Are we ready for neoevolution Harvey Fineberg

[Music]

how would you like to be better than you

are suppose I said that with just a few

changes in your genes you could get a

better memory more precise more accurate

and quicker or maybe you’d like to be

more fit stronger with more stamina

would you like to be more attractive and

self-confident how about living longer

with good health or perhaps you’re one

of those who’s always yearned for more

creativity which one would you like the

most which would you like if you could

have just one creativity how many people

would choose creativity raise your hands

let me see a few probably about as many

as there are creative people here that’s

very good

how many would opt for memory quite a

few more how about Fitness few less what

about longevity ah the majority that

makes me feel very good as a doctor if

you could have any one of these it would

be a very different world is it just

imaginary or is it perhaps possible

evolution has been a perennial topic

here at the TED conference but I want to

give you today one doctor’s take on the

subject the great 20th century

geneticist TG dodging ski who was also a

communicant in the Russian Orthodox

Church once wrote an essay that he

titled nothing in biology makes sense

except in the light of evolution now if

you are one of those who does not accept

the evidence for biological evolution

this would be a very good time to turn

off your hearing aid take out your

personal communications device I give

you permission and perhaps take another

look at Catherine Schultz’s book on

being wrong because nothing in the rest

of this talk is going to make any sense

whatsoever to you

but if you do accept biological

evolution consider this is it just about

the past or is it about the future does

it apply to others or does it apply to

us this is another look at the tree of

life in this picture I’ve put a bush

with a centre branching out in all

directions because if you look at the

edges of the Tree of Life every existing

species at the tips of those branches

has succeeded in evolutionary terms it

has survived it has demonstrated a

fitness to its environment the human

part of this branch way out on one end

is of course the one that we are most

interested in we branched off of a

common ancestor to modern chimpanzees

about 6 or 8 million years ago in the

interval there have been perhaps 20 or

25 different species of hominids some

have come and gone we have been here for

about a hundred and thirty thousand

years it may seem like we’re quite

remote from other parts of this tree of

life but actually for the most part the

basic machinery of ourselves is pretty

much the same do you realize that we can

take advantage and commandeer the

machinery of a common bacterium to

produce the protein of human insulin

used to treat diabetics this is not like

human insulin this is the same protein

that is chemically indistinguishable

from what comes out of your pancreas and

speaking of bacteria do you realize that

each of us carries in our gut more

bacteria than there are cells in the

rest of our body maybe 10 times more

I mean think of it when Anthony Damacio

asks about your self-image do you think

about the bacteria our gut is a

wonderfully hospitable environment for

those bacteria it’s war

it’s dark its moist it’s very cozy and

you’re going to provide all the

nutrition that they could possibly want

with no effort on their part it’s really

like an easy Street for bacteria with

the occasional interruption of the

unintended force rush to the exit but

otherwise you are a wonderful

environment for those bacteria just as

they are essential to your life they

help in the digestion of essential

nutrients and they protect you against

certain diseases but what will come in

the future are we at some kind of

evolutionary equipoise as a species or

are we destined to become something

different something perhaps even better

adapted to the environment now let’s

take a step back in time to the Big Bang

fourteen billion years ago the earth the

solar system about four-and-a-half

billion years the first signs of proto

life maybe three to four billion years

ago on earth the first multi-celled

organisms perhaps as much as 800 or a

billion years ago and then the human

species finally emerging in the last

hundred and thirty thousand years in

this vast unfinished symphony of the

universe life on Earth is like a brief

measure the animal kingdom like a single

single measure and human life

a small grace note that was us that also

constitutes the entertainment portion of

this talk so I hope you enjoyed it

now when I was a freshman in college I

took my first biology class I was

fascinated by the elegance and beauty of

biology I became enamored of the power

of evolution and I realized something

very fundamental in most of the

existence of life in single-celled

organisms each cell simply divides and

all of the genetic energy of that cell

is carried on in both daughter cells

but at the time multi-celled organisms

come online things start to change

sexual reproduction enters the picture

and very importantly with the

introduction of sexual reproduction that

passes on the genome the rest of the

body becomes expendable

in fact you could say that the

inevitability of the death of our bodies

enters in evolutionary time at the same

moment as sexual reproduction now I have

to confess when I was a college

undergraduate I thought okay sex death

sex death death for sex

seemed pretty reasonable at the time but

with each passing years I’ve come to

have increasing doubts I’ve come to

understand the sentiments of George

Burns who was performing still in Las

Vegas well into his 90s and one night

there’s a knock at his hotel room door

he answers the door standing before him

is a gorgeous scantily clad showgirl she

looks at him and says I’m here for super

sex

that’s fine says George I’ll take the

soup

I came to realize as a physician that I

was working toward a goal which was

different from the goal of evolution not

necessarily contradictory just different

I was trying to preserve the body I

wanted to keep us healthy

I wanted to restore health from disease

I wanted us to live long and healthy

lives evolution is all about passing on

the genome to the next generation

adapting and surviving through

generation after generation from an

evolutionary point of view you and I are

like the booster rockets designed to

