>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> My name is Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
I'm a host at National Public Radio.
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And on with our program, it is
my absolute pleasure and honor
to introduce you today to an
author who has done I think so much
for our understanding
of medicine and science
and all that goes into it.
He wrote the book the Emperor of all
Maladies, which was considered one
of the most notable
books when it came
out by the New York
Times, and so many others.
He is a cancer doctor, practicing.
He is also a scientist and
researcher at Columbia University,
and he's now written the book
The Gene: An Intimate History,
which is an astonishing work.
I can attest, having
just finished it.
So I would like you to give
a very warm welcome right now
to Doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> I'd like to start by saying --
and I did say this to him before --
that I am neither a
scientist nor a doctor.
I don't come with any particular
knowledge of the medical profession.
I am actually a storyteller.
And what was astonishing to me
about this book is the stories
about the people who have made these
incredible discoveries and continue
to make these incredible
discoveries.
But I wanted to start with you
and why you chose to
write this book now.
You started with a book
about sort of illness,
and this is about the
very essence of life.
>> So the genesis of this
book is a little complicated.
Really, the three things that
came together in this book --
when I finished Emperor of all
Maladies, I thought I was done.
There's the English
who can specialize
in snippy comments, the reviewers.
There was a review of
Emperor of all Maladies --
and that book won the
Guardian First Book prize.
And one of the reviewers wrote
it should have been awarded the
Guardian Only Book prize.
[ Laughter ]
Because that was my book
and I was done with it.
But then three things happened, and
those three things are relevant.
Number one is that --
the question of cancer,
which is what I was
studying the laboratory --
the question of cancer demands
the question of normalcy.
Of cancer is the altered
self, what is the self?
How do we become ourselves, how do
we develop normalcy anatomically,
physiologically, and where do the
boundaries of the definition lie?
We'll come to how astonishingly
contemporary this question has
become as of the last few weeks.
But nonetheless.
So there was that question.
So it was inspired by the work that
I'd done for my book on cancer.
In fact, when Ken Burns did
the Emperor of all Maladies,
the question that we
kept coming back to --
in the editing room while we were
conversing and trying to make
that film -- was, you
know, what is normalcy?
How do our bodies know to
become what they become?
So this question is
in my mind a lot.
The second strand was something
was going on in the world
of science and technology.
That is that we had begun to
read and write human genes,
human genetics, in a way
that was truly unprecedented.
And by read, I mean the deciphering
of the human genome, the reading it,
attributing meaning to it, and of
course technologies such as CRISPR,
which began to allow us to
make directive interventions
into the human genome, change
our genomes sort of will.
>> This is the gene
editing technology.
>> This is the gene
editing technology.
We'll talk about all of that.
>> Yes.
>> But these techniques, since
this book has come has come out,
of course, have been very
widely now dispersed.
But from the vantage
point of science sitting
in the laboratory you could
already sense bubblings of this.
CRISPR was in our news
long before it was
of course in very public news.
In The Gene, I made the prediction
that we would see the birth
of genetically altered human
embryos ten years from this book.
In fact, it was less than
ten months from this book
that it actually occurred.
So there was that.
So in other words, there was a
kind of gas chamber, gas pressure,
of technology that was pushing like
a piston against our understanding
of who we were; what are
we, what are we like,
what happens when we change it?
So it was that second arena,
second set of concerns.
But the third, probably
the most important,
was my father was dying while
I was writing this book.
And I was having conversations with
him about our own family history
of mental illness, of schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder in particular.
And those conversations went
from very abstract conversations.
You know, there was the story
of my brother and my nephew --
my cousin, his brother, his nephew.
But then those became
very personal questions.
Would I want to scan my own genes
to unveil potential
risks for mental illness?
What would that mean?
How would that change
the way I imagine,
how would it change the way -- let's
say, you had some illness, some --
with a small genetic component,
may be a large genetic component --
tracking through your family and all
of a sudden the capacity to decipher
that prospectively became
available, would you do it?
What would that mean
for us broadly speaking?
So these three strands, just to
remind ourselves again, number one,
a kind of leftover question
from the Emperor of all Maladies
about cancer; number two, the
bubblings of completely new science
and technological breakthroughs
that allowed us to intervene
and understand our genes in a way
that we hadn't before; number three,
a very personal history
of mental illness sort
of came together in this book.
