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than a bag of biodata
The mystery of life
Making new kinds of animals, plants or even humans
is within our grasp using gene technology and British companies
are leading the way. One such company is British Biotech who's share
price hit a new high this week, valuing the company at no less £1.7
billion.
The speed of progress is astonishing. There is little
doubt that we will one day be able to locate genes which influence
height, hair colour, skin pigmentation and possibly even intelligence
or creative ability.
 450,000
artificially mutated animals are born in the UK each year. Many
of these creatures have been made by adding human genes to make
them grow faster, or to turn their bodies into human medicine factories,
or to make organs suitable for transplant.
Sheep and goats have been combined to make geep.
The same techniques could be used to make combined
humans and monkeys. Or perhaps we could blend a seagull and a giraffe
to see what happens. These sort of experiments are common. Fish
have been born with human and mouse genes for example.
Experiments limited -
only by the imagination
 Edinburgh
scientists have made a whole series of identical sheep, with the
potential to create a flock of thousands of perfect clones. Human
embryos have already been cloned using other methods. How far should
we go? Where do we draw the line?
Some of the deepest answers are not to be found in
a biotech laboratory, but in the twilight zone between life and
death.
Doctors like myself who are involved in the care of
the dying are confronted daily by the fact that life is indeed a
mystery.
Here is a woman lying in the bed, bounded in space
and time. Her pulse is weak and life is fading fast. She is lying
quietly on her side as I am holding her hand. She is at peace, she
knows where she is going and has no pain. I think she is deeply
asleep but when there is a small noise she squeezes my hand.
Her breathing is shallow now and her pulse is hard
to find. At times I almost wonder if she has passed away, but no,
she is still breathing. After a few minutes more I am sure the final
moment is near - and am caught by surprise by a loud sharp breath.
Then all is still again.
Death is not instant, despite all the images in films.
Death is a gradual process. She is still there, but over the next
twenty minutes or so something has gone. Almost all the cells of
her body are still alive, but her presence is no more.
Her heart cells may still be contracting irregularly,
her stomach is digesting food. Her skin cells are still living and
her corneas could give a child sight. Her kidneys are still working,
and her bone marrow is still producing red and white blood cells.
All the ingredients for life are there. The genes,
proteins, chemicals, sugars, molecules and gasses are present yet
she herself has gone. All around the room are vivid echoes of her
past, and of her personality. I can almost hear her voice. But where
is she?
This is a mystery, the most profound mystery of our
existence and the real key to understanding our genetic code.
We see the same mystery in the moment of conception,
when half the genes from a man and half the genes from a woman fuse
together and the two become literally "one flesh".
But is a baby born today just a bag of genes? A unique
blend of second-hand biodata ? A mere automaton programmed to grow,
reproduce and die? A random mutant, produced by a chaotic anarchistic
universe which proceeds with no logic, no purpose, no meaning, no
beginning, no cause, and certainly no end?
 As
we study human life in the womb, or the last moments of earthly
existence, or the majestic appearance of the galaxies in space,
it becomes obvious to most people that there must be a God, a prime
mover, an originator, a cause.
And if a prime mover, then a God who creates with
exquisite detail and care, one who has designed conscious, caring,
ethically aware, spiritual beings capable of the deepest thoughts
and of relationships with himself.
You and I are surely more than the sum total of our
genes. Our desire to "control and subdue" the earth by
manipulating genes may well be part of what God intended when he
gave us scientific intellect. However that desire needs to be tempered
by an understanding that there is more to Life than life itself.
As stewards of creation, we urgently need gene technology
to cure disease and feed the world. However, the stuff of life is
too serious to be playing God by wantonly adding new genes to people,
by cloning them, or by adding significant amounts of human genes
to alter animals into our own likeness.
Either we control gene technology today, recognising
that there is indeed a spiritual
dimension to human existence or gene technology will redesign
us.
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