The Hunkapiller Syndrome 430
This could be called the Hunkapiller Syndrome.
In the coming years, if he's lucky and gets better lawyers, Bill Gates is going to have a lot to say about software. Michael Hunkapiller is going to have a lot to say about humanity -- who's born and who isn't, who recovers from disease and doesn't, what kind of information we receive about our own lives and futures, and those of the people we care about.
Yet Gates is a household word, a much-hyped Millenial "visionary," a metaphor for the rise of computing and the new, allegedly global economy. But few outside the exploding genomics industry can identify Hunkapiller.
It was Hunkapiller's company, PE Biosystem, that designed the high-speed DNA sequencers used to unravel the human genome. And it was Hunkapiller who set up Celera Genomics (Celera sells genomic information) which, using 300 of the new meahines, was sequencing the human genome years ahead of the publicly financed Genome Project. In the same way Cisco created many of the systems that run the Net, PE Bioystems (about to change it's name back to Applied Bioystems) has become the leading supplier of equipment for the genomics industry, seizing at least two-thirds of the market for gene sequencers.
Despite one's celebrity and the other's low public profile, analysts often compare Gates and Hunkapiller. "Indeed, customers and competitors often refer to PE as the Microsoft of genomics equipment," reported The New York Times recently, "not only because of its commanding position but also for what they see as its aggressive tactics."
Great. The man responsible for the rapid evolution of the Human Genome Project is being likened to a person branded a predator, monopolist and a liar by a federal judge.
But in corporatist America, these traits are considered inevitable in a successful executive, if not actually admirable. With some notable exceptions, few express doubt publically that gene-marketing and sales should fall into corporate hands, unregulated by science or government.
Gene testing and mapping are proceeding far ahead of humanity's ability to prepare for it or consider it. As testing becomes increasingly common, individual humans are already overwhelmed by social, moral and philosophical questions. Researchers at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have recounted how a woman who'd had ovarian cancer was tested for recently-isolated breast cancer-related gene mutations, mostly for the sake of her two adult daughters. But when she told them she tested positively for the cancer gene, her daughters were so upset they stopped speaking to her.
The Times reported earlier last week too that a young man in Washington State called his genetics counselor with a guilty conscience: several months earlier, he told her, he'd made a sperm donation. And while he knew he had an inheritable syndrome that causes heart trouble and, often, early death, he hadn't mentioned that to the sperm bank. Troubled, the counselor called the sperm bank and found that there had, indeed, been successful pregnancies with the man's sperm. She offered to counsel those families but doesn't know whether the sperm bank even passed along the information.
These anecdotes suggest all kinds of genomic dangers, from honest mistakes to medical mishaps to genetic terrorism. All of which, as genomic manipulation becomes accessible and common, could make their way into fertility clinics and sperm banks and into the general population.
Other complex issues are already arising from genetic research -- parents seeking "perfect baby" are being given the option of avoiding the conception of children with certain illnesses. On the surface, this is a significant escalation for humanity in the war against disease, yet there has been little public discussion of the moral and ethical considerations. Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants.
When the Genome Project was heralded in a White House ceremony, the President and others suggested the gene map would soon eradicate cancer, heart disease, even aging. And genomics surely will help cure and control disease. But this revolting hype has distracted the media and public from focusing on the host of Frankenstein-like issues the genomics industry will soon uncork.
This arguably makes Dr. Hunkapiller one of the most important men in the world, since his company controls most of the machinery that makes such mapping possible. It's hard to argue that Gates, for all his billions, will have a fraction of his influence. Cornering the code of the human genome is the kind of monopoly that makes Gates look like a street-corner vendor.
Re:It's a Pop Culture Dream come true! (Score:2)
Basically the compensatory mechanism people aren't seeing here is that this would be quite a lot of effort and money directed towards unuseful ends, and it would be strictly upper class. It's a setup for class warfare- and wiry manicdepressive ADD povertystricken geeks would make better guerillas, soldiers and terrorists than big studly Adonises with lots of muscle density who have never caught a cold. Muscle bulk DOES NOT matter when you are using modern weaponry. Arnold S's impressive bulk in violent films is just for looks... Lara Croft tits would be even less useful under war conditions.
So, although this issue is certainly a concern and in some ways an inevitability, it is a far cry from producing a ruling class. It is much more likely to produce a fragile and hated upper class that polarises class consciousness and further polarises the middle class into upper and lower, with no-man's land between (tastefully decorated in Abercrombie and Fitch logos- a trademark which once was known for upper class sporting goods, as much as a century ago, if I'm not mistaken)
Individual vs. the Population: 2 diff. problems (Score:2)
Populations have different criteria for wanting to engineer the person. Perhaps you friendly local government wants to reduce antisocial behavior or learning disabilities or the tendency to smoke rock. And the hell with everything else. Just not their problem whether the the resulting person is fat stupid and short lived or not. Populations really have no interest in individual performance whether that's mandated by science, gov't or evolution. It's simply not important. What is important is that those traits that drag down the population on average be eliminated or reduced. That is, eliminate the sickest or most violent 10% and the average performance of everybody else starts to look pretty damn good. The population as a whole does not benefit if you think your offspring have a better chance when they are right handed, left brained and a have a good golf swing. But the individual can benefit from unique tweaking if that person's parents made the right choices. <Let's hope the ability to make good choices about one's children is a trait that must be left in the pool>.
Anyway that's all I can think of for now.
Regarding the "Hunkapiller Syndrome Survey" (Score:2)
It's possible that 10 years from now, we may talk about him that way, but it's too early now Jon.
Needs a name change (Score:2)
But another syndrome in the ascendancy of trendy diseases is Sensory Integration Dysfunction [ptd.net]!
Have a fun day
Survival of the fittest / Sexual Selection (Score:2)
As subj suggests, used to be "what is perfect" is "what survives to reproduce", or "what gets chosen as a mate for reproduction" - I guess with custom genetics the latter will predominate. I mean, looking at pet cockatiels, I'm wondering: Why do they have that orange dot over their ears? What POSSIBLE contribution to survival does it or other seemingly unimportant features impart? Or is it the result of many years of sexual selection, where cockatiels just prefer mating with other birds with orange dots over their ears? So if someone makes or passes a genetic alteration, it will survive if all potential mates don't scream, "ew, yuck!!" and run away.
Have a fun day
Re:Hacking the zygote (Score:2)
Genetic manipulation is fine and could push humans into the next stage of 'evolution' if you will. That all depends on the society that governs genetical manipulation is 'grown up' and 'civilized' enough to be able to accept it in every day life and not discriminate. Self-modification based on needs of the environment or even person will COULD be a viable future and a healthy one, providing EVERYONE involved is mature enough to handle it properly.
Of course, the Culture novels are an idealistic concept but I think anyone who reads them would see that genetic manipulation is shown to 'work' in those stories as the Culture is sufficiently advanced to be able to handle it properly.
At this stage of the game though, it's anyone's guess what will happen. And more and more people will guess (probably correctly) that there will be problems before there's the 'utopia'.
--
Re:The old-fashioned way will stay preferable... (Score:2)
It's WAY easier to modify the genes of a single cell than to get an entire mass of cells to accept the same modification.
The "genetic therapy" trials that that have gone on involve getting just enough cells to accept and express the gene (two separate problems, both siginificant) to produce some substance or other that the body lacks. Theoretically, then, you could design extra genes to make, say, growth hormone (that don't respond as well to the signals that normally turn off production when the 'normal' level of the hormone is reached) - but then you have to deal with the variable amount of the gene that will be expressed - will the baby be essentially normal, or a severe acromegaly victim?
No, I think 'whole body' genetic therapies will ALWAYS be limited to "getting the body to make just enough of a substance that is completely missing from it to keep the host from suffering severe disease". Cosmetically (as another poster mentioned), you could do things like increase melanin production (or, conversely, produce 'antisense' RNA that inhibits melanin production), but then again, it'd still be hard to keep from getting a "mottled" effect. (Plus, if the government funded any of the research, we might have to listen to Al Gore telling us he invented black people :-) )
Now, vat-grown tailored ORGANS, on the other hand, make an interesting possibility. There you might run into some mild abuses - imagine a tailored liver that produces extra alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, to be used as a replacement liver for a chronic alcoholic. Then again, though, there's the issue of expense. Insurance may cover the liver replacement surgery, but probably not the premium cost of a "special order" liver.
Joe Sixpack is dead!
