Orthodoxy and Genetic Engineering Part II

This is a continuation from an earlier post in which I discussed my thoughts on Orthodox Christianity. I still haven't come to any conclusions, but I think I am going to start checking out my friend's church, Elevation of the Holy Cross, in Sacramento.

Now I am going to focus on another topic that has been flitting about in my brain these days. Envision a world in which the genetic code of every known animal is contained within a computer, and can be ordered by phone. Perhaps you want to have a golden retriever. Just pop the necessary genome* into an egg, and you've got a dog! Truthfully, this idea is not so far fetched. The entire genome of several mammals, including humans, has been sequenced, and most are available on a public database. Once you have your sequence, there are companies that will create constructs** for you containing this particular desired sequence, and these constructs can be taken up by a cell (or animal/bacteria) and expressed. We don't know enough about development or cell-genome interaction to pop an entire genome into a generic cell and see a normal animal develop, but as I have just mentioned, we have the fundamentals down.

The process of taking some sequence of DNA or specific gene and causing it to be integrated into or expressed by a host of your choosing is genetic engineering in its essence. Clearly the technology is powerful and multifaceted in its applications. For example, we can replace viral genetic material with some gene of interest and this will be taken up by a cell with 95% efficiency (i.e. it will almost always work). It is not too far-fetched to imagine using this method to deliver an anti-cancer drug to a tumor cell, for example. The virus that is most commonly used for transfection, as this process is called, is HIV!# We have taken a normally fatal virus and are now using it in a way that could potentially save someone's life!

So genetic engineering has powerful applications. Many of these are good, some could be bad. For an excellent coverage of the ways in which genetic engineering can be misused read Next by Michael Crichton.

The power of genetic engineering scares me. It's not that we are modifying God's creation. We have been doing this ever since we took a wild wheat seed and started growing the plant in fields over several generations. I believe He willed us to have free will in His creation, and though we have made awful mistakes, I don't believe the sin lies in the modification itself. My professor in the biotechnology class I am taking this quarter raised an excellent point when he called the whole GMO^ paranoia nonsense. As he noted, the dog is a genetically modified organism. It does not exist in the wild, yet we don't raise a fit about playing God when a lab runs up to lick our face.

My fear about genetic engineering is regarding the attitude with which we approach its use. As I have mentioned several times, it is a far more powerful technique than any we have experienced before. I fear that we will begin to exploit nature in a far more insidious way than we have done so far. Living things are not simply a bag of molecules that churn out products that are useful to us. We have treated them thus far in such a manner. Just take a look at a factory farm. On the contrary, I believe we are required to be stewards of creation. Of course I don't think a world in which all the animals run happy and free amongst the lush evergreen forests is a feasible or practical solution either.

If nothing else, I believe that we must have a deep respect and understanding for what exactly we are dealing with. Looking at the current trend, I wonder if our culture will soon view life as a sort of genetic Go Fish in which we simply trade undesirable traits for those that we think we want. It doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. There are plenty of people who won't hesitate to spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. With each new technology that comes along, it seems there is a tendency lose contentment and peace, rather than gain it. Take the cell phone. It wasn't too long ago that to own a cell phone was quite rare, and everyone got along fine without it. Now we are almost completely dependent on the technology, along with our GPS, and wireless internet. It goes without saying that this technology is helpful. But we don't need it to be human. The same goes for the power of genetic engineering. It can change our lives drastically, and many of these ways will probably be positive on the whole. But the core of our humanity, the essence of what makes us who we are, this should never come from a technology. Perhaps we may define a technology, but we must never let technology define us.

None of these fears are new, and perhaps they are unfounded. Nonetheless, I think the day where this technology is taken for granted is coming sooner than you might think. If we don't appreciate the awesome power that has been given to us, we will be apathetic, thus more likely to allow it to consume us in a dehumanizing way.

If you are interested in this topic I recommend Biotech Century by Jeremy Rifkin, and Human Dignity in the Biotech Century by CW Colson and NMS Cameron. I have to add a caveat... I haven't actually read the second one, but it looked interesting. So if it sucks, don't get mad at me. If someone has read it, I would appreciate a brief review.
Also check out this Wikipedia article for a great introduction to the basic fundamentals of genetic engineering. This article on lentiviruses (of which HIV is an example) is pretty good too.

*The sum total of DNA that is contained within a specific organism. For example, the human genome is the entirety of DNA contained within all 46 chromosomes. As a technical point, the genome size is considered to be half this amount, since humans, for example, contain two copies of each chromosome and in order for genome size to be compared among species, there must be some standard of comparison.
**A construct is DNA sequence that specifically engineered to contain some trait or feature that you are interested in. Often these constructs will be designed to enter a cell and express some specific trait. In this case, the construct is called a vector.
# or another lentivirus
^GMO, or genetically modified organism, is a term coined by opponents of genetic engineering to refer to organisms containing foreign DNA inserted by non-sexual means.