The Unnatural Selection of Our Species

Torill Kornfeldt, Fiona Graham

Description

How are we supposed to handle these new tools that could end up changing our genetic material?

The advancement of the new genetic technology has hurtled forward at breakneck speed. When the first genetically modified children, the twins Lulu and Nana, were born in China in 2018, it became clear that humanity was facing possibilities that we had, previously, only been able to imagine. With the pair of genetic scissors known as CRISPR, we could potentially choose the traits of our children and avoid ageing and disease. But with that ability comes a new set of risks, forcing us to face hard ethical and societal questions.

Torill Kornfeldt has travelled all over the world to meet the people who are driving the research forward. She has visited fertility clinics in South Korea, oncologists in China who are experimenting on sick patients, and biohackers in the US who want to make the new technology available to everyone. In The Unnatural Selection of Our Species, she examines recent developments in gene editing and what might still be waiting around the corner.

'A book filled with curiosity, but with a sober eye on the risks and dilemmas. Well written, knowledgeable, and engaging – exactly how really good popular science is supposed to be' Gustav Källstrand, Nobel Centre

Praise for The Re-Origin of Species:

'[T]his excellent book, written with a deceptively light touch… raises a number of deep questions and paradoxes about our relationship with nature' The Guardian

'Wondrous tales of futuristic science experiments that happen to be true.' Kirkus Reviews

'[T]he projects Kornfeldt writes about are incredibly compelling.' The New Yorker

Sujets

• Médecine
• Médecine de laboratoire
• Life Sciences
• Medical
• Biology
• Genetic engineering
• Biotechnology
• 454 Life Sciences
• Genetics

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 08 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800313439
• Langue: English

