Will our kids be a different species Juan Enriquez
you
all right so like all good stories this
starts a long long time ago when there
was basically nothing so here is a
complete picture of the universe about
40 not billion years ago all energy is
concentrated into a single point of
energy for some reason it explodes and
you begin to get these things so you’re
now about 14 billion years under this
and these things expand and expand and
expand into these giant galaxies and you
get trillions of them and within these
galaxies you get these enormous dust
clouds and I want you to pay particular
attention to the three little prongs in
the center of this picture if you take a
close-up of those they look like this
and what you’re looking at is columns of
dust where there’s so much dust by the
way the scale of this is a trillion
vertical miles and what’s happening is
there’s so much dust it comes together
and it fuses and ignites a thermonuclear
reaction and so what you’re watching is
the birth of stars these are stars being
born out of here when enough stars come
out they create a galaxy this one
happens to be a particularly important
galaxy because you are here and as you
take a close-up of this galaxy you find
a relatively normal not particularly
interesting start by the way you’re now
about two-thirds of the way into this
story so this star doesn’t even appear
until about two thirds away in this
story and then what happens is there’s
enough dust left over that it doesn’t
ignite into a star it becomes a planet
and this is about a little over four
billion years ago and soon thereafter
there’s enough material left over that
you get a primordial soup and that
creates life and life starts to expand
and expand and expand until it goes
couplet now the really strange thing is
life goes kaput not once not twice but
five times so almost all life on Earth
is wiped out about five times and as
you’re thinking about that what happens
is you get more and more complexity more
and more stuff to build new things with
and we don’t appear until about
ninety-nine point nine six percent of
the time into this story just to put
ourselves and our ancestors in
perspective so within that context
there’s two theories of the case as to
why we’re all here the first theory of
the case is that’s all she wrote right
under that theory we are the be-all and
end-all of all creation and the reason
for trillions of galaxies sixth ilion’s
of planets is to create something that
looks like that and something that looks
like that and that’s the purpose of the
universe and then it flatlines it
doesn’t get any better
the only question you might want to ask
yourself is could that be just mildly
arrogant and if it is and particularly
given the fact that we came very close
to extinction there were only about
2,000 of our species left a few more
weeks without rain we would have never
seen any of these
so maybe you have to think about a
second theory if the first one isn’t
good enough second theory is could we
upgrade well why wouldn’t one ask a
question like that because there have
been at least 29 upgrades so far of
humanoids so it turns out that we have
upgraded we’ve upgraded time and again
and again and it turns out that we keep
discovering upgrades we found this one
last year we found another one last
month and as you’re thinking about this
you might also ask the question so why a
single human species wouldn’t it be
really odd if you went to Africa and
Asia and Antarctica and found exactly
the same bird particularly given that we
coexisted at the same time with at least
eight other versions of humanoid at the
same time on this planet so the normal
state of affairs is not to have just a
homo sapiens the normal state of affairs
is to have various versions of humans
walking around and if that is the normal
state of affairs then you might ask
yourself all right so if we wanted to
create something else how big does the
mutation have to be well
Svante Paabo has the answer the
difference between humans and
Neanderthals is point zero zero four
percent of gene code that’s how big the
differences one species to another
this explains most contemporary
political debates
but as you’re thinking about this one of
the interesting things is how small
these mutations are and where they take
place difference human Neanderthal is
sperm and testes smell and skin and
those are the specific genes that differ
from one to the other so very small
changes can have a big impact and as
you’re thinking about this we’re
continuing to mutate so about 10,000
years ago by the Black Sea
we had one mutation in one gene which
led to blue eyes and this is continuing
and continuing and continuing and as it
continues one of the things that’s going
to happen this year is we’re going to
discover the first 10,000 human genomes
because it’s gotten cheap enough to do
the gene sequencing and when we find
these we may find differences and by the
way this is not a debate that we’re
ready for because we have really misused
the science in this in the 1920s we
thought there were major differences
between people that was partly based on
Francis Galton’s work
he was Darwin’s cousin what the US the
Carnegie Institute Stanford alone or
American neurological Association took
this really far that got exported and
was really misused in fact it lets some
absolute horrendous treatment of human
beings so since the 1940s we’ve been
saying there are no differences we are
all identical we’re gonna know what your
end of that is true and as we think
about that we’re actually beginning to
find things like do you have an ace gene
why would that matter because nobody’s
ever climbed an 8,000 meter peak without
oxygen that doesn’t have an ace gene and
if you want to get more specific about a
577 our genotype well it turns out that
every male Olympic power athlete ever
tested carries at least one of these
variants if that is true it leads to
some very complicated questions for the
London Olympics three options do you
want the Olympics to be a showcase for
really hard working mutants
option number two why don’t we play it
like golf or sailing because you have
one and you don’t have one I’ll give you
a tenth of a second Head Start version
number three because this is a naturally
occurring gene and you’ve got it and you
didn’t pick the right parents you get
the right to upgrade three different
options if these differences are the
difference between Olympic medal and a
non Olympic medal and it turns out that
as we discover these things we human
beings really like to change how we look
how we act what our bodies do and we had