A couple points... (Score:2)
Secondly: Yes, Gates is the founder of a company that writes checks to thousands of people. But does this fact alone mean that his contribution is a positive one? If you take the position, like me, that Gates is, in fact, a monopoly, you would certainly not see it this way. Gates didn't create the "computer revolution" through some genius. Gates rode it. Worse yet, by stiffling competition, he's significantly reduced everyone's wealth (except for MS's of course).
Lastly: I agree with you that it is foolish to paint things in black and white; atleast to the extent that it blinds you and lessens your ability to fight back. This does not mean, however, that people don't do selfish, greedy, and immoral things.
In the case of Gates, I don't think his intentions are malicious per se. Rather, I think his actions are selfishly motivated, actions that many humans might commit in the same situation. What's more, I believe that Gates actually believes a lot of the stuff he says...I've seen it before in others. When you start to lie enough, and repeat it to yourself enough, it becomes truth to you.
As long as they don't merge... (Score:2)
Who is to say what is right? (Score:2)
Jon,
You're making an appeal to morality. Morality on the basis
of what? One of the key problems with our culture's attachment
to postmodenism is that there is an acceptance of moral relativism.
The problem with moral relativism is that there is no objective basis
for determining right and wrong. This means that there is nothing
to which you can philosophically appeal for making a judgement of what
is right (or wrong.)
Ideas have consequences, people!
The outcome of our rejection of moral absolutes provides us with no
compass when it comes to making decisions about genetic engineering,
abortion, and all other issues.
Keep on failing to think through your philosophies and their consequenses.
"When they came for the Jews I did not stand up and fight, because I was
not a Jew.....when they came for me, there was no one left to fight for
me." The issue in that illustration demonstrates that there is a
RIGHT and a WRONG. Moral relativism provides no basis for knowing
right and wrong.
Our culture has been sliding down the slippery slope for 50 years.
Just a few more years of this trend before we collapse under the weight
of our thoughtlessness and selfishness.
Cling to morality with a solid foundation and you will have a basis for hope!
Respectfully,
Anomaly.
paranoia (Score:2)
Potential uses of home genomics (Score:2)
Of course this is all speculative. Any suggestions?
(Remember, I'm always kidding)
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:2)
I have a sad suspicion that some people have so identified with being an "outgroup," being ostracized, that the idea of genetic engineering is threatening. "Oh no, the world has more beautiful stable and happy people, what value is there in being ostracized and thus cooly angst-ridden?"
Technology produces results and repercussions. Let's review those and make our choices. But let's stop whining about changing the world - the world is always changing. Let's make decisions instead of just panicking.
And the point is . . . (Score:2)
We just needed to know about Hunkapiller and why we should know about him. Trying to put a sociopolitical spin on the man's life and work only serves to degrade his achievements by making them part of a screed.
So let's give the guy the credit he deserves, but let's not drag him into rants and screeds, since he obviously deserves better than that.
Re:Microsoft Word rules! (Score:2)
Re:do I want to be surrounded by attractive people (Score:2)
I vote "Yes."
You mean smurfs, don't you?
Most of the world's greatest art and many scientific breakthroughs were made by obsessive maladjusted freaks.
I vote "No".
Kaa
Re:Thank you, Mr. Hitler. (Score:2)
And just how would you know when the world is ready? Do you have a handy metric to measure the humanity's readiness for applied genetics? And who is going to make the judgement, anyway?
Kaa
Re:do I want to be surrounded by attractive people (Score:2)
Not allowing? Where did you get this idea? I was not talking about what should be allowed and what should be prohibited. I just made an observation that a world composed of perpetually cheerful uniformly beautiful people who are always happy because their genetics will not allow them to be any other way doesn't strike me as a good place.
This is not an argument to forbig genetic meddling, far from it. It's more a counterpoint to the possibility of government-imposed mandatory happiness: "No, Ms.Smith, we cannot allow you to bear this baby to term because he is likely to be significantly below average in height and have slight autistic tendencies...". A bit of reflection (and reading of SF) should convince you that left to themselves a lot of people would choose pop-culture stereotypes, but a noticeable minority will choose something that will make an average Joe Schmoe blanch. And that is a good thing, too.
Kaa
Re:What If... (Score:2)
"...you'll understand a lot about the irrational way Americans and American media deal with technology..."
What if we're not American? =P
More to the point Isn't Katz a member of the American Media?
People won't get the message if the media says nothing. People will ignore the message if the media sounds too alarmist. That is true of most communication.
IMHO, as per
J:)
Jon Katz - A.K.A. Jesse Berst (Score:2)
Yet another crusade/devil's advocate piece with all the necessary ingredients to get Slashdot people posting, and the ad-counters rolling over.
Sheesh.
Jon Katz is turning into Jesse Berst - it's the same trick.
"This guy is being compared to the great SATAN, Bill Gates!!!!"
Get over it, Katz. Try some proper journalism for a change.
Simon
I don't think so... (Score:2)
Yeah right, my little sister's still waiting for those nose-ring dividends to roll in...
And since evolution is on a large scale, there's no reason to think that small aberrations will affect the course of evolution.
Again I disagree. Over the course of generations of human reproduction, the numbers would probably fall in the "butterfly flaps wings in Africa, starts monsoon in Bangladesh" range of mathematics. Small changes now can easily multiply their effects over generations. Nothing major in our lifetimes, but we might be a different race 1000 years from now, and the change, for better or worse, will be enabled by this early gene research.
-jpowers
My only fear... (Score:2)
Half Serious: My creators were a couple of stoned hippies who couldn't bother to lie to me about Santa Claus.
Full-on Serious: We are all threatened by any ideology which leads its followers towards intellectual sloth. There is a level of stupidity below which you cannot reason morally, and this is where ideological amoralism starts. The "any price for my faith" concept is just fine as long as you're the one paying it. The second you Bible-thumping halfwits try to take other people's minds and lives as yours to sacrifice, I'm going to be there to call you on it. Example:
It's time we excercised some common sense and put a stop to this madness.
Implication: you have a right to stop someone from doing scientific research which directly and immediately harms... no one. You do not. You DO have a right to keep science from affecting you or your children directly, but not by stepping on someone else's curiosity and free will. Wait until they offer the treatment, then say 'no'. See how easy that is? And no one has to get shot.
I work at a non-profit cancer research organization that tests drugs to help people get well again. All year round I get e-mail off the webpage contact link: "Cancer is God's will, stop trying to change God's plan." Oh yeah? Well, your God made people so their organs go ballistic and eat them alive. That is going to stop. Either He can come down here and fix it Himself, or we'll do it for... ourselves.
We will take responsibility for our own destiny, because there is no morally acceptable alternative. The morally unacceptable alternatives include: letting people die for no good reason at all, letting "nature" push us around, or leaving it all to God's will. There is no fundamental difference in these, when they all result in inaction.
And fear...well, I live right down the street from where John Salvi took an AK-47 to the employees of a women's clinic. I lived in FL when some asshole did the same with a shotgun. Do whatever you want with your amoral, responsibility-denying religion, just don't fucking include me.
-jpowers
Let's put it this way. (Score:2)
Why is giving your children an advantage bad? Why is successsful capitalism a threat to anyone? Let's put it this way.
Capitalism run amok is threatening individual privacy and freedom. You have a choice -- capitalism or freedom. What would you choose? A rich slave, or a poor but liberated man?
Genetic manipulation run amok will allow certain people to be decidedly superior than other people. You have a choice -- genomics or equality. What would you choose? Do you really think that you'll be in the top tier of humanity? What happens when someone else emerges as decidedly (and legally) better than you?
History has shown that when a group of people are oppressed and their liberties threatened, it presages turmoil and bloody conflict. Things that threaten our liberty must be applied with caution and monitored closely, because if they become a dominant force we may no longer be able to stop them, short of a total revolution. Genetic manipulation invites caste systems and prejudice. If it is not applied cautiously and equally to the entire race, it will be a precursor to hatred and war.
You have a choice -- advance into the future at full speed and invite conflict and armageddon, or take it more cautiously and let morality guide our tech. What would you choose?
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:2)
Wrong answer private. Animals do the same thing. They want their offspring to have better chances to survive than other animals. Its the law of nature. Survival. Members of the feline family have been known to eat offspring of other prides to ensure sufficent resources for their own progeny. Do they deserve to live? Its survival of fittest, and always has been. Do my kids "deserve" to survive more than yours? I dont know, thats a moral question. But I will do whatever it takes to make sure my kids will survive, hopefully NOT at the expense of others. However I would be remiss as a parent *NOT* to give them whatever advantages I can.
