My Beautiful Genome

by Lone Frank

  This prospect inspired Ilina Singh and Nikolas Rose to pose some thorny questions in a splashy opinion piece in Nature. “Will ‘risk’ and ‘potential’ eventually dominate ideas of personal identity?” they ask. “And will these ideas become institutionalized within education, law and policy?”

  These biologically conscious social scientists, based at the London School of Economics, wonder how genetic predictions will affect our lives if those predictions are with us from birth. How will knowledge of the risks and potentials in a newborn’s gene profile influence her parents? Will it color their view of their child, change the way they treat the apple of their eye? And what will it do to the child’s view of himself that he is labeled from the outset as being particularly sensitive, particularly robust, or placed in some other category of genetic “health?”

  With such hypothetical questions, Singh and Rose are breathing life into the idea that purely statistical dispositions may become self-fulfilling prophecies. Simply by reading about a tendency within their genes, a person may begin to behave in ways that conform with their likely expressions and effects. You can easily envision ugly scenarios in which overly heavy-handed expectations crush or lead astray unfortified souls – and not just at Chinese summer camps. On the other hand, you can also imagine how some genetic alarm bells may trigger an effort to equip more fragile temperaments with vital defenses; a helping hand given to sensitive souls, because genetics tell us that they are especially susceptible to positive influences.

  These perspectives reach far beyond the family and its privileged, sheltered corner of the private sphere. Now that this genetic knowledge exists, how long will it be before politicians really join the game and try to base policies on it? There are those who believe we can and should.

  When I was on my way to Daniel Weinberger’s office at the National Institutes of Health, he pressed an article into my hands, saying this was something I had to read. “This is one of the most well-run studies I’ve seen in years. It’s simply beautiful,” he gushed. If the topic were not so controversial, he noted, the article would probably have been published in one of the major journals.

  Back at home, I turn the pages guiltily. Sure enough, the research team from the University of Georgia has ventured into territory where few people have dared. They went way out into the backwaters of the state and canvassed a poor black community. They then selected 641 families, all of which had an eleven-year-old child. Children on the cusp of puberty, with all the risks that implies for getting involved with alcohol, drugs, and sex – “risk behavior,” as professionals call it. The researchers wanted to gene-test and observe the children until they turned fourteen and investigate two things: first, whether children with the short SERT variant are particularly predisposed to risk behavior; and second, whether there is a genetic difference in how children react if those around them are trying to keep them from getting into trouble.

  Once the children were gene-tested, they were divided into two groups. In one of the groups, the kids were allowed to go their own way, while those in the other, together with the whole family, were entered into a program called the “Strong African American Families Program,” or SAAF. This support program teaches parents how to participate in their children’s lives and, particularly, how to set limits for them. Psychologists know this program works. Statistically speaking, the effort has a positive effect on children’s risk behavior.

  Over the next few years, the children carrying the short version of SERT, who were also in the group left to themselves, began to smoke, drink alcohol, and have sex. And they did so at twice the frequency of the free-for-all kids who had two copies of the long SERT version. It looked as though these children were genetically predisposed to throw themselves into risk behavior, an observation that corresponded neatly to the researchers’ presumptions.

  Yet, a far more sensational finding awaited, and it had to do with the group that had been enrolled in SAAF. The program had a considerable preventative effect on the “genetically disadvantaged” individuals but only a slight effect on the rest. For both SAAF groups, however, the frequency of risk behavior hovered around the same level as for the children with two long SERT variants who did not participate in the support program. Intervention clearly worked best for the children who were particularly genetically sensitive. Or, rather, susceptible.

  Undoubtedly, there are those who will cross themselves, get nervous palpitations, and mumble incantations about stigmatization and social disadvantage. But it could also be said that this research speaks directly against the fear that behavioral genetics will only point out “bad” genes and be the cause for labeling some as hopelessly biologically inferior. On the contrary, this study shows that social initiatives pay off where the problems are most dire. It is not about young children getting gene-tested and stamped as more or less suitable for help. Rather, the very knowledge we get from new genetic studies can shake up our understanding and change policy – for the good.

  A small group of social scientists is beginning to realize these possibilities. One of the more ambitious is the criminologist and author Nicole Rafter, whose book The Criminal Brain was published in 2008. In the book, she recounts the dubious history of biological criminology, its mistakes, and its hopelessly unscientific basis. But, in a surprise twist, Rafter concludes that biological studies in the modern context may – like the Georgia study – be good. “Today’s biocriminologies … are not more of the same,” she underlines. Behavioral genetics turns the genetic determinism of the past completely upside down, with huge implications for research, treatment, policy, and the relationship between researchers.

  Rafter speaks warmly of a new “biosocial” thinking, a way of thinking that marries sociological and biological understandings of why people behave the way they do under different circumstances. Biologists must definitively refute the earlier medical model of viewing behaviors – including criminality – as healthy or sick, normal or abnormal. Social scientists, for their part, must open-mindedly incorporate biological knowledge into their theories. If that happens, it may be the most effective way to create the kind of programs that address criminality by treating social ills. As Rafter puts it at the end of her book: “I want to enlist modern genetics in progressive social change.”

