The gene for hubris

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A recent post by Jon Entine on the Forbes website leads with a complimentary citation of my book– and then goes on to undermine its central thesis. He concludes:

Modern eugenic aspirations are not about the draconian top-down measures promoted by the Nazis and their ilk. Instead of being driven by a desire to “improve” the species, new eugenics is driven by our personal desire to be as healthy, intelligent and fit as possible—and for the opportunity of our children to be so as well. And that’s not something that should be dismissed lightly.

Well, first of all, as the recent revelations of coerced sterilization of prisoners in California shows, “draconian, top-down” measures do still occur. Genetics and reproduction are intensely potent, and wherever we find abuse of power we should be alert to the harnessing of biology in the service of tyranny.

Second, there’s more than one kind of tyranny. Besides the tyranny of an absolute ruler, perhaps the two most potent and relevant here are the tyranny of the commons and the tyranny of the marketplace. The fact that they are more subtle makes them in some ways more dangerous. The healthcare industry does much good in the world, but it is naive to treat it as wholly benign.

Further, putting human evolution in the hands of humans, means accepting long-term consequences for short-term goals. The traits we value–health, intelligence, beauty–are the result of the action of many genes interacting with each other and with a dynamic environment. The entire system is contingent, inherently unpredictable. Yet we treat it as simple and deterministic. Until now, technology has been the major obstacle to guiding human evolution. It may be that now the major obstacle is our reasoning ability, our capacity for grasping contingency and probability and change. We’re tinkering with the machinery of a system whose complexity is still unfolding before us. The probability of unforeseen consequences is 100%. The only question is how severe they will be. We will only know in retrospect.

If we now have the tools to meaningfully guide our own evolution–as eugenicists have always wanted to do–we cannot take a blithe and Panglossian attitude. We have to be alert to the risks and take them seriously. That is not traditionally science’s strong suit. The public face of science is sunny, optimistic, fun. It strides boldly into the future, laughing and making striking promises. The industries behind science and health are wealthy and politically powerful. Not everything they do is benign.

To be a critic of that public-relations machine–of hype, in other words–is not to be a critic of health or knowledge or progress. Genetic science has the potential to bring us enormous benefits in health and well-being, and as they do, I stand in line with my fellow humans for my fair share. But that science also carries huge and unforeseeable risks, the root of which, perhaps, is arrogance. It’s one whose consequences are painfully evident in the historical record.

 

Physiognomy Encore!

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A while ago, we reprinted a set of brilliant pictures of “composite photography”, a more high-tech version of a technique Francis Galton invented in the late 19th century. Here’s a different approach, less sophisticated but still interesting. The artist, Ulric Collette (who has 3 eyes, 2 noses, and 2 mouths) has digitally stitched together the faces of family members. Many are comic grotesques, but quite a few just seem to have the normal asymmetries we all have. As the artist suggests, cover first one side of a face and then the other to see how different the originals were, and then reblend them in your mind. The show’s title? Genetic Portraits.

Here are just a couple teasers. Click the link and go see them all. 

I’m pretty sure I saw this person in the East Village about 5 years ago.

 

H/t to Richard Nash and to fullym.com.

 

Major new cause of achievement discovered: studying

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In a breakthrough discovery, researchers have identified a significant causal factor in educational achievement. It involves sitting one’s ass down at a table and opening books.

The problem of the underlying causes of educational achievement have stymied geneticists for years. Back in the Progressive Era, eugenicists attributed most of the variance in IQ, or intelligence quotient–a test designed to measure educational achievement–to a single Mendelian gene. Today, geneticists are just as obsessed with the genetic causes of IQ. After years of study, they have succeeded in spreading the effect out over several genes, while whittling the genetic basis down to under two percent of the variation. A recent study in Science magazine found that all known genetic variations combined explained 1.98% of the variation in achievement; the largest single effect of a genetic variant was 0.02%.