Yes, animals do the same thing. No need to go as far as the feline family -- primates have been observed killing the children of their competitors in their tribe. It's natural to compete against your own race, to use any means necessary to make sure your genes live on and theirs dies out.
But we're not animals any more. Animals can't alter themselves and their progeny with precision and imagination. Individual animals can't destroy their entire race, or the entire planet, with short-sighted competition and greed.
If we continue acting like animals, determined to get any advantage we can get over our fellows, then there's a good chance we'll all perish -- in designer plagues, in unforseen genetic damage, or in good old fashioned caste warfare. Aren't just just as remiss as a parent if your meddling insures that they and their world die in a bloody conflict?
Re:it's an improper analogy... (Score:2)
first of all there's a million ways to make a cookie, and the directions for doing so are already available everywhere.
The latter statement may be true, but it's irrelevent in the realm of patent law. If patents are being granted for the sole use of an important gene, once discovered, then it doesn't matter that everyone else now knows about the gene and had it concealed in his/her body all along. Patents, by their very nature, prohibit anyone from achieving a certain result, irrespective of how anyone goes about doing so. It doesn't matter that there are millions of ways of putting together a human being so as not to include that gene, since the vast majority of the current installed user base (us) already rely upon that gene's existence. It's concerns like these that make patent reform in this area imperative.
Re:Unregulated?? (Score:2)
As for your second paragraph, well, I just got an apology letter along with a credit on my bill along with a $5 calling card from Hell Atlantic. Hell Atlantic is a big company by anyone's standards.
Natural monopolies are extremely rare. Pick any monopoly that affects your life. Its existance is predicated in government intervention in the market (yes, even Microsoft -- where do you think they got their copyright from?). Yes, companies try to merge to form a monopoly, but without government intervention, the monopoly cannot be sustained.
I don't think consumers (such as you) understand enough about economics to be allowed to regulate it through government action.
-russ
Unregulated?? (Score:2)
True, as far as it goes. However, corporations are regulated by the market. If it doesn't please a sufficient number of people, a corporation goes out of business.
-russ
Re:Unregulated?? (Score:2)
Sure, there are bad ideas. But you can't wave a magic wand and make them go away. You have to produce something which is enough better to justify the cost of switching.
There are no problems; only business opportunities.
-russ
Re:Unregulated?? (Score:2)
-russ
Real question.. (Score:2)
The real question is, is Hunka-whoever a geek who was harassed for being an outsider in a neo-apocalyptic Columbine-esque highschool? This sounds like a job for the open-source youth-driven New Media, Jon.
Re:A pure race (Score:2)
If I know that there is a history of (alzheimers/heart problems/cancer/asthma) in my family, should I not have children, since sometime late in their life, they might have to deal with these problems (assuming no advances in medicine)? I don't think that's the case. Would I anonymously donate my seed without it being accompanied by the proper information. No, I don't think that is right, either.
A family that I know had two children, the second of whom had Cystic Fibrosis. After consultation with their doctor, it was found that the chances of any of their children being affected was about 25%. They went ahead and had a third child, who was healthy, but they took that chance, because of the joys of being a parent, and the fact that they could provide a good life for their children, even if a life was shortened by a disease.
Tough decisions, and a lot of ethics. A perfect race may seem great, but what will we sacrifice to get there?
Re:The Difference between Hunkapiller and Gates (Score:2)
The thing Katz is forgetting in his usual attempts at fear-mongering in the name of editorializing is that as soon as gene sequencing becomes an important social issue--that is, as soon as someone proposes using the results of the HGP to start tinkering with the genome of a baby in a major way--we will get a crash course in who the players in the field are by the press. Just as we got a crash course in who Bill Gates was in '95 when the Feds went after Microsoft big-time for the first time in a press-worthy way.
Just as I'm currently getting a crash course (no pun intended) on the Concord after one crashed in France this morning, by CNBC.
The press doesn't bother telling us about people who aren't currently affecting our lives. But as soon as someone pops onto the cultural radar in a big way--for example, as soon as someone creates a successful fusion reactor (for example), I can guarentee that within 48 hours we will have an in-depth biography of the scientists who successfully created the reactor, the companies and universities who were working on the reactor, the reactions of the existing power companies, and all of the other details ad-nauseum.
Self-important judgemental jackass. Not everybody needs to care about the same things that you do. And those of us who don't are not "wrong" or somehow less intelligent or less morally-concerned than you are. We just lead different lives.
I have to agree. The fact of the matter is that while paranoid people like Katz may have visions of Gattaca dancing in his head, the reality is that the HGP currently only affects the potential long term investment outlook for the large pharmaceuticals. For someone who tends to watch CNBC in the morning (because I can't stomache Regis and Kathy Lee), I actually have heard of many of the players in the HGP--because at least in the relm of the drug companies (and people who may buy drug company stock), it's important stuff.
But just as soon as the results of the HGP affects more than the bottom line of a half-dozen large pharmacuticals, we'll get the in-depth biographies, the timelines, and the movie of the week.
Business vs. Morality (Score:2)
Oh, and if the Government thought something was going on, don't you think they'd step in like they did with MS? People are going to be very careful with things like morality.
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
Re:Thank you, Mr. Hitler. (Score:2)
Genomics is scarey, yes. The only way you will be able to change how the technology impacts your own life is to understand and develop it, not stick your head in the sand. I'd be far more worried about the thousands of Nuclear Missiles that are locked and loaded as we speak than any possible impacts 20 generations down the road from sequencing technology. Personally, I'd be suprised if life, on Earth, anyhow lasts that long. People are violent and irrational animals in groups, and they do horrific things like try and exterminate each other for as long as history has been recorded.
Personally, I would LOVE to know what each gene in my body does. DNA is fascinating; It's life's source code, and we don't even know what the symbols are yet! What we have is a really bad dissassembly and the odd bit of text to figure out what's going on. If there's one thing that makes life interesting to me, it's learning new stuff. And this certainly qualifies.
If our world is ready to stare down nuclear anhillation every single day for as long as homo sapiens contines to breathe on this planet, we're ready for Genetic Engineering. I'd rather see resources spent on engineering human genomes than engineering an airborne Ebola. Which your tax dollars subsidize, along with stockpiles of lots of other biological and chemical nasties. You think Brave New World was bad? Take a look at what a modern aerosol neurotoxin will do to your insides in a few minutes. And the USA is a world leader in "weapons of mass destruction" aka "facilitators of government genocide".
Is this any different than picking a smart mate? (Score:2)
Here's something else. How is genetic engineering any different than picking a mate who's smart, looks good, and/or has a good family health history? Let's think about this: You can spend a lot of money chasing a signigigant other, and in my own current (serious) relationship, one of the factors is that she's good looking, and _very_ smart. If my kids did the same thing, and their kids did the same thing - the result would be the same as if I had imparted genes to them artifically, in that the offspring from these relationships would _undoubtedly_ have a genetic advantage over their peers. We do with with animals all the time.
How is this any different? Money and resources are involved along the way in just the same manner, as is genetic makeup.
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:2)
I live in Canada; But I sure as hell have a Blue Cross card in my wallet just like all my American friends, and if you saw what a trip to the dentist or a few extra tests cost, or glasses, etc, you'd be shocked if it came out of your wallet. We have a two-tier system in Canada. Nobody just wants to call it that.
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:2)
If you want it that way, probably. But there are other choices. BTW, I once read in scientific american that Bangladesh has better health care (for ex. fewer dead babys per 1000 births) than some areas in the USA. Does that make you proud?
I'm Canadian, and our health care is OK, but it's in shambles. And I give near $2,000/month under threat of imprisonment (income tax!) to the Canadian Government to have a system that works, and they piss it away. Privatize it; Get a system that works for poor people; But don't bitch at me when almost half of my income is taxed. Or maybe you americans would like a what, 46% income tax? Huh?
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:2)
Why don't you get off your high horse! What kind of aristocrat are you? Sure, there are flaws to any kind of society, and capitalism's happens to be a separation of haves and have-nots.
I don't know what kind of world you live in. I'm not going to spend my money on your kids. I'm going to spend them on mine, and if that makes the world less equal, tough noogies. I plan on teaching my children the joys of learning and education just as I was, and I'll give them all the tools I have to do that. If I can make them more resistant to cancer, I'll do that too, just as I'll make sure they can go to the best school I can afford. You do the same, we'll toss in a few calls to rand(), and let the best man win. The society gets ahead that way. And who's to say my cancer-resistant offspring won't mate with your intelligence-enhanced offspring to create cancer-resistant intelligent-enhanced kids? People think that the gene pool is small. It's not. Is freaking *huge*. There are enough people on the planet so the gene pool will NEVER be hurt. Ever. Unless we nuke ourselves into oblivion.