That's how this book was born.
>> I want to get to the
last two specifically
of what you just mentioned.
But first, one of the things that's
really wonderful about this book is
that you delve into the history.
And I think that it is so important
to understand where we are now
to look back at what
has happened before.
And in particular, as we were just
talking before we got to the stage,
we were talking about the
history of eugenics in America.
And there're so many
cautionary tales here.
Let's talk a little bit about what
eugenics was and that history.
>> So the history comes in
in three or four phases.
And it's important to
recognize these phases
because each one is a
step toward something.
The idea of eugenics, of
course, is an ancient idea.
Plato writes about it.
The idea that you can somehow make
better human beings by intervening
on heredity, through marriage
or through whatever other
means, is an ancient idea.
It's a kind of -- it's an idea
that comes up over and over again.
But the word really is
coined by Francis Galton.
He was, as many of you know, a
cousin of Darwin's, a philosopher,
a scientist, a mathematician,
a statistician.
And when Galton thought about the
idea, it was quite widely embraced
by the intellectual
elite of Britain.
This was thought to
be a progressive idea.
This was thought to be -- you know,
somehow if you did better
breeding you would get improvements
in human race.
And it was projected as a
way to make us better faster,
grasping the horns of selection and
thereby improving the human race.
It was considered -- and many,
many progressives in Britain signed
onto it, and there were big
conferences held in fancy locations
like this one in, you know,
where the idea was strutted
out very proudly as a mechanism --
>> By famous authors.
>> By famous -- exactly.
>> You know, people [inaudible].
>> And there's a whole list
of people, doctors, authors --
>> H. G. Wells and all
sorts of other people.
>> Yeah, H. G. Wells.
He was just one of --
>> Many.
>> -- many.
There we're dissenting voices, too.
We'll come back to that in a second.
Chesterton very famously
had a dissenting voice.
But nonetheless.
That's the first phase,
positive selection,
positive breeding is eugenics.
Then it moves to the United States.
It's interesting that
the United States phase
of eugenics is often neglected.
>> This is a surprise to me.
>> Yeah. The adolescence of
eugenics occurs right here.
It moves to society who are
very obsessed with a kind
of technological and, you know,
a kind of reengineering
of social structures.
And so it's in the United
States before Nazi Germany,
it's in the United States that
provides a kind of fertile soil
for the second phase of eugenics.
And here, the emphasis moves from
just breeding to sterilization.
And it is here that the idea of
sterilizing those that are people
that are considered
eugenically unfit is really born
and brought into the legal system.
>> So it changes from trying to
make a better human to getting rid
of humans that are not good --
>> That's right.
>> -- in that perception.
>> Getting rid of humans
through sterilization.
>> Right.
>> So the human beings that are
being eliminated in this second,
obviously more compromised, phase of
eugenics is through sterilization.
And the Nazis pick up this idea
as genetics itself moves on,
and they then convert
this into extermination.
So it moves from positive reading
to sterilization, to extermination.
Exterminate the people
who are unfit.
But it's impossible to -- it is
very convenient of the United States
to ignore this second phase, but
it's impossible to ignore it.
Not far from here, there were
institutions, state institutions,
sponsored by the state,
paid for by the state,
where the sterilized
were being sterilized,
where the unfit were
being sterilized.
The book is dedicated to Carrie
Buck as a reminder of that moment.
>> Remind us briefly
who Carrie Buck was.
>> Carrie Buck was one
of the first victims
of this sterilization effort.
She was a woman who was
deemed to be mentally unfit.
She was deemed to be imbecile.
Based on what we know about
the historical record,
it's very unlikely that
she was any of this.
Nonetheless, she was brought
to the Virginia State Colony.
And at first she was confined
as a mechanism of preventing her
from having any children,
and later the superintendent
of the colony applied to the
courts, first to the colony board
and then subsequently the case
climbed to the courts to ask
that she be involuntarily
sterilized, her ovaries removed,
so that she would not have
any more imbecile children.
This case climbed all the
way to the higher courts
and ultimately resulted in
the chilling observation made
by Oliver Wendell Holmes that three
generations of imbeciles was enough.
And with that judgment, Carrie
Buck was involuntarily sterilized
in Virginia, becoming one of
the first women to be sterilized
under the umbrella of eugenics.