A different approach was taken by a researcher who prefers to be known simply as “Miss Perkins.” With her half-moon glasses, her hair done up in a tidy bun, and her sensible shoes, she is the picture of an elementary school teacher. Which she is. Collecting data over more than 20 years of teaching social studies to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders at Martin Luther Malcolm Kennedy Roosevelt Elementary and Middle School, in Slippery Rock, Missouri, she has found that studying (STUH-dee-ying) explains a whopping 60% of the variance in educational achievement–no matter whether it is measured in grade-point average, standardized test scores, or subjective evaluations.

Another 30% of the total variation can be attributed to parents teaching their kids to put their butts in the chair and keep them there, without videos, music, or cell phones to distract them. A further 8% was attributed to nutrition.

The results have rocked the biomedical world. “I’m literally stunned,” said Dick Dorkins, of the Society for the Prevention of Intelligent design, Teleology, Or Other Nonsense (SPITOON), a biological think tank in Tumwater, Washington. “I feel exactly like I did last week when I accidentally got TASERED at the end of a bar fight.”

Not all scientists are convinced by the results, which involve 573 children and 1,719,000,000,000 base pairs. Nicholas Spork, a genomicist at Kashkow University, best known for its discovery of the “Republican gene,” said that Perkins’s “one-size fits all” approach was a “pedagogical dinosaur.” He was pioneering a personalized education approach, he said, that would tailor standardized tests to an individual’s genome. He also said he had applied for a federal grant to buy fourteen new high-speed sequencers that would identify 2 trillion base pairs in 93 seconds. “It’s just a hunch of course,” Spork said with a conspiratorial wink, “but I have every confidence that, with enough venture capital, in ten years we can double the amount of variance explained by single-nucleotide polymorphisms” (or “snips”). That would bring the total to around 3 percent.

Meanwhile, Miss Perkins continues her study—and her students continue their studying. She teaches about 60 students a year, in two classes. Her most high-tech tools are a globe, in the corner, a whiteboard (without a projector), and a terrific set of dry-erase markers, ranging from deepest violet through the spectrum to cherry red. But that’s not all. “Over the summer, a parent donated me a set of grays and blacks,” she said proudly during a quiet moment in class. “They were expensive, but oh, this will help a great deal. Nothing’s too good for my kids. Derek! What do you think you’re doing? Sit down and be quiet this instant, or you’ll have extra homework!”

Eugenics? In California?

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Pacific Colony hospital in California, where they used to perform the sterilizations.

[UPDATE: Changed the link from the Sacramento Bee article to the longer report from cironline. h/t Alex Stern.] A quick note on today’s report from the Center for Investigative Reporting that at least 150 pregnant inmates in prisons in Corona and Chowchilla, CA, were sterilized against their will. Between 2006 and 2010. That’s TWO THOUSAND six. Another hundred or more may have been sterilized in the 10 or so years before that. (See also this HuffPo piece from last month.)

In an earlier post, I noted that when I applied for my marriage license in California, my betrothed and I received a state-sponsored booklet called “Your future together.” It was heavily gene-centered and mentioned that one can obtain free birth control and sterilization, paid for by the state. The historian Alexandra Minna Stern has written about the racial politics of California sterilization (see my review of her latest book–and then buy the book). Not surprisingly, the largest number of people sterilized are poor Mexicans, often illegal immigrants. Those surgeries, however, are at least nominally voluntary. Involuntary sexual surgery on prisoners sounds like something from the 1910s, not the 2010s.

In my book, The Science of Human Perfection, I note that eugenics is alive and well, though it often travels under an assumed name. The principles of informed consent can be–and as this report shows, are–used to mask persuasion. When that persuasion includes being made to “feel like was a bad mother if I didn’t do it,” it grades into coercion. Further, the ethics of sterilizing minority women in prison are even more complex than doing it outside—one wonders, for example, how many of those women were impregnated by prison guards. We should not let the drawing of apparently bright ethical lines allow us to become complacent about the gray, unlit areas where that good ol’ time eugenics can still flourish.

MMMOOOOCS!

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Kashkow logo3lgKashkow University announced today the initiation of an innovative new program of online education that it says will create an “unprecedented revenue stream for non-profit institutions of higher learning,” while streamlining the university staff.

