are trials and approval processes. These things take almost forever to get into our lives meaningfully, and most of them quietly disappear because they didn’t work out.
Sometime leading up to 2012 scientists figured out what CRISPR could do. By 2013 it was used on yeast, plants, fruit flies, zebrafish and mice. Add a couple years and it was ants, monkeys and human embryos in a dish. By the end of 2014 a 1000 research papers had at least mentioned CRISPR.
It can modify crops, make yeasts produce biofuels, change mosquitoes so they don’t carry malaria, and it can do it all at a low cost. Several studies were slated to start in 2018 on humans: in adults for a small number of specific, well-studied uses such as a type of inherited blindness. If they went ahead as planned, results will come in time.
Imagine a fleet of little tiny robots that go throughout your body to cut out a gene that causes disease. This could essentially be that. It is about as literal a use of ‘revolutionary’ as you can get when the guillotines are small enough to slip into your cells and snip only a gene.
It Only Takes One
Then, on November 25th, the world got wind of a Chinese scientist who went ahead and used CRISPR in live human embyros to edit an HIV gene that were implanted in a mother who has reportedly given birth to a set of twins.
He didn’t test this particular use of the technology in any of the usual first steps (in a dish, in animals, then in consenting adults with HIV, for example). He didn’t tell his university what he was doing. He may not of gotten truly informed consent from the parents, and he most certainly did not get consent from the individuals themselves. He couldn’t of course, but that is part of what makes any kind of human embryonic gene editing something that scientists have essentially agreed to stay away from.
Other scientists in the field were quick to say that they were ‘horrified’ and that this was ‘monstrous’ and ‘profoundly disturbing’.
Apart from the fact that the embryos can’t give their consent, and so the people they grow into could not give their consent, there are other issues too. We don’t know exactly what it will do. Are there any other genes that the CRISPR machinery might cut up too? The beauty of CRISPR is that it seems to be very precise in its targeting, but there is that possibility. Are there negative effects to not having this gene? It is thought this gene, which makes one more vulnerable to HIV, may offer some protection from West Nile and from the flu.
This scientist’s actions show human desire to get genies out of bottles. That is a trait that is desired in scientists. Inquisitiveness and innovation are cornerstones of science. The response by others shows the other cornerstones: incrementality and caution.
Should we conclude that science is bound to pull us inevitably towards a technological future, for better or for worse without any real control over it, or should we conclude that the system works and the condemnation is the true story. Some might call this ‘the exception that proves the rule’. As a former policy guy, I think that is possibly the worst saying in the English language. Exceptions never prove rules. At best this shows that most of the time scientists, their institutions, the journals that choose what to publish, the funders that decide what to fund, and the ethics board that decide what to approve, all do their jobs well.
The problem is, it only takes a couple of exceptions to break the system, because we can’t put genies back in bottles.
Think of the early work in physics that led to the atomic bomb. We will never be free of nuclear weapons (unless we bomb ourselves back to the stone age, and even then it is just a matter of time until we have it again).
Think of these two babies and all their future progeny that will be forever changed.
Science can do amazing things. Science has done so much to improve our health and well-being. Science has ended or shortened a significant amount of human suffering in the world. You could even argue that nuclear weapons have been good for peace around the world. Most people are very happy with science, especially if they have interacted the medical system or with a computer of some kind (i.e most people).
An American study, however, found 24% of respondents didn’t trust scientists to do what is best for humanity. I suspect a few more would admit that sometimes scientists work for the best interests of humanity but that new uses pop up that aren’t for the best interests of humanity.
Is science worth the risk? We are awfully happy with our cars and cell phones. I think we feel science is worth the risk. But are the controls on science currently in place enough?
Basic, well-intentioned science + fear or economic opportunity = genie we will wish we could put back in the bottle but won’t be able to.
The US built an atomic bomb because they thought the Germans were trying to build one. Now we will be forever in a world under threat of nuclear war. Everyone loves engines to do stuff without hard work. Now we are at risk of climate change causing much suffering beyond the foreseeable future. Everyone’s happy with cell phones and the internet and social media, and they do level the power dynamic in the world and offer ways to connect that are beneficial, and improve safety. But they do have social consequences that are negative. On balance it is still a love affair right now, but what does the future hold? Will we wish to undo some technologies at some point in the future?
I don’t have the answers. The only thing I know is that I want all the safeguards of the ethics systems and the government regulation and the international condemnation of those that go rogue. It may be enough if the public stands behind it. We need to be patient. We need to let drugs take ten years to get to market. We need to slow science down sometimes, and we certainly need to have public debates about what science is doing, where it may lead, and how to contain genies, because we will be living with them forever.
References
Wikipedia, of course.
