Uebermensch

Uebermensch
VPRO Tegenlicht / 49 min / 08-12-2002
De spraakmakende moleculair bioloog Lee M. Silver (Universiteit van Princeton) schreef in zijn boek ‘REMAKING EDEN’ over de toekomst van de menselijke soort. Wanneer het gaat over menselijke klonen of over genetische veradering van kinderen begint Silver waar anderen afhaken. Want, zo vraagt hij zich af, wat is eigenlijk het bezwaar tegen menselijke klonen? Vanwaar het taboe op genetische modificatie? En waarin schuilt het werkelijke gevaar? Een monoloog van Lee M. Silver met relevante fragmenten uit speelfilms (Boys from Brazil en GATTACA) en documentaires.

VPRO TEGENLICHT – TRANSCRIPT
AFL. ‘UEBERMENSCH’
UITZENDING 08-12-2002

00:00 LEADER TEGENLICHT

00:24 BEELDEN VAN DE CAMPUS VAN PRINCETON

MUZIEK: BERNARD HERRMANN,
JASON & THE ARGONAUTS: SORROW / HERAS WARNING

COMMENTAAR (FRANK WIERING):
De universiteit van Princeton, eens het toevluchtsoord van Albert Einstein. Op speciale faculteiten bespreekt men hier de ontwikkelingen in de wetenschap in samenhang met de maatschappij.

DOORKIJK NAAR ROBERTSON HALL,
HUIS VAN DE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PRINCETON.
LEE SILVER LOOPT TRAP OP

COMMENTAAR VERVOLGT:
De spraakmakende moleculair bioloog Lee M. Silver schreef hier zijn boek ‘REMAKING EDEN’ over de toekomst van de menselijke soort. Wanneer het gaat over menselijke klonen of over genetische veradering van kinderen begint Silver waar anderen afhaken. Want, zo vraagt hij zich af, wat is eigenlijk het bezwaar tegen menselijke klonen? Vanwaar het taboe op genetische modificatie? En waarin schuilt het werkelijke gevaar?

01:32 QUOTES SILVER:

MUZIEK: BERNARD HERRMANN,
JASON & THE ARGONAUTS: THE NETS / THE ROPE / THE CAGE

PROF LEE M. SILVER:
Genetic engineering could be used to provide unbelievable advantages to children. You could put genes in that provide a total protection against cancer, total protection against heart disease, increased longevity. We already know that these genes could be put into children.

Once you can give genetic advantages to children, each generation will be able to design and invent new ways in which people can advantage their children and I can’t think of a limit how far they can go. From generation to generation children will become smarter and brighter and healthier and more and more away from what human beings are today.

We might reach a point where the human species has fallen apart and where those who are genetically enhanced have no desire or need in their minds to give respect and dignity to natural people which is so fundamentally different than the way ethical people think in society today. It will be a fundamentally different society.

02:41 TITEL OVER BEELD: UEBERMENSCH

LEE SILVER LOOPT IN BEELD, OPENT ZIJN POWERBOOK EN START DE EERSTE VAN ZES CLIPS:

02:57 EARLY EUGENICS
(NOT-TELEAC 2001)

MUZIEK: FRANZ SCHUBERT: DER TOD UND DAS MAEDCHEN
DOOR PETERSEN QUARTET

NARRATION (BERNARD OATTES):
At the start of the twentieth century, the notion that many social problems were hereditary was a notion also propagated by scientists. In their opinion, traits as feeble-mindedness, alcoholism and criminal behavior were bound to be inherent in certain families and were even physically visible. That assumption led to eugenics, the science of improving the human race. Eugenicists believed that worthless and worthwhile citizens should be separated. Worthless citizens should have as few offspring as possible, while worthwhile citizens should have as many as possible. This would then gradually improve the human race.
The advocates of this theory were very successful at the turn of the last century, surprisingly enough in the country of freedom for all: America. Dozens of States adapted their legislation in order to be able to annul marriages between the mentally ill or those suffering from venereal disease. And drunks or people with contagious diseases were sometimes not even allowed to mary. Sterilization laws were passed for professional criminals, rapists, epileptics and the mentally insane.
Eugenics also had a great impact on immigration. After the Great War, hordes of migrants left Europe for America. A prominent American eugenicist claimed that certain groups such as Italians, the Irish, Poles and Jews were predisposed to theft, kidnapping, murder and rape. To prevent the decline of America, immigration laws were tightened. Migrants had to undergo stringent physical and mental examinations before entering into the country. Many failed and mass migration came to an end.