  Can genetics really bear this?

  Possibly. But it will require a brutally honest liquidation of some hardy old myths. And this requires that more people gain a realistic view of what genes are and what they can do. This will be no easy task, but there are some pioneers blazing the way.

  One example comes from psychiatry, where practitioners are now in the process of tossing out the concept of “risk” genes in favor of genetically determined susceptibility. The talk about “orchid” children and “dandelion” children is not just poetic, it is an important change in consciousness: the focus shifts from the risk of an unfortunate outcome to the potential for a good one. And this is a potential that is not determined by the genome itself but by external circumstances. There is no genetic determinism here.

  Another necessary readjustment centers on the idea that the genome is something static. Many people have a sense that, because our genes can’t be changed, we are in some way or other trapped into a biological straightjacket. As we identify more epigenetic mechanisms, we can see that this is not the case. With its quirky switches that turn gene activity off and on, or turn its volume up and down, the genome is incredibly dynamic. And though we are just beginning to scratch the surface of genetic plasticity, we can already see how information that is in itself immutable is always subject to interpretation. By different tissues, and by all sorts of environmental and other external circumstances. This interpretation can make for colossal differences. The upshot is that the most effective way to shape human beings is not to change the genes themselves but to change what we subject our genes to.

  In fact, the rise of epigenetics will undoubtedly lead to a renewed and, hopefully, intense interest in the enviro
nment in the broadest possible sense. All the indicators point toward the fact that genetic research is increasingly becoming a holistic investigation of the eternal game of ping pong that the genome, the organism, and the rest of the universe are playing. In other words, it is revealing the dynamism and complexity that is the fundamental condition of biology.

  DYNAMISM AND COMPLEXITY are key to these shifts. I predict that, in the future, a third watchword might prove to be diversity – in the sense of genetic and, thus, biological and behavioral diversity.

  Why that? Because, in the near future, a degree of diversity we never dreamed of is going to come crashing in on us. Researchers will have thousands, and soon millions, of individual genomes to play with, and the exercise will provide fascinating insights into how different our genomes are, how they are different, and what the difference means. We’ve already had a foretaste of this new menu of diversity, with projects that map and compare broad ethnic groups – or races, if you will. But before long we will presumably see genomes from many more specific groups: the San Bushmen and the Pygmies, the Inuit and the Australian aborigines, and everyone in between. Within each of these groups, diversity will unfold in ever more genetic detail and, when it comes down to it, this may be a welcome corrective to the earlier insistence on what was common among humans.

  This will rewrite the mantra of genetic research. In toasts and official releases, it has been said that what is interesting about studying different genomes is discovering how uniform they are. This has forced the genome into a political role, to serve as a fraternization force across cultural, historical, and social differences. But at this point in the history of science, don’t we know perfectly well that we are and will remain one species, regardless of our genetic difference? What is really exciting are those things that, despite everything, make us different from each other in so many ways.

  The geneticist Bruce Lahn, of the University of Chicago, and the economist Lanny Ebenstein, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, say we need to prepare ourselves for this biological future. It may well be, the two investigators point out in a commentary in the journal Nature, that research will indeed expose differences we don’t care for, perhaps a biological difference that is politically repulsive. According to Lahn and Ebenstein, we need “… a moral response to this question that is robust irrespective of what research uncovers about human diversity.”

  This is courageous. For they are not only up against historical racial ideology and its attached idiocy but also the more recent debates about the extent to which, and in the given case why, there are average differences in intelligence across different groups. The last flashpoint burst on the scene in 1995, when the book The Bell Curve pointed to a so-called “intelligence gap” – and became a bestseller. Armed with many years of measurements from a number of US ethnic groups, its authors Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray concluded that there appeared to be a typical pattern of bell curves describing the distribution of intelligence within a population. They plotted the curve for Caucasians in the middle of the field, while the one for blacks was lower and the one for Asians higher. Not a popular finding. There wasn’t much to call into question in the curves and the measurements taken from the data; instead the outcry swirled around the extent to which the differences are due to genes or reflect purely environmental effects.

  For all the heat the book generated, it had one chilling result. A wing of researchers, led by the British neurobiologist, Steven Rose, took the position that the best way to avoid the problem of politics getting into genetics is to refuse to investigate differences in intelligence. Nothing will come from it but discrimination, they maintain.

  Lahn and Ebenstein stand in opposition to that position. They argue that a thorough exploration of genetic diversity – whatever it may bring to light – can act as a medicine against discrimination, simply because genetics will make it obvious that it is impossible, if not to say ridiculous, to rank groups or individuals on some one-dimensional scale. Genetic diversity contributes to variation across domains – both physical and mental – and there is no single measurable trait, such as IQ, that says anything exhaustive about an individual’s total mental capacity. “We argue for the moral position that genetic diversity, from within or among groups, should be embraced and celebrated as one of humanity’s chief assets,” they insist.

