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Recently, a conference of about 100
scientists, politicians, and theologians
from five continents met in Geneva,
Switzerland. They explored the con–
sequences of the biological revolution,
genetic tailoring, and the future of man.
Facing an Awesome Future
Sorne of the explosive issues facíng
the world today carne under discussion
- sterilization of parents who would
carry genetic diseases, sperm and ova
baoks stocked with reproductive cells
from outstanding donors, sex determi–
nation, genetic tailoring and the trans·
formation of human genes.
Professor
L.
Charles Birch of the
University of Sydney, Australia, con–
duded that receot discoveries are
creating new sorts of ethical and moral
problems with "enormous potentiaJ for
both good
and evil."
The specter of
man creating more tools for his own
destruction hung over the conference
like a ghostly pall.
Professor Salvadore Lucia, eminent
American scientist, meanwhile has con–
fessed to a feeling of "tremendous
fear" of the potential dangers if man's
new understanding of genetics is mi s–
applied.
Dr. W . H. Thorpe of Cambridge
University, a leadiog expert on animal
behavior, bluntly dedared: "The
ethical
problems
...
raised by the population
explosion and artificial insemination, by
genetics and neurophysiology, and by
the social and mental sciences are at
least as great as those arising from
atomic energy and the H-bomb."
In spite of fears and unanswered
questions, scientists are pluoging ahead
- increasing their knowledge at a fan–
tastic pace.
Man-made Immortality?
Here is what scientists say will soon
be possible. According to Dr. James
Bonner of Caltech, "Biologists are on
the verge of finding a way to eliminate
senility, thus facilitating a human life
span of 200 years."
But others
~,Q
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f.w:t:h.c:.c.. De.
Jean-Bourgeois Pichat, head of the
National lnstitute for Demographic
The
PLAIN TRUTH
Studies in France, predicted in 1966
that within 50 years sorne people might
be able to live virtually FOREVER! A
year later Dr. Augustus B. Kinzel
wrote, "We will lick the problem of
aging completely, so that accidents will
be essentially the only cause of death"
(The Second Genesis,
p.
34).
The doctors of tomorrow - we are
told - will be able to replace broken,
damaged or worn-out body organs with
such special developments as plastic
corneas for the eye, metallic bones, da–
croo arteries, artificial hearts, comput–
erized electronic muscles. Perhaps even
the brain ultimately will be replaceable.
Gordon Taylor wrote in his book,
The
Biological Time Bomb,
"In the future,
you may be able to pick out the exact
pair of ears you want from a tissue bank
- a sort of medica! supermarket."
Such possibilities, of course, sound
like science fiction. But they are not
mere daydreams - such predictions are
made in all seriousness.
Comiog- Asexual Reproduction?
Even closer on the horizon are major
changes in the method of animal and
human reproduction. At Cornell Uni–
versity Dr. Frederick
C.
Steward has
achieved asexual reproduction with the
carrot and the tobacco plant. He has
taken a single cell from an adult plant,
treated it chemically, and then grown
from this one cell a whole new carrot
oc
tobacco plant capable of bearing
seeds and reproducing itself. This
method of asexual reproduction is
called "doniog."
Dr. J. B. Gurdon of Oxford Univer–
sity
duplicated this feat with the Afri–
can dawed frog. Takiog an unfertilized
egg cell from a frog, he destroyed its
nucleus with radiation. He then took a
body cell from another frog, removed
its nucleus with tiny surgical tools, aod
implaoted it in the egg cell. The new
"cell" combioation began growing and
dividing, and produced a new tadpole
which grew up to be an ideotical twio
of the frog that dooated the nudeus!
Hnw
sooo..
will
mc.h.
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niques be applied to meo and womeo?
Dr. Kurt Hirschhorn, chief of the Divi-
Septembec
197
1
sion of Medica! Genetics at the Mount
Sinai School of Medicine in New York,
thinks it may happen "perhaps much
sooner than people think."
Nobel Prize winning geneticist
Joshua Lederberg and Kimball Atwood,
professor of microbiology at the Univer–
sity of IIJinois, both believe asexual
reproduction in man, producing mul–
tiple copies of an individual, could
occur at "almost any moment." With a
crash program " it could be done now,"
daims Dr. Atwood. Eveo without such
a program, he thinks it will take place
"within a few years."
Asexual reproduction among people?
lt may seem far-fetched, but scientists
are discussing the possibility seriously.
Said the eminent French biologist Dr.
Jean Rostand, "This new technique of
generation from the nucleus of a body
cell would in theory enable us to create
as many identical individuals as might
be desired. A living creature would be
printed in hundreds, in thousands of
copies,
a/1 of Jhem real twins.
This
would, in short, be
human propagati011
by Cllttings,
capable of assuring the in·
definite reproduction of the same indi–
vidual - of a great man, for example"
(Rosenfeld,
The Second Genesis,
p.
138.)
Thousands of Carbon Copy
HITLERS?
Jokes have been told about seeing
eight Albert Einsteins purchasing eight
copies of
The New York Times
in a
nightmare.
But imagine a wocld where reproduc–
tion takes place by tissue cuttings -
where "carbon copies" of particular
individuals are run off by the huodreds
or thousands. What if Adolph Hitler
had ruled such a scientific age? Con·
ceivably there would have soon been
multiple thousands of identical Hitlers
turned loose on the world. Would they
have had the same base character? The
very thought is repulsive. Or he may
have developed a super-force of genius–
level physicists. Scientists tell us that io
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such possibilities.
Cambridge physiologist Lord Roths-