04:53 PROF. LEE M. SILVER
MOLECULAIR BIOLOOG
PRINCETON UNIVERSITEIT:
I think it’s very interesting that although we tend to underestimate the effect that genes have on human beings, it’s quite clear that genes do play a major role in causing many mental diseases and they play a major role in causing people to being susceptible to things like alcoholism. But the fiction that eugenicists had was that these bad genes that caused mental diseases were confined to one social group or another. This certainly is not the case.
Now we have to go back to the 19th century when Darwin came up with his theory of natural selection. When he said that there were going to be different individuals within a group of animals some of which had good genes and some of which would have bad genes and the good genes would provide the animals that carried them with the ability to have more children and those good genes would eventually win out. And Darwin said that species had to continually evolve to survive in their natural environment.
What happened in the beginning of the twentieth century is that social scientists and others looked at Darwin’s theory of natural selection and where the good genes win out by animals having more children and said: this is problematic for human society because the upper class -which they claimed had good genes- were having fewer children then the lower class. And so the social thinkers, mostly from the left end of the political spectrum, felt that it was necessary to encourage upper class people to have more children to safe the human race. They were worried that the lower class people with the bad genes were having too many children and this was the downfall of the human race.
Of course this is complete nonsense. We know that good and bad genes are distributed across all races and all parts of society but the eugenicists thought otherwise. They had a very simplistic view of the way that genes affected diseases.
And so they encouraged upper class people to have more children. That was positive eugenics. Now positive eugenics moved very quickly into negative eugenics, which was supported more by the right wing of the political spectrum. And negative eugenics was the actual interference with people’s right to reproduce. So negative eugenics began with sterilization laws for people that were deemed to be imbeciles or from a class that was low, they were sterilized, they were not allowed to have children. It went in the immigration laws, which America used to stop people coming from Eastern Europe, from Italy, even my grandparents were affected by these laws. And they were lucky to get into the United States. And these negative eugenic policies ended up in Nazi Germany were the ultimate in negative eugenics was attempted in complete genocide in eliminating, murdering people of certain classes: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals.
Now what happened after World War II was that there was a complete backlash against eugenics. People thought this was awful and they thought it was terrible to interfere with reproduction in individual rights. But at the same time the backlash also affected the understanding of genetics as well. And many people in the academic world denied the fact the genes have any role whatsoever in things like mental illness and alcoholism. We now know that genes do play an important role in these kinds of traits. So we went from one side of the spectrum where genetics was being used in a terrible and ridiculous way, to the other side of the spectrum where genes were denied to have any role whatsoever.
I think this leads us into the next clip where we take a look at a conjunction of fiction and non-fiction based on the Nazi experience. And after World War II many of the Nazi leaders were able to escape from Germany and they ended up in South-American countries like Brazil. And one of the famous Nazis who ended up in Brazil was a man called Mengele who had performed awful experiments on human beings during the Nazi era. And now we go into the fictional part of the film which looks at Mengele as a real person who actually was in South-America at the time and we look at a fictional Nazi hunter called Liebermann who was trying to find Mengele and discovers unexpectedly that there are lots of children being sent out from South-America to be adopted by families in Europe. And he doesn’t understand why these children are beings sent to Europe to be adopted. ‘The boys from Brazil’ as the movie is called. And he goes to visit the households of four families in which boys have been adopted. And he discovers much to his dismay that Mengele’s grand plan is to try and bring Adolf Hitler back, reincarnate. So we can look at the next clip.

10:34 BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978):

FIRST VISIT
LIEBERMANN:
Is this Frau Doringers residence? My name is Liebermann.
BOY:
I think she’s off the phone by now.

LIEBERMANN:
Are you her grandson?
BOY:
Her son.

SECOND VISIT:
WOMAN:
This is Jack Curry junior
BOY:
Just Jack Curry, now.
WOMAN:
Jack, you bite your tongue! This is mister Liebermann, a famous man from Vienna in Austria.
BOY:
What’s he famous for?
LIEBERMANN:
This is fantastic. You know you have a double? The boy who lives in Gladbach in Germany exactly like you.
BOY:
Exactly like me?
LIEBERMANN:
I never saw anything like it. Two twin brothers could not be more the same.
WOMAN:
Jack, you go up to bed and I’ll bring you the juice.
BOY:
I want to find out about the boy…
WOMAN:
Just do what I tell you!
When you start paying the doctor bills then you can hang around all you want. Now just say goodbye and go.
BOY:
Jesus H. Christ. Good Bye!
WOMAN:
You watch your mouth young man!

