Prominent scientists not only believe the possibility is real; they are also preparing for it. At a retreat of the premier geneticists and policy analysts last summer at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, LeRoy Walters, director of the Kennedy Center of Ethics, gave a speech on methods for guaranteeing equal access to the enhancement of intelligence.

How close are we to being able to alter the human gene book? Germline genetic manipulation of other mammals is already occurring. Genes are routinely deleted from and added to mice for experiments. Five years ago a University of Pennsylvania researcher discovered how to alter the genes in the sperm of mice, and applied for a patent on it. In the wake of that advance, ethicists called for national and international meetings on germline engineering. Mice and humans are estimated to share 90 percent of their genomes.

The implications of germline engineering are so profound, and scary, that some leading scientists dismiss the possibility that anyone would seriously contemplate doing it. Asked Monday whether any reputable scientists are advocating germline engineering in humans, Celera founder and president J. Craig Venter said that he knew of nobody.

But in a new book, Watson, perhaps the most influential figure in biological research in the last half-century, is quoted as calling for germline engineering during a 1998 conference at UCLA. Watson co-discovered the double helix structure of DNA, the basis for all the genetics research, including the mapping of the genome. He was the first director of the publicly funded Human Genome Project, and is now president of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. On July 4, he is scheduled to receive the $100,000 Liberty Medal in Philadelphia for his life's work.

However shocking Watson's opinion might sound, he provides sound reasons for germline engineering, according to the transcript published in "Engineering the Human Germline: An Exploration of the Science and Ethics of Altering the Genes We Pass to our Children," edited by Gregory Stock and John Campbell. For one, germline engineering is more efficient than treating patients one by one. "You delete a bad gene from the gene pool, and no future generation need worry about it or undergo genetic therapy for it. Also, if a deadly infection broke out across the globe, humanity would be saved by implanting disease resistance into the germline."

Watson offers scientists a strategy for confronting the social challenges that will face germline engineering.

"I'm afraid of asking people what they think. Don't ask Congress to approve it. Just ask them for money to help their constituents. That's what they want ... Frankly they would care much more about having their relatives not sick than they do about ethics or principles."

Although other nations, including Britain, Japan and China, cooperated in and contributed to the sequencing of the human genome, Watson believes that attempts to coordinate globally on the genome manipulation would retard the effort. "I think it would be a complete disaster to try and get an international agreement, he says. "I just can't imagine anything more stifling. You end up with the lowest common denominator."

As for regulating genetic engineering, he says: "I think our hope is to stay away from regulations and laws whenever possible."

Watson ridicules the notion that human genome has sanctity, or that civil rights should somehow enter the debate. "I think it's complete nonsense. I mean, what or who sanctifies? ... Evolution can just be damn cruel, and to say that we've got a perfect genome and there's some sanctity? ... Terms like sanctity remind me of animal rights. Who gave a dog a right? The word 'rights' gets very dangerous. We have women's rights, children's rights; it goes on forever.

"I'd like to give up saying rights or sanctity. Instead, say that humans have needs, and we should try as a social species to respond to those needs ... To try to give it more meaning than it deserves in some quasi-mystical way is for Steven Spielberg or somebody like that. It's just plain aura, up in the sky -- I mean, it's crap."

Watson is not alone in his support for germline engineering. But in science circles there is also strong emerging opposition to such experiments, and growing support for regulation.

Last month, Eric Lander, a friend of Watson and director of the largest publicly funded genome sequencing center, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called for a ban on human germline gene therapy because of our limited knowledge. The human genome, Lander says, "has been 3.5 billion years in the making. We've been able to read it for the last year or so. And we suddenly think we could write the story better?"

Lander acknowledges that there are potential benefits to germline engineering. "There is the prospect that by changing things we might put off aging, prevent cancer, improve memory." The dazzling possibilities, he says, makes it tough to recommend reining in scientists. "I find it a very difficult question," he said. "For my own part, I would have a ban in place, an absolute ban in place on human germline gene therapy. Not because I think for sure we should never cross that threshold, but because I think that is such a fateful threshold to cross that I'd like society to have to rebut that presumption some day, to have to repeal a ban when it thought it was time to ever try something like that."

Though Celera's Hamilton Smith and Lander were competitors in the race to complete the mapping of the human genome, they agree on this point. "The only thing I'm certain of is that we don't possess the knowledge to monkey with our germline," Smith says. "We don't fully understand the consequences of changes that even look like they would be good." As an example, Smith cites the single genetic mutation responsible for sickle cell disease, which has now been found to simultaneously provide resistance against malaria.

Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health Human Genome Project, also has repeatedly urged caution on germline, which he views as humans fully taking charge of their evolution. But asked Monday whether he would support a ban, he demurred, afraid that opening that door for legislation could lead to other prohibitive measures that would impede important biomedical progress.

Princeton's Dyson has his own ideas on what is to be done. In his view, the speciation of humans into different groups is inevitable -- and it would be a disaster to allow such diversification without restraint. "We must travel the high road into space, to find new worlds to match our new (genetic) capabilities," Dyson writes in "The Sun, The Genome and The Internet," published last year. "To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough."

More sci-fi fantasy? The ravings of an aging academic? I asked Celera's Smith what he thought. He paused, and then said, "Dyson's a very smart guy. I think there's a lot to what he says for the future. It's hard to tell where mankind is going here."

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