March
1997
Frankenstein's
Children
Interview with Stuart Newman
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Stuart Newman is Professor
of Cell Biology and Anatomy at New York Medical College in
Valhalla, New York. 15 years ago he co-founded the Council
for Responsible Genetics (CRG), which monitors developments
in biotechnology and biological research and is concerned that
they not be used for destructive purposes.
Q: What particular
dangers were you looking at 15 years ago?
A: The technology that particularly stimulated the organization of
CRG was the new capacity to take genes from one kind of organism, say
a human being or a mouse, and splice it into another kind of organism.
At that time, bacteria were the major host. The idea was to use this
technique as a research tool to amplify certain gene segments, study
them, and then use the techniques to get the bacteria to produce products
that bacteria don't normally produce which might be useful for research
or for the pharmaceutical industry.
Q: Can you give an example?
A: There are certain proteins made by humans - such as insulin for
example - that bacteria don't make. If you put the gene for human insulin
into a bacterium, the bacterium now makes insulin. This has become
the standard insulin, more and more substituted for animal insulin,
in the treatment of human diabetes. The concerns at the time were in
crossing species boundaries and the possibility of releasing into the
environment bacteria that were making things that bacteria do not normally
make.
Q: What was there to be worried
about?
A: It had been known before then that many pathogens have their disease-causing
properties because they mimic some aspect of the biology of higher
organisms. Therefore, they conflict with certain systems in, say, the
human host. So, there was a concern that new pathogens would be developed
by these technologies. Also the prospect for the future was to take
genes from one human and put them into another human, or from an animal
into a human. Back in the late 1970s this was just a theoretical possibility,
and now its something that's technically possible. Gene switching between
species or higher organisms, mice and rats for example, or humans and
mice, now goes on.
Q: But insulin from bacterium seems
to be okay. Why shouldn't other practices be likewise?
A: The people who organized CRG were ready to acknowledge back in the
1970s that there would be some beneficial uses to the technology. There
was just a question of whether it was premature to embark on it because
not enough was known about containment.
Q: Wouldn't the human-manufactured
bacterium be contained in some way?
A: The original intention of the researchers and people commercializing
this was that there would be absolute containment. But people pour
these things down the drain, and there are effluents from the industrial
processes. Although I can't cite any studies because this really is
not something that people are actively doing research on, I think it's
almost impossible to exclude the likelihood that pathogens will appear
because naturally-established bacteria have acquired human genes. I
have little doubt that there are populations of bacteria in the environment
making insulin that were not able to before. It took many years for
the consequences of the chemical penetration of the environment to
be manifested in biological systems; this is going to happen with the
bacterial world.
Q: How come we seem to be so short-sighted
about the possible effects of gene-splicing?
A: Part of it relates to the way heredity has been viewed throughout
history. The standard model we have is a combination of Mendelism and
Darwinism. The Mendelian paradigm, after Gregor Mendel (1822-1884),
is that things are inherited in what some people call a "particulate" fashion,
that there's a one-to-one association between what we now call genes
and particular traits. This is a very deeply set idea, and although
every working biologist would say that this is not exactly the way
it happens for most or many traits, the ones that are studied and therefore
the ones that are fixed in the mind and in the textbooks and in the
popular consciousness are the Mendelian types of traits.
Then there's the Darwinian paradigm. According to this theory, the
diversification that we have in the modern world of living organisms
is the result of small variations, competition between marginally different
organisms on the basis of better adaptation to certain functions, and
then very small evolutionary changes over tremendous amounts of time.
Now I think that this Darwinian paradigm is subject to real question.
I'm not challenging the idea that organisms have evolved from simpler
forms; I think no legitimate modern scientist would question that.
I'm questioning the Darwinian model for how this has occurred.
Q: What are the implications of
this for gene-splicing?