But that doesn't mean we have to try to increase that flaw! No system is perfect, "pure" capitalism just leads to greed!
I don't argue this. Life's not fair though, and I'll use all the tools I can to make sure that my kids have a running head start on the evil world.
One of the major tenants of western democracy is equality. Don't try to tell me that you're more equal than others.
I thought that was communism. One of the tenants of western society is FREEDOM. You are free to do what you want if it does not harm others. Equality - economic equality - is fundamentally communinst/socialist in nature. Sure, we're all "equal" - your life is worth no more than mine - but I would bet money our bank account statements are different (you probably have a lot more money than me!). I'll spend resources I have as I see fit, you do the same. Just don't tell me I can't spend them on making sure my kids aren't gimps.
Re:World Wars were about Capitalism? (Score:2)
Wow, WWI and WWII were fought for the sake of Capitalism?
Last time I checked they were about freedom - to choose, something that is tightly integrated with capitalism, e.g. the freedom to do with your economic resources what you want. One of the principles of a democratic state is also a free economy - relatively, anyhow. Although I suppose everyone could vote themselves into a dictatorship, too, which is argueably a situation faced by some nations today. *ahem*
Don't forget, the USSR was one of the Allies in WWII. The millions of Russians who died (the USSR suffered more casualties in WWII than any other country) certainly didn't die for the sake of Capitalism.
No, they died to keep their state free from German advances into eastern europe and Russia.
Am I the only one amazed that people are more concerned about economic systems (Capitalism vs. Socialism) than they are about political systems (democracy vs. authoritarianism)?
I'm more concerned about economic systems because it impacts my bottom line. I've given up on ever being able to do jack about the political system in which I live. A 2-3 party country doesn't give you much choice, period. Unless you're a minority lobby group. *tongue in cheek* As long as the goverment stays outta my face, the man doesn't hassle me too much, my taxes aren't oppressive (getting there, in Canada) I can save my money for an Acura NSX and mutant kids (*snicker*), they can do what they want.
A country can be ruled by a brutal dictator, but if that dictator is friendly to the powerful property owners and U.S. corporations, they're a U.S. ally. That's sad.
This is sad. It's also for the benefit of domestic corporations (I'm Canadian, but the oil/gas/mining corps here are just as bad as their US counterparts).
Re:Eugenics (Score:2)
From Katz' article:
> Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world
> with only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants.
Katz, I just can't let this one pass without comment. Your faith in "democracy" frightens the hell out of me.
This isn't something that anyone should "vote on" - at least not at the ballot box. No politician should be granted the power to tell us what to do with this technology. This isn't about "corporatism" vs. "JonKatzism", it's about self-determination.
And as long as we can keep the lawmakers' hands off our bodies, we'll ALL get to vote on this -- with our genes.
Choose 'em good, they propagate. Choose 'em bad, they don't. Evolution's the ultimate self-regulating system. So the first century of widespread human genetic tinkering will be littered with failures. SO WHAT?
All this talk fundamentally boils down to an increase in the mutation rate, combined with a possible increase in the ratio of beneficial (== more-likely-to-propagate, like bigger brains, breasts, and buns) mutations to harmful (== less-likely-to-propagate, like $DISEASE_FOO) mutations.
The system has functioned for three billion years in the face of more abrupt changes. It's sufficiently robust to handle this. If we screw up, our descendants look back at our mutants and laugh at our naivete. If we pull it off, what comes out 1,000 years down the road may not even be recognizable as human. But if it's rad-hardened, can breathe methane as well as oxygen, and has an IQ of 300, is that really such a bad thing?
Re:Eugenics (Score:2)
to my way of thinking, gene manipulation by parents is just another tool to be used in an effort which is quite old, and not even that powerful a tool, compared to some others.
so, the basic aim here, the one we're worried about, is for parents to make life easier and happier for their children.
now, paper currency does this, and investing does this, and moving to the suburbs does this, and sending the kids to private schools does this, and getting the kid a lifetime subscription to Abercrombie and Fitch Party of Five magazine and online identity boutique does this. Constant innundation by ads causes conformity, but we don't condemn parents for tacit enforcement of the cultural norms for letting kids watch Dawson's Creek. Should we? Maybe, but the assertion that diversity is endangered by the sudden ability to choose genes in a fashion which is more powerful than the long-standing ability to provide a sheltered, culturally homogeneous environment -- it's unproven, at best.
Way i see it, if McDonalds, the Gap, and the Oprah Book Club haven't managed to stomp out cultural diversity, the ability to gene out, say, dwarfism -- i just don't see it.
Nonetheless -- a single authority, a private one, dictating the manner in which this process takes place, that's lousy, but for entirely different reasons.
Re:The Difference between Hunkapiller and Gates (Score:2)
Gene Manipulation - Don't do it! (Score:2)
One interesting point in GM foods is how if you modify one plant, and that plant is grown outside the lab that you've now lost control - those genes can propogate to any plant that a bee decides to carry that pollen to! Oops!
Lets make up an example (not too far from reality). Lets say a monster tomato plant, with genes that give it the ability to resist frost - given to it by an Artic Char Salmon is grown. Lots of tests are done, it works great! The tomatoes are sampled by a large test group - no problems. Looks like everything worked according to plan! So, its time to grow the tomatoes out in the real world, out of the lab now. One day, a bee decides to pollenate the tomatoes. But on a whim, the bee decides to fly waaay down the road to an apple orchard.
That bee decides to sit on an apple tree, and now the fish allergy I have gets triggered when I eat an apple! How's that for a wonky effect - the scientists never saw that one coming! I mean, how could they? The tomato didn't seem to cause people with fish allergies any problems! Thats the problem with not understanding something fully - you can't percieve all of the secondary effects! UNTIL ITS TOO LATE! THOSE GENES ARE NOW 'out there' IN THE WILD! You can't get that bee back, that pollen is spread wild in the wind!
How about recessive genes? How can you possibly understand all of the interrelationships in something as complex as a human being if you can't figure out a tomato?? Cancers, growths, deformaties, defects that might not be present right away, but what about the next generation?
Until we can understand ALL of the effects, primary, secondary and all the interactions, why can't we keep it in the lab?
MONEY! I can grow bigger tomatoes if you just gimme some of those seeds from the lab!
So. What to do. Seems easy to me. Just don't go there.
But that flies right in the face of our societies need to explore, to experiment. Who can we trust to do it right? To experiment, but to keep it in the lab? And making sure that people arn't screwing with human genes - keeping it to plants and animals?
I would argue that we can't trust anyone. I think we should ban the whole mess.
Please show me how my logic is flawed. I'd love to know how we can reap the benefits of genetic modification without screwing up the world we have today.
What is best for an individual is not best for all (Score:2)
If you knew that you'd have an intelligent kid, but they would be motivated toward art instead of engineering? Would you abort them?
You might consider giving your kids a predilection for doing good at engineering good, but what about the rest of society? Will they look toward fashion models? Football players? Actors? How many soccer-mom's are there would would pay thousands for their kids to have the perfect body for playing soccer? Or acting? Or playing football?
Finally, look at the realm of 'disease' the lines for what is abnormal are VERY malleable. After Columbine, wearing black trenchcoats and liking certain music is considered abnormal. Have you ever heard of human growth hormone? It was origionally given to people who had a genetic flaw and would not grow past 4 feet without it. But being taller is a positive trait. Parents with genetically normal, but short, kids were fighting and getting HGH for their kids.
Should you treat being normal, but short, as if it were a disease? Is it ethical to allow parents to experiment on their children?
We have limitations of what parents can do to their children for a reason. To protect them until they can make their own choices. This does break down in a few cases (circumcision), but overall, it's true. If we give people free (genetic) reign to do as they choose, that would be tantemount to sanctioning child abuse.
Furthermore, what might be best for an individual, say a peacock with a longer tail, may not be the best for a group when everyone evolves into long tails where they get eaten and die.
