Scotch College

Chaplain's Corner September 1999

O Tangle of Matter and Ghost?

(L Cohen, of course)

I went to the Jean Chambers Oration for 1999. It was in the MLC Music Auditorium. I went to hear Sir Gustav Nossal speak on the 'New Biology Revolution and Global Health'. The most exciting aspect of the presentation for lay people like me was surely the prospect for global health of the eradication of diseases like polio. From his vantage point in the World Health Organisation Sir Gustav opened our eyes to what is being done and what can yet be done. We were treated to the prospect of millions of children's lives being saved. 'We have the technology. We only lack the funding'.

More complex, but compensatingly more fascinating is the biology revolution. Likened in scale to the Manhattan Project, which gave us the atom bomb, and the Moon Race, which gave us moon rocks and the non-stick frypan, this appears more important by far.

In the 35 years from the discovery of the complex structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) by James Watson and Francis Crick, until the beginning of the Human Genome Project in 1989, scientists had only decoded a tiny fraction of the human genome. 'Time' reported that at a US congressional committee hearing ten years ago, Watson 'mesmerized listeners' with his plea for support: 'I see an extraordinary potential for human betterment ahead of us. We can have at our disposal the ultimate tool for understanding ourselves at the molecular level.'

Biochemist Robert Sinsheimer of the University of California at Santa Barbara explained: 'The human genome is the complete set of instructions for making a human being.' The 'HUGO' project piggy-backs on the IT revolution, and involves a huge globally coordinated effort, costing more than $3 billion. We are looking for the complete formula for the entire human person, and it is expected that a 'working draft' covering 90% of human DNA will be available by the end of 2001. By 2003 the chemistry of the human gene will be totally decoded.

This research has already yielded exciting results. Two or three years ago 'The Age' published a photo of a baby in the hands of a doctor at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Adelaide. The baby was born to a woman whose genes carried the code for Cystic Fibrosis. Doctors at the hospital had knocked the defective gene out of the woman's ovum before fertilisation.

The IVF baby was born free of the disease. Truly awesome. The segment of the gene code defining CF was discovered early.

The four essential chemicals in the DNA code are each identified by a single letter. Altogether the decoded sequence of these four letters will run to three billion characters. Enough to fill a thousand, thousand page books! It may not be printed, but it will be written. This is big. This is human.

Ethical questions are everywhere. Who will have access to a person's code? Will insurance companies have early warning of genetically transmitted disease? Will orthodontists be out of work? How will the new designer drugs be regulated? Who will have access to them? What will it mean to own the emerging and patented technology? Can we ask for a tall child? A brown eyed girl? Above average IQ? Will people of less than average IQ be desired for some roles? The spectre of designer people persists. But such issues aside, will we have the sum of a person? Will the whole code define the sum of you and me?

One feels that we have been here before, some centuries ago. When the explosion of scientific knowledge of the world around us made it hard to fit God into the picture. God was shrunk to fit into the 'gaps'. Finally we were left with a 'God of the Gaps'. Eventually, at the apex of the modernism we excluded God. 'God Is Dead' wrote the clergy; there was no room in the inn.

Now we have gone a step further.

Our knowledge of the human within is comprehensive. We have a text, a formula, a decoded string of letters. S/he has become it. There is no doubt I am chemistry, but is there not at least a ghost in the machine?

A real you and a real me in addition to my chemistry?

Can you hear the ancient question: 'Adam, where are you?' And perhaps also a voice asking 'Have you done to yourself as you did to me?'

Rev. Graham Bradbeer