Four articles by the venerable science journalist Sebastian Shaw, from the years 2030, 2040, 2055, and 2070:
January 7, 2030
Facetweet Times "Detecting Genetic Defects Earlier Than Ever" Sebastian Shaw
To
learn more about the latest reproductive screening technology, I
followed a woman I'll call Aspen on her visit to the Obstetrics and
Gynecology center at Mass General Hospital. A 33-year-old professional,
she arrived four days after she ovulated. A technician wielded a device
the size of a hand vacuum cleaner. The business end was a flat plastic
plate the size of an old music CD, and she placed it on Aspen's bare
stomach just above her pubic bone. After 30 seconds the technician
determined that she did indeed have a fertilized egg on its way down
the fallopian tube to her uterus. Aspen was visibly pleased at the good
news.
Her expression turned more somber as the technician
prepared her for the next step. She had not come here for simple good
news -- she was here to rule out bad news that might not be simple.
The
ability to detect genetic diseases in a fertilized egg four days after
ovulation rather than seven days after is not that important to most
women. But to some who are uneasy with abortion, implantation is a key
milestone. If the egg is destined to produce a child with a disease,
then when an egg is just passing through the uterus, it's not so bad to
just let it keep going. Once it has put roots down, it's a harder
choice.
Watson and Crick discovered the double helix of DNA in
1953. After decades of intensive scientific efforts, gene sequencing
became possible. The human genome was first fully sequenced in 2003, a
half-century after Watson and Crick's discovery. This was just one
milestone in a research effort that held high promise for saving human
lives. But fundamental advances have been slow to yield practical
benefits -- many start-ups failed when a marketable product proved to
be out of reach. Now the benefits are clear and significant, and with
the benefit of 2030 hindsight -- 2020 hindsight is a decade behind us
now -- we can see all the obstacles that had to be overcome to move
from sequencing the human genome to practical applications. Now we can
detect most common errors in the human genome early, when abortion is
still possible.
The National Medical Database tells us that in
the US, the incidence of genetic diseases has dropped dramatically. The
ability to detect massive genetic abnormalities such as Down Syndrome
has been around far longer, but now diseases caused by a single errant
nucleotide can be reliably detected in the early stages of pregnancy.
New cases of cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Huntington's, Sickle Cell
Disease and many others are down sharply. They could be virtually
eliminated if two additional conditions were met. One is universal
access to high-quality medical care. The other is the willingness of
mothers to abort a fetus with an abnormality. The second is of course a
moral question, not a medical one. Many women refuse to have the
genetic testing performed; even after a serious genetic disease has
been diagnosed, about 30% of mothers carry a pregnancy to term.
Some
women are unwilling to have an abortion from the moment of conception,
usually on religious grounds. For others, unwillingness rises as the
fetus becomes larger and more developed. Studies show that in practice,
a woman's decision is most strongly influenced by the invasiveness of
the abortion procedure -- and advances in technology have made it less
and less invasive. A 4-month pregnancy can now be terminated with an
hour's procedure under IV sedation and virtually no side effects. The
woman's experience is going into a hospital pregnant, falling asleep,
and waking up with no signs she can detect that she ever was pregnant.
Earlier-stage
pregnancies can be terminated by taking one pill and having a heavy
period -- without even the menstrual cramps that most women before the
year 2023 considered an inevitable monthly occurrence.
Still,
there is a drive for ever-earlier detection. Doctors used to rely on
amniocentesis, but this requires the presence of a fair-sized amniotic
sac. For the past 8 years or so they have needed only a maternal blood
sample to fully sequence a fetus's DNA -- once it has implanted.
Now
nearly finishing clinical trials is a technology that allows DNA
sequencing before implantation. Aspen is one of the patients in the
trials. Having determined that her egg had been fertilized, it was time
for the real test.
The sensor was an impressive belt, six inches
high, an inch thick and weighing about ten pounds. Given the current
state of technology, that is space and weight to hold a lot of sensors
-- the sensing power of 4,000 MRI machines of 2010 vintage. Aspen sat
in an ordinary armchair as the technician wrapped the belt around her
hips. All she had to do was sit still for twenty minutes. After five
minutes, as our conversation tapered off, she elected to read.
Electronic devices interfere with the sensors, so she read a book --
the old-fashioned kind based on Gutenberg technology.
The other
presence in the room was a computer on a cart. Imagine a stack of four
microwave ovens. This enormous computing power is required for an
astonishingly complicated task. Aspen's fertilized egg had by now
divided many times into a ball of cells. The computer needs to detect
the minuscule vibrations of the nuclei of the atoms in that little
ball, and from that determine the exact sequence of 3 billion base
pairs in the simple CGAT genetic code. The mass of surrounding maternal
cells all have the same DNA sequence, a background against which this
tiny ball of cells is a very faint signal. The computer takes advantage
of knowledge of the father's genome, but it is still a very difficult
problem.
