Geneediting researcher: at least he gets the job done
I’M unsure whether to cheer or boo the cheeky Chinese genetic researcher who it seems is unsuitably proud of his breakthrough in ‘‘editing’’ children before they’re born.
Prof He Jiankui has brashly announced a first so ‘‘hugely’’ titillating that Trumpese might have difficulties exaggerating its significance.
Our professor doctored up the genes of two embyros so they’d be genetically incapable of becoming infected with HIV.
Before you yawn and move to the next subject, the big point is the chap wasn’t diddling with embryos he found sitting by the milk in the laboratory fridge. He’d done the deed using the real thing. His work saw gurgling twin girls — Mademoiselles Lulu and Nana — born into the world HIVproof.
And so, the arcane possibilities of one day ‘‘editing’’ real children became the reality of a researcher actually going out and finishing the job. It was a Christopher Columbus moment. Someone had moved from postulating the likelihoods, to setting sail and completing the journey.
So — good work by the professor?
Well, not so fast. The professor’s peers decided he was reckless and way too pleased with himself. When he triumphantly announced the baby girls, (at a convention, where else?), he called up the sort of PR panache best suited to a product launch. He was distinctly unhumble, and this created many ‘‘dear me’s’’ from the precious. Science prefers that geneticists knit their brows and make a show of ethical handwringing, if there’s any chance that, heaven forbid, they interfere with nature.
The Guardian’s science section was quickly on to the upstart.
‘‘The reckless actions of one scientist cannot and should not preempt the global conversation as to whether to proceed with germline editing, as the procedure is known,’’ it righteously fumed.
‘‘Global conversations’’ are of course, the interminable, wellmeant discussions, that progress us towards — well towards absolutely nowhere. Ask the Greens about this. The glaciers melt faster than the speed of the global conversations they want to save them.
The Guardian writes from the Dr Frankenstein view of genetic progress — the quaking fear that dictatorships will use genetics to engineer whacky master races.
It’s no help that He Jiangkui’s ultimate employer is a consciencefree political zone called the People’s Republic of China.
But as Hitler’s Aryan racial visions showed, the evil is in the philosophy. It wasn’t the scientists who connected the gas to the ovens.
The worriers are also in a lather that gene editing will create a less equal society where rich, powerful oicks will handcraft their babies. We see Mr and Mrs Albert WellOrf working through The Better Baby Genes Catalogue, ticking the ‘‘buy’’ boxes, as they assemble their child from a genetic grocery list.
‘‘I’d love my Caesar to be a Scot, but they do look so terribly pink,’’ muses Mrs WellOrf. ‘‘I see we can avoid this by ordering
The Brown Scot. It’s on special and comes with green eyes, olive skin — so it’s not really brown — and a claymore duelling scar. And get this — the buyer, moi, gets a raccoon coat.’’
‘‘Great, Scots it is. They’re canny and this kid’s job is to make us richer. He — I’m sorry, we did agree on He? — he’ll need the sharemarket smarts. The Premium Section says we can get investor genes harvested from Warren Buffet’s toenails.
‘‘So a Warren Buffet joins the family. Do you think this mob take credit cards?’’ enthuses Mr WellOrf, accidentally missing the fine print which says the genes of all Brown Scots come with congenital bad breath and knock knees.
Would the results of selling ‘‘smartgenes’’ to the rich be that much less shambolic than the devils’ mix that nature already serves up to everyone? We can’t choose whether our parents are doctors, or dopeheads. And we aren’t given marshal’s flags to supervise the mayhem when our father’s 250 million sperm charge whooping up the vagina, each hell bent on fertilising the egg.
It’s a race of pure chance. How did the ‘‘you’’ sperm arrive there first, beating all the others? Did it ankle tap a sixth female prime minister en route? Was an Einstein double flattened in the finishing straight, by the sperm bearing your good self?
Of course, the more gogetting researchers will try to push the envelope with human gene editing. But government will regulate them back to the surly bonds of earth with the cautious, officious goodness of our safeatall costs bureaucracies.
Today’s beliefs assign Mother Nature an added holiness. But most of the greatest human breakthroughs were ones that defeated one of nature’s countless tyrannies. Yes there will be mistakes but that’s always a part of becoming better.
We need more He Jiankuis — people who run a mile from ‘‘global conversations’’ and get on with actual progress. Oh yes, and stop HIV.
I’ll cop the brashness.