Picturing
DNA
Introduction
Scientists have sequenced the entire human genome and mapped the locations of thousands of its genes. This triumph of the Human Genome Project has inspired an explosion of research in laboratories around the world and has also stimulated the imaginations of many artists. Working in a variety of media-paint, photography, computers and installations-artists have explored the implications of the power we now have to control our biological future, creating new visions of the potentials of the gene map. Painter Alexis Rockman offers a garden of Eden in primary colors filled with plants and animals no one of us has ever seem, while self-portraits by installation artist Due Seid and painter Steven Miller show us interiors filled with DNA images beyond the camera's lens.
Eduardo
Kac, GFP Bunny, 2000
"Transgenic art does open a new practical horizon for artmaking, but perhaps its most important contributions are made elsewhere. Transgenic art imparts a cognitive change regarding the way we feel about and understand the very notion of life, considering it at the crossroads between belief systems, economic principles, legal parameters, political directives, cultural constructs, and scientific laws." - Eduardo Kac
There
can be no doubt that the map of the human genome is a milestone in human
history. It is hard to imagine any part of our lives that will be unaffected
by it. As we learn to read this map, we will begin, for the first time,
to understand the nature of disease and the complexity of human behavior.
We may also appreciate anew the wonderful differences that make us unique
individuals at the same time we share membership in a single species.
The
promises of the Human Genome Project are important in terms of what we
will be able to control in the matter of our own health, the health of
our children, the length of our own lives, the length of their lives and
the quality of life for all of us in these extra years. But even though
this new approach to health is now in the realm of reality, it tells us
little about who will benefit, and how.
In the
seven chapters that follow, we will discuss the many ways that the Human
Genome Project can affect our understanding of what it means to be human.
We must confront the ethical and moral ramifications of the decisions
we now will have to make. The future that we once floated before us in
a rosy haze has become the present.
The
first chapter begins in the nineteenth-century, when Charles Darwin, in
England, reluctantly convinced himself, and the ultimately the rest of
us, that human beings are part of the evolution of animal life on Earth
and when Gregor Mendel, in Austria, discovered genes in the cloister where
he raised pea plants, and carries us to the twentieth century and the
development of the science of genetics. One after another, biologists
picked up Mendel's and Darwin's leads until the mystery of how traits
passed from one generation to another was solved in 1953 with the discovery
of the double helix of DNA. From that moment, the field grew crowded as
scientists raced to decipher the code and map the entire human genome.
That race is finally over, leaving us not at the end of anything, but
at the beginning of a new epoch.
The
second chapter discusses the contribution that DNA "fingerprints" have
made to the legal process, including the exoneration of doomed men by
DNA evidence that proved they could not have committed crimes for which
they were convicted. While DNA evidence is now used as evidence only in
prosecution of violent crimes, there is no reason to suppose that someday
it could not be used in the investigation, prosecution and defense of
misdemeanors such as shoplifting.
The
third chapter discusses potential problems created by the fact that public
officials, insurance agencies and health providers can use our DNA to
improve public security and health care, but they can also use it to invade
our privacy in ways previously unimagined. Insurers might use this information
to permit or deny medical care. DNA could be used to trap a shoplifter,
if the miscreant had been so foolish as to drop a Kleenex from which a
tissue sample could be lifted. But that implies that all of us have allowed
authorities to take our DNA samples for something so ordinary as a driver's
license or that we have acquiesced to the establishment of a national
registry.
The
fourth chapter is about who actually owns human genes. Researchers have
already registered patents on parts of the human genome. Should all or
most of the pieces of the genome belong to pharmaceutical companies, which
can do with them what they like and charge what the market will bear for
only those medications they choose to develop? Or should these gene sequences
belong to the world?
The
fifth chapter is about the past: what genes tell us about our ancestors;
Thomas Jefferson's offspring, black and white; the royal families of France
and Russia; the sons
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; all the way back to our African birthplace.
This kind of retroactive genetic sleuthing reveals a lot about race and
variety in the human family.
The
sixth chapter discusses food and the transfer of genes from one plant
to another, from one animal to another and possibly from a plant or nonhuman
animal to other plants and animals. The potential of genetically engineered
foods for preventing famine and delivering vaccines and medications is
an example of the radical changes in human life promised by genomic maps.
The
last chapter discusses the kinds of changes we are on the verge of being
able to make in our children and their children through germ-line therapies,
as well as genetic medical treatments that may soon be available. We will
soon have to redefine what it is to be normal, and as the population ages,
we will have to reconsider what is normal at every stage of life. We also
discuss the new demographics that began with improved hygiene
and nutrition and the eradication of many contagious diseases and that
will continue as
we conquer the vicissitudes of aging. It is now possible to change the
character of the next generation by selecting embryos for talent and health
rather than by simply eliminating girls, either as fetuses or infants,
as is done in many cultures. The opportunity for one generation to select
another has never before been offered, and responsibility of making this
choice has never before been shouldered.
The
first half of the twenty-first century will most likely see the eradication
of most forms of cancer and the enhancing and extension of the last decades
of life. Yet with
every revolution comes the dilemma of how to accommodate the new to the
old.
Everyone
is affected by the promises implicit in the incredible scientific achievement
that is the Human Genome Project. In different ways, artists and scientists
have explored these questions visually. Some of the imagery they use comes
from the sheer beauty that new imaging technologies enabled them to see.
Others have homed in on the moral issues of the Genome Project, the possible
commodification of human beings, and the provision of benefits and profits
to some, but not all, in the fiercely capitalistic global economy.
An important
and seldom discussed ethical ramification of the new genomic map is the
use of recombinant DNA in creating new life forms for the purposes of
art, but without any potential medical or scientific benefit. Human beings
have tampered with the animal world through selective breeding for millennia,
probably beginning with the separation of dog from wolf. In the West,
since the eighteenth century animals have been bred for looks and personality
traits to satisfy human pleasure, pride and profit. Eduardo Kac challenges
the biomedical establishment by using their new technologies for his own
aesthetic reason, creating a live, transgenic rabbit that glows green
under ultraviolet light. Kac's creature does not benefit science, medicine,
or the rabbit. In fact, the animal is a freak.
As Kac
intended, the rabbit has provoked controversy with a significance that
reaches well beyond the animal rights community. Most artists whose work
we display use art to protest or dramatize or exult in the possibilities
of the genomic map. But by using recombinant DNA as a medium, Kac and
artist davidkremers, who manipulates bacteria, take the issues raised
by science to a different plane, to the morality of creating a living
chimera for the sake of art alone.
The
problems are daunting, the promises tantalizingly wondrous for the enhancement
of human life in the new millennium. We have included conversations with
eight of the artists who have created images based on concepts that underlie
the Genome Project. We have also spoken with Dr. Eric Lander, director
of the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, and Nobel Laureate,
Dr. David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology.
Although cognizant of the potential negative consequences, they each explain
why they believe that the map of the human genome marks a leap in scientific
knowledge that is at the very least equivalent to Darwin's discovery of
natural selection or to Einstein's discovery of the theory of relativity.
Return
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Go
to First Chapter
To see an interview with Eduardo Kac, click here
Picturing
DNA by Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles & Marilyn Nissenson
Copyright © 2000 Bettyann
Holtzmann Kevles & Marilyn Nissenson
All Rights Reserved