>> What is important about
the story in the context
of the book, taking us to today?
What is it that we need
to learn from that?
>> Well, the strange
back story about this --
and we were just talking
about it in the back --
I had expected this book
to be scientifically
and personally contemporary.
I thought that I would
write about questions like,
what if you we're presented with the
prospect of sequencing your genome
and determining the
genetic propensities
of your child, would you do it?
What if there was mental illness?
What I had not expected was
how politically clamorous --
how this book would intersect with
the political climate of our times.
It was just totally unexpected.
You know, the question of
supremacy, what does supremacy mean?
A question of race.
How much do we know about race based
on what we know from
genes and science?
The confusion and clamor created
around questions of what is inherent
and what's not, what is intrinsic
and what's not intrinsic,
the IQ words.
You know, as I said, the book
was called an intimate history.
I didn't call it the Genome
Political History, which may have --
[Laughter]
>> Possibly you should have.
>> Exactly, right.
But I just had not expected the
way that this would intersect --
the book would intersect
with very clamorous
and I would say rather important
debates about what's going on today.
>> You wanted to -- I'd like you
at this point to read a section
of your book that I
think speaks to this.
>> Actually, a funny story is I
suppose now I could sadly pick
up any section of the book and --
>> And make it relevant.
>> -- and make it relevant.
>> Sign of a good book.
>> I thought I'd read
the section on race.
So somewhere here.
Let's start somewhere here.
And this is about human migration.
"From here, they went west and
north, as young men often do,
and then traveled through the
gash of the rift valley or ducked
into the canopies of the rain
forest around the Congo basin
where the Bantu and
the Mbuti now live.
The story is not geographically
contained or as neat as it sounds.
Some populations of early
modern humans are known
to have wondered back
into the Sahara,
a lush landscape then crisscrossed
with [inaudible] lakes and rivers,
and then heading back into local
pools of humanoids, coexisted
and even interbred with them
perhaps generating evolutionary
back crosses.
As Christopher Stringer,
the Paleoanthropologist,
described it in terms
of modern humans,
this meant that some modern humans
have more archaic genes than others.
That does seem to be so, leaving us
to ask, again, what is modern human?
But the long march went on.
Some 75,000 years ago, a group of
humans arrived at the northeast edge
of Ethiopia or Egypt where the Red
Sea narrows into a slit-like strait
between the shrugged
shoulder of Africa
and the downward elbow
of the Yemeni Peninsula.
There was no one to part the ocean.
We don't know what drove the men
and women to fling themselves
across the water or how
they managed to cross it.
The sea was perhaps shallower then,
and some geologists have
wondered whether the chains
of sandbar islands
span the straight along
which our ancestors hopscotched
their way to Asia and Europe."
This goes on for a while.
But then it comes to a question
which gets to the meat of things.
"What does this tell us
about race and jeans?
A great deal.
First, it reminds us that
the racial categorization
of humans is an inherently
limited proposition.
While it's there, the political
scientists like to quip
that academic disputes
are often the most vicious
because the stakes are
so overwhelmingly low.
[ Laughter ]
By similar logic, perhaps our
increasingly shrewd debates
on race should begin with the
recognition that the actual range
of human genomic variation
is strikingly low,
lower than in many
other species, lower,
for instance, than in chimpanzees.
Given our rather brief
tenure on earth as a species,
we're much more alike
than unlike each other.
It is an inevitable consequence
of the bloom of our youth
that we haven't even had time
to taste the poisoned apple.
Yet even a young species
possesses history.
One of the most penetrating
powers of genetics is its ability
to organize even closely related
genomes into classes and subclasses.
If we go hunting for discriminatory
fake features and clusters,
then we will indeed find features
and clusters to discriminate.
Examined carefully, the variations
in the human genome will cluster,
importantly, along geographic
regions and continents
and along traditional boundaries.
Every genome bears the
mark of its ancestries.
By studying the genetic
characteristics of an individual,
you can pinpoint his or her origin
to a certain continent, nationality,
state, or even tribe with
relatively remarkable accuracy.
It is to be sure an
[inaudible] of small differences.
But if this is what we mean by race,
then the concept has not
survived the genomic era,
it has been amplified by it.
But the central problem with racial
discrimination is not the inference
of a person's race from the
genetic characteristics --
this is the most important point
that's raised in this chapter --
it is quite the opposite;
it is the inference
of a person's characteristics
from their race.
