TV REVIEW : ‘Web of Life’ Probes Genetics, Responsibility

“Web of Life,” a “Smithsonian World” special airing tonight at 8 on Channels 28 and 15, asks some of the big questions about mankind’s fooling around with Mother Nature via molecular genetics:

--What is man’s role as an agent of evolution?

--How far can we go in changing our environment, our heredity?

--Are we prepared for the responsibility?

And although “Web”--through interviews with scientists, educators and philosophers--makes a good attempt at explaining these complex ethical issues, the show founders on the very complexity it tries to cut through.

Producer-director Sandra Wentworth Bradley relies on too many talking heads to make “Web’s” points. The interviewees have some very interesting things to say, but there is far too much dry, bloodless discussion at the expense of more arresting segments--which becomes all the more evident when the show cuts away to focus on the wonders of prenatal testing or on a Texas ranch where genetically superior cattle are being cloned.

That caveat aside, “Web” is a valuable show, a worthwhile examination of some very thorny concerns. This is a serious show, the kind that lawmakers and scientists should be forced to watch.

As “Web” clearly shows, humans have reached a point where we can sculpt our own destiny, changing the structure of life itself. The dramatic and rapid strides of molecular biologists have opened the door for potential miracles--or disaster.

“We now have the ability to, in a week of work, manipulate what took millions of generations . . . to create,” says Rob Dorit of Harvard Biological Laboratories. And, says Everett Mendelsohn, a history of science professor at Harvard, “Human beings are seen to move right to the edge of disaster . . . a miscalculation could be disastrous. . . . All the wisdom we’ve had hasn’t kept us from putting in place the technology to make the disaster.”

“Web” challenges scientists--as well as viewers--to, as biologist Nina Fedoroff puts it, “invent an ethic” for the entire biosphere. As the narrator warns us, quoting 19th-Century Suquamish Indian chief Seattle, “Man does not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

For the sake of the web of life, let’s hope someone capable rises to the challenge.