A group of professors from around the nation on Saturday discussed in “plain English” genetic issues such as privacy, child design and the unknown future of the human genome.
At the public outreach conference, “The Human Genome Project: Progress, Problems, and Prospects,” the panel of professors discussed the scientific and ethical roles of the human genome in front of a near-capacity audience at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.
Scientists conducting the Human Genome Project, which launched in 1989 to make a detailed map of the human genetic code, completed a rough draft last year of all the genes in the human body.
“We now have in our hands the book of life, but we don’t know how to interpret it,” said Rex Chisholm, a Northwestern professor of cell and molecular biology. “The program of DNA is like the program of a computer. A computer is useless until you can run the program.”
But the inability to read the genetic code, which Chisholm said is equal to 100 Chicago phone books’ worth of information, did not hinder the panelists from discussing public policy that could determine the privacy of a person’s genes.
“Privacy is not the solution but the problem,” said Alexander Rosenberg, a philosophy professor at Duke University.
Rosenberg said health care insurance companies would not discriminate against people who made their genes public. People would decide how much health coverage they need according to their genes, and this would lead the path for a national health care program, he said.
“Our genes do not have commercial value,” Rosenberg said. “We’ll give up the data to give an advantage for everybody.”
A panel discussion moderated by the president of Princeton University, Harold Shapiro, brought responses on the moral questions regarding the human genome.
“There is no scientific knowledge that doesn’t have moral resonance,” Shapiro said. “The more scientific advancements, the more ethical dilemmas.”
Rosenberg said “there needs to be a separation between religious doctrines and scientific aspects” of the human genome project.
But Chisholm dismissed ethical issues such as child design as not immediate priorities to the scientific community.
“We shouldn’t worry about designing the perfect child,” Chisholm said. “We have more immediate issues to focus on.”
Providing a legal perspective to the discussion, Lori B. Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law said that in the future children with disease-causing genes may be able to sue parents for not aborting them.
“All of us have DNA on file,” Andrews said. “As technology evolves, we’re going to have more control of creating our children.”
By selling genetic traits, creating a baby will be like “designing a car,” she added.
Andrews said a student once asked her if the Constitution would protect “half-humans.” In response, another student said, “If it walks like a man, talks like a man and photosynthesizes like a man – it’s a man.”
Weinberg freshman Marc Sala, one of the few students at the discussion, said it was important to step away from science and examine the ethics of the genome project.
“I think that people’s expectations in science are moving too fast,” Sala said. “People are jumping the gun on the issues, and the problems the panelists addressed are key and something they will not see in their lifetime.”