Once the test was done and the belt removed, Aspen and
I were ushered into a doctor's office. A minute later Dr. Michelle
Renaud entered, introduced herself, and started talking.
She had
bad news. The ball of cells had a genetic abnormality that was
inconsistent with life. It might or might not implant, but it would not
live long enough to really count as a pregnancy. If Aspen did nothing,
she might conceivably miss one menstrual period. But her body would
shortly flush out this tiny blob of dead cells. Without the test, a
delayed period would just tell her she hadn't gotten pregnant. About a
fifth of failures to conceive during any given month are due to
problems of just this sort. This result had no adverse implications for
Aspen's ability to have a normal baby in the future.
The good
news was that she had no life-and-death decision to make about whether
to bring a child into the world. Her only choice was whether to take a
morning after pill (the newest versions of which have no side effects
at all) or let nature take its course. She took the tiny generic pill
with her and was told she had a day to take it if she wanted. She
scanned a QR-X code with her wristy which would give her access to
further information on the situation in however much depth she wanted.
I
reached Aspen by phone a week later. Asked how she felt about the
experience, she said it was a little disconcerting to think she had
produced something so very defective, but well worth it. She planned to
go back every month until she did conceive a health baby.
I
accompanied three other women that day. Two did not have any fertilized
egg at all and never made it to wearing the heavy belt. The fourth was
a petite 28-year-old redhead I'll call Martha. She is married to a
woman, and was having the test four days after artificial insemination.
She went through her half-hour with the belt and was told she had a
healthy baby. The test's job is to verify that all the important genes
are healthy. But in the process, it inevitably also reveals which
healthy variants of those genes are present. A few of them have simple
effects. Martha wanted to know, and was told she would have a girl with
brown eyes and A-positive blood.
When I followed up with Dr.
Renaud, she reported that for Aspen's defective ball of cells the
underlying technology could reveal the gender, blood type and eye color
it would have had if it had been viable. But revealing those "what-ifs"
was not going to be comforting, so the software is configured in the
factory to destroy that information once a "not viable" diagnosis is
made.
It was no surprise that none of the four patients I
followed that day was on course to deliver a baby with what we usually
think of as a genetic defect -- since the nonviable ones don't enter
our everyday thinking at all. What we call genetic defects are quite
rare and always have been.
When this technology emerges from
final tests and becomes publicly available, scientists predict more
women will choose to have the test and more will abort in case of a
defect. In parallel, the genes for ever-rarer diseases are being
identified. We will continue to hunt genetic diseases towards
extinction.
Another promising technology is in its infancy. It
should be possible to apply the same sensing technology earlier, before
conception. There is no sperm in the picture yet, but the test could
detect the half of the genome that would be contributed by a ripening
egg. If the egg has a defect, the couple might just decide not to
invite any sperm to meet that particular egg, a decision that is
acceptable to most people who are opposed to abortion -- and beneficial
to many women like Aspen who would not allow a defective ball of cells
to implant but would feel morally uneasy about it.
Although no
sperm have met the egg in this test, such a calculation could take into
account the genome of the prospective father. In a fairly common case,
the chances are 50% that he would contribute a gene causing a defect
and 50% that the baby would be normal. A different father might with
certainty contribute a working copy of the relevant gene, guaranteeing
a genetically normal baby.
Facetweet Times "Genetic knowledge, computing power, and humongous data combine to let us predict your baby's adult face" Sebastian Shaw
In
the late 20th century, doctors could tell from amniocentesis whether a
fetus would have Down Syndrome and whether it would be a girl or a boy.
That could be done by just looking at the 46 chromosomes. In the one
case they were looking for an extra chromosome, in the other looking
for a small Y instead of a large X. Only in the 21st century have we
been able to look within the 46 chromosomes at 3 billion base pairs to
find the defects in individual genes. A genetic disease in a newborn
baby today in the developed world is extraordinarily rare. The cases
that do occur are largely confined to children of religious
fundamentalists, including devout Catholics.
But scientists can
find more than gender and defects. Sometimes things go wrong, but most
of the time they go right. Genes determine healthy variation too. A
decade ago it was easy to determine from a noninvasive scan of a tiny
ball of cells the eye color and blood type. Good guesses were soon
possible for height and hair color. Intelligence joined the mix, and
this posed a new problem -- an ethical one. Most people would consider
very low intelligence a defect. But depending on parental expectations,
anything short of very high intelligence could also be viewed as a
defect. There is no clear line between a defect and healthy variation.