A: It may be that you can remove a gene and things will react in such
a way as to bring about the normal outcome. And that's part of what
this evolution was selecting for: the robustness of the system. But
clearly these are highly integrated systems. With a machine you have
replaceable parts and it's possible to attribute certain effects to
certain causes. Here you're dealing with a highly articulated, integrated
system that has evolved in hierarchies and layers over huge amounts
of time. The idea that one gene will have a very determinate function
in this overall network of interactions is very naive. Moreover, to
try to get at altering the biology of the organism by altering genes
one at a time is very naive and susceptible to accidents, mistakes.
It's just the wrong theory.
Q: It's like fiddling with an ecosystem:
removing one species may not appear to do much damage, but
there may be unforeseen consequences to the balance of the
system.
A: Yes. The reason for the parallel is that both the human body and
an ecosystem are generated by a historical process. If you look at
the insides of a television set or the inside of a computer you don't
really have to understand the history that led up to various design
features in order to understand what the different parts are doing.
But if you look at the kind of system that the human body is, or the
ecosystem is, the elements that make it up have taken on their roles
at different points in the system. Therefore the complexity is of a
different type than the complexity of a piece of machinery like a computer.
Q: So what role does this outdated
thinking play in your concerns for the future?
A: What you see more and more are proposals to use the results of gene
technology to get at various human diseases and things that are considered
by some people to be undesirable, and therefore defined as disease
states. For example, obesity or short stature or something like that.
If we have this sense, which I think is a false sense, that we're able
to manipulate genes and know the connection between genes and traits,
we'll basically be trying to attain some kind of perfectibility by
manipulating genes. That's the extreme of this genetic ideology. But
even if you take a more modest view, where you say there are certain
things that we can all agree are diseases: is it therefore desirable
to use these genetic techniques to design individuals who will be free
of these diseases? Even there I consider that there's a real downside,
and there are certain things that shouldn't done, lines that shouldn't
be crossed.
Q: Because of the interconnectedness
of genes?
A: Yes, that's right. I think we really don't have a scientific theory
that would allow us to do it in a really predictable fashion. We don't
have any social organization - and I don't think we should - that would
say that if the experiment didn't work that this person be removed
from the breeding pool of the population. That would be awful. I think
the ethical problems, the technical problems, and the prospects of
creating new diseases undermine any the justification for doing this
germ-line modification procedure, I would say, indefinitely.
Q: How confident are you that your
particular concerns are going either to become law through
Congress or accepted by the larger scientific community or
bioindustry?
A: I don't see much evidence that my concerns about this and the concerns
of many other people will be addressed. I think that in our society
anything that can make money for somebody, if it's technically possible,
will get done unless it's specifically illegal. I don't see any movement
towards making this kind of thing illegal. I've recently seen articles
in reputable journals written by philosophers and people concerned
with bioethics that this is probably in the cards and that there may
be benefits to it. I totally disagree with that. But, that it's in
the cards: it probably is.
Q: Within how many years?
A: Within 10 years there will be attempts to do this, unless there's
a big awakening, a social understanding of this in a largescale way,
and a publicly-expressed revulsion for taking this path. Otherwise,
somebody's going to try it.
Q: There would also be patenting
issues, wouldn't there?
A: Yes. It's definitely a possibility. As we know, human embryos do
not have constitutional protection nor do I think they should. But
because of that particular legal situation, human embryos can be genetically
manipulated. Things that are genetically manipulated can be patented
by existing patent law. And there you have it.
Q: What should we do as individuals
and a society?
A:This kind of thing should be widely discussed. Certainly this is
not typical dinner table conversation, but it's something that will
affect the entire human species if it is done. I think that it has
the weightiness of provisions that we have against racial discrimination
and discrimination based on gender. We have taken certain steps in
our history to abolish things once and for all. I mean it's not up
for debate as to whether we should have slavery, although there was
a time 130 years ago when it was still a matter of debate.
For more information on Council for Responsible Genetics,
contact: CRG, 5 Upland Road, Suite 3, Cambridge, MA 02140.
Tel.: 617-868-0870. E-mail: crg@essential.org
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