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All attempts to engineer human biology ride high on promises: They will enable us to predict disease, prevent crime, make our innate nature legible, take control of our own evolution. Here I sketch the longue durée of human engineering. I focus on two twenty-first-century techniques that have drawn much attention, scientifically and publicly. The first, polygenic risk scores for complex traits using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) big data, promises to tweeze nature from nurture and tell our fortunes. Researchers claim to predict wealth, sexuality, educational attainment—any trait you can name—from birth, or even earlier. Historically, such efforts have not gone well. The second, gene editing with “CRISPR,” democratizes genetic engineering in ways that are both exciting and terrifying. Within six years of its invention it had been used on live human embryos. These techniques open up new vistas of human engineering. Or do they? Situating the continuities of scientific aspiration in the context of three centuries of social, political, and economic change suggests both cautionary tales and narratives of at least partial success. Yet the rhetoric and hype around these techniques make them sound like genetic panaceas, like reminders of a benighted past.

Every technology has its history, and this chapter looks at the technologies of animal cloning and how they changed when it became apparent that one could perform some of the medical task of cloning with embryonic stem cells. These stem cells were difficult to obtain (and morally worrisome to many) and a new technology, induced pluripotential stem cells, enabled researchers to transform nearly any cell of the body into an embryonic stem cell. This has brought new worries concerning the ability to manipulate these cells to enhance a person’s capabilities.

Rachel Adams uses a question-and-answer format to extend the conversations she has had with her friend and colleague Alison Piepmeier and to imagine which issues Alison might have tackled, had her friend lived beyond 2016. Rachel believes that Alison would have been wary of such developments in genomics as the commercialization of prenatal genetic tests, direct-to-consumer genetic services, and the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9. She discusses Alison’s likely concerns about how genetic technology can influence society’s perception of disability, identity, and social justice. Rachel considers Alison’s response to conservatives’ continued use of disability to curtail women’s reproductive freedom today. The chapter also describes Alison’s likely concern that the #MeToo movement has overlooked people with disabilities. Rachel assumes that as Maybelle, Alison’s daughter, grows older, Alison’s own experience with a teenager and then an adult would have propelled her toward further examining such issues as sexuality, employment, and independence for people with intellectual disabilities. Finally, Rachel asks whether Alison would have had more to say about the differences between disability and illness and how much Down syndrome can represent other disabilities and how much it is simply one unique characteristic of some people.

This dream-inspired chapter seeks the spiritual meanings of green, the color announcing the living presence of nature. Multitudinous green beings appear in sacred, artistic, and popular traditions, and are all emblematic of Mother Nature-Earth. Familiar greenness signifies the continuous renewal of the energetic patterns that sustain life as we know it, patterns that must be fed or else they dissipate. A new strain of symbolic mutagenic green signposts the Man-made insults that result in the disruption of those ecological patterns. Humans, who have not been so doing, need to feed the green and practice ritual renewal of the patterns that sustain us, though all aspects of lifestyle, work, arts, and ceremony, both private and public.

We are in the middle of a scientific revolution in the biological sciences. In the 1970s scientists discovered ways to cut and paste DNA in a test tube, and then introduce gene ‘constructs’ into first bacteria and then more complex organisms such as mice. This made it possible to, for instance, produce human insulin artificially in bacteria, but also to create genetically modified mice for medical research. But such genetic engineering methods were expensive, time-consuming, and limited to only certain organisms. In contrast in recent years, new ‘genome editing’ approaches, particularly one called CRISPR/Cas, now makes it possible for the first time to precisely edit the genome of living cells from practically any species. Genome editing looks set to revolutionise medical research, clinical medicine, and agriculture, as the rest of this book will explain. But this is only one of the new technologies discussed In Redesigning Life. Others include optogenetics, which makes it possible to activate nerve cells in the brain using light, ‘organoids’, which are created from human stem cells, and have similarities to human organs like the kidney, intestines, heart, and even brain, and synthetic biology, which seeks to create artificial bacteria and yeast chromosomes from scratch and even reconfigure the genetic code. All of these technologies have great potential for improving human society, but they also raise many ethical and socio-political issues and questions about ways they might be misused, which will be explored in this book.