send the genetic payload into the next

level of orbit and then drop off into

the sea I think we would all understand

the sentiment that Woody Allen expressed

when he said I don’t want to achieve

immortality through my work I want to

achieve it through not dying evolution

does not necessarily favor the

longest-lived

it doesn’t necessarily favor the biggest

or the strongest or the fastest and not

even the smartest evolution favors those

creatures best adapted to their

environment that is the sole test of

survival and success at the bottom of

the ocean bacteria that are thermophilic

and can survive at the steam vent heat

that would otherwise produce if fish

were there sous-vide cooked fish

nevertheless have managed to make that a

hospitable environment for them so what

does this mean as we look back at what

has happened in evolution and as we

think about the place again of humans in

evolution and particularly as we look

ahead to the next phase I would say that

there are a number of possibilities the

first is that we will not evolve we have

reached a kind of equipoise and the

reasoning behind that would be first

we have through medicine managed to

preserve a lot of genes that would

otherwise be selected out and be removed

from the population and secondly we as a

species have so configured our

environment that we have managed to make

it adapt to us as well as we adapt to it

and by the way we immigrate and

circulate and intermix so much that you

can’t any longer have the isolation that

is necessary for evolution to take place

a second possibility is that there will

be evolution of the traditional kind

natural imposed by the forces of nature

and the argument here would be that the

wheels of evolution grind slowly but

they are inexorable and as far as

isolation goes when we as a species do

colonize distant planets there will be

the isolation and the environmental

changes that could produce evolution in

the natural way but there’s a third

possibility an enticing intriguing and

frightening possibility

I call it neo evolution the new

evolution that is not simply natural but

guided and chosen by us as individuals

in the choices that we will make now how

could this come about how could it be

possible that we would do this consider

first the reality that people today in

some cultures are making choices about

their offspring there in some cultures

choosing to have more males than females

it’s not necessarily good for the

society but it’s what the individual and

the family are choosing think also if it

were possible ever for you not simply to

choose the sex of your child but for you

in your body to make the genetic

adjustments that would cure or prevent

diseases what if you could make the

genetic changes to eliminate diabetes or

Alzheimer’s or reduce the risk of cancer

or eliminate stroke

wouldn’t you want to make those changes

in your genes

if we look ahead these kinds of changes

are going to be increasingly possible

the human genome project started in 1990

and it took 13 years it costs 2.7

billion dollars the year after it was

finished in 2004 you could do the same

job for 20 million dollars in 3 to 4

months today you can have a complete

sequence of the 3 billion base pairs in

the human genome at a cost of about

$20,000 and in the space of about a week

it won’t be very long before the reality

will be the $1,000 human genome and it

will be increasingly available for

everyone just a week ago the National

Academy of Engineering awarded its

Draper prize to francis arnold and

willem stemmer two scientists who

independently developed techniques to

encourage the natural process of

evolution to work faster and to lead to

desirable proteins in a more efficient

way what Francis Arnold calls directed

evolution a couple of years ago the

Lasker prize was awarded to the

scientists Shinya Yamanaka for his

research in which he took an adult skin

cell a fibroblast and by manipulating

just four genes he induced that cell to

revert to a flurry potential stem cell a

cell potentially capable of becoming any

cell in your body these changes are

coming the same technology that has

produced the human insulin in bacteria

can make viruses that will not only

protect you against themselves but

induce immunity against other viruses

believe it or not there’s an

experimental trial going on with vaccine

against influenza that has been grown in

the cells of a tobacco plant

can you imagine something good coming

out of tobacco these are all reality

today and the future will be evermore

possible imagine then just two other

little changes you can change the cells

in your body but what if you could

change the cells in your offspring what

if you could change the sperm in the OVA

or change the newly fertilized egg and

give your offspring a better chance at a

healthier life eliminate the diabetes

eliminate the hemophilia reduce the risk

of cancer

who doesn’t want healthier children and

then that same analytic technology that

same engine of science that can produce

the changes to prevent disease will also

enable us to adopt super attributes

hyper capacities that better memory why

not have the quick wit of a Ken Jennings

especially if you can augment it with

the next generation of the Watson

machine why not have the quick twitch

muscle that will enable you to run

faster and longer why not live longer

these will be irresistible and when we

are at a position where we can pass it

on to the next generation and we can

adopt the attributes we want we will

have converted old-style

evolution into neo evolution will take a

process that normally might require a

hundred thousand years and we can

compress it down to a thousand years and

maybe even in the next 100 years these

are choices that your grandchildren or

their grandchildren are going to have

before them will we use these choices to

make a society that is better that is

more successful that is kinder or will

we selectively choose different

attributes that we want for some of us

and not for others of us will we make a

society that is more boring

and more uniform or more robust and more

versatile these are the kinds of

questions that we will have to face and

most profoundly of all will we ever be

able to develop the wisdom and to

inherit the wisdom that we’ll need to

make these choices wisely for better or

worse and sooner than you may think

these choices will be up to us thank you

[Applause]