Gene manipulation: CRISPR-Cas9

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With the introduction of the inexpensive and very effective gene-editing technology, CRISPR, there is potential to alter all manner of genes, allowing scientists to alter genes for cancer and many other diseases.  

This is a scientific breakthrough. On the other hand, CRISPR comes with ethical issues: on what and on whom to use it? What could go wrong and how can one reverse mistakes?  Is its use harmless, or even acceptable in food in the long term? Genes are complex things – if you alter one to eliminate multiple sclerosis, for instance, how can you be sure that it won’t cause, say, heart disease as an unexpected consequence?

With sufficient money a small team of rogue biologists and IVF doctors could create the first gene edited baby right now. “This is the thing that scares me the most,” says Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute. “You can easily imagine clinics trying to boost their revenue by offering this,” says Lovell-Badge, who points out that unregulated clinics offering unproven stem-cell treatments are springing up all over the world.

Another risk comes from something called “gene drives“, which CRISPR is making both easier to create, and more powerful. Normally a genetic variant in an organism has a 50 per cent chance of being inherited by offspring. But a gene drive can insert a copy of itself into the DNA inherited from the other parent, which guarantees it gets passed to all of the organism’s offspring. Thus it can spread very rapidly through a population. In theory gene drives could be deliberately unleashed to wipe out unwanted species such as disease-carrying mosquitoes. But there are fears they could also spread uncontrollably in the wild as a result of lab accidents. Fortunately, in species that reproduce slowly – like us – they would spread extremely slowly.

Positive developments from CRISPR will come from genetically altering plants, animals, fungi and bacteria to create drought resistance, salt tolerance, faster growth, or pathogen resistance. The technique has already been used to create extra-muscular dogs for police work, hornless cattle for farmers and micropigs for pets. The worst-case scenario is that CRISPR is accidentally or deliberately used to engineer a pathogen that infects people or crops – a biological weapon, although it is already possible to do this in other ways. (precised from an article by Michael Le Page, New Scientist)

Epicurus would probably advise to sort out the ethical problems right now, while there is time, and to supervise the results with vigour.

The crisis in the French countryside

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Last July angry French farmers, who get the lion’s share of EU subsidies, were out on the roads again, stopping lorries carrying produce from Germany and Spain, tipping the contents onto the tarmac. Much of the EU subsidy goes to a few wealthy cereal producers; the rest of France’s farmers are losers in a brutal continent-wide price war. While the French have to pay a high minimum wage, they can’t compete with Spanish and German farmers, who employ Poles and Romanians.

An increasing proportion of “French” produce is actually made in Slovakia and other low-cost areas. The French are eating less meat, European milk quotas have ended, and supermarkets are forcing prices down.  This is without the Russian sanctions that have reduced food exports by 10%.  Every time the French government try to reform anything to do with farming (or, indeed, industry) it is forced to back-track, often by unions or by obscure groups in distant departments.  It can’t do anything unilaterally about Russia, or force the Germans to stop using cheap labour.  All it can do is offer farm loans at low interest rates, which then annoys industry, the Germans and everyone else. “The government has watched the “silent tragedy” overtaking French farms and done nothing. France ungovernable? No, simply ungoverned.” (Extracted from reports by Sascha Lehnartz, Die Welt, Berlin, Olivier d’Auzon, Le Huffington Post, Paris, and Antoine Miailhes, La Dépêche, Toulouse.)

I love visiting France, love the countryside, the language and the food. The French seem to have discovered, better than most, how to live. Now they seem adrift in the modern world of globalisation, Uber and competition, and cling to their unions and their leisure time increasingly desperately. The old ways were charming, civilised and enjoyable. Epicurus would have been at home in most French cities and villages.

Are old people a waste of space?

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Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, 57, thinks old people over 75 are a waste of space. They consume too much healthcare and their lives are so diminished that they are not worth living, he thinks.  He publicly announced that he intended to accept no medical treatment after 75 and preferred to die before he became “feeble, ineffectual, and even pathetic”.  ” Living too long is a loss”, he says, and trying to  diet, exercise, do mind puzzles and so on in order to extend life amounts “manic desperation”.

The Boston Globe, which ran a story about Dr. Emanuel, commented that the doctor had 18 years to ponder his death wish. “He is still young, and not yet wise”.

Old age, with its pains, impediments and memory gaps, requires courage.  My mother used to say that old age was not for the faint-hearted. But one thing is for certain – Dr. Emanuel will lapse into silence should he reach the age of 75.  

If you are over 75 and are an Epicurean you are not, by definition, afraid of death; you would just prefer it, when it comes, to be a good death, surrounded by weeping friends and relatives, listening to one’s profound last words. Meanwhile, you don’t have to put up with a disagreeable boss, commute, waste time on Facebook, try to find a new job – and a hundred other things. Best of all, you stop worrying about what people think of you, and you can speak your mind. You might actually have acquired a measure of wisdom and can reflect on how much better the world would be if you ran it, instead of the current bunch of incompetents. The good doctor should enjoy his old age; it has a lot going for it.

The kindness of strangers

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A team of anthropologists at University College London interviewed hundreds of couples in two hunter-gatherer tribes, the Palanan Agta of the Philippines and Congo’s Mbendjele BaYaka, as well as the Filipino farming tribe the Paranan, which is a patriarchal society. These people offer a strong approximation of the lifestyles and communities of our oldest ancestors and their survival strategies.  The anthropologists studied cooperation between strangers and acquaintances and concluded that our hunter-gatherer ancestors, before they took up farming, believed that men and women were equal.

Members of current hunter-gatherer tribes say they prefer to live close to their kinfolk so that siblings and grandparents can help with child care.  But even though that’s what they say, it’s not what they do. In fact, the tribes live in camps that are heavily populated with those to whom they’re not related.  This seems to be because the wife wants to live with her kin and the husband with his.  They end up living with a constantly changing group of strangers instead. This works because the members cooperate. “Sharing and cooperation is crucial to survival,” explains Andrea Migliano, the paper’s senior author. “So [tribe members] evolved mechanisms to cooperate with unrelated individuals.”  For example, hunters need only find food about 75 percent of the time, because unrelated neighbors share their food. (Thomas K. Grose, May 2015, adapted from an article on the NPR website).

Some aspects of Epicureanism were not new even in the lifetime of Epicurus.  They were in full flower among the then hunter-gathering peoples of the Earth. What Epicureanism can do is to help restore those levels of empathy, courtesy, cooperation, sharing, and equality between the sexes. Life has become too fragmented, lonely, stressful, uncooperational and “me-orientated”. We can set an example by trying to lead civilised lives, ironically re-learning from the hunter-gatherers.

Montaigne and nuclear weapons

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“Conquests and wars of choice always bring unexpected consequences and never bring happiness. The seeking for security with massive armies is an illusion. While you are fighting to be secure, matters at home all too often deteriorate, especially if only a small part of the population benefits from the profits”.  (Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592).

Montaigne lived in Perigord, in South Western France, best known for its geese and foie gras, and he came up with the above nugget over five hundred years ago. If he could get it why can’t we?

The current talk is about spending an unbelievable fortune on up-dating the US nuclear submarine fleet, increasing the national debt exponentially, no doubt at the expense of education, infrastructure and probably the welfare of millions.  The military-industrial complex will benefit from the profits, but new nuclear weapons will not make us secure; they will simply guarantee that Russia and China catch up. Beware of generals and admirals demanding money for fancy weapons. Once involved in a war they seem incapable of winning it, however fancy their weaponry.