This is a central confusion
that runs through some
of these sort of clamorous debates.
The question is not, can you,
given an individual's skin color,
hair texture, or language,
infer something
about their ancestry or origin?
That is a question of biological
systematics of lineage, of taxonomy,
of racial geography, of
biological discrimination.
Of course you can.
In the genome has vastly
refined that inference.
You can scan any individual genome
and infer rather deep insights
about a person's ancestry
or place of origin.
But the vastly more controversial
question is precisely the converse.
Given a racial identity,
African or Asian, say," --
those are in quotes --
"can you infer anything
about an individual's
characteristic?
Not just the skin or hair
color but complex features
such as intelligence, habits,
personality and aptitude?
In other words, genes can
tell us about racial origin,
but can race tell us
anything about genes?
To answer that question, we need
to measure how genetic
variation are distributed
across racial categories.
Is there more diversity
within races or between races?
Is knowing that someone is of
African versus European descent,
say, allow us to allow us
to define or understanding
of their genetic traits or
their personal, physical,
or intellectual attributes
in a meaningful manner?
We know precise and quantitative
answers to these questions.
A number of studies have
tried to quantify the level
of genetic diversity
of the human genome.
The most recent estimates
suggest that the vast proportion
of genetic diversity,
up to 85 to 90%,
occurs within so-called races --
that is, within Asians
or Africans --
and only about a minor proportion,
about 7%, between racial groups."
>> So these are the
questions still of our day,
which is what so striking.
So when you read that, what is
the conclusion that you draw?
>> Well, the conclusion
that we draw is
that genomics should
have stuffed the genie
of racial discrimination
back into its model.
The fact that it hasn't
is really a commentary
about our society's new desire
to discriminate and a new desire
to categorize along
racial boundaries.
These are Victorian ideas
that we inherited sub classifying
human beings into these categories.
Genomics has belied this
Victorian idea that the difference
between a man from Namibia and a man
from Ethiopia is greater genetically
than the difference between a man
from Ethiopia and a man from Yemen.
We know this because of
the nature of migration.
And yet, Victorian classifications
would put the first two
in the same category and the man
from Yemen in a different category.
That's just false.
It makes no sense.
The fact that we hang onto these
ideas, the fact that we keep
with these categories, is
a reminder not of genetics
but of a certain biological, or a
certain desire whether biological
or not, cultural or
biological or not,
a desire to categorize people along
boundaries, which we sadly inherit
from time before science.
>> What is striking to me
while reading this book and --
is that these recur but science
is often used by scientists
to make these distinctions.
There are people who use the science
to further these erroneous ideas.
>> Absolutely.
I mean, one of the purposes
of this book and the Emperor
of all Maladies is to remind
us that this, you know,
silence is not a hallowed activity.
Human beings within the science as
within medicine are just as guilty
of the same desires to
categorize, to discriminate.
But it's also a reminder
that there are truths.
Science is not fake news.
[ Laughter and Applause ]
>> It bears reminding.
>> And the confusion
caused in the clamor
of our times is a smokescreen
thrown up onto that idea.
But if you look deeply, if you're
able to lift the smoke screen,
the truth is self-evident.
I believe in truths.
>> I'm going to actually
follow you down this road,
because I'm interested in it.
What is the role of a book like this
and your coming out and speaking
in a moment when science
is questioned all the time?
[ Laughter ]
I'm going to put you on the spot
there because I'm a journalist.
>> Well, look, as I
said to you before,
when I started writing this book,
it was very self-consciously
calling into history.
I wanted this book to be about
my family, an explanation,
I wanted to try to understand what
it feels like to be in this moment
in time, what it feels
like when you can --
you know, if you think about your
genome as a massive encyclopedia --
actually that encyclopedia
with one genome written
in ACTG would cover
every wall of this room.
One human being's genome,
3 billion letters.
We are now learning to read
or ascribe meaning
to that encyclopedia.
But it what was more
astonishing to me is
that we had invented technologies
that would allow you to go to,
you know, volume 16, page
347, erase the word CG
and make the word AG instead.
That's the kind of --
I'm leaving the rest
of the encyclopedia untouched.
I wanted to talk about
all of this and talk
about the ethical implications
of all of this.
