The idea of modifying or completely altering genes in search for cures for diseases and physical/mental improvement is certainly compelling. There’s a whole movement in support of this idea when it comes to humans. Let’s sit back and explore the idea of genetic engineering. I will show why I think genetic engineering is dangerous and virtually impossible to master.
In Software Engineering, a computer program is a set of one or more instructions for a computer. Software engineers design, develop and implement computer software. Depending on the quantitative and qualitative complexity of the task our program should accomplish, the process of its creation can range from trivial and obvious to immensely complex. Analogously, as complexity of the program rises so does the need for more intellectual resources. At the dawn of the Computer Era, humans were communicating with machines using computers’ native language (0s and 1s). As the quantitative complexity of the tasks rose, more effective ways to program had to be found. Assembly language assembled all those obscure strings of 0s and 1s into acronyms because humans find it more natural and easier to remember. Productivity was increased at virtually no cost in computers’ performance. Humans, inherently curious, created higher-level programming languages without the invention of which you would probably not be reading this on a computer today. There was a performance trade-off involved, but Moore’s Law helped ignore this aspect. Humans have absolute control and virtually supreme knowledge of computer technology. We created computers. However, we are virtually incapable of writing a flawless program. This assumption may be close to false if we talk about printing a simple message on a computer screen. Useful programs are more complex than that. With all the advance we made in our own technology, we are still unable to fully guarantee that a program will behave as intended at any point in time. So much for the level of power we exercise over our own technology.
It may sound far fetched to the uninitiated, but genetics is conceptually very similar to computer science. Genes are our 0s and 1s. Our bodies are built by genetic activity. Genome, a set of all our genes, is a tremendously complex program. Even the most complex computer programs created by humans are simple toys compared to what’s contained in a single cell’s core of your body. At conception, none of us is but a pile of genes invisible to our own eyes. But genes know what to do. They know how to bind the material from the environment and know how to build your body for you. Yet, people still think life does not begin at conception. Genes have alleles which are mapped to specific characteristics of our bodies. For example, there is allele responsible for the color of your eyes. If it holds information that your eyes should be green so it will be.
To be continued…