THIRD VISIT
VISITOR:
Is this the Harington residence?
BOY:
Yes, this is the Harington residence.
VISITOR:
Could I talk to you mother please?
BOY:
Well, you could but you can’t.
VISITOR:
This’ll only take a moment, I promise you.
BOY:
My mother isn’t receiving today.
VISITOR:
Well perhaps if you told her…
BOY:
Don’t you understand English, you arse?
We are not at home.

FOURTH VISIT:
MAN:
First there are some things about yourself you must know.
BOY:
What do you mean?
MAN:
If I prove to you that I know you better than anyone in the world, better than your own mother, would you listen to me?
You are a clever boy, are you not?
You do not do well in school that is because you are too clever, too busy to think your own thoughts. But you are much smarter than your teachers. Huh?
BOY:
My teachers are nowhere.
MAN:
Have you ever felt superior to those around you?
Like a prince among peasants.
BOY:
I feel different from everyone sometimes.
MAN:
You are infinitely different, infinitely superior. You’re born of the noblest blood in the world! You have it within you to fulfill ambitions a thousand times greater of which you presently dream. And you shall fulfill them Bobby, you shall! You are the living duplicate of the greatest man in history:
Adolf Hitler.
BOY:
Oh man, you’re weird!

13:59 LEE M. SILVER
This is a wonderful fictional account of a fictional form of cloning that was released as a movie in 1978 and had a huge impact of forming the public opinion about what cloning was all about. In this movie, Mengele -the Nazi doctor- makes 90 clones, 90 copies of Adolf Hitler. Hoping that one of them will be able to take over the world. And so we come forth with this idea of cloning as mass reproduction of absolutely identical twins. That was the image in people’s minds about cloning from 1978 all the way up to 1997 when the first actual animal clone was produced. Now during that period of twenty years, people had this image of cloning but thought it was completely fictional. And then in 1997 Dolly was announced to the entire world. I had the privilege of meeting this first cloned sheep and one of the first things you notice is that she is not mass produced; it was just one of her. Because when scientists are talking about cloning, they’re simply talking about creating an animal or being that has the same genetic information as another. Not necessarily mass-producing these animals. Dolly was just one of a kind.
The other thing about Dolly is that she doesn’t look like a clone. In fact, many scientists doubted that she was a clone and it took a few months of fingerprinting experiments before it was really proven that she was a clone of another animal and not just a member of her breed who all look alike anyway as the case may be.
But the problem with Dolly and cloning in general is the notion that it could be transported and used to clone human beings. This is what people are absolutely frightened about and so from the Boys from Brazil and the actual real cloning of an animal, people have this image in their mind of societies wanting to mass-produce particular copies. Now this actually makes no sense whatsoever. The reason it makes no sense is because twins are not identical copies of each other. And a society would be much better if it wanted to build leaders or build people with specific talents used in particular industries, it’ll be much better of if it went to it’s schools, educated children in the best way possible and than select from those natural born children the ones that were best able to carry out the tasks of government and society. That’s the way we work today. We don’t need cloning to produce individual humans who may not even reproduce the characteristics that were present in the progenitor of all the clones.
So in what way could this technology possibly be used by human beings? It serves no purpose for society as a whole, the purpose it serves is in a small number of cases where individuals for one reason or another want to use this technology to have children of a particular type. And in the next clip we’ll see an example of a real person -not a fictional account like the Boys from Brazil- a real man who wants to use this technology in the believe it’s going to allow him to bring back the child that has recently died. So let’s take a look at the clip.

17:52 ALS HERBOREN
DNW 2001

FATHER:
Who am I and why do I support human cloning?