But as I said to you, I had not
expected the political intersections
that occurred.
I just hope people read the book.
You know, what else can I say?
[ Laughter ]
We're going to take some questions
shortly, but I just want to ask you
about CRISPR because being the
deep investigative journalist
that I am, I did a Google search --
[ Laughter ]
-- before I came here.
And I did it actually looking for
headlines, not because I wanted
to all the sudden give you
a dissertation on CRISPR.
But briefly, it's gene editing
technology, it's been in the news.
And I did a Google search.
These are the two headlines
that I came across.
Could Gene Editing Tools
Such as CRISPR be Used
as a Biological Weapon?
Question mark, all in caps.
And then the other one was,
Two-Thirds of Americans Approve
of Editing Human DNA
to Treat Disease.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> These seem to be at odds with
each other, these two headlines.
And to me it spoke to the very real
concerns of the moment and the hopes
that people have about what
this technology can do for us.
>> So the answer is
both of those are true.
So could CRISPR technologies be
used to create biological weapons?
Sure. At any time you manipulate
the genomes of organisms,
you can manipulate the genomes
of organisms and make them loaded
with toxins or capable of
introducing new disease
into human populations, so
the answer's absolutely.
Just to remind us, CRISPR
belongs to a suite of technologies
that allow us to intervene on the
genomes of organisms, and absolutely
when you intervene on the genomes
of organisms you have the capacity
to change the organism and make
it more pathogenic and, sure,
you can make a biological
weapon out of it.
The second question, also
important, we don't --
this is why we need to
have this conversation now.
As I told you before, you if you'll
imagine an individual's genome,
3 billion letters of it, as an
encyclopedia lining every wall
of this auditorium, these
technologies now allow us to,
as I said, pick out
page 346 in volume 17
and alter one letter
to two letters in that.
Not everything is that accurate,
but nonetheless close to that.
But it's important.
We are struggling to find
what the ethical realm
and the boundaries would be for
this kind of experimentation.
I'm just going to finish by saying
-- if we're going to questions --
I'm going finish by saying
that there are three --
my book recommends three potential
boundaries, and they're important.
You can think of them as a triangle.
One edge of the triangle
is that obviously we would
like to intervene genetically
on diseases
that cause extraordinary suffering.
That should be a bright line.
Number two, the second line of
the boundary is that the link
between what we're trying to change
and the disease should
be relatively tight.
In other words, there are many
illnesses, many human illnesses,
that are not linked to just one gene
but have multiple genetic links.
Genes plus environmental links.
But we have to establish that
when we intervene on the genes
that we're very confident
that the link between the gene
and the disease is tight.
And the third one, going back to
the political history of eugenics
and the human history of
eugenics, is to remind ourselves
that this should only
occur with consent
and it should be justifiable.
It we should be able
to justify it in terms
of the individual whose genomes
are being intervened upon,
and they should have
freedom and consent.
So these are the three triangles.
You can imagine every angle of
these three triangles is its own
ethical debate.
What is extraordinary suffering?
You know, who defines it?
Are you to define it,
am I to define it?
How tight do you want
this link to be?
What does freedom mean?
You know, if we create
a coercive society,
do we tacitly violate the capacity
of individuals to give consent?
So course these three are
complicated realms of this triangle,
but at least it defines
some boundaries.
That's what I recommend.
>> Who would like to
ask some questions?
And while people are --
come up to the microphone --
and while people are coming up, I
thought of this in your first answer
and I did want to ask you
before we go on to questions,
which is, did you scan your genes?
>> I did not.
You know, I run a laboratory.
We do genetic sequencing
day in and day out.
It would take me no more than
drawing a pinprick of my own blood
or spitting into a
little tube to do it.
I decided not to.
>> All right.
Yes, sir?
>> OK, hi.
Thank you for coming.
It's very interesting.
I love your book.
>> Thank you.
>> I was involved
in the sociobiological
debates back in the '70s.
>> Uh-huh.
>> And I think one of the problems I
have is that on the one hand we want
to think of science as being
objective and looking at the truth,
but we also have to recognize
that science is an inherently
political activity in terms
of what questions get asked,
what science gets funded,
how it's interpreted,
how the results are used.
So I think we have a dilemma
really between, you know,
what we want to think
science is and --
but we have to at least
recognize the fact
that science is inherently
political.
