DNA: The Secret of Life by James D Watson, with Andrew Berry (New York: Knopf, 2003)

A review by M Susan Lindee

The time has come, in the world of James D Watson, to leave behind societal fears of genetic technologies. It is time to start using genetic engineering to make people who are more intelligent, more attractive, and resistant to HIV. It is time to use genetically modified organisms to improve the environment and end world hunger. And it is time for everyone to contribute their DNA to databases, both private and public. Fortunately, there is no need to worry too much about abuse, injustice, commodification, technical error, or social stratification grounded in biological difference. Such worries are groundless because science shows that people are biologically inclined to care about one another and to care about building a good society. But despite their propensity for caring, people are often fanatical, unscientific, ignorant, dishonest, irrational, and unwilling to accept the true facts that science reveals. So Watson notes in his latest public promotion of genomics, DNA: The Secret of Life.
People just need to stop worrying so much about power and money, says Watson. It is true that politics and economics do drive science, but this should be irrelevant to its assessment. And people also need to stop worrying so much about “the human spirit.” The idea that there “is no gene for the human spirit” reflects irrational prejudice. People wish that there were no such gene and this constitutes “a dangerous blind spot in our society.” In any case, back in 1953, molecular ghostbusters Watson and Crick cleared out any spirits that might be hanging around inside the cell. As Watson notes, “Is there something divine at the heart of a cell that brings it to life? The double helix answered that question with a definitive No.”
I have just summ-arised the framework that drives Watson’s book. The alert reader might well ask how such a convoluted nexus of belief and prophecy could gain cultural legitimacy, or even a sympathetic publisher. What forces made this incoherent tangle of mysticism, historical ignorance, religiosity, corporatism, exaggerated technocratic rationality, intemperance, and social naïveté plausible to so many people? Or even to James D Watson?
Throughout his account, Watson is unconstrained by either evidence or logic. For example, he invokes the existence of a bioethics industry to suggest that there is no reason to get too worked up about ethical concerns: The ethicists are on the job; the public can relax. But the reason ethicists have taken an interest in genomics is that it is an endeavor that could lead to practices devastating to human rights, a potential exacerbated by the pronouncements such as Watson’s. The bioethics industry built around genomics is a sign not that the public should be complacent, but that it should actively resist the kinds of answers provided in Watson’s book.
If Watson, for example, wants to theorise about world hunger, perhaps he should consult the work of his fellow Nobelist Amartya Sen. Sen has demonstrated, (through finely textured, detailed, specific, and data-rich accounts of major famines since 1943) that famines are not simply the result of inadequate food supplies. They are the result of economic systems. [1] People can starve when the grain elevators are full; they can have enough to eat when crop yields are disastrous. Promoters of genetically modified organisms often claim that anyone opposed to transgenic crops is turning a blind eye to the needs of those who are starving. But anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone has suggested that the real moral outrage is the strategic use of hungry people to justify corporate programs to develop these crops. “Malthusian biotechnologists need to explain why crop genetic modification will feed hungry Indians when 41.2 million tons of excess grain will not.” [2]
When Watson turns to the Icelandic genome, he again gives the story a meaning that the details cannot sustain. The Icelandic genome was sold to investors on the premise that Icelanders were a uniquely homogeneous population. deCODE Genetics arranged a deal with Iceland’s parliament to construct and market to pharmaceutical companies a database that combined Icelandic genotypes, medical records, and genealogies. These companies could then study genetic predispositions to common conditions such as cancer and heart disease. But if Icelanders were no more homogeneous than any other population, they would be far less valuable commercially and scientifically. Einar Arnason, at the University of Iceland, has demonstrated that Icelanders are among the most genetically heterogeneous populations in Europe. [3] Those who calculated Icelandic homogeneity in the early promotional years were using public databases of mitochondrial DNA, databases now known to be filled with errors. Like the investors and the buyers, the Icelanders themselves were conned into a corporate scheme that has profoundly compromised their privacy. Watson uses the deCODE story to hint at the promise that complex, multifactorial disease genes will soon be tracked down, profiting both patients and the biotech industry. But the deCODE story is also about speculative hype; rapid profits based on inaccurate information; and disadvantaged, ill-informed patient consumers.
Now that the sequencing of the human genome is essentially ‘finished’, Watson proposes that there is a new Holy Grail – the transcriptome – that will elucidate how all genes are expressed. Developing the transcriptome will, of course, cost a lot of money. But like the mapping of the human genome, it will supposedly lead to medical breakthroughs and cures.
Meanwhile, genetic disease continues to be controlled almost entirely through the selective abortion of affected fetuses, which in Watson’s world is conflated quietly with compassionate medical and educational intervention. So, for example, Watson suggests that the controversial testing of school children for fragile X syndrome is intended solely to help “tailor” educational plans to their needs. But he also immediately points out that each of these children costs at least $2 million more in health care expenses than would a child without fragile X. Watson’s invocation of health care costs to justify testing and selective abortion is vintage eugenics. Watson urges biologists to “stand tall” and “not be intimidated by the inevitable criticism” that will come with promoting germ-line gene therapy to “redress genetic injustice.” Injustice comes in many forms, of course. For most people on the globe today, germ-line gene therapy to improve their children is not remotely possible – their pressing health care needs are for vaccines, nutrition, and environmental justice. An argument could be made that health care expenditures should reflect human needs, rather than potential corporate profits.
Celebrations these last few months mark both the discovery of the helical structure of DNA and the completion of the sequencing of the human genome. Both events should be celebrated. DNA is an important and interesting molecule, and the map of the human genome does provide a baseline for the elucidation of crucial questions about evolution, development, disease, and health. The gene map does not, however, solve all social and economic problems or transform clinical care, and the exaggerated promotions and insupportable claims are becoming tiresome.
Watson is fond of saying that mapping the human genome reveals “what makes us human” and on this point I have to agree. The genome project does reveal our extraordinary ability to imagine and create institutions and ideologies that reflect our social organisation, our practices of commerce and trade, and our needs. Perhaps someday, when the body’s complex operations are better understood, the knowledge the project has produced will appear as quaint as phlogiston [4] or mesmerism.5 But its organisational and ideological qualities are timeless testimony to the nature of the human species. They reveal our tendency to elevate what we craft into the realm of neutral, absolute truth, and make manifest our vulnerability to propaganda. Watson has been the genome project’s marketing director and prime salesman. His latest promotional brochure is not worth anyone’s time.

Footnotes

Susan M Lindee is in the Department of History and Sociology of Science, at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. E-mail: , The review is shortened from a longer review that appeared in Science
Vol. 300, No. 5618, April 18, 2003.

 jul 2003

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