Extrait

Hero, an imprint of
Legend Times Group Ltd, 51 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HJ
[e-mail] | www.hero-press.com
Torill Kornfeldt 2021
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Translation Fiona Graham 2021
First published in Swedish in 2020 by Natur Kultur Published by agreement with the Kontext Agency
The cost of this translation was defrayed by a subsidy from the Swedish Arts Council, gratefully acknowledged
Illustrations: Erik Kohlstr m
Cover design: Sophie Burdess
Print ISBN: 978-1-80031-342-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-80031-343-9
Set in Times. Printing managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Torill Kornfeldt is a Swedish science journalist with a background in biology. She has worked in the science department of Sweden s leading morning newspaper Dagens Nyheter and at the science branch of the Swedish public service radio. There she created the successful radio show Tekniksafari (Tech Safari) on new technology changing society. Her main focus is on how emerging bioengineering and technology will shape our future.
Fiona Graham has a degree in Modern Languages from Oxford University, and has lived in Kenya, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Nicaragua and Belgium. She translates from Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish and German, and is currently the reviews editor at the Swedish Book Review.
Contents
Introduction - A Time of Radical Change
1. A Modern Prometheus
2. Build Your Own Baby
3. Biohackers
4. The Gene Race
5. Storm in a Bowl of Yoghurt
6. Unruly Peas
7. Gene Therapy among Gilded Temples
8. Panacea
9. Avatars
10. A Huge Spider s Web
11. A Modern-Day Horoscope
12. A Place You Didn t Think Existed
Epilogue - Do You Suffer from Freckles?
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Sources and Further Reading
Introduction
A Time of Radical Change
The 2020 Nobel Prize festivities broke with tradition. 1 No banquet in the Blue Hall or dancing in the Golden Hall, no ceremonial presentation of medals by the King of Sweden. Instead, the laureates received their medals and congratulations individually, in many cases from Swedish ambassadors around the world. The festivities are on hold until the pandemic has subsided.
Despite the exceptional circumstances, the two chemistry laureates attracted rather more attention than usual. A Nobel Prize is rarely awarded just a few years after the groundbreaking discovery it honours; in most cases, decades pass before important discoveries have proven their value and conferred the greatest benefit to humankind . Even though the results for which the prize was awarded were only published in 2012, it is already clear that the laureates creation is poised to change the world - and us - in fundamental ways.
The discovery made by these two scientists, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, is actually quite simple: a chemical device developed by bacteria can be turned into a tool that we humans can use. Yet that tool - the gene scissors CRISPR-Cas9 - has transformed our potential future.
The new generation of sophisticated, precise and cheap gene technology has opened up infinite opportunities in medicine, opportunities to cure people and improve their lives. Yet these also involve new risks, as well as concerns about how best to use the technology. And this isn t just about the future: new though the technology is, it has already had a major impact. That was why the Nobel Committee decided to award the prize to Doudna and Charpentier as early as 2020.
During the ten years and more that I ve been working in science journalism, I have witnessed rapid advances in what new research enables us to achieve. We now have the capacity to redraw the blueprint of our own species, along with that of all the animals and plants in the world. We can transform our own genetic makeup and design living beings that have never existed before. Some of these developments are described in my previous book, The Re-Origin of Species .
When I started writing about these scientific advances as a news reporter, I realized that the people I met outside my professional circle were still talking about gene technology and gene-editing as if they lay in the distant future, as if the phenomenon of gene-editing in humans were something that might confront their grandchildren s generation - if that. Most seemed to dismiss the idea as pure science fiction. Yet many of our wildest dreams and our worst nightmares are already scientific reality, or at least well on the way there. Very few people outside scientific circles seem to be aware of this. There is still little or no public debate on the risks and opportunities the new gene technology presents, although it s bound to change our society in many ways.
My aim in writing this book is to depict the rapid developments we are in the midst of and to show their possible consequences. I have tried to sketch these advances while they are happening. To do so, I have made every effort to meet the people in the vanguard of this new field of research. I have interviewed many scientists, as well as patients, activists and parents who want to change their children s genetic makeup. I have visited commercial clinics that provide gene therapy and seen laboratory animals that have been genetically modified in various ways.
To understand all of this, I needed to travel so that I could see the research and its results in situ . I spent nearly a month in China - which is on the way to becoming the world leader in gene technology - and took high-speed trains to different parts of the country. In Beijing I met scientists who had edited the DNA of human embryos; in leafy Hangzhou I talked to cancer patients and doctors experimenting with gene technology as a cure for cancer; and in Kunming, the city of eternal spring in China s south-west, I visited a centre for research on genetically modified monkeys. And there was much more. This journey also showed me clearly how China is flexing its scientific muscles and gearing up to overtake the United States and Europe. The US-Soviet space race has been replaced by a scientific arms race, a gene race. While in Asia, I also met scientists and visited clinics in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
But though China and Asia in general are playing an increasingly important role in scientific progress, developments in this field are not confined to Asia. I visited biohackers in a New York lab who are part of a non-mainstream movement keen to share gene technology with the masses, attended scientific conferences and talked to activists in Boston about who actually gets access to the costly new drugs developed with the help of modern gene technology. I travelled to a fascinating research centre in the countryside just outside Chicago to meet a very special genetically modified pig. This book is a piece of reportage that presents a snapshot of where we are now.
But technology isn t merely a technical matter; it s not just about what scientists do in labs or operating theatres. Technical developments must also accommodate us - human beings, our society and our culture. And our view of both risks and opportunities is formed by our narratives; technical advances have to be fitted into our view of the world. Just over 200 years ago, an adolescent girl sat in a drawing room near Lake Geneva, writing what was to become one of the world s most famous books, a novel that paved the way for a whole new genre. That time, just like the present day, was an era of radical change in which rapid scientific advances were transforming the world. 2 The brilliant young lady was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, whose novel Frankenstein introduced a new way of looking at the possibility of transforming our own bodies. 3 Her story of the bold, curious scientist has become iconic.
Just like the scientist Victor Frankenstein, we face a choice: what do we do with the knowledge and the power we ve acquired?
Like all science fiction, Frankenstein takes an idea and pursues it to its conclusion: what would happen if a scientist succeeded in creating life - if we humans had the same powers as God? The scientific breakthrough is just the starting point: most of the story concerns what happens afterwards. When Victor Frankenstein sees the result of his experiment, he is terrified and flees. He leaves his newborn creature all alone, inarticulate and confused. The creature clearly isn t evil from the outset - it s more like an ingenuous child - but Victor s actions drive it to murder. This is a tale that captures the zeitgeist, the feeling of living in a world where the ground moves under your feet and all established truths have to be re-examined.
The novel has been interpreted and reinterpreted countless times, but what struck me on a first reading was a sense of sadness that so great a scientific advance was wasted and ended in tragedy: of disappointment that Victor s knowledge fails to make the world better. For, despite his egoism and arrogance, I can t help but identify with him. As the old sayings have it, you shouldn t play with fire, and curiosity killed the cat - but I wouldn t have been able to resist experimenting if I d been in his shoes. It s hard not to like someone who is prepared to defy the gods to give humankind more knowledge - whatever the consequences.
For two centuries, the tale of Victor Frankenstein, the reckless scientist, has shaped our v