Genetic Engineering. The Game of Life

James Dewey Watson is perhaps the most famous Nobel laureate in science of recent times. Together with Crick and Wilkins, he developed the first model of DNA, the fundamental structure of life. He was in the country together with other foreign Nobel laureates and several prominent Argentine researchers working around the world on the occasion of the Book Fair devoted to science and technology. Watson, a man with a particular reputation ever since his autobiography The Double Helix (“the double helix,” that is, the representation of DNA structure) exposed a dispute with colleagues over ownership of the discovery — one that certainly contradicted some of the ideal norms that, according to sociologist Robert Merton, guide scientists: universalism, communalism, organized skepticism and disinterestedness — expressed here a radical view on freedom of research.

On that visit to Argentina, Watson attacked fears in general and regulatory bureaucrats in particular, whom he colorfully described as “genetically disposable.” He recalled that when experiments involving recombinant DNA in bacteria began in 1977, many voices arose accusing scientists of irresponsibility. With corn plants, for example, spectacular increases had been achieved, but because in the United States it was bureaucratically necessary to prove that something was safe rather than demonstrate that it was not dangerous, those varieties had to be destroyed “before they escaped from the laboratory.” When the “Super Mouse” was created, claims were made about the “human rights” of mice. He described this as a ridiculous mystification of science. The mouse has the right to live only if the cat agrees and if it possesses the DNA molecules that allow it to respond appropriately and escape the cat.

He said that we have to educate the population about this kind of work. Society should not be nervous about genetic engineering. We have to concern ourselves with the human condition and try to alleviate suffering as much as possible. We are gradually achieving the possibility of eliminating certain genetic pathologies; we can venture into Down syndrome and even schizophrenia, for example, and we are already beginning to see the possibility of controlling many others. However, since some people believe that abortion is wrong because all children have the right to live… well, that is a philosophical position. If one believes that a child is born as a consequence of the evolution of DNA and that mutations always occur, one must accept the fact that children will be born with genetic conditions for which there is no solution. They will not be born because of a plan dictated by some divinity, but because of the accidental replication of DNA. “From this point of view, I believe the most altruistic way to act is to abort those fetuses, sparing the children they would become from miserable lives. It is a debatable issue, and I think society must confront it.”

Such were his position and opinions at the time. In recent years, Watson once again became international news. Appointed to lead the enormous international Human Genome Project, which had a budget of more than four billion dollars, he walked out after a couple of years, slamming the door behind him. One may suppose — true to character — in the faces of other “genetically disposable” bureaucrats. A Washington lawyer, Jeremy Rifkin, a writer, lecturer and lobbyist, has maintained a militant position in favor of banning genetic engineering experiments, to such an extent that biologist Maxine Singer, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, compared him in terms of dangerousness to Lysenko, the charlatan who, rejecting Mendel and “bourgeois” genetics, ruined Soviet agriculture under Stalin.

The fact is that since the 1970s, the potential risks of recombinant DNA research have been on the agenda. In 1974, the United States National Academy of Sciences convened an International Conference because of “serious concern” among some scientists regarding molecules that could prove “biologically dangerous.” At the same time, it called for the “voluntary postponement of certain types of experiments” until those risks had been adequately evaluated. The meeting was held the following year in Asilomar, California, and produced a report intended to serve as a guide for administrative and legislative bodies. Through a continuous process of review and correction, these guidelines have demonstrated clear usefulness as safeguards for experimentation without significantly interfering with scientific work. Researchers themselves have increasingly recognized the appropriateness of placing limits on an unrestricted right to conduct research. Not all of them, of course, as seen above.

Is gene splicing a safe, prudent and moral technology?, asked Robert Sinsheimer, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. For billions of years, through a game of chance and selection, natural changes in genes have determined the course of evolution. Now genetics, the science of heredity, has opened the coded book of life. We can manipulate genes and direct the future course of evolution. Genetic technology is something entirely new. First, just as synthesis did in chemistry, it transforms biological science itself. Biology, once a descriptive science, has become in part a manipulative science and even, if one wishes, a technology. Second, its impact on techniques will be profound: for example, designing crops capable of resisting pests or droughts, programming microorganisms to produce medicines, and so on. Third, therapies for genetic disorders and the replacement of “bad” genes with “good” genes. Human beings come from the same DNA and are built from the same molecules as other living beings. But if we begin to perceive ourselves merely as another crop to be processed, simply as another species to be improved, we will lose our breath of humanity and undermine every sense of human dignity.