>> And to be honest --
>> Thank you.
>> -- both of my books
address the question of science
as a human and political activity.
I have no doubt whatsoever that this
will continue way into the future.
The way we interpret data
is ultimately altered,
we see it through the
lenses of culture.
That said, I don't believe
that it's a free-for-all.
As I said, I do believe in truth.
I don't think that, I
think the interpretations
of data are constantly changing.
But we're becoming richer
and more knowledgeable
about what all this means, what
genetics means, what genes tell us
about ourselves, our history, etc.,
etc. I think that absolutely
we will continue to struggle
with the truth value of
science and our capacity
to interpret it and
to understand it.
And this is an old struggle.
You know, we will continue to engage
with this through human history.
I don't think that's going
to change in the near future.
>> Yeah. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
Over here.
>> Thank you.
First off, I love what you're doing.
I love your research.
You said when you wrote your book
you predicted in the next ten years
that we would see that the
human genome being edited,
but it was actually ten months,
what are the next developments
you see in your field?
>> Well, the next major milestone --
the next small milestone will be the
arrival of multiple, not just one,
CRISPR and CRISPR-edited organisms.
And they will climb
higher and higher
into the complexities of organisms.
So I suspect in the next
few odd months we will see a
CRISPR-edited monkeys.
>> Months?
>> Months, I would say, yeah.
That would not surprise me.
Certainly a CRISPR-edited animals
of various sorts genetically
modified in whatever way.
And meanwhile, the human embryos --
of course currently no such human
embryo has ever been re-implanted
or brought to term.
We have no idea.
There is in fact a
big debate going on --
>> It's illegal, actually,
isn't it --
>> That's correct.
>> -- in the United States?
>> So I would say it's illegal
beyond a certain place it becomes
illegal, but not so in
many other countries.
>> Yeah.
>> So I think within the next 20 odd
months, these embryonic experiments,
human embryo experiments,
will continue to progress
until we're brought to that
precipice, and then we have
to make a big decision,
whether to allow
or not allow the first
genetic changes
in human beings directed
deliberately by human beings,
should they be introduced
into human embryos are not?
I think that precipice
is probably coming
in 20 months, 20 to 24 months.
>> Thank you.
>> Yes?
>> I just wanted --
>> It is a big deal.
>> Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
I just wanted to express
my gratitude.
Because a couple of years
ago, I had breast cancer.
And each day that I had
chemotherapy, I would come home
and I would watch the
Emperor of all Maladies.
>> Thank you.
>> And I'm not a scientist,
I'm a librarian and archivist.
So watching the history
unfold allowed for context
that I just simply didn't have.
And so as I was dealing with
this personally I was able
to see what had gone on before
me and what was going on,
you know, for future people.
>> Well, thanks back to you
because your and archivist.
It allowed the book to happen.
>> Yet.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
>> Yes?
>> This is high enough?
So two things.
Thank you how well-written
the book was.
I am an art history major,
and not a science major,
and I think that you are the first
scientist I actually listened to --
[ Laughter ]
-- who wasn't a professor.
The reason I picked up the
book, moving to my first point,
is that I struggle with
-- my mother has bipolar.
>> Uh-huh.
>> My brother was categorized
as ADHD and severely medicated
in the '80s and it has led
him to amplified versions
of bipolar syndrome, which has
gotten him in much trouble.
So it's something I struggle with.
Being the youngest child is --
when will this come out for me?
So I really appreciate your
book and how it broke down --
how it really gave an
understanding of the history.
But what I found shocking to myself,
and I guess my question to you is,
were you prepared for from Plato
and Aristotle to Mendel and peas
to Kelly Buck -- or
Carrie Buck, I'm sorry --
were you prepared for
the female role
in how this gene history
has been laid out?
It's so prevalent in one
generation to the next is --
it amazes me that we have, you
know, Lady Justice and Lady Liberty,
but the female seems
to be blamed for a lot
of the discrepancies in the gene.
>> I will add that
I noted that myself.
[ Laughter ]
Well, you know, as I wrote the book,
I personally became more aware.
You know, I thought myself
relatively well-versed
in American history.
I'd never heard of Carrie Buck.
I had to go back and try
to understand what it was
like to be labeled an
imbecile in 1910, 1920.
