On the way to Yellowstone, we had a 3 hour layover in Minnesota. This time gave me a chance to talk to Dr. Peter Yau, a renowned scientist who has two PhDs and who was coming on our CHP:395 Biocomplexity trip to work with Professor Fouke.
Eventually, the conversation turned to fluorescent in situ hybridization, or FISH. I'm not sure how A led to B to cause C, but apparently, this technique is critical to gendering babies. Dr. Yau told me a story about a Columbia MD who came to work with him for a year. When the year was up, the MD told Yau why he wanted to study FISH with him. The reason: to gender babies.
Dr. Yau was angry. One of his discoveries had been used for what many deem an ethically unsound reason.
The story amazed, shocked, frightened me. For one, science fiction seemed to suddenly diminish the fiction aspect. But, Manovich's New Media prime on the mind, what truly struck me was how science could treat an embryo like a pixel. One of Manovich's key principles is how using the pixel as the smallest discrete unit allows digital media to be easily manipulated. In fact, that's what we've been doing all semester.
Has science taken this pixel idea too far when the same variability power is imposed on embryos? Are we playing God? And if so, why not? Who should say whether or not FISH can be used to gender babies?
Then I read this article on nytimes.com about kids getting tested for what athletic genes they have.
I go back to the Spiderman line: "With great power comes great responsibility." Because a fundamental tenant of science is that it is reproducable, any discovery is everyone's discovery. And I'm not sure every scientific hand is enlightened.
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