Were Charles Darwin alive today, would he write the same books? Perhaps today’s gene discoveries — led by researchers in the United States, particularly Boston, as well as in the United Kingdom and Japan — would change his focus and perhaps even a part of his theory? We see evidence of rapid evolutionary transformation in our daily lives; symptoms include how long we live, how we have sex, what we die of, as well as increases in allergies, autism, obesity.
Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and their disciples figured out that all living creatures evolve, and showed that species survive based on two principles — the survival of the smartest, fastest, fittest, or best adapted to any given place, and by random mutation, a gene code that acts like a roulette wheel in a casino. In the world of random mutations, most folks with six fingers and toes find the excess appendages useless and sometimes embarrassing. But random mutations also mean that Antonio Alfonseca’s extra fingers, and perhaps his 12 toes, may have given him the edge to become relief pitcher of the year in 2000.
All kinds of environmental changes have altered how any given creature, large or small, evolves. Whether you are bacteria, a plant, or an animal, if different predators eat or attack you, you better adapt. Over the past century, extreme changes in food, disease, shelter, weather, and myriad other factors alter how we humans evolve.
We are rapidly rewriting the rules that guided evolution for four billion years. On at least half of the land mass of Earth, it’s humans, not nature, who largely determine what lives and dies as well as what gets a chance to evolve and how. When we place our cities here, our corn, wheat, soy, and cattle there, and our parks and vacation homes yonder, we profoundly reshape our lives as well as those of other creatures. This thoroughly unnatural state has changed us, mostly for the better; in just over a century Americans live at least 30 years longer. Many “elderly” now run marathons on titanium knees.
The biggest change has occurred over the past few decades; we have learned how life is coded (in DNA), how to copy that code (clones are ever more common), and how to edit life. When we choose to put a gene into a plant to make it drought and salt tolerant, when we use gene therapy to cure or treat a disease, we are not practicing random mutation; we are attempting intelligent design.
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Driving evolution through unnatural selection and non-random mutation turns parts of Darwin’s theory on its head; it establishes two parallel evolutionary systems, one that operates in the deepest jungles, deserts, and other isolated areas, just as Darwin predicted, and another that increasingly operates as we wish, as we guide. When we suppress mustard weed flowers, we produce broccoli. If we sterilize the flowers, we grow cauliflower. And if we emphasize leaf growth, we produce kale. Nature is not choosing what the plant does, where it grows, and what it grows. We are.
As we take charge of evolution, we can no longer blame a supreme being, or bad luck, if we get measles, smallpox, polio, or rabies. When we decide whether to vaccinate, we decide whether these microbes live or die within our bodies and those of our kids; we decide whether someone may be “naturally selected” by a particular disease or not.
As we drive evolution based on our wishes, desires, and designs, we face many quandaries. Perhaps not everything can be done, or should be done. Yet, time and again, what was once inconceivable, like in vitro fertilization or C-sections, is now standard operating procedure. Within the past year, an infertile woman gave birth to her own child, using her aunt’s transplanted uterus. In an attempt to cure deadly diseases, Britain just approved a DNA transplant protocol that means, for the first time in history, a human will have three genetic parents. While we may be awed and scared, our kids will likely say ho-hum.
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The work going on in labs will redesign humanity, cure many diseases, and provide our children with choices we never wrestled with. These discoveries will also have an impact on where you work, what makes you sick, what your body can do. As we evolve ourselves, we need more debate and coeducation, between non-scientists and scientists. This need not be a dreary or nerdy debate, but it’s a debate that we need to have.
Juan Enriquez co-authored “Evolving Ourselves,” with Steve Gullans, and is managing director of Excel Venture Management.
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