I am a successful attorney, a husband, a son, a brother, but most importantly, I am a father. When I looked into our son s eyes for the first time, my heart melted, and I knew that he and I were one, and that I would never be the same. Then the doctor informed us that our child had a rare and random heart defect that would require open-heart surgery during the first year of his life.
When our son was ten and one-half months old my wife and I took our angel to a children’s hospital to have his heart repaired. The Doctors told us he had a ninety-four percent chance of full recovery. After seventeen days of misery and struggle, our sweet baby succumbed to the insult on his body and we lost him.
We didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t accept that it was over for our child, and for the first time in human history I/ we didn’t accept death as the end. He deserves a chance to live, to grow, to learn, to walk, to talk, go to school, to listen to music, to drive a car, to make a difference in this world;
I decided then and there that I would never give up on my child. I would never stop until I could give his DNA his genetic make-up a chance. I knew that we only had one chance; human cloning. We saved the appropriate cells from his body, I studied and read and traveled and wrote letters and called scientists all aver the world.
Finally I met a very kind and brilliant woman in Albany, New York, Dr. Brigitte Boisselier. I knew from our first meeting that together we could change the world. And for us, cloning is the second chance at life that our son deserves, that all ten and one-half month old babies deserve.

20:02 LEE M. SILVER:
This is interesting because it is a real person expressing very heartfelt views of cloning that are shared by very large numbers of people around the world and yet this view of cloning is completely inaccurate. There is no way that this technology or any other technology can bring this person or any other person back to life. The only thing that cloning technology can do is to allow the birth of a child that happens to have the same DNA as somebody else. It’s a later born identical twin. No we already know from studies of twins that exist naturally in the world that twins share characteristics but that they are very different people. They’re unique, they have different identities, they often have very different paths in life. And so when this man is fertile, which he seems to be, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t go through the normal procedure with his wife to have another child. There’s absolutely no reason for him to use cloning technology.
So does this mean that the technology has no purpose for human kind? No, there is a particular use of this technology and that’s for people that are sterile. Men or women, who cannot produce sperm or eggs and, at the moment, have no chance of having a genetically related child. What cloning technology provides is a chance for them to use a skin cell or any other cell from their body to produce an embryo that would turn into a child that would be genetically related which is what so many people want to have. I should point out at the moment the technology is not safe for human use but at some point in the future I’m quite confident the technical problems will be resolved and it will be safe for that person.
So what will such a person get? If they use cloning technology? All they will get is a unpredictable boy or girl because all children are unpredictable and a cloned child will be no more or less predictable than any other child. And in fact it is doubtful if anybody will actually know the child is a clone. Unless the mother or father tells the world it’s a clone. I often show a picture of my son at the age of seven and myself at an old picture at the same age and ask whether they can recognize the difference. Which one is me -or my clone- and which one is my son? And people don’t often figure it out right away. Sometimes it takes a few moments before they can figure it out and sometimes they get it wrong. What this means is that we won’t know a clone as a clone when we see them. Because they will have the same characteristics pretty much as one mother or father, but every day there are children born who by chance look very much like their father, by chance very much behave like their father. And we don’t think that’s so terrible, we don’t think there’s intrinsic harm when it happens naturally.
Why do we think there is some much harm that’ll be caused by cloning if it can be done safely? I think it’s because people have this image, this false image in their mind that somehow cloning infringes upon the soul and that it does much more than it actually can do. It’s actually quite overrated as a technology.
So is there a significance to cloning? Well there actually is a very big significance to the use of the technology and it to use the technology not to clone whole people or whole individuals but to clone embryo’s. And the reason why this is very important is for genetic engineering. At the moment genetic engineering is a very inefficient technique. When it’s applied to a series of embryo’s it only works 5 or 10% of the time. And so what scientists now do with animals to make genetic engineering more efficient is they take an embryo that they are interested in modifying, they will clone that embryo to a fifty or a hundred embryo’s, they perform genetic engineering and then they will identify the one embryo that’s engineered properly and they’ll put that back into the animals womb, start up the pregnancy so they know they will come out with an animal that has been genetically engineered in the way they wanted it to be engineered. So this is the potential use of cloning at the cell level, not at the person level, which has a much broader audience. Because I think that there will come a time when many people will want to use genetic engineering to give advantages to their children. And in the next clip we will see a fictional example of the use of this technology in human beings which is not very far distant from what we can do today.

25:17 GATTACA (1997)
VOICE:
I was conceived in the Riviera. Not the French Riviera, the Detroit Variety.
They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don’t say that anymore.
I’ll never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God’s hands rather than those of her local geneticist.
Ten fingers, ten toes, that’s all that used to matter.
Not now. Now only seconds old, the exact time and cause of my death was already known.
NURSE:
Neurological condition: 60% probability
Manic Depression: 42 % probability
Attention deficit disorder: 89 % probability
Heart disorder: 99% probability
Early fatal potential, life expectancy: 30,2 years.

