Playing God's Apprentice

Lt. Commander Data - Star Trek

Lieutenant Commander Data, an enduring character in the Star Trek empire, is an android, a powerful computer in human form. Data’s computer processes the instructions of his sophisticated software, yielding the sympathetic and somewhat humorous character which millions have come to love.

But we are all data, in more than a figurative sense.

Men and mice, towering redwoods and diminutive bacteria, all have DNA, the very stuff of life. Think of DNA as data which instructs our cells to create and maintain the peculiar beings that we are. Living creatures, plant and animal, all consume nutrients and absorb energy from the environment, but it is their DNA which shapes them.

DNA can be conceptualized as a “computer program” that defines us. It is made up of genes, individual commands that instruct our cells how to behave and multiply and specialize. Not a computer in our common sense of laptops and smartphones and mainframes, but a computer nonetheless.

And in 2015, scientists perfected something that any computer programmer would instantly recognize: an editor. Just as a programmer uses an editor to manipulate the source code of the myriad computer applications we encounter daily, scientists can now edit the DNA of living creatures, changing their characteristics.

The basic technology is called CRISPR (pronounced crisper), an acronym for a genetic manipulation technique first discovered in 2012. With recent perfection, CRISPR now allows researchers to quickly edit nearly any gene in the DNA of any organism.

This is astounding, truly a scientific breakthrough. Mankind is now capable of mucking about with God’s designs for living creatures. This promises great good, but, as with many scientific innovations, great evil as well.

First a brief review of genetic modification. We have always been able to do so, but ever so slowly and unreliably. It is done by selective breeding, looking for desirable traits over many generations. This is how Beagles were derived from wolves. More recently, we have developed the means to create genetically modified crops which use bacteria to introduce foreign genetic material into the DNA of existing plants. Both of these techniques are painfully sluggish and less dependable than CRISPR.

Here are some of the things that CRISPR has already done:

In October, scientists reported that they had deactivated 62 genes in porcine DNA, thereby removing viruses and making these pigs safer for human organ transplants.

In the same month, Chinese researchers published their account of using CRISPR to edit dog DNA, resulting in a more muscular beagle than her untreated littermates. (Now think of editing Tom Brady’s future children to create a generation of super-strong quarterbacks).

And as reported in Science News, “…scientists turned to CRISPR to genetically engineer organisms in the lab, including rhesus macaques, mice, zebrafish, fruit flies, yeast and some plants.”

Now there is one more major concept to absorb: germline versus somatic editing.

Somatic cells make up the majority of your body. Muscle, bone, blood. Changes to these cells would survive only in you. They cannot be passed on to your children. Germline cells, on the other hand, exist in sperm or eggs. Changes to these cells can be passed on, possibly changing permanently the linear descendants of the edited organism.

Wow. Now we have the possibility of designer babies who will have their own designer babies, and so on. The ethical implications are immense.

CRISPR could also be used to eliminate malaria, for instance, by editing the germline cells of mosquitoes to code a vaccine against malaria. The descendants of these mosquitoes could propagate the malaria vaccine, thereby eventually eliminating the Plasmodium protozoa that causes it.

But there are ethical implications here, too. Does God have any plan for Plasmodium? In some future “War of the Worlds” scenario, might malaria infect and kill invading space aliens? We can’t know the answer to that. But relieving the suffering of millions of worldwide malaria victims is a very seductive outcome.

We are proceeding, carefully, cautiously. The world’s leading scientific bodies and governments are convening conferences to establish guidelines for gene editing. While the benefits are potentially enormous, there are deep ethical and governance issues to be resolved.

Although we have discovered how to program the biological computer, we cannot play God lightly.

Speak the truth

U2 performs in Paris, Dec. 6 2015

On Sunday, December 6, the Irish band U2 rocked a capacity crowd in the AccorHotels Arena in Paris. Bono’s vocals soared and the Edge’s distinctive guitar rang out. Over 20,000 people waved and cheered and clapped, offering a big poke in the eye to ISIS. And then Bono sang U2’s anthem, “In the Name of Love,” and brought down the house. This was powerful stuff and showed human love and compassion in sharp contrast to the evil of terrorism.

This celebration of Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité occurred just four days after the vicious ISIS-inspired attack in San Bernardino. Radical Islamic terrorism had, once again, visited our shores. Our President sprang into action. Jumping right to the central point, he profoundly observed that “we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country,” and called for more and stricter gun laws.

While millions of ordinary Americans scratched their heads over this, the President went on to scold us. “We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam.”

This is a habit Mr. Obama has long possessed. A Google search for the phrase “Obama scolds” returns over 150,000 hits.

Here is a telegram Mr. President. The American people are a good people. We are reasonably smart. We are kind, generous, and welcoming. We have Muslim friends, neighbors, and colleagues. It is very clear to us that they are good people and not radical jihadists. It is condescending of you to point this out as if you were privy to some great insight. We get it.

And to claim that this terrorism is completely divorced from Islam is an insult to our intelligence as well. Maajid Nawaz, a former jihadist who has deradicalized himself and written about it, defines it succinctly. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 12, Nawaz says:

“Islam is a religion, and like any other faith, it is internally diverse. Islamism, by contrast, is the desire to impose a single version of Islam on an entire society. Islamism is not Islam, but it is an offshoot of Islam. It is Muslim theocracy.”

“In much the same way, jihad is a traditional Muslim idea connoting struggle—sometimes a personal spiritual struggle, sometimes a struggle against an external enemy. Jihadism, however, is something else entirely: It is the doctrine of using force to spread Islamism.”

That the President and his supporters can’t mouth these terms is demeaning. We really do get the distinction.

And it goes on. In a major policy speech on December 6, the President demanded that “Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?”

Here is what possibly could be the argument. It’s surprising that a constitutional scholar needs to have it pointed out.

In 2005, Rahinah Ibrahim, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, tried to board a flight to Hawaii from San Francisco International Airport. While trying to check in, her name flashed up on the no-fly list and she ended up being taken away in handcuffs. A long, ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get herself off the list followed. So she sued in Federal court.

The issue was the opaque nature of the process. According to the Stanford Alumni Magazine, “The U.S. government has given her no opportunity to hear the evidence against her, let alone challenge it, say her lawyers.”  Rahinah ultimately prevailed, and in 2014 (yes, nine years later), won her case. But only Rahinah was removed from the list – nothing else changed. The system is still broken.

Many others have found themselves improperly on this list. Ted Kennedy, United States Senator. Daniel Brown, United States Marine returning from Iraq. John Lewis, U.S. Representative from Georgia. And many, many more.

In proposing that everyone on the no-fly list should lose their Second Amendment rights, the president is compounding an already constitutionally challenged program. Let’s fix that first by providing transparency, notification, and due process for anyone placed on the list. Then, and only then, add the no-gun provision.

Here’s the bottom line. We are in a war not of our asking. We must prosecute it, but to truly change this jihadist meme will require generations. It will require solidarity with our Muslim brethren. We will have further attacks, further losses. Perfect safety is not possible. But emotional demands to reduce the strength of the American people will make us even less safe. Calm, cold-eyed reason must prevail. And truth. Quit the scolding, trust us, and speak the truth.