--
who gave Katz a copy of Gattaca? (Score:2)
Hacking the zygote (Score:2)
--
Re:Who is to say what is right? (Score:2)
How many time have we heard this one? Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, isn't it. Everyhting was so much better before. Need I say more than slavery, religious wars, colonisation? I don't think I do.
this isn't a new issue. (Score:2)
Seriously, the issues Katz is raising aren't new. 4 years ago I was at a summer program at UPENN and we discussed the moral and social impacts that this knowledge would have. We also got to talk to Dr. Kaplan, UPENN's resident Ethics dude who seems to be quoted more often than any other ethics dude by newspapers.
The genie is basically out of the bottle and we aren't prepared yet to deal with all of the information we are going to have at our disposal from the sequencing of the human genome. We could very quickly end up in a world akin to the one portrayed in Gattaca. I feel I should make a reference to Brave New World but I haven't read it, so I'll let someone else chime in with that.
We could very quickly be facing a host of problems, but like I said, it's nothing new. Anything from life insurance being denied because your genetic code signifies you are "high-risk" to an employer refusing to hire you due to something unfavorable they find in your genetic code. There has been legislation bandied about to possibly preserve the privacy of genetic testing, so that insurance companies and employers wouldn't have access to your genetic information, but at the same time insurance companies are lobbying so that they will be able to have said information once it becomes available.
I'm not even going to get into the whole Eugenics issue. That's a hideous mess and I simply refuse to go there.
Moller
Re:Eugenics (Score:2)
Aside from the obvious philosophical/engineering arguments about what would constitute a "perfect" human, frankly I'd be happy if I had some kind of genetic defect which made my standard of living lower, and could fix it.
It's that interim period, where you can detect the defect but not fix it, where society is going to struggle.
There is, of course, the problem of deciding whether or not something IS a defect (and possibly WHO gets to decide such things), and what you want to do about someone who disagrees with you.
Re:Hacking the zygote (Score:2)
Frankly, the first thing I want to be able to do if I *could* program my genes, is to build some kind of genetic "ICE" into my cells to prevent OTHER people from changing my genes if I don't want them to...
Re:Hacking the zygote (Score:2)
As for the immune system - it gets compromised by attacks from organisms which were generated by natural evolution - it's certainly not ready to handle stuff which will be "intelligently" designed to get around it. It would probably be intelligent to use the immune system as part of the defense, but we are definitely going to have to build some kind of "authentication" system for our genes which makes it very difficult for "unauthorized changes" to occur.
Whether or not we can accomplish this w/o majorly reengineering our basic genetic machinery is a whole another topic...
spare me the bleeding heart liberalism (Score:2)
So what.
I don't know the genetic history of a woman before I marry her, and I won't marry her on that basis. If I decide to have kids with her, I probably won't know if there are any genetic syndromes in her family that will get passed down to our children. Should I divorce her if I find out that there are?
It's always been a lottery the way we've been doing it for thousands of years. So why should the above sperm bank situation be any different? The counsellor has no ethical business interfering in the lives of the families involved, no matter what she knows about the donor.
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:2)
- Michael Cohn
Re:Oh... (Score:2)
No. Celera is run by Craig Ventner. PEB makes the sequencers that are used by Celera (and everyone else in genome research). Katz used the correct analogy once, then he threw it away.
Hunkapiller's level of importance (Score:2)
Hunkapiller helps people, therefore he must suck (Score:2)
Re:Unregulated?? (Score:2)
Having to do something (trade money for gasoline or paying overinflated prices for CDs) is different from having a choice. There are relatively few choices aside from gasoline for transportation (this is changing, but slowly). The option of going without transportation or using public transportation is of very limited value to a majority of americans.
Getting back to the RIAA, if I don't want to support the RIAA and it's overinflated prices, I then don't buy CDs. However, I am no longer entertained by the artists I do like unless I can find the CD used (rare, and the RIAA tried to squash that) or get it from Napster (illegal and immoral).
Talk about hell... (Score:3)
Philo T. Farnsworth (Score:3)
NO!
The credit goes to John Logie Baird, presumably because he was more charismatic in his presentation!
Farnsworth died in 1971, hardly recognized for his contribution to Television, or fusion research.
It's tragic to me. Did you know Farnsworth even
had prototypes of COLOR TV in the late 20's? How
long did it take to catch up with that? That's a good decade before color film even!
Do we remember Nathan Stubblefield as the inventor of radio? NO! Even though he demonstarted a wireless telephone in 1885! He demonstrated it to
large groups in 1892, and people were impressed.
Bear in mind, Marconi was 17 in 1892...
In 1902, Stubblefield even demonstrated ship-to-shore voice radio.
He died in 1928, broke, and obscure.
Granted, Marconi's contributions to broadcasting went far beyond the proof-of-concept type of work
that Stubblefield did, but...
Stubblefield and Farnsworth were hackers.
Marconi and Baird seem to have had much more
"suit appeal."
Examples abound in the history of technology.
Look at Tesla and Edison. Theremin and Moog.
Jobs and Gates.
The Difference between Hunkapiller and Gates (Score:3)
The old-fashioned way will stay preferable... (Score:3)
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the usual panicky arguments about parents getting together at a clinic to meet with a genetics specialist to start their own private Master Race(tm) are completely silly.
While this type of clinical treatment, when it finally becomes available (if ever) will be a legitimate and wonderful thing for, say, couples with infertility problems or severe heritable genetic disorders who want to have children, I just do not see how:
Will EVER replace the more traditional method:
- In.
- Out.
- Repeat as necessary.
Which is much less expensive and lots more fun for the couple.Joe Sixpack is dead!
Re:The Difference between Hunkapiller and Gates (Score:3)
Certainly some science fiction authors have described near-future scenarios in which hacking genes is as easy and commonplace as hacking computer code is today.
Just like Moore's law affects the computer industry, a similar law (heh. Hunkapiller's law?) affects biotech. Those gene sequencer machines are expensive - like early mainframes - but they are several orders of magnitude cheaper and faster than the old manual techniques for gene sequencing.
If gene sequencing really does turn out to be useful, of course the machines to do it will get cheaper and faster. Since cheaper usually also means smaller... eventually we might very well see gene sequencers that fit on a desktop.
But why would a normal person want a gene sequencer on their desktop? you ask... Well, I don't know. But similar questions were asked about computers. I would not be surprised if everyone has their own gene sequencer in 20 years, and they do all sorts of things with them that we can't even imagine now.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Anyone have the instuction set docs? (Score:3)
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:3)
No. We killed millions of people so that we could have a Democratic system, rather than a fascist one. Democracy was supposed to insure freedom. Now capitalism has evolved to the point where it is threatening that freedom, and people are beginning to realize that run-away capitalism is not mandated by our Constitution.
I'll spend my money and make my kids smarter, better, and quicker. This is the way it is, has always been, and always will be. You're kidding youself if you think otherwise. It just so happens that genetic engineering is the ultimate expression of this phenonomon. We've got lots of problems in society as is; This isn't the biggest. Might it be 100 years from now? Maybe. But I'll make sure my offspring have every advantage I can give them in that world, the same as my parents did for me, and the same as their parents did for them.
Selfishness and greed. Makes one wonder if the human race deserves to survive.
We need to stop thinking about what is best for individuals or for their progeny, and start thinking about what is best for the race as a whole. There are too many things looming on the horizon that can destroy us in toto for us to be squabbling about advantages for the individual.
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:3)
it's an improper analogy... (Score:3)
i mean, you can make the connection if you really want to, but to me, it's a bit of a stretch.
nobody can 'corner the human genome market'.. that'd be like saying you can corner the market the recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
first of all there's a million ways to make a cookie, and the directions for doing so are already available everywhere.
this guy may have the corner on (de?)sequencing machines, but so what? i'm no lab rat, i don't really care. this is a much smaller market than gates goes after, cornering these small markets is not uncommon. if you do some looking around you will find lots of niche software companies that have their respective areas relatively cornered, and i'm sure the same is true for these kinds of mechanical applications.
i think it was just a slow week for jon and he had to try to come up with something sensational, but i think this one was a failure
...dave
Re:A pure race (Score:3)
"Every sperm is sacred,
Every sperm is great,
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate."
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:3)
And that is exactly what is wrong with the current state of genetic engineering. Already, we see on a limited scale the separation between the haves and the have-nots in the world of computing. The white-middle-class-computer-programmer group by far has a huge advantage in life (not that other groups can't succeed; they just have more obstacles). Do we really want a world where those with money are smarter, faster, stronger, and healthier than those without?
Get off your high horse. We do this now and we've done it for centuries. I have better health care, better education and better resources than the people down the street because my parents were educated and have money. I don't want to think about how much all those books cost or how much I spent on computing gear. How much does post secondary education cost in the United States of America, especially the 1st tier stuff?