The
danger of genetic knowledge leading to eugenics occurred to thoughtful
people long before it became a technical possibility. As a reaction to
recent advances, legislation has been enacted or is pending in many
states that limits the information that doctors can convey to
prospective parents. Given the enormous complexity of prenatal DNA
sequencers, prohibitions have been largely effective in the case that
matters -- when abortion is still a possibility.
But once a baby is born, there are no such restrictions.
We
have heard for some time now of predictions of intelligence, height,
strength, coordination, and running speed, for instance. The
predictions keep getting more accurate.
Then we heard of
predictions of the six key personality traits: openness,
conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and the
recent addition: optimism.
But massive computing power, the DNA
sequences of a billion people, and plain old digital photography are
allowing something quite different: predicting what someone is going to
look like.
I joined Dr. Aaron Singh in his lab at
Carnegie-Mellon University. A short, dark-skinned man with a ready
smile and perpetual twinkle in his eyes, it was impossible to miss his
enthusiasm for his work.
"Here are some examples of what we were
able to do last year," he said, bringing up a series of side-by-side
pictures on his 36-inch monitor. The first pair of pictures was the
same blue-eyed woman with short dark hair. Or that's what I would have
sworn. Maybe they could have been identical twins instead of the same
person. But Mr. Singh told me that the picture on the right was the
real woman at age 26. The one on the left was derived from nothing but
her genome, some very complicated algorithms and a great deal of
number-crunching. My jaw dropped. Next he showed me the same woman aged
backward in time. My eyes saw two pictures of the same 8-year-old girl.
Up next was a pair of African-American men of 52 years. He asked if I
could tell which was the real picture and which the simulation. I had
no idea. He grinned at that, but noted that the level of realism was an
older advance -- the current problem was how to produce accurate
predictions, not simply ones that were realistic in every detail.
These results were astonishing. "That was last year?" I said.
Dr. Singh laughed. "Well, I have to admit I showed you my very best examples. Here are some of the worst..."
They were indeed bad. A broad face and big nose in one case, a narrow face and much smaller nose in the other.
"But what we care about most is the average case. And I'd like to show you the results from our latest study."
More
pairs of pictures came up. For these I would have judged the two people
to be brothers or sisters -- a definite family resemblance, but
different people. I then saw a picture of Dr. Singh and the prediction
based on his genes, and could definitely tell which was Dr. Singh.
Next
I saw a pair of earnest-looking 4-year-old East Asian boys who again
looked like identical twins. "Our predictions are best with children,"
he said. "People naturally diverge from predictions as they get older.
To some extent that's just more genes doing their work differentially,
and partly it's environment. Take a look at these." I saw what I
correctly guessed were the same boy, now at age 45. But those images
looked quite different, one looking well-preserved and the other more
worn down. "We're toying with adding in environmental factors. For
instance, most of our Japanese data is on people who live in Japan --
not surprisingly. But this man actually grew up in New Delhi, eating
New Delhi foods and breathing New Delhi fumes. If we put in our
environmental model, you can see the results." The match was noticeably
better -- now both looked worn down.
I saw pictures of our US President Kyle Connor -- a decent match.
Finally
I saw two pictures of myself -- or me and my predicted alter ego. I had
given him access to my genome in advance of the interview. Looking at
the simulated face was a creepy experience. Who was this other guy? Is
that who I should have been? He actually looked like me -- like the big
brother who the younger one can never quite compete with. Perhaps
sensing my discomfort, he said, "But then there's this," and I saw next
to the real me a much less appealing man -- the dissolute ne'er-do-well
of my imaginary clan.
"That's you on a traditional Russian diet."
I
asked if he could describe the advances -- what had led to the
improvements and what would lead to more. "Schwartz-Feingold Hidden
Markov Models" was the first in a long list. The algorithms are beyond
the comprehension of more than a couple dozen experts worldwide. But I
did get the picture that there were still plenty of interesting ideas
to try and he was confident of further progress.
I tried to
think through what it would mean to have accurate pictures -- to know
what your baby will look like at the age of 50 -- or 90. I asked about
predictions for old people, and I thought I saw his face darken for one
brief moment before it resumed its bright smile.
"Those results aren't so good," he said. "And to be honest, we're not focusing our efforts there."
The
implications for parents seeing their newborn at age 50 were plenty of
food for thought. We have always been uneasy at the prospect of knowing
too much about our future. On the bright side, I figured that some
awkward 13-year-olds could be relieved to see themselves at 21.
Apple Micro-Google Times "The Quest For Uniform Sperm -- How and Why" Sebastian Shaw
I have interviewed many intensely driven scientists over the years, but Dr. Kyle McCarthy stands out.
We
met in his office at the giant medical complex in Atlanta, Georgia. He
is notably clean-cut, and a conservative dresser -- formal Scottish
wear, largely unchanged from the 18th century: kilt, matching sash,
Prince Charlie jacket, and sporran. He is also a devout Catholic.
