Undeniable (30 page)

For me, there are two important lessons from humankind's recent experiences with GMOs. They may be good in the short run for upping our food production, and they may make certain foods available to people who would otherwise never enjoy or benefit from those foods, but we don't know—we cannot know—the big picture. What I mean is we
can
determine with great confidence what will happen to the modified organism, i.e. the corncob, the soybean, the canola bean, the papaya, and the tomato. But, we just
cannot
be certain what effect a GMO will have on the ecosystem. We just can't know what will happen to populations of butterflies or even perhaps a population of bats that eats butterflies or the population of fleas that carries the odd bacterium that keeps the population of bats in check, and so on, and so on.

Ecosystems come to be by means of the bottom-up nature of evolution. Natural systems come into existence over thousands of centuries; they end up being extraordinarily complicated. By introducing organisms designed in top-down fashion, there is just a very good (or bad) chance that the designers, the gene-modifying scientists and engineers, will miss something—something subtle but important. So for me, evolutionary theory informs our decisions about GMOs.

In general, natural systems are just too complicated for us to predict the effects of taking genes from one species to another. Instead, we should focus our food-production modifications on those within a species. Hybridizing wheat is great, so long as we do it wheat-to-wheat, working within the framework that evolution has tested for billions of years.

There's another important aspect of the GMO issue for me. When we clear away millions of hectares or acres of land and inundate them with pesticides, the environment is harmed—but the damage is potentially reversible. If we stop using these chemicals, the ecosystem will probably recover. Would that be the case if we introduced a new species that would not have come into existence by natural or hybrid-style breeding? Would nature heal from the negative effects such an organism might have on the environment? It's hard to say. I'd prefer to err on the safe side—not because I'm anti-corporation or anti-progress (not at all)—but because I recognize there's just no way to predict an outcome.

What of the GMOs that are already extant? Well, we'll live with them. They are already being integrated naturally into their ecosystems, even their human-made artificially created ecosystems. Time and the process of evolution will sort out any good or bad ramifications of the food's genes; there's no obvious way to recall them anyway. Meanwhile, instead of continuing our pursuit of extraordinary genes to create extraordinary quantities of food—more than we need in the developed world—let's optimize our farming practices to bring healthier foods to all of us, all over the world.

We have enough good food. We just need to find better ways to bring more healthy food to everyone. If we are choosing our battles, let's pick this one.

 

31

HUMAN CLONING—NOT COOL

If genetic engineering is confounding when applied to crops, it is downright head-spinning when we think about applying it to people. We now have the capability of bypassing natural selection and imposing a very precise form of artificial selection on ourselves. But it goes further than that: Scientists know enough about human DNA that they could, in principle, clone a human being and bypass the entire billion-year evolution of sex. There are a lot of reasons to be excited about these advances, but let me say up front: Human cloning ain't one of them.

Oh I get it. Most of us wish we could do a lot more every day: more chores, more shopping, more writing, more work, more exercise, all of it. To that end, it's a popular theme right now to propose that we clone ourselves. (I find it funny that people who say they don't believe in evolution are often opposed to cloning—not because they doubt it will work, but because they fear it will work too well.) But if you've ever given birth, witnessed a live birth, or simply watched a little film about it, you'll appreciate that cloning people is somewhat harder than it's depicted in ads for financial planning and family vans. Not only is it difficult, it's not what any of us really wants. Cloning doesn't give you a perfect copy, nor is the process instantaneous.

In the plant world, cloning is easy. Think of all those cloned strawberries and grapes. Bananas and potatoes are grown from clones as well. Heck, you can go online and instantly find a DIY guide of how to clone a cannabis plant. Cloning a mammal, any mammal, is a different animal. But starting with Dolly the sheep in 1996, scientists figured out how to do that, too. They've managed to bypass evolution and its stubborn preference for sexual reproduction. Cloning eliminates the variations that are the raw material of natural selection, replacing them with perfect genetic predictability … in principle, at least. At this point researchers have cloned about two-dozen different species. Nobody has cloned a human, yet—at least, no one has admitted to it—but the process would surely work the same way as it did with Dolly.

First you take a cell from one animal and extract its DNA. Then you insert the DNA into the egg or ovum of another animal. If the process works—and a lot of the time it doesn't—the egg takes in the DNA and resets as if it has been fertilized. Put that fertilized egg into an appropriate host, wait through a standard gestation period, and at birth time out pops your clone—your brand-new, crying baby clone. Then you spend a couple decades raising the clone to adulthood. Imagine the petulant teenage years: “I didn't ask to be cloned!”

Contrast that result with the clones in our current commercials, or in a long line of sci-fi movies. In fiction, the clone usually pops out as a fully formed adult. You want more of yourself, so you just somehow make more adults. The real world doesn't work that way. Nobody knows how to make a baby grow into an adult any faster than usual. Then there's also the little issue of nature versus nurture. How could you possibly raise, say, four kids to have exactly the same experiences? Ask anyone who's raised twins, or even met twins. Even more puzzling, how could you raise your clone to be just like yourself? We are all shaped not only by our genes, but also by what happens to us.

Now consider what the fate of a cloned person might be. In our scenario, a person who thought that he or she was a big deal got her or himself cloned. Somebody somewhere was, in this story, able to extract DNA from one of the person's cells, and implant it in a surrogate mother's womb. (I've read articles about women carrying other people's babies for around the price of a luxury automobile.) When this baby is born, he or she would be one genetic step behind his or her contemporaries. He or she would not have the genetic benefit of a new mix of genes, as other (non-cloned) organisms do. The clone would have sidestepped the evolutionary mechanism of sexual reproduction.

