22.2 Books MH

Vol 445|22 February 2007 BOOKS & ARTS Calamity gene When biotechnology spins out of control. Next by Michael Crichton HarperCollins: 2006. 448 pp. $27.95, £17.95 Michael A. Goldman At last, a Michael Crichton novel you can put down, a vilification of science that does COLLECTION COLUMBIA/KOBAL not make compelling reading. Next is a veri- table catalogue of what could go wrong with biotechnology. This is what would happen if every patent attorney and judge had a pre- frontal lobotomy (done the humane way using RNA interference, of course), in case the bioethicists hadn’t warned you already. Crichton tries to address every aspect of the biotechnology craze at once, giving the book too many simultaneous plotlines to follow. The result is no single story you really want to stick with to the end. The book is certainly entertaining at times. There is a smart-beaked African grey parrot named Gerard, rather self-centred and with The big screen: the film Gattaca portrayed a future in which opportunities are dictated by genetic tests. a British accent. In exile because he imitated his owner’s husband in a liaison with another seems like anything other than an unabashed requires a full description of an invention so woman in the house, Gerard manages to help a condemnation of biotechnology. Human cells, that it can be used by others. Patent enforce- chimpanzee with a raspy voice and bad gram- the judge says, are different from other forms ment typically does not occur until a competi- mar rescue an ordinary little kid from being of property, as one might still be attached to tor is ready to market a commercial product, abducted for his liver. Meanwhile, a cocaine- them, especially when they are in an unwill- at which time a user licence can be negotia- addicted good-for-nothing thirty-something ing body. ted; basic research is not excluded. Crichton’s finally snorts a concoction that turns his life Crichton uses extant biotechnology com- claim that a patent on ‘noses’ would exact a around: an experimental virus containing a pany names, such as BioGen and BioRad, licence fee from perfume manufacturers is human ‘maturity gene’. The transgenic orang- even if he does capitalize them differently and too broad an interpretation; a patent on a gene utan who curses in Dutch could use a whiff of change the trademarks. Even California sena- clearly does not even extend to a drug that that stuff as well. Body parts and eggs are traded tor Dianne Feinstein plays a part. Craig Venter inhibits the activity of the product of that gene. like commodities, and genetically engineered seems to have escaped, but there’s a spiritual We do, however, have a problem if patents are fish display illuminated advertising billboards and influential scientist at the National Insti- granted too broadly and on too little informa- on their sides. I admit that Crichton had me tutes of Health associated with the thrill-seek- tion, relying strictly on enforcement actions going with the Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic ing gene. And a prominent divorce attorney to to ascertain validity. Park, but somehow that was a bit more believ- the stars discovers the value of genetic testing His next claim is that we should “establish able, and had a lot more suspense. — for everything — in determining whether clear guidelines for the use of human tissues”. One story line concerns BioGen’s ownership or not a parent is a good candidate for child In Next, and in a commentary in The Wall of Frank Burnet’s cell line, which produces a custody. Street Journal on 15 December 2006, Crichton cancer-fighting compound. BioGen gets a legal As in his previous novel, State of Fear (Har- describes a case in which a court upheld the judgement that says they own Burnet’s cells, perCollins, 2004), Crichton pleads his case right of Washington University to keep pos- wherever those cells happen to be. When Bio- clearly and succinctly in an author’s note at the session of prostate-cancer tissues donated by Gen’s own lines are contaminated, and Burnet end of the book. He lists five points, which I patients of William Catalona when he moved himself has disappeared, the company employs take up in turn. to Northwestern University. The ruling was bounty hunters to collect the ‘property’ from First, Crichton contends that we should astounding in that it ignored the wishes of Burnet’s daughter and grandson. Dave, the “stop patenting genes” because vague claims 6,000 patients who had expressly consented genetically enhanced chimpanzee, effects a render it impossible to do useful research and to the move, thereby asserting that patients rescue. The Burnet family’s attorney challenges paralyse scientific progress. Although this idea had no control over the tissues once they had the property decision. After an exasperating has been bandied about, there are powerful left the body. This apparently contradicted the hearing, a judge finally hands down a reason- contrary arguments. Patent protection actu- patient consent forms, which