Scientific Stampede
Geneticists, biologists, engineers and astronomers set a swift pace for scientific discovery in 2000, overturning established wisdom and raising social and ethical challenges that policymakers will be forced to confront in 2001.
The top scientific achievement of the year--and arguably of the century--was the unraveling of the chemical codes that govern life in several organisms. In 1999, researchers had read the DNA strings, or genome, of only one multicellular organism, the worm C. elegans. This year, however, saw the release of genome maps for humans, fruit flies, a weed and several microbes, some far more complete than others. The maps are already enabling biotechnologists to experiment with genes in ways that could one day cure cancer and other genetically based diseases.
Gene mapping is only the most prominent of several quantum leaps this year in understanding and manipulating the world of the very small. Symbolizing one key achievement, UC Santa Barbara professor Alan J. Heeger and two other researchers won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing how humble plastic could be re-engineered, molecule by molecule, to conduct electricity. Their work helped inspire a number of advances in plastics engineering in 2000 that are expected to lead to innovations like printable bar codes that can absorb and respond to radio signals, allowing warehouses to quickly inventory every package.
This year also saw advances in man’s understanding of the very big. Most notably, scientists found the strongest evidence to date of water runoff and ancient lake bed sediments on Mars, of an ice-covered ocean on the Jupiter moon Europa and of a liquid ocean under the frozen surface of another Jovian moon, Ganymede.
While astronomical advances inspired mostly wonder about whether life could exist on other planets in the solar system, discoveries in genetics and biology led national security experts to worry that biotechnology could make it easier for terrorists to craft biological weapons. That concern is purely speculative, but genetics advances provoked a more justified anxiety among scientists: that the rush to profit from deciphering genes could slow the pace of discovery.
Biotechnology entrepreneurs are increasingly keeping their genetic maps private, selling them to the highest bidders or, in some cases, revealing only selected parts. This is a major departure from traditional academic research, wherein scientists, as the price of recognition from publication in peer-reviewed academic journals, have been required to disclose all supporting data. The new situation has formed a major impediment to scientific progress because the gene maps revealed this year, while impressive, are still rudimentary--rife with transcription errors and data gaps that can be best corrected if all scientists are permitted to scrutinize them. Just as sailors like Columbus used their sightings of land to improve late 15th century maps of the new world of the Americas, allowing cartography to take a giant leap, so gene researchers should be allowed to use their observations in the laboratory to improve 21st century maps of the new DNA world.
As if the question of whether entrepreneurs ought to be able to profit from controlling gene research weren’t enough to keep ethicists and lawyers occupied, a storm is brewing on stem cell research. Until this year, biologists thought that only stem cells, the cells found in newly created human embryos, could be reprogrammed to create specialized tissues like spinal cords, bones and muscles for medical use. Scientists found this year that some adult cells too could be reprogrammed, though less reliably.
President-elect George W. Bush, an abortion opponent, opposes federal funding of stem cell research because it destroys early embryos. Bush has, however, said he would support research on adult cells. Scientists are certain to challenge Bush, pointing out that adult cells are not nearly as malleable as stem cells and arguing that much of the new money that Bush wants to spend on the National Institutes of Health would go for naught if they were not allowed to experiment on biology’s most promising frontier. The controversy over stem cell research pits fundamental American principles against one another. The divide is even clear in the names of advocacy groups: Opponents call theirs Do No Harm, whereas advocates named theirs Cure.
Cure versus Do No Harm, in fact, symbolizes the challenge at the heart of almost all scientific discoveries this year: how to encourage science to progress, but ethically and safely. Lawmakers and citizens are understandably leery of taking up this challenge, for with each new discovery science becomes harder to fathom. But science is raising social questions that scientists cannot and should not be answering on their own. A full-throated debate among both scientists and laymen is a good place to start 2001.
