Poetry: Critique of Genetic Engineering

Posted by Chengde Chen *

“Genetic engineering technology is designed to enable genes to cross species 
barriers.” – Martin Khor, New diseases as viruses break species barriers 


Genetic engineering has a million benefits,

While I have only one reason against it.

But, any number multiplying a zero becomes a zero.

Science is supposed to support human existence;

If genes are written by all historical conditions of nature,

Isn’t quoting them out of context man outlawing himself?
 


The temperature on the Earth’s surface is within ±50ºC

A very small range in the grand thermometer of the universe,

But just the home for us – the creature of 37ºC – to survive.

Believers marvel at God’s arrangement, yet it’s only nature.

All existing species are adapters to this condition;

Those not, either never had a chance, or have been eliminated.

 

Should God, seized by a whim, play at “planet engineering”

Rearranging the order of the solar system, what would happen?

If Earth moved one step inwards to the position of Venus,

The mighty 480ºC would evaporate us into clouds.

If Earth moved one step outwards to the position of Mars,

The minus 140ºC would cast us into super-ice.



Earth is in our genes.

Genes are nature’s vertical memory and horizontal logic.

The process of adapting and eliminating carves all specifications.

The billions of codes are billions of doors and locks without keys,

Shutting out foreign viruses with DNA incompatibility

So we don’t catch cats’ flu, nor do dogs get our hepatitis.
 


Yet, manufactured genes come suddenly

Sharing no responsibility of history but short-circuiting species.

When transgenic pig organs are implanted into humans, 

Pig viruses also leap over millions of years to join us.

To gain medical benefits by dismantling the species barriers, 

It’s self-disarming to the bone or tying oneself up to WMD?
 


The biological world is a self-contained all-dimensional computer;

Messing up one sequence could throw the whole system into chaos,

Which is asking God to restart His creation all over!

So He’d rather we mess about with the planets than modify genes.

“If you must,” He may say, “modify Mine first to have a GM god 

To recreate the world, I’d need enhanced energy and perseverance.” 


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* Chengde Chen is the author of the philosophical poems collection: Five Themes of Today, Open Gate Press, London. chengde.chen@hotmail.com

Special Investigation: Gene Therapy and the Origins of Life

The process of natural selection and survival of the fittest lies at the surface of the great molecular chronicle of gene therapy. This investigation argues  the approach will play a great use in near future- as long as  attention is paid to the very spirit of its conceptualisation.

A Special Pi Investigation into the Biochemical Mechanisms involved in Origins and the Evolution of Life - centred on the role of Gene Shuffling.

by Muneeb Faiq and PI editors

Is gene therapy - or gene shuffling as we might alternatively call it -  a product of human genius or a traditional method employed by evolution for last 3.2 billion years in order to give rise to all forms of life that the planet earth has seen? 

Indisputably, this is a very important question which has escaped attention from theoretical biologists for almost four decades (since gene therapy was conceptualised) and there seems to be almost no literature available on it. Instead, there is a general tendency to think that gene therapy is a very recent phenomenon innovated by human mind to achieve desired functioning of a gene and consequently an organism.

That notion is correct in its own right but when you look at it with a little scrutiny, you have to be drawn to the conclusion that gene therapy has been the modus operandi of the process of evolution for billions of years and it is the process of gene therapy (or gene manipulation for that matter) that has brought about the variety and complexity of life that we witness today.

This philosophical investigation will oppose the self-evident notion that the best survives (which begs the question of what the 'best' means) by emphasising that it is the shuffling, the complexity, of gene manipulations that is the real engine of evolution.