Superman: it's not harmful to dream...
When will they make a superman
Alexey Torgashev, "Russian Reproter" No. 24-2010
Gene manipulation should end with the fact that we will improve the human breed. Order abilities for your children, add opportunities to the body and brain. Experiments of genetic engineers and biotechnologists suggest that science is halfway to the invention of Homo super. But we will never go all this way.
We talked about the main thing – about molecular biology. My interlocutor, an academician of two academies – RAS and agricultural – casually mentioned that it would be good to make such a microbe so that it breaks down cholesterol plaques: "We run it into the bloodstream – and you don't have any plaques."
Then we moved on to gene therapy, figured out when genomic maps would appear in polyclinics… The conversation left a feeling that science has seriously begun to remake man. To finally get the Juberman out of it.
There are many examples of such conversations. You come, for example, to Academician Skulachev, and he is just testing the pills of youth. If you come to listen to Watson's lecture, he will tell you in which genes autism is programmed, and in which, on the contrary, schizophrenia. You will get acquainted with a wonderful ophthalmologist Marianna Ivanova, and it turns out that her research institute already has a chip that replaces the eye. The chip needs to be inserted directly into the brain and broadcast an image into it: if you want – from the camera, if you want – from the Internet, and if you want – in general from ultraviolet sensors or photomultipliers of a particle accelerator.
About every little thing like articles in Nature about the cornea from stem cells or about turning off genes with drugs, I will not go into detail: and so it is clear – it has begun.
There are two questions, on reasonable reflection. First: do we need all this? Second: is it doable?
Each of the questions individually can be answered in the affirmative, but both together - no. Let's take it in order.
The first answer is that Superman is needed to adapt to the unprecedented complexity of civilization. In the USA, for example, the number of "white collar workers" exceeded the number of "blue" back in the fifties of the last century. An information revolution has taken place: computers, the Internet. At the same time, transport was developing, and the world really became a global communal. Medicine is constantly inventing new medicines that doctors themselves do not have time to figure out. Banking instruments became so confusing that they required simplification, which resulted in the crisis of 2008.
A modern person sitting at a computer hardly adapts to an ever–changing life: a little mistake - and the environment bites off the individual's head no worse than saber-toothed tigers to Cro-Magnons. And at this moment, a physiologist comes with immortality pills, a molecular biologist with gene transformation, an electronics engineer with a chip in the brain, and so on. And we expect that they will twist everything to us and harmonize everything back.
Will they do it? Each individual task looks solvable, but all together – not. Because the body is an integral system, and it is also controlled integrally: by the brain (about which, by the way, we don't know much yet), and hormones, and intercellular and intracellular signals. To radically improve a person, you need to manage all this complexity. By the way, nothing is impossible in this either, but it is obvious that at the current level of other technologies, huge resources will be required. Roughly speaking, it will be possible to make one superman, but massively – there will not be enough capacity.
What should we do with our superhuman ambitions? But nothing. Unreasonable expectations are a common thing for progress. For example, in the 60s it was believed that by our time they would be picking apples on Mars. And we haven't sent a single person there yet. But there are satellite maps, TV… And most importantly, when a cheap launch vehicle appears (and they persistently make it), everything will be ready so that a person does not suffer in space, as now, but lives: molecular biologists and pharmacists will try with their pills. And we will slowly begin to explore space, albeit sixty years later than expected, with other rockets, other comfort and practical goals.
It's the same now: medicine and chipization will still slightly adapt us to the super-complex global world. In the meantime, radical intervention in a person will have to wait. Wait until some new technology "pops up". And then we will safely and cheaply use all our molecular genetics. The main thing is that then we will know why. By that time, humanity will have more serious tasks, which, however, we do not yet know about.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru25.06.2010