No, I'll bloody well spend money on my kids, and I'll be damned if anyone tries to stop me, or tries to tax away my advantage. Do you think that the poor schmuck on the street gets the same medical attention you do when HE has a heart attack? Where do you live?
The gap between the rich and the poor sucks. Welcome to a Capitalist society. We killed millions of people in WWI and WWII so we could have a capitalist system. I'll spend my money and make my kids smarter, better, and quicker. This is the way it is, has always been, and always will be. You're kidding youself if you think otherwise. It just so happens that genetic engineering is the ultimate expression of this phenonomon. We've got lots of problems in society as is; This isn't the biggest. Might it be 100 years from now? Maybe. But I'll make sure my offspring have every advantage I can give them in that world, the same as my parents did for me, and the same as their parents did for them.
Re:The Difference between Hunkapiller and Gates (Score:3)
Re:A pure race (Score:3)
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:3)
And that is <b>exactly</b> what is wrong with the current state of genetic engineering. Already, we see on a limited scale the separation between the haves and the have-nots in the world of computing. The white-middle-class-computer-programmer group by far has a huge advantage in life (not that other groups can't succeed; they just have more obstacles). Do we really want a world where those with money are smarter, faster, stronger, and healthier than those without?
IMHO, this is one place where the government <b>must</b> step in and subsidize it when it happens, possibly according to tax bracket or something similar. Gaps between the haves and have-nots are acceptable in computing, but when it comes down to a matter of life, the government has a duty to step in and make it equitable, just as they have a duty to license car drivers.
--
You (and Katz) find freedom distressing? (Score:3)
While I can't think of anything good coming out of pagers squealing and cell-phone conversations in restaurants, libraries and theaters, I think that embryonic prenatal genetic testing can do nothing but good. People will get children with better potential rather than the luck of the draw. Knowledge of the way that certain genes work is all but certain to lead to ways to work around defects; if you can administer a drug to cut the expression of genes on chromosome 21 in the developing embryo and fetus, Down's Syndrome (caused by a redundant chromosome 21) could disappear! That's just one example.
Trying to prevent us from knowing ourselves at the genetic level, and using that knowledge, means throwing away every possible benefit in addition to (maybe) holding off the ills. You can look back into history and see what previous attempts to stop the clock would have done; how would you like a shirt to cost a week's wages? That's what you're voting for when you mindlessly oppose all change. Opposition must be targeted to real problems or it will be neither credible nor effective.
Work for a better world. Vote with your offspring.
--
Simple reason (Score:3)
Re:Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:3)
In fact, every time we are attracted to an intelligent or beautiful individual, we're hearing a genetic call to SELECT good genes to pass on, improving the survival potential of our own. But large chunks of that attraction are also due to the environmental aspect of child-rearing, as well as our own developed intelligence and preferences, so it would be desirable even if inheritance were a total crapshoot.
Consider also that not passing on genes -- even in the form of killing an already-fertilized egg -- isn't just stopping a potential individual from existing. If it were, the argument that "life with an incurable disease is better than no life at all" (what bioethicists call the "gift of life" argument) might be convincing. But these parents will probably have another child, one which might not have the genetic ailment. In this case, you might as well say that having the first child would have been depriving the second of life!
- Michael Cohn
Cheaper? Faster? Well, yes, but... (Score:3)
The costs... well, costs per sequenced base pair are certainly lower, but if you don't sequence a whole genome and don't have a sequencing service handy, manual sequencing is much cheaper and works just fine, thank you. The reason is, that sometimes you just don't want to sequence hudreds of thousands of bases, you just want to see whether you got the right PCR product, whether your mutagenesis worked, what organism does a certain sequence come from. Sometimes? No, not sometimes. Most of the time for most biology labs *those* are the primary reasons for doing the sequencing.
Besides, the method hasn't changed greatly over past few years. I mean, the chemical reactions. They are good, fast, reproducible and applyiable both in automated sequencers and when sequencing manually. But -- come on. Sequencing is not science. It's boring. It gives you basis for scientific work, but that's all. "Landing on the moon", my foot. V2? Not even V2. I don't thing there is a good metaphor for that. After all, it is collecting a really huge amount of data without knowing it. Like, before the Polish broke the Enigma, they had to collect some encrypted messages -- and that's what the genome projects are all about. In our case, the principle of the code seems to be partly known, but the one-time keys have to be broken each day de nouveau. Here the metaphor ends, because finding a working model of a genome complete with the proteome and transcriptome and regulation will be... well, let me put it this way: I wonder whether it will be possible to finish it before the end of the next century.
Cheers,
January
Jon Katz is an Idiot (Score:3)
don't blame dumb americans... (Score:3)
I Couldn't Agree More (Score:3)
People don't concentrate on what's useful or good tech, they'd rather look at eye candy and what M$ tells them to. They don't think about actual technological issues. They seem to forget that when they were kids, they had to go through a boot sequence and didn't have a mouse, now it's "too hard" to even type anything ("Why can't I just click?").
This is more than just technology though. Politics, school systems, sex, drinking, religion, it's all obscured and commercialized and nobody does any real thinking anymore. People say that AI has to behave intelligently, be sentient. I say that most people don't have those qualities, and I could simulate them. I can predict EXACTLY how most people around me will react to anything to the point where if I was manipulative enough, I'd always have my way because I'd just write down a set of instructions and talk the right talk.
It's not just technology, people don't want to think anymore.
We're all different.
Think of the future (Score:3)
From someone who uses PE Bio's equipment (Score:3)
I find the Hunkapiller - Gates analogy a little spurious. As mentioned in passing in the NY Times article, the analogy with IBM of the early 80s is a little more appropriate.
PE Bio's equipment is very popular and most labs that sequence use PE equipment. And... unlike Gate's product, Hunkapillar's product is good. PE Bio does have a near monopoly in the sequencer market, but... sequencers from other companies have a reputation of unreliability (this may not be true, this may be in the past, but the perception exists nonetheless). Is it still a monopoly if the best (or perceived best) equipment has the lion's share of the market?
As for the FUD over genetic testing in Katz's editorial . . . Hunkapillar has no control whatsoever over that. The output of sequencers or other genetic analysis machines is fairly useless until analyzed. If this analysis is done on a Windows PC, do we then blame Bill for genetic discrimination . . . or if the analysis is done on a gnu/linux box do we blame RMS or Linus?
Hunkapillar's interest in Celera gives him some control over genetic information . . . but PE Bio sells their machines to anyone and those machines are entirely out of Hunkapillar's control as soon as they leave the factory.
Celera Genomics is being massively sued (Score:3)
Apparently, Celera announced they intended to reap huge profits from selling licensing fees to access human genome information, apparently contravening their agreement with the Human Genome Project, and they didn't bother to indicate in their statements concerning expected future profits that the HGP is dedicated eventually to making all this information public.
What Celera had in mind was a system rather like Westlaw, where they would essentially hold intellectual property rights over the human genome.
Anyone in their right mind would oppose this fascist, I. G. Farben-under-Hitler-type company from holding some sort of monopoly on the human genome.
The three classes of stockholders suing Celera were understandably pissed, but the lawsuit has brought out some interesting information concerning this frankly evil corporation.
Area Scientist Says Yay (Score:3)
"Starting with Tokyo first," he added.
Re:The Difference between Hunkapiller and Gates (Score:3)
The difference between Hunkapiller and Gates is that no one envisions a world with a gene sequencer on every desktop!
In reality, the problem would be even worse. At least if everyone had a sequencer, they would probably have some control over their genetic information. Of course, it'd probably be something goofy like sequencing your babies' genome right after birth so you can copyright/patent it and then control its dissemenation (legally, at least).
But the way things are shaping, regular people won't have control over their genetic information. Going back to your Micro$oft analogy, it would be more like you send a tissue sample to Hunkapiller.NET, which keeps the information and lets you know of anything it decides to tell you.
That's the root of the problem with knowing a person's genome. It isn't the knowledge itself. Rather, it's control over it. Most (but not all) of the horror stories you hear about (eg being denied health insurance because of a genetic trait) tend to come about because Big Corporations have your genetic data and use it in their best interest.
If only we could have a sequencer on every desktop. I guess we'll have to settle on just doing the first step [slashdot.org] ourselves.
--
"Better dead than smeg."
Re:A pure race (Score:3)
I've heard that said about male pattern baldness, which is particularily distressing.
