Designer People

Princeton University microbiologist Lee M. Silver can see a day a few centuries from now when there are two species of humans -- the standard-issue "Naturals," and the "Gene-enriched," an elite class whose parents consciously bought for them designer genes, and whose parents before them did the same, and so on for generations. Want Billy to have superior athletic ability? Plunk down the cash. Want Suzy to be exceptionally smart? Just pull out the Visa card at your local fertility clinic, where the elite likely will go to enhance their babies-to-be.

It will start innocently enough: Birth defects that are caused by a single gene, such as cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease, will be targeted first, and probably with little controversy. Then, as societal fears about messing with Mother Nature subside, Silver and other researchers predict that a genetic solution to preventing diabetes, heart disease and other big killers will be found and offered. So will genetic inoculations against HIV. Eventually, the mind will be targeted for improvement -- preventing alcohol addiction and mental illness, and enhancing visual acuity or intelligence to try to produce the next Vincent Van Gogh or Albert Einstein. Even traits from other animals may be added, such as a dog's sense of smell or an eagle's eyesight.

What parents would see as a simple, if pricey, way to improve their kids would result, after many generations of gene selection, in a profound change by the year 2400 -- humans would be two distinct species, related as humans and chimps are today, and just as unable to interbreed. People now have 46 chromosomes; the gene-enriched would have 48 to accommodate added traits, Silver predicts in his aptly titled book, Remaking Eden.

We may already be on the path to change the very nature of nature. If you think it's a far-off prospect best left to future generations, think again. On June 26, 2000, with much fanfare, scientists with the taxpayer-supported Human Genome Project (working with the private Celera Genomics of Rockville, Maryland) announced that they had completed a working draft of a genetic blueprint for a human being. Many details still need to be filled in before scientists can build a human from scratch.

Sequencing the human genome requires identifying 3.2 billion chemical "letters" located on the 46 coiled strands of DNA found in nearly every human cell. While researchers now know the order in which DNA is arranged on the chromosomes, they haven't identified all those chemical "letters," which contain the instructions for making the proteins that comprise the human body. About half of the genome sequence is in near-finished form or better; a quarter is finished. The 15-year project is to be completed in 2005 at a budgeted cost of $3 billion, though some of that tax money is spent on other genomic research.

While the implications for longevity, health insurance and discrimination of this milestone achievement have grabbed media attention, the ramifications for the environment -- good and bad -- haven't.

An Accelerating Timetable

How soon will all this happen? Silver believes that by around 2010 parents will be able to genetically ensure their babies won't grow up to be fat or alcoholic, and by 2050 arrange to insert an extra gene into single-cell embryos within 24 hours of conception to make babies resistant to AIDS. It is already possible to insert foreign DNA into mice, pigs and sheep. The obstacles to inserting them in humans are mainly technical ones. At this point in human knowledge, it could lead to mutations. Several techniques are under development to try to avoid that, however.

"For the near and midterm future, we're looking at science fiction. You'd have to be terminally reckless to do that type of human engineering on people [with what we know now]," argues law professor Henry T. Greely, co-director of the Program in Genomics, Ethics and Society at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics.