It’s life – but not as we know it

Published in Tribune, 19 October 2007

SCIENTISTS tend to have a great capacity for self-effacement, at least when it comes to relations with the public and the media. They perpetuate the idea that science is a collaborative enterprise, where the role of individual researchers can only be measured in their contribution to the whole sum of human knowledge, and where individuals seek the truth rather than personal fame.

In the 1940s, a sociologist, Robert Merton, came up with what he called the “norms of science”, the rules which, he claimed, govern the way scientists work as a community. Scientific knowledge, he said, is not owned by individual people or organisations but is the common ownership of all. Theories are universal in the way they are tested and understood (so there is no “capitalist science” or “government science”). Scientists are rewarded for acting selflessly. And scientists, he said, are trained to be sceptical about claims and propositions.

These norms never quite rung true as a way of describing how science really works – but they are good stab at defining what makes up good manners in the scientific world. And even if good manners are not always evident in the lab, science mostly projects the image of good-natured, polite research to the public.

But occasionally, the serene and polite image of science is shattered by people like Craig Venter, the American geneticist known ominously, as the “bad boy of science”. Venter has again hit the headlines, this time with an announcement which has caused alarm, disapproval and admiration in roughly equal measure: his team is expected to announce the first artificially created life form in the next few weeks.

The team synthesised, piece by piece, a pared-down version of the genetic code of the simple bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium. The genetic code itself is not alive – it requires a host organism to truly cross the boundary into the world of the living. The next step, then, is to insert it into a bacterial cell that has had its own genetic material removed. And hey, presto, synthetic life – an artificially created genetic sequence, living and reproducing, like every other form of life on Earth. They even have a name for it – Mycoplasma laboratorium. Cue outrage from the usual self-appointed guardians of scientific ethics.

Venter is hardly a stranger to controversy, though. For one, he did not make his reputation as a staid academic, but as the abrasive president of a private corporation, Celera Genomics. When he saw that the publicly-funded effort to sequence the human genetic code (a massive international project with a £1.5 billion budget) was progressing slowly, he made his company race the public effort by publishing a human genome of its own. Or rather, of his own: where the public effort published segments of anonymous individuals’ DNA, Celera sold the code of Venter’s own genetic sequence, turning the book of life into his autobiography.

Celera eventually fired Venter – competing with a freely accessible, publicly funded effort was a vanity project of dubious commercial value. But this didn’t stop him: he soon set up the Craig Venter Institute, with, of course, himself at the helm.

Venter’s latest venture, is different from his previous stunts. Although he has annoyed many already, he has essentially caused offence so far by being rude, and ignoring the scientific community’s social niceties. Creating synthetic life is obviously a bigger deal than that, with wide ethical implications. The research could also have risky outcomes, if a synthetic life form turned out to be harmful. In fairness, it is doubtful whether scientists would be able to create an artificial life form more unpleasant than the millions of naturally occurring parasites and diseases which plague the world. But that won’t stop the critics.

As for the bishop...

ON THE subject of self-appointed critics (and bad boys), a recent outburst on HIV/AIDS by a senior Roman Catholic was disgusting, even by the church’s disgraceful standards.

Speaking to the BBC, Francisco Chimoio, the archbishop of Maputo, Mozambique, alleged that condoms manufactured in European countries were deliberately infected with HIV. Not satisfied with conning his flock into not using condoms – the only practical way to contain the epidemic in a country where one in six is infected – he went on to add that anti-HIV drugs are also infected, in order to “finish with the African people”.

If it’s not enough to say that Chimoio is a complete idiot, here’s why he’s wrong: HIV is deadly – but it’s not particularly contagious, because the virus can’t live outside the human body for any length of time. Even if someone wanted to wipe out the population of Africa through HIV, it simply wouldn’t be possible to do it by deliberately infecting condoms and drugs.

Chimoio’s allegation was loaded with innuendo. Mozambicans still have memories of the brutal Portuguese occupation – and of a violent civil war that left a million dead. If anyone knows that accusations of genocide should not be made lightly, it is Chimoio.

Some might argue that it is the man who tells lies and encourages the spread of a deadly disease who is guilty of genocide, rather than the health workers who try to stop it. But, unlike the archbishop, I’m not in the business of casting aspersions.