Don’t jump on me. Jump on him:

The genes for IQ have never been found. Ironically, at the same time that genetics has ceased to be a popular explanation for human intellectual and temperamental differences, genetic theories for the causation of virtually every physical disorder have become the mode. “DNA” has replaced “IQ” as the abbreviation of social import. The announcement in February 2001 that two groups of investigators had sequenced the entire human genome was taken as the beginning of a new era in medicine, an era in which all diseases would be treated and cured by the replacement of faulty DNA. William Haseltine, the chairman of the board of the private company Human Genome Sciences, which participated in the genome project, assured us that “death is a series of preventable diseases.” Immortality, it appeared, was around the corner. For nearly ten years announcements of yet more genetic differences between diseased and healthy individuals were a regular occurrence in the pages of The New York Times and in leading general scientific publications like Science and Nature. Then, on April 15, 2009, there appeared in The New York Times an article by the influential science reporter and fan of DNA research Nicholas Wade, under the headline “Study of Genes and Diseases at an Impasse.” In the same week the journal Science reported that DNA studies of disease causation had a “relatively low impact.” …The failure to find such genes continues and it seems likely that the search for the genes causing most common diseases will go the way of the search for the genes for IQ.

I mean, he merely happens to be the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard. And I merely happen to read his books. (Admittedly, the NYRB review from which I pulled the paragraph is not very good. It’s more about the ideas Lewontin has detailed in his own books than the book under review, The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture.) I also concede that the HGP has shown the important role viruses have played in the human genome. Indeed, some scientists argue that viruses do not just transfer genetic information from one entity to another, but play a creative role in the development of their host. The more I read about this, the I more I will have to say about it in the future.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

10 replies on “The Human Immortality Project”

  2. The advances that would originate from the HGP were hugely oversold on a massive scale. However most of the overselling was done by the media, who oversell Every. Scientific. Advancement. How many times have you read variations of the following:
    – Scientists find gene that causes lung cancer
    – Scientists one step closer to curing cancer
    – Drinking kool-aid could cure cancer, say scientists.

    You can rest assured that all these headlines and their bastard cousins have one commonality; they make scientists cringe and likely make the scientists supposedly making the “claim” cry and rock back and forth. Saying “a cure for cancer” is like saying “a cure for infection”.

    Likewise with the HGP. It has been hugely important for scientific studies, but it has not rendered us immortal. Most scientists are not shocked by this development, though the media will always find someone willing to make the claim (likely as not in a bid for funding) and/or wildly exagerate actual claims.

    If we want to increase the average human lifespan we need to find cures for less fashionable and sexy diseases, like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, the flu, malaria, cholera, Chagass, etc. Cancer and cardiac disease for the 1st world, but most people don’t live there.

  3. I wish I could remember the name of the awful sci-fi book I read once about this. The gist of the book was that every few thousand years our bodies send out viruses that cause mutations and we collectively leap to the next stage of evolution.

  6. @5 LMAO, yes, I had seen it. I have PhD comics on email alert. They are the Dilbert of all the long suffering grad students and post-docs around me 🙂

  7. @5 The Science News Cycle should also include those Big Bad Rationality-hating artists who often make work that is supposedly critical of science but either don’t understand what it is they’re criticizing or think by quoting Lacan they’ve proven that all scientific activity is REALLY just a shamanic ritual. Hats of to Lewontin for pointing out some of the non-constructive distortions made my artists when he saw the Henry Art Gallery’s Gene(sis) Project several years ago.

  8. This is rambling, but I can think of a few things that need being said.
    Two different issues here: Heritability of traits can be measured even if genes for the traits have not been identified. It’s pretty easy to figure out *how much* one’s genotype for something contributes to the occurrence of that something. With time-tested and twin-tested mathematics (google “Minnesota Twin studies”), one can compare the relative heritability of traits that are subtly different between individual humans. For intelligence, introversion, religiosity, mood and mood control, the correlation of heritability (nature vs nurture) appears to be higher than 0.5, like more in the 0.6-0.8 range. Of course, for the genes responsible for human intelligence versus animal intelligence, the “nature” is even much higher than that. Think about how ALL normal humans are smarter than ALL normal chimps, and you get an idea about how human genes are responsible for human intelligence.

    OK, so, about half of our individual variation in human behavior is due to genes, which is not very much, that’s for sure. Barring fetal or neonatal accidents, we all have the potential to be very smart, provided we have a good social environment (lots of wordy conversation, for example, seems to drive brain development to optimum levels).

    The disappointment with the human genome project (which is a mostly-manufactured problem among non-scientists- and the good people at HGS, who made a grab to patent 1000’s of genes in the human genome before they had done adequate research, thus barring further research) is that your genes can’t be changed. At least not easily. If we could identify genes that need modification in an individual and then could successfully modify those genes (in ALL cells of the body, remember!), then the human genome project will prove very useful, indeed. Gene therapy is just not there yet.

    Also, it seems as if our genome is more Lamarckian than previously thought. With epigentic methylation of genes, our own bad habits and bad behavior can affect our genes for years or decades. Such epigentic silencing or activation can even affect one’s germ line, leading to modification of the genes of our children.

    I agree with the general theme of this post that one’s normal genetic variation should not usually be considered for any reason or comparison, as most variation that we see in human society is due to environment. All you can do with genetic information, when you know it, is to try to live up to its potential.

  9. That was a good, thoughtful commentary, @8. Really nicely done.

    Sometimes I think if Charles just went and got an MS in Biology, he and we would have a lot more fun than we do.

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