I mean, I've neither got male pattern baldness (my grandfather died last year, 98 years old, with a veritable mop of white hair), nor do I have any known congenital or inherited predisposition to any diseases. Maybe I speak from a position that I don't fully understand. But come on, let's enjoy those little human failings and vulnerabilities we have. They're what make us interesting.
Having said that, I have a nose bigger than Pinocchio, Cyrano De Bergerac and Nicholas Cage. Combined. In fact, when I'm tired, its sheer mass upsets my center of gravity and makes me fall over. When I sneeze, it's a seismic event; it makes the San Andreas' worst look like a mere sniff. And the expelled winds will remove even the most tenacious trailer parks from any piece of southern Florida real estate. If I breathe deeply inside a car, I can implode the windshield.
And ya know what? I'm cool with it. While I have a very aerodynamic profile, I'm a good looking guy, though I'd never be one of the world's Brad Pitts or John Kennedy Jrs. And for that, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I'm not that good looking, because if I were, I think people might be afraid to approach me, or might brand me a snob. On the other hand, I'm glad I'm good looking. My nose is the division between the two; I've been asked for autographs by people who thought I was either Wil Wheaton or Jerry O'Connell, and, in fact, when I'm facing someone straight on, I look very much like the two of them combined. A quick turn of the head, and they give me a phone number but cease to ask for autographs.
(The other great advantage is the propositions I get in bars. I'm 6'4", and women come up to me. They stare at my nose the way men stare at breasts. They take a look at the size of my hands, then look at the size of the shoes I'm wearing, then look at my nose from as many angles as they think they can without me noticing. Of course, I always notice. A couple of times, I've been asked directly just how big I am... You know. So, things that we perceive as detracting from our appearance aren't necessarily a liability.)
I'm glad to be me, with all my strengths and weaknesses; things that genetic alteration could have changed perhaps at the press of a button in the future, things that would now require immensely painful plastic surgery. Who cares? I am who I am; I'm grateful to be who I am.
Re:A pure race (Score:3)
But because we humans are so goddamn different, we need to contemplate the issue forever. Why? Genetics is something that we control for our benifit, but when we do, we are simply acting as an agent of evolution. We have the power to remove those undisirable from the gene pool, just like animals do by choosing who they mate with. Why is this any different? Do we not belong to the same kingdom? Do our actions present any different options than those posed by evolution?
Suppose we wish to make a minature human, about the size of my arm. We can do it with genetics, or we can do it the same way we created a Chiuaha from a wolf. No genetics necessary.
Most of the people fall into the trap of the "human chauvinist pigs" - when we create something, it is different than when "nature" creates something, because we are not part of nature. It's somehow "dirty" and "unnatural". Well, so is your pet cat or dog.
Just because we have the power to create does not make us dirty, or unnatural. We simply wield the power of evolution the same way that nature wields it. It is not wrong, unless you believe that we are "different", which is a morally immature opinion.
do I want to be surrounded by attractive people? (Score:4)
I vote "Yes."
It us understandable to be surly sometimes.
Where's the evidence? (Score:4)
Of course, this is another article which is meant to raise our hackles and get us ticked off about another subject. Give the Human Genome Project time to really do some work before we decide that "Hunkapiller Syndrome" is totally evil and on it's way.
You really want to get ticked off, read the history of nuclear power and radiation. You'll see the stupidity and viciousness that came through that.
BTW - hey, Jon, if I want to seem tons smarter then everyone else, I too, can come up with a name no one has heard of and try to make people feel dumb. It's a bad tactic - don't use it.
Editorial? (Score:4)
Any hard facts?
Popular genetic changes (Score:4)
The first time someone comes up with a pill with a retrovirus in it that changes your natural hair/eye/skin color, they're going to make billions, genetic engineering will become a widely accepted reality in "fashion conscious society", and the Klu Klux Klan will have a mental meltdown trying to apply their standards of racial purity to a population trying out new "looks" every other week...
Re:Editorial? (Score:4)
Why the comparison? (Score:4)
"This arguably makes Dr. Hunkapiller one of the most important men in the world, since his company controls most of the machinery that makes such mapping possible. It's hard to argue that Gates, for all his billions, will have a fraction of his influence. Cornering the code of the human genome is the kind of monopoly that makes Gates look like a street-corner vendor."
This is point where the whole comparison breaks down. Hunkapillar isn't a corporate man; he's a scientist. Gates wants power and influence, and Hunkapillar wants knowlege. It's a different quest. In fact, check out this quote from a Fox News article [foxnews.com] (Venter is Hunkapillar's business partner):
"Venter says it's not a gene monopoly he's after, but information. In fact, he plans to publish all the company's findings on the genome. By immediately publishing their work, Venter and colleagues intend to make the base knowledge of the human genome unpatentable."
So, they're trying to open source the human genome, not embrace and extend it! This represents a totally different mindset, and simply cannot be compared to Gates' capitalist obsessions.
A pure race (Score:4)
I take it he also felt that it was wrong that his parents should have conceived him, since he would have had a much more thorough life if he had never existed.
He is nothing like this article says. (Score:5)
I am a firmware engineer in Applied Biosystems (formerly PE Biosystems). I was one of the people who developed the 3700 DNA analyzer, as well as a a couple of other instruments before this one.
Mike Hunkapiller is my boss's boss's boss's boss. Four levels. Compare to HP, Microsoft, or even Sun, and you will find that this is a very flat structure.
Hunkapiller sits in 2nd floor on one of the "Bay Towers" (the first two buildings you see on your right as you come west across the San Mateo bridge). In the floors above him are the software development and software product test teams. He sits in a cubicle, along with everyone else. He eats lunch in the cafeteria.
Those groups are going to move out of those buildings and onto the main campus (next to it), yielding more space for our neighbour, Inktomi. Instead, Applied Biosystems has just bought some property in Pleasanton. Mike Hunkapiller is currently lobbying for, and seeing if it is possible, for those people who live in the East Bay and want to work there to move to Pleasanton, and the remainder to stay on the main campus in Foster City.
You get the point. He has fostered a very informal, casual, and respectful culture in this company. People are allowed to enjoy themselves and to be Nice. :-) I.e. trusting, creative, personable. (Except IT, of course). The last employee survey showed that we had one of the highest motivated work force anywhere.
If he was Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison, or even Craig Venter (of Celera), he would be a lot more ego-driven. The company would be made into an image of his mind. We would have a lot more procedures, "employee agreements", and a lot less fun.
I have friends working both in Microsoft, Oracle, and Celera. I know what I'm saying here.
Sorry if I sound a bit exaggerative here. I do really like people like Hunkapillar, and there are plenty of them here. Even if they are a dying breed in corporate America at large.
Yes, Applied Biosystems dominates the market for DNA analyzers. It always has. That has nothing to do with "monopolistic practices" or such rubbish. Mike Hunkapiller, Leroy Hood, and a couple of others, invented electrophoresis scanning. The company has always had the edge, and always made the best equipment. People here want to do a good job. And it certainly has the best field support apparatus.
So, sorry JonKatz, but your sensationalist huff-puff upsettedness about the world (and anything that sounds like a suitable target for your "corporate America" label) is probably best applied to your own pidestal.
And iff you haff doubts about our genuine motifation to help mannkind, vee haff very effektif mezods off deelink witz you. Ve vill just allter your genes to make you look like ze monkey you are.
Healthy, Cheerful, Smart and Attractive - Get Real (Score:5)
Great idea, Jon. Not everybody should be healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive? Are you saying that we should deliberately create sickly, miserable, idiotic, ugly people -- just to AMUSE the lucky ones? Are you saying that if we have the technology to make people's lives dramatically better, we should withhold it from some of them to add a little "flavor" for the rest of us?
I don't know who would resign their children to the fate of being the 21st century equivalent of circus freaks and court jesters -- but maybe you'd like those to be your kids, Jon.
-IT
Why is giving your children an advantage bad? (Score:5)
Other complex issues are already arising from genetic research -- parents seeking "perfect baby" are being given the option of avoiding the conception of children with certain illnesses. On the surface, this is a significant escalation for humanity in the war against disease, yet there has been little public discussion of the moral and ethical considerations. Nobody has voted on whether he or she wants to live in a world with only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants.