said that patients able decision — this is the first time that Next ally encourages the publication of results, and could withdraw from the study at any time, and 819 BOOKS & ARTS NATURE|Vol 445|22 February 2007 that tissues would be used only for the specified with Crichton’s other claims, that we should In Western culture there is an abiding dis- purpose. Crichton makes an important point “pass laws to ensure that data about gene [ther- tinction between understanding nature and about the Catalona case, but the portrayal of apy] testing is made public” and “avoid bans doing things with it. This was formulated by this issue in Next is extreme. on research”. Aristotle as episteme versus techne (the Latin Crichton thinks we should “rescind the The book could have a role as a conversation equivalents are scientia and ars). Natural philo- Bayh–Dole Act”, which allows US universities starter for a course in bioethics. Most students sophy, the discipline responsible for seeking a to claim ownership of patents derived in whole would find it more entertaining than the typi- causal understanding of natural qualities and or in part from federally funded research done cal textbook, and it covers a similar range of processes, was classed as scientia, whereas in the academic setting. He believes that this issues. There is no doubt that our scientific mathematics, which deals with quantities that 1980 act has turned universities into money- capabilities and our imagination have already need not apply to real things, was regarded as a hungry corporate monsters no longer moti- gone well beyond the reaches of law and eth- practical craft charged with measurement and vated to seek truth, but rather to prove the ics, even though Next exaggerates the extent. computation. As Dear stresses, Isaac New- efficacy of the pharmaceuticals their research The book is a reminder that we need to edu- ton’s universal law of gravitation — the great labs produce. Thus, he contends, university fac- cate professionals in medicine and law about scientific achievement of the seventeenth ulty can no longer be relied on for an unbiased biotechnology so that the field’s gargantuan century — was viewed as a mathematical opinion on anything, let alone a reliable piece potential, which Crichton’s book never denies, accomplishment. Although highly sophis- of data. The jury is still out on the Bayh–Dole can be realized safely and equitably. It never ticated, it was in the same class as utilitarian act, but academic institutions and scientists hurts to have this highlighted on The New York calculations of the relative movements of the would probably be looking beyond tuition Times bestseller list. ■ stars and planets involved in almanacs and payments, gifts and federal grants for funding Michael A. Goldman is in the Department of horoscopes. More over, Newton eschewed any with or without Bayh-Dole. Biology, San Francisco State University, account of what gravity was or how it acted at Most readers of Nature would surely agree San Francisco, California 94132-1722, USA. a distance in a vacuum. He did not provide a natural-philosophical explanation of the kind attempted by René Descartes, for example, who sought to understand celestial motion in terms of bodies in a fluid medium using the The two faces of science analogy of straws in the eddy of a river. Such an account was deemed intelligible, even if as the main basis of scientific authority. The not demonstratively true. Newton’s reluctance The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science leitmotif of his book is that science has availed meant that his theory lacked intelligibility, even Makes Sense of the World itself of two self-supporting, albeit circular, though it possessed striking instrumentality, by Peter Dear rationales: its account of the structure and as judged by the predictive power of the University of Chicago Press: 2006. 242 pp. $27.50 processes of nature is backed by the success inverse-square law. of instrumental techniques (such as the use of In discussing various scientific domains Richard Yeo electron microscopes and DNA profiling); and from the seventeenth century to the present, In 1690 the philosopher John Locke imagined explanations of why certain techniques work including celestial mechanics, taxonomy, a man with “microscopical eyes” many times are grounded in intelligible, even if speculative, atomism, natural selection, electromagnetism more acute than the best microscope. Such a accounts of the natural world. and quantum physics, Dear meditates on this ORTI PARIS/DAGLI CARNAVALET, ARCHIVE/MUSEE THE ART man, he conjectured, might grasp the deep “texture and the motion of the minute parts of corporeal things”, but “would be in a quite different world from other people… I doubt, whether he, and the rest of men, could discourse con- cerning the objects of sight.” We can surmise that the scientific explanations such a person offered might not be intelligible to others.

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