Church attitudes on homosexuality and the inclusion of women have
softened in recent years, so if there is one thing that defines a
Catholic today, it is an implacable opposition to abortion of any kind.
It is the most fundamental conviction of his faith: human life begins
at the moment of conception, and any human intervention to end that
life is murder. He is not the least apologetic in admitting that it has
driven his life's work.
In the early days, the practical
application of advances in genetic knowledge started after birth. It
was limited to predicting future disease and providing early treatment.
But sensitive scans inside the mother allowed detection of defects in
tiny fetuses. A mother who didn't want a child with a defect could get
an abortion. As technology has advanced, the new life's genome can be
known earlier and earlier. Now it is routine to abort small balls of
cells before they implant.
But Dr. McCarthy has devoted his life
to something else. He wants to change the reproductive workings of the
adult male. He is imaginative and very capable -- the number of
parallel investigations he conducts has eminent colleagues sighing with
envy. He is also aggressive in pushing the envelope. Much of his work
is privately funded by Catholics. He is deeply frustrated by US medical
ethics restrictions, and has been reprimanded for his treatment of
chimpanzees.
In parallel, there are research programs in
countries with much laxer medical ethics and medical ethics
enforcement. Catholic men have volunteered in large numbers. A few have
contracted fatal cancers, many more have become sterile or impotent,
but still they volunteer.
It seems crazy, until it makes perfect
sense. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Catholics believe
that every time a fertilized egg is not allowed to implant and develop
into a baby, it is cold-blooded murder. These are desperate times.
So what exactly is McCarthy trying to do with the male reproductive system, and why?
"It's
really quite simple. For some years now we have been able to analyze
the genome of a woman's egg, and when there is a serious risk of a
genetic disease, the woman may decide not to engage in intercourse at
that time. This is not a sin. We cannot do this with men, because men
emit millions of sperm in each ejaculation. Each one is different. They
each contain half the man's genes, but which half is essentially
random. Among them all, some small fraction carry genetic diseases. We
do not know until the instant that a sperm penetrates the egg whether
he will contribute good genes or defective genes."
"So early detection sounds like a very difficult problem."
"What
we can do is to constrain the meiotic divisions during sperm formation.
When we succeed, the ripening sperm are all genetically identical. To a
large extent this works by killing the other sperm -- 95% of the sperm
die. But the other 5% are the result of meiotic divisions that have
been constrained to an exact pattern. While ordinarily the chances of
two sperm cells having identical genetic structure are effectively
zero, with this experimental drug cocktail tens or hundreds of
thousands undergo identical meiotic division. They are numerous enough
to have a high probability of causing conception -- nearly as high as
an ejaculation from an untreated man."
"So you can now analyze the man's genetic contribution before intercourse too."
"Precisely!
The same technology that allows us to look at the egg's structure
allows us to analyze the structure of the sperm. It is actually easier.
Since there are tens of thousands of identical ones, they stick out
like a sore thumb in the genetic soup inside a man's testes."
"I think I see..."
Dr.
McCarthy is eager to finish the story himself. "So now a couple can
determine before they have intercourse the exact genetic structure of
any baby that God may see fit to bless them with. There should be no
need to ever abort a fertilized egg. Whatever criteria the couple may
choose can be applied before intercourse happens."
"So does this
mean that all a man's children would have his same contribution? That
would mean he could only have all sons or all daughters, right?"
"That
is correct, if it was permanent. But instead, we find that a particular
meiotic constraint lasts only a few days, then it is replaced by
another one. For roughly two days his genetic contribution is fixed,
but then for the next two days it is also fixed, but to a different
genetic structure."
"Very interesting. How is the man treated to make this happen?"
"It
is easy and painless. We can give a man an implant that delivers its
drugs in a consistent fashion for up to several years at a time. No
doctor visits, prescription refills, or doses to forget."
"I can
see that this would be of great interest to devout Catholics. But they
are not the ones having abortions anyway. How could you convince other
men to accept this treatment?"
"Mostly preference. A great many
people are troubled by the prospect of abortion. They may go through
with it anyway, but it bothers them. With this technology they would be
completely free of guilt -- and mortal sin. It will also help Catholics
and others who refuse to murder children to nonetheless prevent genetic
defects."
"So, what stands in the way of bringing this to market?"
"There
are still some issues to be worked out. Most important are the side
effects. As you may know, I am collaborating with colleagues overseas
where human trials have been underway for years. Before we could get
approval for a US trial, we would need to greatly reduce the side
effects."
"And what are these side effects?"
Dr. McCarthy gives a wily smile. "Our overseas colleagues have not been willing to share that data with us."
