Petri Dish Politics.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Biomedical revolution

Biotechnology will make it possible for us to live longer and better. So why are some people dead set against it?

"Death to death," declares Gregory Stock, director of UCLA's Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society, at a conference on life extension. "Aging itself can be considered to be a disease," says Cynthia Kenyon, the biochemist who last year discovered genes that quadrupled the life of the nematode C. elegans.

"This is the first time that we can conceive of human immortality," William Haseltine, the hardheaded CEO of Human Genome Sciences Inc., the largest genomics company in the world, tells The Washington Post. Francis Fukuyama, the man who famously asserted that "The End of History" had arrived, declares that History is about to begin again, and its motor is biotechnology. "It is no longer clear that there is any upper limit on human life expectancy," writes Fukuyama. That, he argues, changes human nature and thus restarts History.

The biomedical revolution of the next century promises to alter our culture, our politics, and our lives. It promises to extend our life span and to enhance our mental and physical capacities. The closer those promises come to reality, however, the more they incite opposition and, in some cases, horror. And they are becoming more real by the day.

In September, Princeton University neurobiologist Joe Tsien announced that he had boosted the intelligence of mice by inserting extra copies of a gene that produces a type of receptor in brain cells; the receptor enhances long-term memory and learning. The "smart mice" did considerably better than normal mice on a battery of six rodent intelligence tests. The mouse gene Tsien manipulated is 98 percent identical to the one found in humans. In the short term, Tsien's work could lead to drugs that will boost the memory capacities of adult humans. Over the long run, these genes might be introduced into human embryos who, once born, would have an easier time learning and retaining new information. It was the prospect of making smarter people, not just curing Alzheimer's, that made global headlines.

On the horizon are artificial chromosomes containing genes that protect against HIV, diabetes, prostate and breast cancer, and Parkinson's disease, all of which could be introduced into a developing human embryo. When born, the child would have a souped-up immune system. Even more remarkably, artificial chromosomes could be designed with "hooks" or "docking stations," so that new genetic upgrades later could be slotted into the chromosomes and expressed in adults. Artificial chromosomes could also be arranged to replicate only in somatic cells, which form regular tissues, and not in the germ cells involved in reproduction. As a result, genetically enhanced parents would not pass those enhancements on to their children; they could choose new or different enhancements for their children, or have them born without any new genetic technologies.

Already, a Vancouver company, Chromos Molecular Systems, makes a mammalian artificial chromosome that allows biotechnologists to plug in new genes just as new computer chips can be plugged into a motherboard. These artificial chromosomes, which have been developed for both mice and humans, offer exquisite control over which genes will be introduced into an organism and how they will operate.

Meanwhile, the prospect of substantially extending the human lifespan is growing, as biomedical researchers investigate promising technologies to diagnose and treat the various ways the body breaks down with age. EntreMed Inc. of Rockville, Maryland, and Cell Genesys Inc. of Foster City, California, are working to deliver a gene-based drug that will cut off a cancer's blood supply and kill it. Human Genome Sciences, also of Rockville, is developing a heart-bypass-in-a-shot using the VEGF-2 gene, which produces a protein that encourages the growth of blood vessels around blocked arteries. In Silicon Valley, Santa Clara-based Affymetrix Inc. has created a "biochip" - a silicon wafer that analyzes thousands of genes in a single test, diagnosing all sorts of diseases. Combined with the full sequence of all human genes, which will be available in a couple of years, the biochip will enable doctors to do a full genetic physical with a simple blood test.

Late last year, Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, California, announced that scientists whose work it had supported had isolated the grail of human cell biology: embryonic stem cells. These remarkable cells are capable of growing into any of the 210 types of cells found in the human body. Suffer a third-degree burn? Grow some skin cells in a petri dish for a skin graft. Heart attack? Replace the damaged tissue with made-to-order heart cells. Broken back? Fix that right up with a skein of new nerve cells.

Repairing broken bodies, extending life, and improving individuals' capabilities may sound like good things. But the promises of biomedicine increasingly attract opposition. A chorus of influential conservative intellectuals is demanding that the new technologies be crushed immediately, and many in Congress are listening. These "luddicons," as one observer has dubbed them, see in biomedicine the latest incarnation of human evil. "In the 20th century, we failed to stifle at birth the totalitarian concepts which created Nazism and Communism though we knew all along that both were morally evil - because decent men and women did not speak out in time," writes the British historian Paul Johnson in an article in the March 6, 1999, issue of The Spectator. "Are we going to make the same mistake with this new infant monster [biotechnology] in our midst, still puny as yet but liable, all too soon, to grow gigantic and overwhelm us?"

The most influential conservative bioethicist, Leon Kass of the University of Chicago and the American Enterprise Institute, worries both that our quest for ever-better mental and physical states is too open-ended and, contradictorily, that it is utopian. "'Enhancement' is, of course, a soft euphemism for improvement," he says, "and the idea of improvement necessarily implies a good, a better, and perhaps even best. But if previously unalterable human nature no longer can function as a standard or norm for what is regarded as good or better, how will anyone truly know what constitutes an improvement?"

Kass argues that even "modest enhancers" who say that they "merely want to improve our capacity to resist and prevent diseases, diminish our propensities for pain and suffering, decrease the likelihood of death" are deceiving themselves and us. Behind these modest goals, he...