DISSOLVE TO:
VOICE:
Like most other parents of their day, they were determined that their next child would be brought into the world in what has become: the natural way.

GENETICIST:
Your extracted eggs, Mary, have been fertilized with … Antonio’s sperm. After screening, we’re left as you see with two healthy boys and two very healthy girls. Naturally, no predispositions to any of the major inheritable diseases. All that remains is to select the most compatible candidate.
First we want to decide on gender. Have you given it any thought?
MARY:
We would want Vincent to have a brother. You know, to play with.
GENETICIST:
Of course you would. Hello Vincent.
VINCENT:
hi…
GENETICIST:
You have specified: hazel eyes, dark hair and a fair skin.
I’ve taken the liberty of eradicating any potential prejudicial conditions: premature boldness, myopia, alcoholism and addictive susceptibility, tendency of violence, obesity etcetera.
MARY:
We didn’t want… I mean diseases, yes, but…
ANTONIO:
We were just wondering if it’s good to leave a few things to chance.
GENETICIST:
You want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built in already. The child doesn’t need any additional burdens.
And keep in mind this child is still you. It’s simply the best of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.

28:03 LEE M. SILVER:
This is a very interesting clip in which complete fiction is mixed with very real possibilities in technology. The complete fiction is that we will ever have the ability to predict the exact time and date of somebody’s death. Genetics is not that clean. Genetics provides predispositions and susceptibilities of course but it doesn’t tell us when we’re going to die. And so it’s an exaggeration not just of what genes can do, but the implication is that the scientist and society itself is exaggerating what genes can do. And I think both of these things are false. I don’t think that society will ever reach a point where it really exaggerates to the point of knowing when somebody is going to die.
On the other hand, the technology portrayed in this clip is almost at our doorstep. In fact it’s technology that’s already been perfected for use in animals. And over the last twenty years, scientists have genetically engineered hundreds of different species of animals and plants for purposes that benefit human kind. So for example, cows have been engineered with a gene that encodes the human insulin protein, which is needed by diabetics to stay alive. And what happens is these special cows produce this therapeutic drug in their milk and than it can be obtained very safely and efficiently and given to diabetics. Much more efficient than the current factory-way of producing the drug. And there is an enormous number of applications of this kind. Plants have been engineered; one type of rice has been engineered to produce vitamin A and iron, which is not normally produced in rice. And if this rice was provided to people in Asiatic countries where blindness is very common, the presence of vitamin A and iron would allow these people to have a diet that was much more nutritious, even though it was a single kind of plant. Plants have also been engineered to produce vaccines, which similarly could be given to people to help their children as well.
Now genetic engineering has not been used in human beings yet. What has been used is a different aspect of biotechnology, which is genetic diagnosis and selection of embryos. And the way this technology works is that a couple will produce a whole series of embryos and then scientists have learned how to go in and look at the genes present in each one of these embryos. And when a couple for example both carry mutations in the cystic fibrosis gene or the sickle cell anemia gene, 25% of their embryos would turn into diseased children. So what the technology allows is for physicians to select un-diseased embryos, put those embryos into the woman so that she can start her pregnancy with a disease free embryo as portrayed in the clip we just saw.
The limit to this diagnostic technology is that if parents don’t carry a particular gene, none of their embryos will either. So you can prevent the appearance of horrible diseases like sickle cell anemia, but this technology will never allow parents to give advantages to their children that they themselves do not have. To overcome the limit of the technology it would be necessary to use genetic engineering.
Genetic engineering could be used to provide unbelievable advantages to children. You could put genes in that provide a total protection against cancer, total protection against heart disease, increased longevity. We already know that these genes could be put into children. We know that it can be done, it has already been done in animals and yet there is this barrier that exists within our consciousness as human kind to broaching the line into genetic modification. This barrier exists because we have this notion that the genome, which defines us is somehow interlinked with the human soul and it would be completely immoral to infringe upon the human soul and people think therefore it must be infringe upon the human genome. The problem with this way of thinking is that the human genome causes horrible diseases in so many people. And so many people die of heart disease and lung disease and other kinds of diseases. This technology could let parents give protective genes to their children. What’s wrong with that? Well, the problem is the soul, I think that’s what people are afraid of. Now in the next segment, which was produced by the BBC, I participated in a discussion of where all this technology could lead and the title of the segment is ‘Designer Babies’ and we’ll take a look at it now.