It
is widely suspected that the overseas operations are completely
controlled by McCarthy, but it's impolite to say that, and I don't want
to jeopardize my relationship with him.
He has good reason to
remain silent. He knows that even if the side effects are eliminated,
public knowledge of what they used to be will interfere with acceptance
of the treatments.
One of the first steps in human drug trials
under standard medical ethics is administration to people with terminal
illnesses to make sure the drug itself doesn't have any
life-threatening side effects. It sounds like he still has to get over
that hurdle.
Some scientists are skeptical that McCarthy's
technique could even work. He admits he does not have a theoretical
basis for his treatment -- in plain language, he has no idea how it
works. However, an independent US lab has found some evidence of this
meiotic restriction effect in rhesus monkeys. It would be wrong to
dismiss Dr. McCarthy.
Exxon Micro-Apple Times "Potential Babies: Making Them Or Grieving For Them" Sebastian Shaw
I
have been covering advances in genetic technology for 42 years now. The
achievements have been many. Genetic diseases have virtually vanished
from the developed world. Down syndrome, other forms of mental
retardation, schizophrenia -- all down sharply. Even psychopathy is
down noticeably, leading to lower crime rates.
Now we face a new
sort of problem. We are seeing the start of a baby boom. The anecdotes
have been building for a couple years, getting much more common in
recent months. But the breaking news is that the United Nations
statistics back it up. They are no longer just anecdotes. How did this
happen?
It is the story of several independent technologies converging.
The
first is the late Dr. McCarthy's work on sperm restrictions. The drug
works. Side effects are now rare, and in contrast some users report a
sense of well-being. Perhaps more surprising is the number of men who
have chosen to be "McCarthyized". Contrary to McCarthy's predictions,
moral qualms about abortions are not the reason men give. There is
instead a psychological benefit: somehow men like the idea that they
are dependable -- reliable. Instead of producing sperm with a
bewildering variety of genetics, they now have control. A man can say,
"Today I'm loaded with brown-eyed girl".
The man's ability to
say that depends on another technological advance -- easy-to-use
affordable devices for sequencing the DNA of his sperm. It's already
widely available, and it will soon be a standard app on wristies. Put
your wrist near your crotch, and the computer knows your half of the
genome if you make a baby today.
A reliable women's version is just now achieving broad market acceptance.
And
it is then a simple matter to produce a full genome from the
combination of egg and sperm -- the particular egg waiting in a woman
at that moment, and the particular batch of sperm waiting in a man at
the same moment.
What's
the problem? To find out, let's visit Steve and Anne. They are a
married couple in their early 30s, and they wanted to start a family.
They had been trying without success for a few months using the
old-style 4-day genetic tests. Twice they had genetic duds, once there
was no fertilized egg at all, and once they were predicted to have a
shy, short boy of average intelligence and a significant chance of
developing schizophrenia. They decided not to have him, but it gave
them pause and they stopped trying for a few months.
Meanwhile,
the last of the new technologies came out -- an affordable home device
for sequencing the genome of a woman's ripening egg. Steve got
McCarthyized and fired up his sperm sequencing software. When the
identity of Anne's egg became apparent, the software would be able to
tell them what baby would result if they simply let nature take its
course. And they increased their possibilities by using an obvious
technique. During the many weeks of the month when Anne was infertile,
Steve started a new routine. Every other day, he read his gametes,
saved the resulting file describing exactly the half-genome, and
collected a semen sample that he froze. Now the software could combine
Anne's fixed contribution with each of Steve's frozen samples in turn,
so they could pick the most promising combination. Looking at columns
of statistics, it was easy to rule out several, but there were two
outstanding ones, both blue-eyed girls. Anne whimsically called them
Amy and Sue.
If the decision process ended with columns of
statistics, it would have been a fairly easy matter to choose the one
they liked best. But a few more clicks and swipes could apply the
standard Singh process to bring any genome to life.
At age 2,
Amy would be gorgeous with wavy blond hair and a bright smile. There
she was at 6, missing her front teeth, dancing around the room with
abandon for all to see. And there she was at 30, a voluptuous young
woman with a mesmerizing speaking voice, most likely in a career
involving entrepreneurship.
Sue would be an equally gorgeous
2-year-old, but with straight brown hair. She was watchful and
hesitant, but she too had the brightest smile when the occasion
warranted. There she was at 6, dancing around the room more slowly but
with more graceful movements. And there she was at 30, an appealing
young woman with a willowy figure, suitable for a career as an engineer
or perhaps a visual artist.
Steve and Anne had fun playing with
different diets and climates, looking at them at various ages,
listening to them talk and sing. They knew from countless
demonstrations just how accurate the modern versions of the Singh
process are.
