In the past few weeks, the science sections of newspapers and magazines have been full of stories about the recently-sequenced map of the human genome. Most opened with a tone of theotechnic awe. Science writers, unlike sportswriters, don’t often get the opportunity to announce a new epoch in human history. We haven’t gotten this worked up over science since the Apollo program, and before that, nuclear energy, two boons that have enriched all our lives.
Now we know where all the genes are, but what do they mean and what do we do about them? Sequencing the genome makes us feel smart, and smart’s a good thing, but there are many ways to be smart. The genome map makes us more knowledgeable, which is only one way of being smart; knowing how to handle the information will require wisdom, the most important way of being smart.
Many of the genome stories point to the potential we now have to improve ourselves, either by curing illness or rearranging our children’s genetic furniture prior to birth. Here’s where that wisdom thing comes in.
During the genome celebration, I happened to see an Associated Press story regarding the Virginia State Legislature’s refusal to apologize to a man the state had forcibly sterilized in 1942. Virginia, in those days, was caught up in the eugenics movement, something that used to pass for science. If you opened a newspaper or magazine 60 or 70 years ago, you might have read a worshipful account of how the science of eugenics marked the beginning of a new epoch. Eugenics and gene mapping have much in common: they both aim to improve the human race, one through gene manipulation, the other through good old selective breeding. The idea behind eugenics was to encourage the best members of society to have many children and the lesser humans to have none. Just like gene sequencing, that makes sense, until you get to the wisdom part. Where’s the line? Who decides who is fit and who is not?
In the case of Virginia, and 29 other states – including Vermont – the state decided, and 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized. How were the decisions made? If you were an immigrant, or a person of color or, inevitably, poor – you were a candidate for sterilization. The Virginia man in the news was 17 when he was sterilized, a ward of the state, because he kept running away from a father who beat him. He later went on to become a decorated war hero and a good citizen, but he gets no apology from Virginia, which forcibly sterilized its citizens until 1979.
In its day, eugenics was promoted by Harvard professors, by Calvin Cooldige, by Margaret Sanger, the mother (so to speak) of birth control, by Sigmund Freud. In 1927 forced sterilizations were upheld and eugenics were endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court. And you thought the Bush v. Gore decision was a disgrace.
The idea of improving the race, or purifying it, is an old one. It can be heard throughout history, murmured in the Protestant doctrine of predestination, shouted in the India’s caste system, or in the silence of those not deemed worthy to share the planet with the fascists’ “master race.” You can hear it echo in the recent genome articles – researchers were surprised and somehow disappointed to learn humans do not have the 100,000 genes they had estimated, but only 34,000 – too close to the roundworm’s 19,000 or the mustard plant’s 25,000, as if quantity equals quality.
Sequencing the human genome is a good thing, there is no doubt about it. It would be a better thing if we could simultaneously admit we must be very careful in how we use our new knowledge.
A little humility now can save us from a great deal of humiliation later.
The Bad Seed
In the past few weeks, the science sections of newspapers and magazines have been full of stories about the recently-sequenced map of the human genome. Most opened with a tone of theotechnic awe. Science writers, unlike sportswriters, don’t often get the opportunity to announce a new epoch in human history. We haven’t gotten this worked up over science since the Apollo program, and before that, nuclear energy, two boons that have enriched all our lives.
Now we know where all the genes are, but what do they mean and what do we do about them? Sequencing the genome makes us feel smart, and smart’s a good thing, but there are many ways to be smart. The genome map makes us more knowledgeable, which is only one way of being smart; knowing how to handle the information will require wisdom, the most important way of being smart.
Many of the genome stories point to the potential we now have to improve ourselves, either by curing illness or rearranging our children’s genetic furniture prior to birth. Here’s where that wisdom thing comes in.
During the genome celebration, I happened to see an Associated Press story regarding the Virginia State Legislature’s refusal to apologize to a man the state had forcibly sterilized in 1942. Virginia, in those days, was caught up in the eugenics movement, something that used to pass for science. If you opened a newspaper or magazine 60 or 70 years ago, you might have read a worshipful account of how the science of eugenics marked the beginning of a new epoch. Eugenics and gene mapping have much in common: they both aim to improve the human race, one through gene manipulation, the other through good old selective breeding. The idea behind eugenics was to encourage the best members of society to have many children and the lesser humans to have none. Just like gene sequencing, that makes sense, until you get to the wisdom part. Where’s the line? Who decides who is fit and who is not?
In the case of Virginia, and 29 other states – including Vermont – the state decided, and 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized. How were the decisions made? If you were an immigrant, or a person of color or, inevitably, poor – you were a candidate for sterilization. The Virginia man in the news was 17 when he was sterilized, a ward of the state, because he kept running away from a father who beat him. He later went on to become a decorated war hero and a good citizen, but he gets no apology from Virginia, which forcibly sterilized its citizens until 1979.
In its day, eugenics was promoted by Harvard professors, by Calvin Cooldige, by Margaret Sanger, the mother (so to speak) of birth control, by Sigmund Freud. In 1927 forced sterilizations were upheld and eugenics were endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court. And you thought the Bush v. Gore decision was a disgrace.
The idea of improving the race, or purifying it, is an old one. It can be heard throughout history, murmured in the Protestant doctrine of predestination, shouted in the India’s caste system, or in the silence of those not deemed worthy to share the planet with the fascists’ “master race.” You can hear it echo in the recent genome articles – researchers were surprised and somehow disappointed to learn humans do not have the 100,000 genes they had estimated, but only 34,000 – too close to the roundworm’s 19,000 or the mustard plant’s 25,000, as if quantity equals quality.
Sequencing the human genome is a good thing, there is no doubt about it. It would be a better thing if we could simultaneously admit we must be very careful in how we use our new knowledge.
A little humility now can save us from a great deal of humiliation later.