This idea that you fall behind when you clone is important. You fall behind in time, in genetics, and in evolution. If people were to stop and just think about that, nobody would even be thinking seriously about making a human clone. Then our lawmakers could relax the controversial laws against cloning research in the United States, and get on with other business. This would, in turn, enable United States' medical researchers to do some basic investigations into the nature of cell genesis, which may lead to new therapies that would improve the quality of life for everyone everywhere.

There are people who object to messing around with human eggs and sperm in any way, based generally on their interpretations of
The Bible
. There is, for example, the strong belief that life begins at the moment a human egg accepts a human sperm and is thereby fertilized. But that's not exactly what happens, or more accurately what has to happen. Once the egg has accepted a sperm and its Y-shaped or X-shaped chromosome, it has to attach itself to the wall of the female's uterus. If it doesn't do that, there will be no baby in the works. After attaching to the uterine wall, the fertilized egg forms a cup shape and three layers. This is “gastrulation” because, if you use your imagination, the cup shape reminds you of part of an intestine. (This business of medical terms based on Greek and Latin is part of why it takes four years to get through medical school.)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but no one in any church would even be able to assert that an egg is viable or not were it not for the scientists with microscopes who studied the details of human eggs and the fertilization process. Certain church professionals go on to claim that they know what an egg does after it's fertilized; this may be a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

I mention this because our lawmakers spend a great deal of time in town hall meetings and on our legislature debate floors considering laws based on the idea that fertilized eggs are the same as people. Entire branches of organized religion seem to be based on the notion. Violent internecine wars have been fought over the assertion that un-gastrulated eggs are people. It's not clear that they are.

I hope it gives some of us pause for thought to realize that fertilized eggs pass right through women into the environment all the time. Put bluntly, un-gastrulated fertilized eggs become sewage. Are the women who produced these cells to be prosecuted for violating some church-driven law? Are they to be tried for involuntary infanticide? What about their husbands, whose sperm perhaps were not active enough to git 'er done? The science is clear; certain church-derived ethics reflect an understanding that's murky at best and just plain ignorant at worst. Perhaps we should be prosecuting people who espouse these views for undermining our economy, as we will surely send medical patients overseas to spend enormous sums of money elsewhere, to places where certain egg-based treatments are available.

The understanding of processes that lead to babies and eventual adolescent algebra students came from basic scientific research. It did not come from ancient texts or scripture. Without the basic research, this odd debate and these extraordinary laws that are intended to legislate or control what goes on in a woman's womb would not be possible. We have debates that are based on centuries-old scientific discoveries. Perhaps a more informed approach would obviate the need for the debates in the first place.

There is a fundamental difference between research based on fertilized eggs and human cloning, even though the two issues often get lumped together. But making that distinction, and explaining why human cloning is a bad idea, is tricky in a country where many people still close their eyes to the lessons learned from evolution. It's been difficult to get even our elected leaders to take the time to grasp the issues at hand. We'll see in the coming years if learning the facts helps our leaders make informed ethical decisions.

There is a great deal more to the ethics or idea of human cloning. The technique frankly holds great promise, but it also may be just too invasive or just plain weird for many of us. Please, consider the following: In recent years, medical researchers have discovered and investigated the significance of stem cells. These are the cells in a fertilized mammal's egg or ovum that divide and divide and become every single cell in your whole body. People often make reference to the “miracle” of birth. Well, it may not be miraculous by nature's standard. After all, animals have been doing it routinely for hundreds of millions of years; but it is absolutely amazing to me all the same.

Once an egg has been fertilized and managed to attach itself to the wall of the uterus and gastrulates (produces the three layers), the next key stage is the development of the “blastocyst,” the sack or sphere of just one hundred fifty cells that is produced by the first few divisions of the single cell that is the fertilized ovum. These cells will divide and divide to become a porpoise, a possum, or a person.

With this understanding of the self-dividing and self-organizing nature of stem cells in the blastocyst, it's not unreasonable to wonder: If a skilled researcher could extract a stem cell, couldn't he or she induce new or regenerative growth in a person who needed a new or replacement organ, for example? This may sound a little creepy, at least at first, but people have proposed doing just that by harvesting an egg and fertilizing it in a laboratory setting, as we do now for in vitro fertilization. Skilled technicians would let the egg divide for the better part of two days and extract the stem cells. These would then be used to help a car crash victim regrow spinal nerve cells. With the aid of such cells, a person with a catastrophic spinal injury might be able to induce his or her own body to grow its own new nerves, and regain the ability to walk. As odd or invasive as it might sound, compare it to cutting people open to put in new heart valves or titanium hips. Those are extraordinarily invasive procedures that have become commonplace in the developed world.

When it comes to the deliberate use of human eggs, they are harvested or extracted all the time, and discarded all the time; that, too, is a part of in vitro fertilization. There are many deeply religious people who object to this. For me, their reasons are arbitrary. An extraordinary number of human eggs go unfertilized—countless unproductive eggs are shed by every single woman on Earth today, and everyone who has ever lived. Imagine a religious imperative to ensure that every dandelion seed reach flower-hood. We'd have a weedy world on our hands. I am just reminding us all that unfertilized eggs, unproductive seeds, and unmet potential are part of the bigger picture of reproduction and, for better or for worse, are the way of the world. This fundamental insight that living things produce a surfeit of eggs and sperm, more than can survive, goes back to Darwin's work on competing populations and figures prominently in any understanding of biology and evolution. For me, this makes every baby that much more precious—
after
the egg successfully develops and a baby is born, not
before
the egg even attaches to its mom. My point of view differs from many other people's, because it's based on the facts of life rather than some suppositions of life.