They were at first delighted, but then delight
turned to unease. They could not have both of these girls. They could
only have one. If they thought ahead to having a second child, Steve's
sperm could be divided into multiple doses, but Anne's egg could yield
at most one baby.
In their brooding they Singhified a couple of
the other combinations. They looked at the child (a boy) who would
appear if they just had sex; that gave him a certain claim on life. He
was only average in intelligence and would have flat feet, but he was
still cute and entirely lovable. Anne felt that he was very handsome at
25. Whatever his merits might be, neither of them really felt like
having sex. They debated just skipping this month.
Eventually
they decided to thaw Steve's contribution to both Amy and Sue and mix
the sperm thoroughly before inserting it where it would hopefully do
its job. In a sense it removed the decision from their hands, but in
another sense it didn't.
It was a "Sue-genic" sperm that won.
They are looking forward to her birth. But Anne tears up as she says
she will always miss Amy. And she's not even just a child who died in
an unfortunate accident. In a very real sense, they killed her.
Now let's join Jenny as she recalls her second date with Bill.
Her
wristy told her she was fertile. Reaching under the table while they
were eating, Jenny surreptitiously took a reading near Bill's crotch.
At a suitable moment she went to the ladies' room and brushed the
relevant wristy controls with her right index finger. And what she saw
was the most adorable boy. Yes, the stats confirmed he would be smart,
strong, outgoing, and a good guy in every way. But it was the image
that affected her so powerfully. He reminded her of her brother, who
she had always adored.
She wasn't sure about Bill as a life
partner, but at a primal level she really wanted that baby. Back at her
place, they had sex -- with a condom, naturally. When she took her turn
in the bathroom afterward, she retrieved the used condom from the
wastebasket, and thought of her son lovingly. She knew that it was
wrong, but on sudden impulse, she put some of the sperm back exactly
where the condom was designed to prevent it going.
It really
wasn't a good time of life for her to have a baby, but she'd manage
somehow. Bill's anger had mellowed to annoyance. He wasn't sure what
sort of a relationship if any he would have with this baby. He refused
to look at the Singhified boy.
"The
Place" used to be an ordinary singles bar, but it has developed a
certain reputation recently. It attracts young men and women interested
in using their genetic apps. It is typically the men who make their
genetic profiles freely available and the women who scan them and
initiate a connection if they feel like it.
Many of the women
are not fertile. They have stored profiles from past eggs, and they
just enjoy the interplay of apps as a topic of conversation. But a
picture of a baby you could have jointly made with someone has a
greater effect than the typical romantic dinner. It has some of the
same bonding effect as an actual baby born to a couple. They can see
who the baby would have resembled, often of course having some visible
features of both.
But some of the women come when they are
fertile. Sometimes it is just for the thrill of dangerous potential,
other times they are actually open to getting pregnant that evening,
and based on later reports, other times they do not really know their
true motivations. But they see many babies vividly depicted on their
wristies. "Baby hunger" is an ancient phenomenon, but when there is a
specific baby who you can almost reach out and hug, it can be a much
more powerful force. Something happens. Pairs have been observed going
into the alley out back for a quick coupling, or even the bathroom.
Other times they end up at one apartment or the other. There has always
been the temptation to forget a condom in the heat of passion, but here
it is magnified many-fold. Also, men have been known to put small holes
in the condoms in their desire to create that cute baby, and women have
been known to go fishing in used condoms like Jenny did.
The result: many pregnancies among a demographic who were having very few before.
Rachel
is almost 15 years old, a girl from a solid middle class family. Her
parents and teachers had always seen her as responsible and sensible.
So had she. Now, at four months, she is just starting to show. She was
just having fun when a friendly 18-year-old boy engaged her genetic
app. She had no idea the effect that the animated little girl on her
wristy would have on her. She quite eagerly lost her virginity. Now she
regrets what she's done. She says maybe she'll give the baby up for
adoption. When I see the glow in her eyes as she looks at her animated
future daughter, I have serious doubts.
Wherever
the genetic apps are used, people are seeing potential babies.
Sometimes they like what they see -- this isn't unusual, since most
children are appealing. Now they are making those potential babies into
real ones at an alarming rate.
The many who resist the
temptation often think with anguish of the babies they have glimpsed
who will never be. Because they were not just theoretical babies. An
act of unprotected intercourse would with high probability have brought
that baby to life.
This is an entirely new aspect of human
reproduction. It is hard to know just how its effect will play out in
society in the years ahead.
A common reaction to this situation
is to get rid of the genetic apps. However the technology is so good
that anyone else can scan your genetic condition without really even
invading your personal space. Imagine yourself a woman. A pair of
attractive men walk in front of you. One reaches his wrist out closer
to your body than was really called for. You then see them huddle ten
yards away and grin at whatever is on their wristies, also glancing at
you. Wouldn't it be sorely tempting to at least have the option of
looking at what they are seeing?