33:12 DESIGNER BABIES
BBC, 2001

NARRATOR: This sperm is unique. Of the thousands that reach a woman’s womb no two are exactly alike. Each one carries a set of chromosomes with the unique combination of the father’s genes. Any one of these sperm could end up fertilising the woman’s egg, fusing with her chromosomes. It’s nature’s random way of making babies, but now some scientists are talking about removing the element of chance and improving on nature. They’re talking about creating the perfect baby by choosing exactly which genes to put into human embryos. Some people even believe that we may be heading towards a future of genetically created super-humans.

LEE SILVER: I would say that within 50 years it will be easy to add 100 genes into an embryo at a time. If you go over 10 generations with 100 genes you’re talking about 1,000 genes that have been added in to the human species over a period of 200-300 years, it’s 1,000 genes.

NARRATOR: We are racing towards an era when new technologies may offer parents even more control over the kind of child they have, not just genetically perfect health, but more. Beauty and brains might one day be on every couples shopping list. But how exactly would parents go about getting the child of their dreams and when, if ever, will it be possible?

LEE SILVER: I have no doubt that in the future people are going to want to use this technology for uses that go beyond medicine, for uses that are cosmetic, for things like eye colour and height and other things that are on the border of medicine like longevity. I have no question in my mind this technology is going to

NARRATOR: The expense of genetic engineering means that only the rich could buy disease-free super babies. Class differences between the rich and poor would become genetic differences. Some think that eventually humans could even split into two different breeds.
35:48 LEE M. SILVER:
This piece talks about the future of genetic engineering. Which sounds very similar to eugenics which was attempted in practice over a hundred years ago. But there is a difference even though both are trying to control reproduction. Eugenics in the early twentieth century tried to control reproduction in a very different way than genetic engineering will allow us or specific people to control reproduction. What eugenicists wanted to do is to control the reproduction of an entire society by imposing limits on individuals, by determining which individuals could have children and which individuals could not have children. And their goal was to change society as a whole.
Genetic engineering is not being imposed upon individuals in our market based society, genetic engineering will be embraced by individuals. It will be the individuals that make the choice to use this technology. And their goal is not to better society, their goal is going to be to advantage their own children. The technology will benefit them, it will benefit their children and there will be no direct harm caused to anybody else. So the same objections that were raised to eugenics one hundred years ago don’t hold, they don’t apply to the current situation.
All parents want to advantage their children, that’s a natural human instinct. Not only to preserve their own life, but also to make your children’s life as good as it possibly can be. So all parents would want to have this choice, to be able to give their children advantageous genes. But the problem is this technology is not going to be cheap and it’s only going to be available to those who can afford it. Which means: those who are the upper echalons of society, the upper class today. And eventually even it becomes cheaper it will still be the rich countries of the world that would be able to afford this and never would poor people in poor countries be able to use this technology. So what would happen then, if this technology would actually get into use by human beings, is that the social differences that now distinguish classes from each other. It’s environmental, social differences that decide who is rich and who is poor. Well rich people will be able to use this genetic technology to turn social advantage into genetic advantage. And from one generation to the next, children will become more and more and more advantaged with better genes. If the parents who started it all started off in the upper class. While people in poor countries, their children will be randomly inflicted with diseases as they always have been in the past.
Now the problem is that generation after generation after generation of genetic enhancements makes evolution go at a much more rapid pace then it went in the past. It has taken seven million years to go from a chimp-like ancestor to human beings today. And we’re looking at a series of differences that occurred by natural selection that could be compressed into perhaps a few hundred years or perhaps a few thousand years that are going to make the difference between the genetically and socially enriched class so different from the genetically and socially natural and deprived class. And as the differences get larger and larger and larger between these two classes of people there will be much less interest for children from these classes to come together and marry. And eventually even if they want to come together, the genetic differences will be so great that they won’t be able to have children with each other. That’s the way that species are formed, that even when the animals mate with each other, there will be no offspring. And once that happens, there is a permanent rift in the human population. There’s a permanent rift that is akin to having different species of human descendence in the world. So what took 7 million years in the past could take a few hundred years or a thousand years in the future. And the problem with this is a very serious problem. It’s that people of one human species won’t feel any kinship to people of the other human species and won’t feel a need perhaps to treat them with the dignity and respect that people give to every human being today as a part of their ethic.
Now in the next piece we’re going to look at another clip from GATTACA, the movie, in which we see the conclusion of what happens when some people have genetic enhancements and other people are deprived of the enhancements and must live the life of naturally born people who don’t have a chance of ever achieving whatever they want to achieve in the world. Let’s take a look.