  And we love diversity, right? In nearly every possible situation, difference is elevated as a value. Modern society cultivates and celebrates cultural diversity, and many of us react to globalization’s threat of general homogenization by appreciating what is distinct or unique. That which we don’t already know. And as far as nature is concerned, diversity is king. Monoculture is the great sin of industrialized agriculture, and environmentalists are fighting a bitter struggle for biodiversity, to save obscure toads, unusual corals, unseen birds, undiscovered beetles, and other living things battling the threat of extinction.

  In fact, biodiversity is well on its way toward becoming the next great issue in environmentalism. So why not cultivate and protect our own biological diversity?

  The consciousness that we are a species with characteristic genetic differences and physical variation could be the hook that finally gets us to worry about threatened peoples; human populations whose way of life, cultural peculiarities, and language are on the verge of extinction – along with their special genetic composition. It might be the San Bushmen of the Kalahari, the marginalized Udege of the Russian taiga, or the Amazon’s Akuntsu – of whom only six survive. To mention just a few.

  OUR FASCINATION WITH genetic diversity may also offer an entry to a better understanding of human cultural and intellectual diversity. At least, the psychologists Matthew Lieberman and Baldwin Way, of the University of California Los Angeles, have put forward some ideas about how genetic differences between ethnic groups may help determine where a given culture puts down roots in the world.

  Lieberman and Way have contrasted Asian culture and Western culture. They put aside the subtle differences between Japanese and Vietnamese, or French and British and concentrate on the characteristic difference that Heejung Kim studied: namely, that Eastern Asian culture is collectivist, while Western culture is individualist. For decades, anthropologists have studied and described how this is expressed, but these two psychologists decided to ask why. Is it entirely random, or might there be a biological basis? Their hypothesis is that social sensitivity marks the cultural divide.

  That idea is grating to many ears, especially those adorning people inclined toward the humanities. But Lieberman and Way have some interesting observations to hang their hat on.

  Specifically, they investigated whether sensitive – or susceptible – variants of a number of specific genes appear at different frequencies in the two lumped cultures. They reviewed studies of social sensitivity in relation to three selected genes: the by-now-familiar MAOA and SERT and the gene for a receptor found in the brain that is activated by opioids (opium and morphine derivatives). These three genes are all found in a variant that has been proven to increase sensitivity to social stress, but which also provides a high susceptibility to the beneficial effect of an environment where there is a high degree of social support.

  Lieberman and Way found that the frequency of the sensitive variants of all three genes is between two and three times as high in Asian peoples as it is in Caucasians. The psychologists suggest that this means more Asians thrive when they receive a high degree of social support and positive social relationships – which, as it happens, is best achieved in a collectivist culture, where people are embedded in a strong social network. This might explain why, for instance, the teaching of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, that the family and the group is the most important thing an individual must take into consideration, has been embraced throughout Asia. In contrast, fewer Caucasians are particularly sensitive to social rejection and exclusion, which may be why ideas about the individual’s need to take precedence over the commu
nity have been more popular in Europe and the rest of the Western world. As Liebermann sums it up, “When enough brains are predisposed to find the same idea compelling, it is likely to stick around for quite some time.”

  This is a far cry from traditional cultural research. You can imagine the vicious accusations about genetic determinism and reductionism that will be aired in the professional journals. But the question is whether this and similar research into the genetics of culture will herald a shift in the way we think about humanity, a shift that can be felt in the social scientist James Fowler’s call for “a new science of human nature.” More to the point, Fowler says that no human science can explain human behavior and culture without integrating human biology, from genes to brain function.

  THIS RESEARCH, AND the researchers behind it, are moving us toward a genuinely biological view of humanity. A view that takes as its starting point what the creature Homo sapiens is, and the understanding of which is based on both a knowledge of evolution, genetics, and brain physiology and of culture and history. This is not about biological man standing in opposition to cultural man. Instead, the goal is to find a more comprehensive familiarity that integrates all the products of human behavior and ideas – politics, culture, music, poetry – and considers them in a biological context. And vice versa.

  If there is anything that can drive this transformation beyond the sanctuary of academia, it is personal genetics, quite simply because the phenomenon is a teaching device for the individual that works on the individual’s premises. Even now, as genetic tests can be bought in supermarkets and pharmacies, tens of thousands of people around the world are getting acquainted with their genetic information by using it. This is decisive. Because it is only when you get the information in your hands and, so to speak, under your skin, that you really experience and understand its significance.

  There is no doubt that personal access and the personal approach to genetic information is here to stay. At the moment, consumer genetics is portrayed as a panacea for the plague of diseases, a cornucopia of health and prevention – with the Holy Grail being the advent of personalized medicine, tailor-made for your individual genes. And while illness is an important matter of genetics, it is far from the most important.