A common female reaction is to
go on the pill. It both guards against impulsive sexual acts and
against heartache from seeing babies that never will be. It promises to
give the pill less of a stigma, so that young girls and single
religious girls may be more likely to go on it. Preventing an emotional
reaction to a possible baby is a goal consistent with moral purity.
We
can predict calls for banning the technology. But the tiny scanners can
be shipped between countries with ease, the apps downloaded with even
greater ease.
We can predict a strong reaction against the
technology from many pundits, think tanks, and organizations. Religious
communities are likely to be prominent among the "anti" voices. The
online communities that define so much of today's social organization
will be bound to weigh in on one side or the other.
But we can
also predict enthusiasm for the technology, acceptance of it, or at the
very least respect for individuals' choices as to whether to use it or
not.
Even going on the pill is no long-term guarantee of
avoiding unwanted knowledge. Researchers are experimenting with
identifying the egg that will become ripe the first time a woman
ovulates after going off the pill. Results are promising. If she
catches sight of a match of that egg with some frozen sperm, that baby
lives as a potential.
A few Catholics have made news with statements that seem to challenge the core doctrines of the church.
Meghan
Murray is a lifelong Catholic, a woman pushing 70 with short gray hair,
not at all petite. She conveys calm. In a recent Atlantic article, she
says the Church's focus on abortion is misplaced. I visited her in her
apartment in Pittsburgh.
She gets right down to business.
"There
is no question that the possibilities uncovered by recent technology
have influenced my views. Other Catholics have criticized me for that,
but they are conveniently forgetting history. Ultimately, it was
science through geology that convinced us the world was not formed a
few thousand years ago. It was science through astronomy that convinced
us the earth was not the center of the universe. It was science through
biology that led us to accept large portions of the theory of
evolution. Now it is science through genetic technology that has
convinced me that abortion must not be the center of our beliefs."
"How?"
"It
has shown us that the essence of life is information, not the present
arrangement of molecules. All of us are moved by the videos of children
who could have been created but weren't. The essence of the child is in
the egg and the collection of uniform sperm. The essence is there as
information. This is as true whether the sperm is in the woman's body
or resting quietly in the man's. It is as true whether a sperm has
actually penetrated the egg or not."
"So are you saying abortion is OK?"
"No,
I'm not saying that. But we have to confront the fact that from the
viewpoint of information, there are innumerable children who can never
be created. Let me show you some."
She brought up on her desktop
display an app that I had seen before. It accepts in real time genetic
scans of women who have hooked themselves in to it. It shows eggs that
are ripe at that very moment, available for fertilization in a woman's
body. It crosses them with the vast collection of stored semen samples
from McCarthyized men. You can specify many parameters. For instance,
you could restrict your display to strong, coordinated men who would
grow to 6'9" or taller, or to those with Black African fathers and
Chinese mothers, or highly intelligent women with the personality type
of CEOs. Such restrictions do not slow the pace of images available for
you to peruse. Meghan had no obvious filters in place and had set the
display rate to a comfortable one second per image.
"None of these people will ever live. Why is it in comparison so vital that a sperm that has combined with an egg should?"
I nodded. I couldn't think of a good reason -- but then I never had been able to before, either.
"Our
Church teaches that ensoulment happens at the moment of conception."
She points to her display. "These people may not have souls, but we
certainly know a great deal about them."
We look at a dozen more
potential people whiz by before she continues. "There is another church
teaching that we should emphasize instead, one whose truth is
reinforced rather than undercut by recent technology. And that is not
to interfere with God's plan. We have no business scanning genomes at
any point before birth."
"That will be hard sell, given how successful we have been at eliminating genetic defects."
"I
know that. Church teachings are often unpopular, but it is a clear line
that can be drawn. Thankfully the world is still united in opposition
to infanticide. Once the baby is born, we can use technology to save
its life or improve its quality of life. Not before."
It's a consistent position. It appeals to many non-Catholics who are disturbed by the parade of potential people.
I
say, "Suppose we take that approach. The Church's teaching on not
interfering with God's plan is also the reason the Church bans
contraception. Yet this is almost universally ignored, even among
devout Catholics."
"That depends on what you mean by a 'devout Catholic'."
"True enough. Let's say it has been almost universally ignored by self-identified serious Catholics."
She
doesn't argue the point, so I go on. "Many religious people could get
behind the idea that we should leave it to God to determine what
properties a baby will have. But humans get to decide whether to have a
baby or not. It's an 'on-off' switch. They can use the 'off' switch by
not having intercourse, by using contraception, or using the
morning-after pill."
I deliberately omit the case of even
early-stage abortions. We both know that once the baby starts to take
on recognizably human form, a different set of issues arises.