41:16 GATTACA (1997)

ARRIVAL OF TRUCK WITH WORKERS IN FRONT OF GATTACA BUILDING

VINCENT (OFF):
Like many others in my situation I moved around a lot in the next few years getting work where I could. I must have cleaned half the toilets in the state.
I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin.
CHIEF-CLEANER:
Welcome to GATTACA, gentlemen.
VINCENT (OFF):
No, we now have discrimination down to a science.
CHIEF:
Alright, there’s your cleaning material. Start from the front and clean all the way back. And I want to see my smiling face on that floor.
VINCENT STARES UP TO A DEPARTING SPACESHIP
CHIEF:
What about you, your majesty? You dreaming of space?
Over here! You can start by cleaning this space right here.
VINCENT CLEANS ON THE ROOF AND INSIDE ONE OF THE CONTROL ROOMS
VINCENT (OFF):
I was never more certain of how far away I was from my goal then when I was standing right beside it.
FINALLY HE IS CLEANING A WINDOW WITH VIEW ON AN ESCALATOR
CHIEF:
When you clean the glass, Vincent, don’t clean it too well.
VINCENT:
What do you mean?
CHIEF:
You might get ideas.
VINCENT:
Yeah, but if the glass is clean it’ll be easier for you to see me when I’m on the other side of it.
CHIEF:
Huh!

44:00 LEE M. SILVER:
This is the conclusion, summation of the film GATTACA where the species has split into two groups: the genetically enhanced and the deprived natural people who can’t afford genetic enhancement. And I think when this time comes in the future, it will produce the greatest ethical dilemma, the greatest ethical problem that human kind has ever faced. The problem is that these two people will really be different from each other. And they will show the lie to the classic line in the American declaration of Independence, which said: ‘All Man are created equal’. This will be a future time where all men are not created equal. And so what will happen when the genetically enhanced people know that the natural people from them -they can’t even reproduce to each other- what will happen then is that it will be a form of apartheid. The groups of people will be forced to live apart from each other, but beyond that it’s hard to see what genetically enhanced people would see inside of the natural people to give respect and dignity to. And so, we might reach a point where the human species has fallen apart and where those who are genetically enhanced have no desire or need in their minds to give respect and dignity to natural people which is so fundamentally different than the way ethical people think in society today. It will be a fundamentally different society.
And the important thing is that this fundamentally different society won’t be produced on purpose, it will just be the accumulation of a large number of individual choices. Individual parents saying: I want to give my child an advantage, I’m not hurting anyone else by doing this, but when the entire group of people who can afford it give their children advantages, and those children give their children advantages, it has a societal consequence far beyond each individual choice.
So I think this is what’s going to happen: we will have this huge inequality between the two different species. Now where will it end? Once you can give genetic advantages to children, each generation will be able to design and invent new ways in which people can advantage their children and I can’t think of a limit how far they can go. From generation to generation children will become smarter and brighter and healthier and more and more away from what human beings are today.
If we look back at the history of evolution in the past by natural selection, life began with what Aristotle called the vegetative soul, they where plants. Then plant life evolved into animal life, what Aristotle called the sentient soul and then animal life evolved into human life, the highest form of life what people consider to be the human soul. And now, in the future, we will take evolution into our own hands and it will happen so much faster then we could possibly imagine today and if it happens so fast, we are bound to reach some higher soul which I can’t imagine what that might possibly be. But it seems that in a market orientated society that we have today which values individual choice above everything else, which already displays itself that there are so many social inequalities in society, this must happen.
And so there will probably be a future human soul that will descend from at least a part of society and we can’t predict how far that will go.

MUZIEK: BERNARD HERRMANN,
JASON & THE ARGONAUTS: SORROW / HERAS WARNING

47:47 PAN WEG VAN ROBERTSON HALL

AFTITELING:

Regie Jos Wassink

Research William de Bruijn
Ger Wieberdink

Camera Willem Heshusius

Geluid Menno Euwe

Montage Floor Rodenburg

Geluidsmixage Mark Meewis

Kleurcorrectie Ronald van Dieren

Productie Karin Spiegel

Eindredactie Doke Romeijn
Hans Keller
Frank Wiering

Copyright © VPRO 2002

49:21 ZWART

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