The Kashkow scheme is called Massive Money-Making Opportunity: Opting Out Of Courses! (MMMOOOOC!). Under MMMOOOOC! PROGRAM, Kashkow would eliminate all classes. Instead, it would offer college credits and diplomas through a subscription service similar to the online movie and television service Netflix. The caliber of the degree purchased would be tied to the subscription level. For $29.99 per month, for example, one can receive credit for a full load of coursework that is “equivalent to a Duke University or Washington University in St. Louis,” according to the university. Johns Hopkins or Wesleyan-level coursework costs $69.99 per month, while a Premium membership (Harvard, Princeton, or Yale) can be purchased for $99.99 monthly. There is a three-month minimum contract, which enables one to purchase a complete course; an automatic renewal system allows one to “drop out” of taking the spring semester. The university will also offer a “Basic” membership: for $9.99 a month, students can pursue coursework toward the equivalent of a philosophy degree from the Delaware College of Textiles and Mines.

The new MMMOOOOCs! would be packed with information and essentially content-free. Subscribers would receive a full set of lecture notes, digests of reading materials, complete term papers (with bibliographies), and exam keys—everything needed to pass a course with a grade of A+ or higher. All exams and essays will of course be open-book, and students are encouraged to cut and paste from lecture materials in order to save time. This greatly increases the efficiency of the learning process, university spokesmen say.

Think of education like filling a bucket, said the former Kashkow Dean of Students, Prof. Tweed Pantsuit. In conventional teaching, the faucet is an old fashioned pump handle and the bucket is full of holes. The massively online course movement is a firehose that the student can turn on and off at will, while holding the bucket herself. The result is much more water hitting the bucket in less time—and as we learned in quantum mechanics (wasn’t it?) time is money. Prof. Pantsuit said more about the bucket model, but frankly it wasn’t printable.

The streamlining of courses into “courseware” will have a big impact on the university’s bottom line, according to a Kashkow spokeman. It will enable the university to trim the faculty salary and benefits budget from $75 million to $342.50, according to official university documents we obtained. The bold new plan would reduce the current faculty of 225 full-time professors down to two part-time adjuncts: one for “arts” and one for “sciences.” The medical and engineering faculty would be spun off into for-profit companies, “Kashkow Medicine Dot Edu” and “Kashkow Engineering Dot Edu Dot Com,” respectively.

MMMOOOOCs! will “revolutionize higher education,” said to university president Dieter Geld. “By concentrating on what we do best,” said Geld, “We will be able to better serve our stakeholders.” Pressed on what it was that Kashkow did best, Geld said, “Serving our stakeholders!”

Further aiding the bottom line is the fact that Mr. Aristotle Spinoza, MA, the Professor of Arts, will be on leave next year, serving steakholders at a local “Surf-n-Turf” dining establishment. Raising profits while cutting costs is a “win-win” for education, Geld says.

Such a massive transformation of the university structure will not happen overnight, Geld noted; nor will it happen on its own. “To facilitate the reallocation of resources,” he said, “we are pleased to announce the appointment of a crack team of administrators.” Kashkow will be hiring six new deans and associate deans. Horatio S. O. B. Functionary, former Provost of Gouger Administrators’ College in Shillings-upon-Quid, U.K., will be the new Dean of Profiteering and will oversee the university’s money laundering program. Reed M. N. Weap, a freelance card sharp with over 20 years’ experience in money management, will be the new Dean of Accumulation. And John “Bud” Balls, formerly the football coach at Bigten University, will serve as Associate Dean of Associate Deans and will manage the university’s burgeoning roster of high-level administrators. (Balls will also head up the new varsity intramural sexual predator squad, The Fighting Flashers.) The Office of Public Relations will be split into three, each with its own associate dean: the Office of Stakeholder Relations, the Office of Trustee Relations, and the Office of Dean Relations. The new administrators will make an average of $550,000 per year salary, plus an average of nearly $4,000,000 per year in benefits.

When asked about the wisdom of adding high-paid staff as a cost-cutting measure, Geld replied, “It takes a crack team to bring out real educational change. When it comes to sparing expense, we spare no expense!”