She hesitates briefly, then says, "That would be a consistent view that I think would appeal to many people."
"But not you, as a devout Catholic."
"Correct.
My main point is that using or even having information about potential
babies just might be of much greater consequence than destroying blobs
of cells."
"Could that view get you excommunicated?"
She
does not appear very enthusiastic as she says, "These are my private
speculations. I accept that I am in error. His Holiness John Paul IV
and his successors will as always discern God's true plan."
A
good Catholic couldn't disagree with that. But if devout, lifelong
Catholics like Meghan Murray can have profound doubts, others will too.
We can predict a notable exodus from the Church and turmoil among those
who remain.
It's ironic that the late Dr. Kyle McCarthy who lent
his name to McCarthyization was himself a devout Catholic whose passion
was eliminating the need for abortion. I interviewed him back in 2055.
His work has instead undercut the revulsion against abortion by
revealing a more riveting problem. Abortion opponents may view it as a
tragic irony. But if McCarthy hadn't invented his technique, others
would have before many years had gone by. As so often happens, people
failed to predict the consequences of new discoveries.
This
emphasis on information does raise an interesting possibility for
non-Catholics who seek consistent moral rules, one that arose in my
conversation with Meghan. It might be permissible to have an abortion
because you don't want a baby, but impermissible if that decision is
based on any property of the future baby you happen to find out.
Many
are troubled by the images of people -- visible as babies, children,
and adults -- who could have been created but were not. But there are
others who aren't worried about such things. When they want children,
they will pick the one they want most from among many possibilities.
Eugenics
has had a bad name ever since its heyday in the early 20th century. It
brings to mind the killing of undesirable adults, undesirable babies,
or undesirable fetuses. Eugenics also conjures up the idea of a woman
forced to mate with a man based on someone else's decision about a good
match.
What we have here is eugenics with a friendly face. The
choice is entirely up to the woman -- and her partner, if she grants
her partner a say. It's not a matter of killing undesirables. There are
so many potential babies that will never be born that no moral system
can fault us for not bringing most of them into the world -- and what's
more, many of them are mutually exclusive possibilities. It's a
positive process -- I choose THIS baby! -- and not a negative one. Yet
by the unprecedented precision of information available, the potential
looms for a rapid and dramatic change in the gene pool beyond what
earlier thinkers could have dreamed of.
The app that Meghan
Murray showed me has potential far beyond entertainment. A woman can
detect the genome of her egg before it actually ripens. She has roughly
48 hours before the egg needs to be fertilized. She could consult a
national database with millions of sperm samples and choose the one
that will produce the single baby among millions that she wants most.
FedEx overnight is fast enough to bring that baby into being.
The
gap between haves and have nots has been widening for decades. This
technology has the power to multiply such differences a thousand-fold.
We will breed people with extreme traits, and in succeeding generations
the rare genes that contribute to those traits will be far more likely
to co-occur in a single gamete, ready to contribute to further
concentrations of rare genes, resulting in further improvements. New
people who are extraordinarily strong, tall, fast, or graceful might
just be wonders to behold. We will also breed astonishingly intelligent
people. They might give us new technologies or inspire the rest of us
to be our better selves. They also might apply their gifts to control
and manipulation of others for their own ends. They will accumulate
further wealth and power by way of merit.
The technology is not
restricted to the 1% or even the 10%. Anyone in rich countries can use
this technology if they want to. But what about the many who will
choose not to use it? The technology will also be selecting for the
willingness to look at thousands of potential individuals and be
untroubled by not bringing them to life. Consider the mindset of the
parents of these new superbly talented children who weren't troubled by
a potential dancing Amy. They will tend to create a home environment
and convey values so that their children will not be troubled by it
either. Subtle genetic influences are possible as well, though moral
values are mostly unrelated to genes.
My hunch is that
indifference to potential people is closely related to a broader sense
of morality and compassion -- or rather its absence.
And
finally, civilizations rise and fall. If we are faced by some
asteroid-induced decade of winter, what skills will be needed for
survival then? Might it not be the ability to patiently hoe potatoes
all day in cold summers,and huddle in cramped dwellings for months on
end in far colder winters. Key traits might be slow metabolisms, the
ability to pack away ample stores of fat when food is available, and
the ability to tolerate boredom. Those are unlikely to be high on
anyone's list of desirable traits today. Fortunately, the gene pool of
poor nations will retain all the diversity the gene pool has brought
forward for tens of thousands of years. Nature's long-term wisdom may
win out over the inevitable short-term focus of the go-getters of
today. The first will be last -- would be last, or could be last.
Meanwhile,
we can expect some extraordinary people to come our way in the years
ahead. What they will mean for our society is anyone's guess.