June 12, 2011 9:36 P.M. | by JACQUES ATTALI
For a very long time, we have known that the day would come when genomics
would keep its promises. This required that computer technology advances
were able to release the computing power needed to reduce drastically the
cost of the genome sequencing (plants, animals and humans); and lessons be
learned from the first cloning experiments of a living being and the
introduction of genes from one species to another. This day has arrived. And
the most insane exploits, the dreams and the nightmares, are now achievable.
Thus, a team of researchers from Argentina, who had already managed to clone
a cow capable of producing insulin, has introduced simultaneously two human
genes in the genome of a mammal: a cow received two human genes controlling
production of maternal milk in women; they will allow this cow’s milk to
contain lactoferrin and lysozyme, two proteins very abundant in human milk
and almost absent in cows, improving the assimilation of iron, the
production of red blood cells, the development of teeth and some intestinal
cells in children who will consume them. More importantly, the calves from
this cow will have one chance in three to have the same modified genes.
A priori, this means to make great progress: who can criticize a technique
that will improve children’s health by improving the quality of milk they
consume? Yet, many questions arise: will the milk of such cows be considered
safe? Is a cow thus cloned and genetically modified still a cow, or is she
the beginning of a new species? Does she have a human dimension? Finally,
would consuming her meat be cannibal?
These questions are all the more important that this innovation, apparently
minor, part of a set of much larger mutations, which allow already, and will
allow even more tomorrow, the insertion of human genes into animals and in
working on stem cells, to make animal organs compatible with humans, in
order to have them transplanted. Further still, we will create new species,
chimeras, capable of operating in difficult environments, radioactive for
example, or replace men in battle. And even supreme transgression, to equip
animals with a brain similar to the human brain. A little later, the meeting of
computing science, genomics, nanotechnology and neurosciences will allow man
to create other species, ultra-human, super-human.
Let us not hope to put a stop to it. Unless some unlikely world police,
makes a shrine of the genome, a place will always be found to conduct these
experiments, inexpensive, justifying them by the promise of curing rare
diseases or extending human life expectancy. And even if the West resists
it, emerging countries, from Argentina to China, via Brazil and tomorrow
Nigeria and Indonesia, will welcome desperate researchers. After getting rid
of God, man will have gotten rid of himself.