 

The Arsehole Gene

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There is a tragic epidemic plaguing us–particularly in the U.S. and in France. Assholes, or, as the Brits say, arseholes. The philosopher Aaron James, in his breakthrough work, Assholes: A Theory, has defined an asshole as a person with an entrenched sense of entitlement who is immune to criticism of his behavior.

Until now, these people have been blamed for their behavior, but genetic science has uncovered a mutation in a gene, dubbed the “arsehole gene,” that leads to the creation of an asshole. Here is a link to a touching new documentary by Eric Romero that chronicles the discovery. Please watch it and pass on the link.

Avaris announces new gene strategy: trademarks

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The recent Supreme Court decision striking down the patenting of naturally occurring genes is being hailed as a victory for patients and healthcare providers, because sky-high licensing fees can no longer be charged by companies holding a monopoly on genetic information. Some biotech companies are down in the dumps, however, as they fear smaller returns on discoveries and thus lower incentives to develop new gene tests. The BRCA1 and BRCA2 tests at the center of the SCOTUS case, developed and licensed exclusively by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics, helped propel Myriad’s 2012 earnings to a snip shy of half a billion dollars–equal to the GDP of the British Virgin Islands, which has much better rum drinks than Utah.

Avaris Pharmaceuticals–based, conveniently, under a tax-sheltering palm tree in the British Virgin Islands–has announced a bold new strategy it hopes will become a new industry standard for gouging providers and patients alike: gene trademarks.

Using a variety of newly available technologies, Avaris plans to “brand” genes to give them a distinctive look and feel. Traditional pharmaceuticals have used this approach since the mid-20th century. The color and shape of a pill is known in the industry as “trade dress.” Think Zantac’s blue pentagon, Viagra’s blue diamond, or the “purple pill,” Prilosec. The physician and historian of medicine Jeremy Greene has discussed how trade dress is used to instill confidence on the part of doctors and, with direct-to-consumer marketing, patients themselves. But can Avaris really create “trade dress” for genes?

“We can create a trade dress for genes,” said Ray P. N. Pillage, a senior scientist at Avaris. Pillage offered several scenarios by which trademarked genes could become a reality. One is fluorescent labeling. Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) has been in use since the 1990s as a technique for staining whole chromosomes. Avaris scientists are working on ways to create microscopic logos on engineered chromosomes that carry particular genes. By placing a sample under a special microscope, a routine technician could check that a chromosome carried a particular gene. Pillage imagines a host of attention-getting devices that could usher in a colorful era of flashing, flickering chromosomes, reminiscent of the golden age of neon storefront signs of the early 20th century. “It’ll be like Times Square in a dish,” said Pillage.

Another technique could involve radioactive labeling of individual nucleotides. This is an even older technique that dates back to the years immediately after World War II. Substituting hot isotopes of phosphorus, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen for their non-radioactive atomic counterparts could enable researchers to create intricate patterns in the DNA itself. Specific forms of naturally occurring genes could be labeled with unique eye-catching designs and even logos. “We might even be able to embed subliminal messages,” said Pillage, his eyes widening and little flecks of saliva appearing in the corners of his mouth. “You know, like when they spliced a single frame of a Coca-Cola into a movie and suddenly you felt thirsty?” An intrepid reporter takes the bait: “So, you’ll make technicians want a soft drink?” “No, that’s small potatoes–and anyway a different market niche. We’ll make you think, ‘Say, a high-Speed sEquencing machine would be eXcellent! And PErhaps a New In Situ fluorescence microscope!'”

For now, trademarked genes would not be marketed to the public. Branded DNA would be delivered, ice cold, to genetic testing laboratories and biotech companies seeking to develop new tests. The hope is that the labeled genes will inspire confidence that the DNA is the “real thing.” If the product can be trusted to have zero impurities, Pillage said, “things will go better” in the lab.

The beauty of trademarking, from a marketing point of view, is that in modifying the DNA, it then becomes patentable–even though no biological activity is introduced to the molecule. It will respond to the same genetic tests. By dressing up the DNA, furthermore, industry executives hope to instill the same sense of confidence trade dress confers in pharmaceuticals. It seems likely that a new “generic DNA” industry will follow suit, providing a lower-cost–but perhaps lower trust–alternative to “name brand” genes.

