From: Kharin (kharin@kharin.com)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 05:45:23 MST
Sometime in the future, when the distinction between cosmetologist and molecular biologist has faded and gene shops dot the seedier urban streets like tattoo parlors, the philosophers, moralists and historians of science will try to pin down the moment when the new age began.
Science historians will probably say it started with the discovery of DNA, or the mapping of the human genome. Others will claim it started when Dolly was cloned and it became clear that the tools of biotechnology had moved out of the high church of pure research and into the unpredictable hands of people who bred sheep for profit.
I think the moment is now. And the creature that embodies the escape of biotechnology into the world at large — a movement that will never be reversed — is an aquarium fish that glows in the dark.
Genetically modified GloFish, developed by injecting genes from sea coral into zebrafish eggs, will go on sale Jan. 5 in this country, according to Yorktown Technologies LP in Texas. The GloFish are red in regular light and glow fluorescent red under ultraviolet light. Similar fish, but with different genes for luminescence have been sold for several months in Taiwan.
This is the tipping point, when the world irrevocably turns toward the science-fiction fantasies of writers like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, who envision biomedical technology permeating every corner of the marketplace, from global corporations on down to small-time illegal operations like stolen-car chop shops.
Imagining futures, much less predicting them, is a risky business, but there's a nugget of truth in these fantasies, and that is that once technology reaches the marketplace, it is transformed for mundane and apparently frivolous purposes and spreads everywhere, legally or not.
Many groups and government agencies stand poised to confront abuses in medicine, to protect the food supply and the environment from big agriculture. Meanwhile, who is watching the pet stores? Or the beauty parlors?
The science involved in creating the fish is not new. Genes for bioluminescence were introduced into tobacco plants and carrots in the 1980's. Mice have been made to glow. No doubt humans could be made to glow if parents with foresight knew that one day they would be desperately trying to find their middle school child at a dark and crowded school dance.
The fish were first developed to be indicators of polluted water. Scientists set up the genes for the proteins that produced light to be turned on by the presence of toxins.
The original fish were hobbled genetically to prevent their spread in the wild. And there is not much worry about the new pets creating a new crisis of global glowing. Zebrafish have long been sold without establishing themselves in the wild.
But biotechnology itself cannot be successfully hobbled, despite the best intentions of governments or the self-appointed guardians of our health and food supply. The Center for Food Safety, a private consumer group that has been keeping an eye on genetically modified fish for use as food, has urged the Food and Drug Administration to regulate genetic adventurism like the GloFish project. But it is far from clear that bioengineered pets count as food or drugs.
There is no doubt about the human appetite for modifying the bodies of their plants, their pets and themselves. Witness dogs, cats, parakeets and canaries, pigeons, tulips, roses and plastic surgery.
"I think this is just an expansion of what's always been done with ornamental plants and flowers," said Dr. Lee Silver, a professor at Princeton in molecular biology and at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "It may introduce a lot of people very quickly to the power and wonders of biotechnology."
It may also suggest further advances, or outrages, depending on your point of view. What we do with our own bodies is pretty open territory. Plastic surgery is often, as they say, elective. So, imagine if you will, that you could pay to have genes for glowing in the dark inserted into your own body. How many glowing teenagers would there be? And who would stop them, once they reached age 18? After all, one's own body is one's own business.
"I think there's a distinction between what you do to yourself and what you do to the larger environment," Dr. Silver said. Society looks askance at any attempt to change human evolution or tweak human nature in a way that will be passed on to posterity. But if you could engineer only yourself, there would be few limits.
The technical problems are serious because this is different from using genetic engineering to create new strains of mice and other creatures. To create these strains of mice, scientists start at the beginning, with an egg cell. The difficulty comes in sending genes into the body once it is fully grown to try to get the body's cells to express them. Dr. Silver said this had been tried for medical uses but with little success. "Somatic cell gene therapy is extremely inefficient," he said. It's hard to get the cells to take up genes and express them. Researchers have, however, succeeded in getting mice to take up and express luminescent genes in lung cells.
That's a beginning. And there's going to be big money in cosmetic genetic enhancements once scientists do find a good way to send genes into a human being and get skin, and other cells to express them. Skin may glow, of course. Or people could choose a skin color they like. Baldness could disappear. Fur may make a comeback — one's own fur. Certainly any genes that make one more sexually attractive will find a market no matter what regulations applied.
Athletes, who seem willing to indulge in self-experiment with relatively little concern for their long-term health, would push biotech in another direction. The Olympic Committee would have to look for genetic enhancements for, say oxygen metabolism, buried in the genome. And pets. The pets will be beyond belief. Just find a picture of the hairless sphynx cat to see what we've perpetrated without stirring the genome with our fingers. Then let your imagination run riot.
I'm not suggesting that this is a good thing. But like it or not, the fish has left the barn. This is not going to stop no matter what anyone thinks.
There will, of course, be holdouts — people who cling to the old ways. They'll insist on living with the bodies they were born with, carrying around cairn terriers in little baskets like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." But even if they stay in Kansas, they won't be in Kansas anymore.
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