Look it me! – a poltical message.
It is odd – but speaking as a lay person (but one who recentl, and for various reason had to read a fair amount of biology) what the entire human genome project inspires me wiis nt awe – or fear or even anxiety – so much as that slight fasicatied revulsion I feel when I look at the headlines of Magazines such as Ok! Or Closer. That is the feeloing that things are being infront of me (and arrangd in all too easy brightly colured pictures) which I really have no right to know – a fact that is the case whther I am interest in or not in the knowledge. I mean do I have the right to know what is the extent of the spread of the ‘Viking’ gene through the population – what possble value could I gain form this knowledge? Why xactly am I interested in it? People with this gwene have no visible characteristics – they do not have hormed heads, or a tendancy marked tendancy to annex Greenland – so why does it mattr? And more importantly why am I at all interested.
Before I go I must say to examine this curiousity – I must say that there are rewal problems here. The entire genome project simply eats money – Money that I for one am uncomfortable about being spent in tthis way. After all who can say that it is best spent rearchong one super long and super inert chemical within our bodies? Could the money be better spent say of reasearching other ways we can be fit? The supposition has to be (well for me at least) that there are really three sets of people who are benefiting from the project . Firstly there are the large drug companies –who stand to win in two ways. Firstly it is of course just about possible that new drugs will be found. No I is even probable that many will be found – although I remains absolutely and openly cynical that we really might find a cure for death – and if there was one I really am not sure I would take it – I love life far too much for that. But whether the numbers of drugs found will ever really justify the expense is quite a different matter. But of course th drug companies stand to win even if very few really good new drugs are found – all it needs to make money is the hope. That is as long as we hope that drugs could solve everything – then their product remains in our minds – and something we naturally might turn to , and use – and that is enough to make profit. That is all they need is the belief in sata(n)-drugs – that is is the strange totemic power of drugs – in order to be in the forefront of our minds. After all why diet when you can take a smart fat? – inpite of the fact that the smart fat works less that dieting in nearly all cases, and has many other possible side effects…Come what may the iconic imagae of complex DNA – and the caption the ‘secret of life’ – is just too good news for drug companies for me to view it with any equinamity. The second set of people to really benefit form DNA are of course the profession pundits. Lay people (such it has to be said my self) can take up oppions- and have debates - - moral questions can be raised, ethical problems highlighted, and worried about- an frwak shows (of clones or aging mothers – who will be the unlucky vbay I wonder to have a seventy year old mother ). A corncucorpia of problems and question can be raided – nd puzzled over. At the risk of sounding terribly cynical – it is of course the case that much of the moral furore in being manged by the drug companies (who do so want to be thought of as ‘play God’) – and are willing to pay people loads on money so say it – and worry about – or even to condem it. The stark bottom line is playing god – good or bad sells drugs. And money is the God of many an acdemic…Am I wronghere but I fail to se why the moral(and yet hypothetical) problems of cloning a child should be built up as a burning issue- and yet the far more real problem of drug companies pumping us full of drugs and effecting the water simply and with it our entire natural world? Do we have a moral right to put fertilisers on the field – which give us affordable food and so much free time and yet cause drastic allegoric responses in some…This question is one that feels somehow so much more worth while that the essentially narsicist question of whether we should clone ourselves ( do we really want more).
But all this is almost by the by – it is the third interest group that most worry me – namely the population itself. Here it strikes me that there is a very odd and deeply worrying alliance been formed between those people who need to raise the varst amounts on money needed for the genome project- and our own ‘ photocopy my own Bum’ curiousity. This curiousity of course sells – an sells well The match is a seductive one, and must surely operate on many levels. Firstly he myth of DNA puts everyuone in the postion of spectator in the real action of live – that which happens in our genes. It thereby very neatly and absolutely suspiciously justifies are current instorspective narrcisssms, There are no secrets beyond gossip – and watching bits or pourselves – or ither ‘perform’. If the Victorian age was the age on evolutions- ours is the age of vapid and meaningless introspection – and it is clear that genomics as a displine suits that world so very well.
Secondly though there are substler forces at play. Put simply DNA offers us both a new character in the saop opera that is of lives – and simulatenously a new way to spy.
That is one easily imagine that ‘popular’ genes were etablsihed. Genes that spread though the population (and which were associated with various traits – real or more likely imagined). We can take can then watch fascinating be the spread- fantising about all the tales of sex and violence that are hidden in the story of the spread of genes. Finding out were we fit in the picture of this tale (how long before test-your-self to se if you a horened head drug kits I wonder). We can even take sides; Depening on our own geneti bake ground we can hope that some of genes are passed on – others not ( and test ourselves – accordingly) – the entire thing ends p as some midnless (but enjoyable realtiy game hsow – less big Birther and more Big Gene). How of course we are miles away from such a position – but what worories me is that th e,ogic of the argument surely tends that way. Companies need money. What seels is being nosy and intrusive. Genes offer new ways to be intrusive – so … Well why nit – surely it is innocent fun?
There fore me the real worry about genes is not that we are playing God – in everty generation there are some idiots who fantize about playing God – whatever tha might me0 – it is not thn that we are intruding into big question – matters of life or death –0 but rather that we are not. or rather that we are marketing what really amounts to yet another reality sho ( with a more quixotic casts of charcters, and odder comentatotrs) as some how telling us the menaing to life. Triva very easily after all translates into absolute truth – particularly when big interests are involved. Tgus more than everything I suspewct will be the lasting legacy of the genome