We are currently in the middle of a revolution in the biological sciences. The genome project made it possible to read the sequence of individual genomes, but what was lacking until recently was a way to rewrite particular genes in a living cell in an accurate, rapid, and economical fashion. This is now possible thanks to the invention of molecular ‘scissors’, based on natural mechanisms in the cell, that make it possible to cut the genome at a particular point, after which the cell’s own natural repair mechanisms edit the gene as directed. The most revolutionary of the molecular scissors is one called CRISPR/Cas. This is based on a process discovered in bacteria that normally acts to destroy viruses that invade the bacterium. Reprogrammed, CRISPR/Cas now makes it possible to accurately edit the genome of any living cell of practically any species, for a fraction of the time and cost required by other genome editing approaches. Not only can this approach be used to edit the sequence of genomes but also to switch genes on or off at will. CRISPR/Cas is revolutionising medical research and looks set to do the same for clinical medicine and agriculture. But it is also the source of much controversy as recently a scientific team in China used this approach to create genome edited babies, and in general some people fear the speed at which this new technology is developing and its potential for misuse. These are all issues that are explored in subsequent chapters of this book.

The law and other forms of regulation are important tools in ensuring that the benefits of precision medicines are enjoyed by all society, and that scientific risks and ethical and social concerns associated with these new forms of medicine are appropriately addressed. Though the law appears at times monolithic, it is not permanently set in stone. Nor should it be seen as a single homogeneous mass; rather, there are many diverse components—a ‘regulatory soup’. In the context of innovative health technologies, each new advance is likely to be accompanied by new ethical and social debates, demanding appropriate regulatory responses. This chapter canvasses these issues through the lens of genome editing, which is destined to be the most personalized and precise form of modern medicine. It offers much hope in the treatment of disease, but opens the door to modifications of the human genome that can be passed on to future generations. Currently the law relating to these matters ranges from outright prohibition to less restrictive approaches. There are calls for better and more coordinated regulatory responses, including by leading proponents of the science of genome editing, but finding a global solution is not easy. In the meantime, the regulatory challenges associated with bringing somatic cell genome editing into mainstream clinical practice need more attention. In particular, there needs to be greater focus on the role of law in ensuring distributive justice.

This chapter begins with the discovery of human gene editing, and how the immediate ethical response used the existing weakened barriers. The chapter then turns to a detailed analysis of how an influential report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine advocated taking down the somatic/germline barrier. The replacement barrier proposed by the National Academies is deemed unstable, and in its place this chapter describes a strong barrier located at the median trait in a population. That is, people could modify their children to take them up to the median value on any trait but not above the median. This would satisfy the dominant contemporary value of justice or fairness, which would require the genetically disadvantaged to overcome their disadvantage, but not allow anyone to use genetics to gain advantage over others.

Chapter 9 describes potential disruptive technologies in the 21st century. It covers the expanding area of gene editing, also known as genome editing or CRISPR. It describes ‘wonder materials’ such as graphene and high-temperature superconductors. Three-dimensional printing, also known as 3D printing, is covered in the text. Two materials that have intriguing properties, namely metamaterials and auxetic materials and their properties, are described.

The mathematician Kurt Gödel showed in his Incompleteness Theorem in the early 1930s that there are some statements in mathematics that are true but cannot be proven. Whether statements are true is important in the twenty-first century, an age of ‘fake news’ and alternative facts. Patent documents are true and accurate as they are examined and can be challenged for accuracy. This chapter outlines the patenting procedure. It also highlights the role of patents as a source of information alongside other sources. Accurate and true information is important for people with interests in engineering, physical sciences and life sciences. Patent infringement and patent trolls (non-practicing entities) are described. The following technical areas are grouped together to describe how they developed over time and how they may develop in the twenty-first century: communications, computing including quantum computing, life sciences including gene editing (CRISPR), transport and unexpected consequences of technological change.

