The politics of cloning

On a recent visit to South Africa I was fortunate enough to be given access to interview a number of high-level academics, journal editors, and science journalists on questions concerning the social and ethical implications of genomic technology in Southern Africa.  What I found surprised me.

Africa is discussing the same issues as everyone else.  Everyone, the world over, seems fascinated by the bio-safety, health, and commercial implications of genetically modified food.  And, (almost) everyone in the higher echelons of academia, the world over complains that the ‘general public’ remains misinformed, polarised, and altogether unable to grasp the science behind genetic modification.  Although these interviews could not prove it, it would appear that (nearly) everyone, the world over, is fascinated by the potential for genomic engineering to provide vaccines, diagnostics, and cures for the diseases that they are most burdened with.  The difference between these discussions, and those elsewhere, are the diseases with highest prevalence in the population and the numbers (absolute and relative) of people affected by such diseases. 

Future pharmaceutical?

Dear Valli: you asked how it is that we commit an entire organisation to providing public education about genomes? Or, then, how much and for how long can we milk this cow you really mean to say? Technically forever, because there are millions of organisms to sequence, establishing the biochemical ordering of their DNA or RNA.

So far 180 organisms have been sequenced, including that of modern human beings, chimpanzees, dogs, cats, insects, worms, plants, protozoa, yeasts, bacteria and (ancient) archeabacteria. The harvest of information has been magnificent and enriches our understanding of life.

Dr Watson, in happier times

Nobel Laureate James Watson, co-discover of the double helical architecture of DNA, talks nonsense. There is no factual observational or experimental data of any measurable link between any human brain function ­ of which there are many ­ and a social construct called intelligence, of which there are, also, many.

This is what we know today: there is about a 2 per cent difference between modern human beings and our closest living ancestral relative the chimpanzee - using a crude DNA count. A portion of that DNA, we do not know how much of it, would explain the considerable differences in our brain size and specialisations, among other differences like stature.

The South African born Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner once made a joke by asking what is left over if one subtracts the chimpanzee genome from the human one?

Genes that make it possible for language, he quipped and, he furthermore suggested, why not call them Chomsky genes ­ after the linguist Noam Chomsky.