about ten point two million plastic
surgery the United States except that
with the technologies that are coming
online today today’s Corrections
deletions augmentations and enhancements
are gonna seem like child’s play you
already saw the work by Tony Atala on
Ted but this ability to start filling
things like inkjet cartridges with cells
or allowing us to print skin organs and
a whole series of other body parts and
as these technologies go forward you
know you keep seeing this you keep
seeing this you keep seeing things mm
human genome sequence and it seems like
nothing’s happening until it does and we
may just be in some of these weeks and
as you’re thinking about you know these
two guys sequencing a human genome in
2000 and the public project sequencing
the human genome in 2000 you don’t hear
a lot till you hear about an experiment
last year in China where they take skin
cells from this mouse put four chemicals
on it turn those skin cells into stem
cells what the stem cells grow and
create a full copy of that mouse that’s
a big deal
because in essence what it means is you
can take a cell which is a pluripotent
stem cell which is like a skier at the
top of a mountain and those two skiers
become two pluripotent stem cells for
8:16 and then it gets so crowded after
16 divisions that those cells have to
differentiate so they go down one side
of the mountain they go down another and
as they pick that these become bone and
then they pick another road and these
become platelets and these became
macrophages and these become t-cells but
it’s really hard once you ski down to
get back up
unless of course if you have a ski lift
and what those four chemicals do is they
take any cell and take it way back up
the mountain so it can become any body
part and as you think of that what it
means is potentially you can rebuild a
full copy of any organism out of any one
of its cells that turns out to be a big
deal because now you can take not just
no cells but you can take human skin
cells and turn them into human stem
cells and then what they did in October
is they took skin cells turn them into
stem cells and begin to turn that into
liver cells so in theory you could grow
any organ from any one of your cells
here’s a second experiment if you could
photocopy your body maybe you also want
to take your mind and one of the things
you saw at Ted about a year and a half
ago was this guy and he gave a wonderful
technical talk using professor at MIT
but in essence what he said is you can
take retroviruses which get inside brain
cells of mice you can tag them with
proteins that light up when you light
them and you can map the exact pathways
when a mouse sees feels touches
remembers loves and then you can take a
fiber-optic cable and light up some of
the same things
and by the way as you do this you can
image it in two colors which means you
can download this information as binary
code directly into a computer so what’s
the bottom line on that well it’s not
completely inconceivable but someday
you’ll be able to download your own
memories maybe into a new body and maybe
you can upload other people’s memories
as well and this might have just one or
two small ethical political moral
implications just a thought
here’s the kind of questions that are
becoming interesting questions for
philosophers for governing people for
economists for scientists because these
technologies are moving really quickly
and as you think about it let me close
with an example of the brain the first
place where you would expect to see
enormous evolutionary pressure today
both because of the inputs which are
becoming massive and because of the
plasticity of the organ is the brain do
we have any evidence that that is
happening well let’s take a look at
something like autism incidents per
thousand here’s what it looks like in
2000 here’s what it looks like in 2002
2006 2008 here’s the increase in less
than a decade and we still don’t know
why this is happening what we do know is
potentially the brain is reacting a
hyper reactive hyperplastic way and
creating individuals that are like this
and this is only one of the conditions
in souther you’ve also got people who
are extraordinarily smart people who can
remember everything they’ve seen in
their lives people who gussed anesthesia
people guts gets rafinha got all kinds
of stuff going on out there and we still
don’t understand how and why this is
happening but one question you might
want to ask is are we seeing a rapid
evolution of the brain
and of how we process data because when
you think of how much data is coming
into our brains we’re trying to take in
as much data in a day as people used to
take in in a lifetime and as you’re
thinking about this there’s four
theories as to why this might be going
on plus a whole series of others I don’t
have a good answer there really needs to
be more research on this one option is a
fast-food fetish there is beginning to
be some evidence that obesity and diet
have something to do with gene
modifications which may or may not have
an impact on how the brain of an infant
works a second option is the sexy geek
option these conditions are highly rare
but what’s beginning to happen is
because these geeks are all getting
together because they are highly
qualified for computer programming and
it is highly remunerated as well as
other very detail-oriented tasks that
they are concentrating geographically
and finding like-minded mates so this is
the sort of mating hypothesis of these
genes reinforcing one another in these
structures the third is is too much
information we’re trying to process so
much stuff that some people get
synesthetic and just have huge pipes and
remember everything other people get
hypersensitive the amount of information
other people react with various
psychological conditions or reactions to
this information or maybe it’s chemicals
but when you see an increase of that
order of magnitude in a condition either
you’re not measuring it right or there’s
something going on very quickly and it
may be evolution in real time here’s the
bottom line what I think we are doing is
we’re transitioning as a species and I
didn’t think this when Steve Collins and
I started writing together I think we’re
transitioning into a home level lootus
that for better or worse is not just a
hominid this conscious of his or her
environment
it’s a hominid that’s beginning to
directly and deliberately control the
evolution of its own species of bacteria
of plants of animals and I think that’s
such an order of magnitude change that
your grandkids or your great grandkids
may be a species very different from you
thank you very much