“It’ll be a goldmine,” said Pillage, reaching into a company refrigerator. “Have a Coke?”

 

 

DNA spoofing

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Okay, there could not be a more apt title for a Genotopia post. This conceptual art piece is scientifically silly, almost frivolous, but it makes a serious point (I know!): the prospect of genetic surveillance is creepy. I love the notion of “genetic ambiguity.”

http://ahprojects.com/projects/dna-spoofing

Killing off the Ta-Tas?

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Angelina Jolie’s announcement that she had had a prophylactic double mastectomy prompted a thoughtful piece on NPR today. In it, Todd Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology at the University of Minnesota, discussed the motivations underlying such decisions. The number of women choosing this extreme form of preventive medicine has risen dramatically in recent years and is also much higher in the US than in Europe, although women there have the same access to surgery and reconstruction.

One cause, he said, was that women tend to greatly exaggerate their breast cancer risk when extrapolating from genetics or family history. Why is this? The NPR piece suggests that “the ubiquitous pink-ribbon campaigns may be fueling the rise in mastectomies.” We’d like to see the evidence, but it’s a profoundly ironic notion:

Could the campaign to “Save the Ta-Tas” in fact be reducing their numbers?

In an age of super-sensitive, ever more powerful diagnostics and a culture that favors preventive medicine, it becomes increasingly important for people to actually understand abstract concepts such as risk and probability.

 

Composite photography now and then

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A student* linked me to The Postnational Monitor, which features composite photographs of different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. By superimposing many images (selected by unstated criteria) and centering them on the eyes and other key facial features, they produce visual “averages”. Here’s an average German male:

 

And here’s an average Irish female:

Some of the distinctions are pretty subtle. I had to look back and forth several times to make sure the Belgian and Dutch woman were not the same image. Can you tell which is which?

Statistics can be witty. Here’s “Ras’ average ex-girlfriend:

This lovely individual is the average South African female:

And the average Han Chinese man:

This fascinates me because in the 19th century, Francis Galton (Charles Darwin’s cousin and the inventor of eugenics and linear regression) invented this technique to uncover the “true” underlying features of different groups. His methods were cruder, of course, but the technique was basically the same. Here’s the essential Boston physician:

Boston physicians

But for Galton, this was more than just visual play. He thought you could identify fundamental features of physiognomy, letting one get at the structural qualities of health and behavior. Composite photography could reveal the facial features of predisposition to disease (diathesis):

It could also be useful in crime prevention. Here are portraits of the kind of man who commits larceny (without violence):

Larcenists

Right! If you see any of these men, look for the nearest Bobbie.

Today, more sophisticated image-processing could be easily combined with DNA sampling and whole-genome analysis to find genetic correlates of these facial features. The Human Genome Project was, of course, a “composite” of a sequential sort—it comprised consensus sequences of numerous individuals to provide an image of “the” human genome. Today, much of personalized medicine relies on genomic composites of “Europeans,” “Africans,” and “Han Chinese.” Someday, similarly blurry visual portraits might even be made from genome data.

Consensus sequence
Consensus sequence, from bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org

Think of the possibilities for preventive medicine and crime prevention! With sufficient data, it would be straightforward to produce “Wanted”-style posters of people predisposed toward illness or indiscretion, enabling the appropriate authorities to step in and save both the public and the individuals themselves from suffering. 

There is a long-standing dialectic between the belief that individuality most faithfully expresses the real world and the belief that truth lies in averages–that variation is noise. Personalized medicine, which relies on “big data,” inches forward by the pushes and pulls of that dialectic, alternately claiming to tailor treatment to the individual and relying on racial categories considerably less differentiated than the composites above to parse disease and behavior.

The patron saint of this style of research is (or ought to be) a hybrid of Galton and Archibald Garrod, whose inborn errors of metabolism are often cited as the origin of the kind of individualized, biochemical-genetic approach so much in favor today. So we close with a portrait of that patron saint, Sir Francibald Galrod:

Galrod
Sir Francibald Galrod

*h/t Dmitry Pavluk