First off, I won't get into the fact that sequencing genes is nothing more than effectively counting them. I'm not a genomics wizard but my Dad is (albeit Plant genetics, but, hey). It's an important first step, but this is more akin to the V2 rocket launches by Germany than it is landing on the moon. I suspect this is why nobody has heard of Professor What's-His-Face. That, and he's not the world's (2nd?) richest man, so your comparison sucks, Katz. IMHO, Biologists are too concerned with drawing pictures than looking at ways to engineer life, which is where this research is going. Bacteria are wonderful little machines, as are plants, and their power will be harnessed.
What I'm interested in is why people freak out when you concider applying this to your kids. The obvious one is to concieve many children - fertilize a lot of eggs - and then sequence the genomes and see what good 'ol mother nature did for you. I'd sign up for this in a second; I would not think twice (nor would my current SO) about aborting a clump of cells that is going to have a miserable existance, albeit by my standards, but I'm the one creating that life, not your diety of choice. YMMV.
The best comes when you think about a latter step; Changing the genes of your kids to make them better (tm). Looks don't bother me; The kids can look like their old man, he obviously found a mate. What about intelligence though? Contrary to popular belief, it's hundreds if not thousands of traits that combine to make a good whatever(Engineer, in this case). If I could give an edge here, I will. You're fooling yourself if you think this technology can be stopped, too - because it'll be done in some country, because there's a lot of interest in this.
I've always wondered what would make up for man stopping natural evolution - we're too successful, and it's too slow. I always thought eventually AI would come into the picture, but with the possiblilty of being able to engineer our genes in the next 25 years, maybe government will be bright enough to let us make choices for how we want our offspring be.
Mind you, this tech isn't going to be cheap. But, I'd rather leave my kids improved genetic code (resistance to Cancer, maybe?) than a big chunk of money when I die. That might even be worth saving up for.
Kudos.
What PE is like (Score:5)
First thing you have to consider when making such analogies is that the market of PE and Microsoft is very, very different. It is a little harder to fool a scientist then it is to fool someone buing a home computer. You know, you tell one of them scientist fellas "this is 100% better" and he asks you what did you use as a negative control and where did you submit the paper with the detailed descriptions of experiments. And when you tell him, he actually goes to the library to read the paper, and maybe repeats one or two of the experiments, usually demanding a trial period for your machine or a sample of the chemicals. (Some even say, they do not buy chemicals at all, with all that company representatives in the house. But I'm digressing.)
You keep in mind your goal, you stay in touch with other people using the same techniques, you read a lot. My institute bought recently a quite expensive machine for so-called real time PCR; there are three companies producing such machines, and PE is one of them. Getting opinion, testing the machines, reading etc - I even was to two workshops - took a couple of months before we bought the PE machine. Funny thing is, it had definitely the worse marketing: everybody seems to know about another one, by Roche, which is called LightCycler, and has a mega-cool design, crossed with some piece of a futuristic ST device. PE machine is computer-ivory, takes more space, looks very old-fashioned and you can hardly spot any advertisments for it. It is not much better then the other one and definitely has some weak points (software, for example, is very crappy), but it seems much more -- reliable.
And that's the point about PE. They have a good opinion due to two things. First, the know-how: they are good at it. Technical support which I encountered was always exactly what the name says it is, and the workshop was excellent (however, that by Roche was not bad either, and definitely much more splendid). The other one is, the machines are really, really good. We have one PCR machine that has been working without any problems for the last ten years. A whole genome [www.zmbh.de] was sequenced with that single machine (admittedly, the genome is about 3750 times smaller then the human genome, but 1996 it was the seventh or so genome sequenced). PE PCR machines are quite expensive, so now we are using two by Eppendorff, but if we had that dough...
On the other thing, they are agressive, definitely. And I hate that thing with Celera, which is, IMO, the worst way of doing science. And I don't like anything that is set out only for money (as opposed, for example, to the university, which is set out only for making lives of some grown-up childrens more interesting and buy them more toys. Like, for example, a real time PCR machine). But PE is far, far away from being a monopolist, and the quality of their products is very high. So they are as far from MS as it is only possible for a large, international company (international? did I say international? You want to hear something about MS polish language support?).
Best regards,
January
Re:A pure race (Score:5)
Could you fault this person for choosing not to have children?
To put it differently, if your parents had chosen not to conceive you, perhaps for career reasons, or whatever, would that really be so callous? Would it be murder, akin to abortion or to abandoning you on a hillside once born? Is it wrong for anyone to choose not to have as many children as they possibly can, since they are denying life to the ones who could have been conceived?
There is a mighty difference between saying "I choose not to have children" and saying "I wish I had never had my children".
Re:The Difference between Hunkapiller and Gates (Score:5)
I'm not downplaying the imporance of gene research at all, but is it really suprising that we don't know who this guy is? No - the average american doesn't need to care about it. If I run up to some schmoe on the street and ask him who Larry Wall is, I'm not likely to get a correct answer...but Larry Wall's work has been extremely important to me and that's why I know who he is. But then again, I also don't know the names of people who are working on the computer languages that I may use in the future. Sure, we may benefit from gene research in the future, but not presently.
Katz, in order for Americans to keep up-to-date on what you think is important, they would have to read the same journals and magazines and web sites that you do.
Katz - do you know the names of the pioneers in the field of alternate energy? Probably not...amazing, really, because in a few years, fossil fuels are going to run out and, as far as I'm concerned, that's a really important field of research.
Self-important judgemental jackass. Not everybody needs to care about the same things that you do. And those of us who don't are not "wrong" or somehow less intelligent or less morally-concerned than you are. We just lead different lives.
shame on all of you (Score:5)
this kind of uninformed writing (in journalism and advertising alike) was despised enough by hackers that they invented an acronym to classify it -- FUD. the posts that are represented here, with talk of "perfect babies" and "playing God" and such foolishness speak of a community that obviously is not armed for rational discussion of a serious issue.
there was a good quote by oppenheimer in james gleick's book "Genius", to the effect that as a scientist, he had to believe that to know was ALWAYS better than not to know, even when that knowledge was dangerous. "god created this world, not us" (saw this in a post a bit down). if god created this world (i'm not arguing either way), i doubt that he wanted us to sit here and live in self-imposed ignorance.
it is true that as we probe deeper into the heart of nature, we progressively become more of a danger to ourselves. but with this loss of innocence, we become closer to finally being masters of our own lives, and to really understanding our place in the working of all things.
"perfect babies" (i also saw this post elsewhere). you know, you perform your own kind of genetic engineering when you pick a mate with whom to breed -- selected for physical and intellectual attributes which you hope to preserve (albeit in a crude, haphazard kind of way) along with your own traits in subsequent generations. to be able to augment that kind of selection with the ability to delete disease causing genes -- that's great.
sure, there will (eventually) be people who blow a considerable amount of money making their children into blonde-haired, blue-eyed (there is nothing wrong with blonde hair and blue eyes) little volleyball players, but really, for every three or for dozen of those children, someone with real vision is going to have a child who is genetically predisposed for intelligence, wit, and compassion. and against even a handful of such children, those "perfect babies" don't stand a chance for survival. And aside from all of that, my guess is that most people will still elect to reproduce the old fashioned way.
Oh yeah... about the article itself. Having the genetic sequence is like having a billion page book that is written at odd patches in french, spanish, german, bengali, english, and swahili; and worse yet, the book actually contains about one million different storylines, the sentences of which are all woven in and around each other. We have no way of understanding or using this information, and the common conception that there is some gene that controls this or that feature of a person is just plain wrong. for a bare handful of traits, this is true; but many genes code in different combinations with many other genes for widely disparate information, the grouping of which often seems lacking in serious rhyme or reason. And the interpretation of all of that kind of information will take more than superfast computers -- it will take decades of cleverly designed experiements and careful research.
so everyone quit whining and stewing, read that copy of "Future Shock" one more time, and work on teaching yourselves and your children to live responsibly in a world where you might have to have questions about yourself answered that you wouldn't even think to ask. We should work on making ourselves worthy of this kind of power, rather than fearing it, because it is inevitable.
Neither Gates nor Hunkapiller matter (Score:5)
Stop making these people out to be cartoon villains or heroes. The real answer to your question is that being famous is irrelevant to issues of public concern. You seem to be saying that fame or infamy is a measure of one's importance to society. While it may be true that infamous people are well-known, the actual reasons for their infamy are far more important than their 'top-of-mind' rating in focus groups. As others have pointed out, genetics has been widely discussed for several years. People are already aware of the issues -- they only need data to help them understand the risks and benefits of genetic engineering, and you haven't provided any. If you think Hunkapiller should be more famous, perhaps you should get him an agent.