26 - Genetic databases and governance

Summary

The publication of ‘C. Elegans SGK-1 is the Critical Component in the Akt/PKB Kinase Complex to Control Stress Response and Life Span’ in April 2004 received hardly any media attention. C. elegans or Caenorhabditis elegans is a worm in which manipulation of a gene that produces enzyme SGK-1 stopped ageing processes. In other words, SGK-1-manipulated C. elegans is literally forever young. Human beings possess the gene for SGK-1 as well. Longevity, living perhaps twice as long as we do today, seems to be around the corner. There are seemingly no limits to the biotechnology-induced development of modern medicine: ‘precisely because modern medicine's unspoken goal is simply more, there are no limits to what can be hoped for and sought’. The potential of transgenic enzymes and plants to transform traditional industries (such as production of paper, textiles and chemicals) and agriculture is similarly revolutionary. And it all promises to be huge business, too. In the chemical industry alone biotechnology could by 2010 account for $160 billion in sales. Yet, ‘despite such unquestionable success’, writes Evelyn Fox Keller, ‘biology is scarcely any closer to a unified understanding (or theory) of the nature of life today than it was a hundred years ago’. In other words, we know fairly little what precisely we do with our biotechnological tools. Yet, the motives to use these tools more and more are so strong and obvious that it is hard to conceive of a counterforce to these pressures that would let us govern these developments in a responsible manner.