Well-studied cases of programmed DNA rearrangements, e.g., somatic recombination in the emergence of specific antibodies, suggest a rubric for specially evolved mutation systems: they amplify the rates of specific types of mutations (by orders of magnitude), subject to specific modulation, using dedicated parts, with the favored types of mutations being used repeatedly. Chapter 5 focuses on six types of systems that generate mutational diversity in a focused manner, often in an ecological context that makes sense of such a specialized feature, e.g., immune evasion or phage-host coevolution: cassette shuffling, phase variation (switching), CRISPR-Cas defenses, inversion shufflons, diversity-generating retro-elements, and mating-type switching. The emergence and influence of these systems relates to the concept of evolvability, here expressed in terms of three types of claims: evolvability as fact (E1), evolvability as explanans (E2), and evolvability as explanandum (E3).

Gene drivers and geoengineering promise great benefits but involve large risks. Yet, no norms govern their use. Both have global effects but could be implemented by governments, private firms, or individuals. There will be commercial and moral pressures to develop and deploy them. Geoengineering would create negative emissions that could mitigate climate change. Except for bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, even research and development on geoengineering would entail substantial environmental risks. Gene drivers would spread altered genes throughout a population, creating ecological risks for non-human organisms and permanently changing the genetic makeup of humanity. The scientific community has proposed principles to guide research and possible implementation of both technologies. Despite widespread agreement on general principles, fundamental disagreement remains between people favoring careful deployment, and those favoring moratoria or a complete ban. Binding treaties are unlikely. Norms based on adaptive management and the common human interest in survival are essential.

DNA is the very core of human existence. The thought of humans manipulating the DNA base sequence of a living thing can be unsettling, disturbing, and sometimes intensely controversial. What are some of the techniques and what are some of the purposes? And what are the concerns? Chapter 10 considers the most controversial use of DNA technology: genetic engineering. It also explores twenty-first century technologies recently developed beyond the “old-fashioned” genetic engineering methods of the 1970s and ’80s. These newer technologies, with curious names, will soon be responsible for putting new products on the market. Synthetic DNA and gene drive are recent additions raising both exciting new possibilities and, simultaneously, old fears. New genome editing technologies, with cool names such as CRISP-Cas9, RNAi, Zinc Finger, and Talens, alter the native DNA in the genome—hence genome editing—and thus forego the need to add DNA from other species or to synthesize entirely. This strategy, say proponents, should quiet the concerns raised from those worried about introducing “foreign” genes from different species. Are you ready?

History is not always written by the victors. Competing histories often become ssbattlegrounds for those who want to declare themselves victors. Emerging from the frontiers of molecular biology, today’s caustic patent dispute over gene-editing technology is being waged partly through published myth-histories. The revolutionary gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 has quickly become a vehicle for patent and priority controversies to determine who cashes in on billions of dollars in licensing fees, a Nobel Prize, and scientific immortality. This chapter examines competing myth-histories in the context of larger socioeconomic forces, as well as the lack of an international regime of ethical guidelines for this work. Careful study is necessary to grasp the background and impact of these narratives.

Science is defined by continual progress and new technologies. This final chapter starts with introducing what it means to sequence and assemble a reference genome. It is easy to forget that the true genome is not linear but has structure and function. In this chapter the genome is explored as a 3D entity—from how it is transcribed, to how proteins interact with it, and finally to how it is actually structured. This also gives an opportunity to focus on epigenetics and how to interpret processes such as DNA methylation in an evolutionary context. The second part of the chapter focuses on ways we can interact with the genome—exploring how we might test the function and role that candidate genes play. The chapter introduces transgenics, in particular the transformative technology of CRISPR/CAS9, and explores how this might change the face of evolutionary biology in the near future.

Optimizing human cognitive performance by genetic and epigenetic means requires consideration of the goal and context of the desired cognitive performance. This chapter considers two examples to illustrate how optimization will depend on deciding what qualities are desired, defining such traits or phenotypes, and then considering the environment in which genes are expressed. The warrior/worrier gene provides a way to explore the alteration of a single gene with simple dominance. The most commonly desired genetic cognitive trait, intelligence, is considered as an example of a multigenic trait. The genetic techniques for optimization of human cognition are described using plasmid introduction, direct gene editing, and genetic alteration of the microbiome. The approval of three medical genetic therapies in 2017 indicates a high probability that genetic enhancement will become possible in less than 20 years.