I had not understood the role
that was ascribed to heredity
and how much of it was
miss-ascribed because of a whole set
of political reasons,
some of them having to do
with our intersection with gender.
So it was an awakening
for me as well.
And I'm intrigued by the fact
that you picked it up in the book.
>> Yes. No.
For me, it was also a bit of
history that I didn't know.
And secondly, it struck
a chord with me as well
that frequently women
minorities are often the targets
of scientific experiments.
>> Science, politics.
[ Laughter ]
In fact, the eugenics project
continued in the United States
on African-Americans way
into the 1950s and '60s,
long extending beyond the
-- what's known about it.
>> Extraordinary.
Yes, sir?
>> I'm from Mumbai.
I'm on holiday here, and
I big and I'm a big fan.
I hit the jackpot today when
I checked on the Internet
and saw you were speaking.
[ Laughter ]
So my question is on longevity.
How soon before we have humans
living for 200 years or more?
[ Laughter ]
>> Yeah. That day's
always supposed to come,
apparently, so I'm curious myself.
>> Well, the longevity
demands a long answer --
[ Laughter ]
-- but I'll try to be brief.
>> We've got five minutes,
we're being told.
>> There are two extreme ways
that I think about longevity.
I'll go from the least
provocative to the most provocative.
The least provocative is removing
-- it's a double negative --
killing all the killers, removing
the diseases, the illnesses,
that place natural restrictions on
human age; cancer, heart disease,
and neurological illnesses would
be the highest on that list.
So as we eliminate them, of course,
human lifespans will increase.
So that's vision one.
Vision two is more complicated.
Vision two is not a negative
vision but a positive vision.
Are there genes that we can --
or pathways or things that we
can intervene on that allow us
to increase longevity in a
way not by killing the killers
but by increasing the human
body's capacity to live longer?
And in fact there are.
There are metabolic
properties, there are genes,
we're discovering more and
more of them in other animals
and extending those
data into human beings.
The third one I'll give you
as a thought experiment.
I'm writing a little bit about it.
The third one I'll give you
as a thought experiment.
Another possibility is to clone
yourself and to then implant
through some kind of deep
learning techniques your voice,
some of your memories, including
the memories of your trauma, etc.,
to this genetic clone of yourself.
We are edging -- we
won't come there --
but we're edging towards
technologies that will allow us
to achieve these technologically.
I just pose this as
a thought experiment.
What if I we're to think about
creating a clone of a self,
genetically identical, and then
passing on some of these memories,
traumas, histories, to that
clone, is that longevity?
I don't know.
I think of that as a mind-bending
experiment for a second.
>> That's a happy thought
to leave everyone with.
[ Laughter ]
We have two minutes left.
I just want to come back
to the ethical implications
of all the things that you've
just said very briefly.
Has the technology surpassed
our ability to regulate it,
to actually make sure
that some of these things
that we've only seen
in movies come to pass?
>> I think that the feeling
across the scientific community is
that it's getting time to hit the
pause button for a little bit.
And it's getting time -- as I
said, this is not trivial stuff,
this is intervention on the
human genome deliberately.
It's a conversation that
people in laboratories
with white coats cannot have in and
of themselves, within themselves.
It's your genome.
We have all of this in custody
across all human beings,
so you have to be able
to have this conversation
as widely and broadly as possible.
And therefore, you need -- you, me,
we all need to know the vocabulary,
we need to understand the
technology, what's fantasy,
what's not fantasy, what's
possible, what's not possible,
where the lines are, what
nations draw what lines,
what we have allowed, what others
have allowed, what we're doing,
etc., etc., this has to be an
international conversation.
So I think in the scientific
community there is every day
increasing cognizance that we sort
of need to hit the pause button
for a little bit before moving on.
And I think again within
the next ten odd months,
we will begin to see -- I know many
of them already because they're
in draft form -- we will begin to
see a very public acknowledgments
that we need to have
stronger boundaries,
international boundaries.
You can't do something if
China's doing something else.
We can't do something if India
is going to have different rules.
How to negotiate those boundaries
based on ethical precepts.
The conception of, you know,
what the life of an embryo is
is different between cultures.
So we have to respect
and understand that.
But at the same time
because it's the human genome
that we're talking about, this
has to be a conversation that all
of us need to have together.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>> Please, round of applause.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation
by the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.