Rejoice, my fellow lefties! We were right all along. Human beings, it turns out, are much more than the products of their genes. Now that scientists have actually read and analysed the human genome they completed sequencing last June, biological determinists do not know whether to laugh or cry. But they are definitely turning red all over.
The simultaneous publication of the results of the Human Genome Project, by the publicly funded International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium and the private American company Celera Genomics, contains many surprises.
The biggest surprise is the actual number of genes in the human genome. For decades, scientists have been predicting there would be between 80,000 and 150,000; the real number turns out to be around 30,000. This is hardly more than the tiny plant thale cress with 25,495 genes, the fruit fly with 13,601 and the roundworm with 19,099.
Among other surprises is the realisation that bacteria and viruses have been integrated into our genome. The entire history of human disease is part of who we are. Equally surprising is that most of the human genome is devoid of genes; only around 5 per cent actually consists of genes, most of which are to be found in clusters.
The Y chromosome, the distinguishing genetic mark of men, turns out to be almost totally barren of genes. The few it does have seem to be copied from the female X chromosome.
There is clearly something other than the sheer number of genes that makes humans so much more complex than simple life forms. One telling characteristic is fragmentation. This enables many different proteins to be built from the same genes. Roughly 35 per cent of all human genes, it appears, may be read in several ways, allowing them to encode five times as many proteins as the less flexible genomes of the fruit fly and roundworm.
What does all this actually mean? We are not, as biological fundamentalists such as John Maynard Smith and Richard Dawkins have been telling us, lumbering machines, hard-wired with genes for homosexuality, criminality, intelligence and all sorts of other things. Our meagre gene numbers suggest that environmental and cultural influences are more important in shaping human behaviour.
In one respect, this is hardly news. A number of left-leaning scientists, including Steven Rose and Richard Lewontin, have argued for decades that we are much more than the sum of our genes. The father of American anthropology, Franz Boas, a dedicated nurturer, showed that the offspring of immigrants to America were bigger and smarter, thanks to better environmental conditions, than their counterparts back home. He also argued that race was not a fixed category; it, too, responded to environmental factors.
The real news is that a deeply cherished belief, held in certain scientific circles, has been demolished. As Craig Venter, the president of Celera Genomics and one of the leading scientists behind current human genome research, put it: “We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right.” So all those overzealous scientists who claimed that “when we know the complete human genome we will know what it is to be human” now look rather foolish.
The new discovery tells us as much about science itself as it does about what makes us human. The one overriding lesson is that in science, there is seldom foreclosure. Minds have to remain open; answers are not only complex, but often generate a plethora of new questions. Instead of open-and-shut theories that explain everything, modern science does little more than scurry around, illuminating our ever-expanding ignorance. Science continues to humble us; yet, paradoxically, scientists grow increasingly arrogant.
As long as we continue to talk about genes and numbers, we are missing the bigger picture. Science does not exist in a vacuum. It poses its research questions and understands its discoveries within social and political contexts. Simplistic determinism of the selfish gene variety, now debunked, captured the public imagination for specific reasons: its message of aggressive individualism, concerned solely with the survival of the self, gave resonance to the ethos of the Reagan-Thatcher era.
The pendulum could quite easily swing from the simplistic position of “it’s all in our genes” to an equally crude perception that “our environment makes us do what we do”.
In the 16th century, environmental determinism was the ultimate explanation for racial difference. The temperate climate of Europe, it was thought, conferred advantages not enjoyed by steamy, tropical parts of the globe. Therefore, perceived differences in human achievement among races was a natural phenomenon. So thought the Enlightenment philosophers, Victorian thinkers and, eventually, a whole school of American cultural anthropology in the 1950s. Human genome research could yet relaunch the group’s career.
So this is not the moment for left-wing scientists to indulge in “we were right all along” euphoria.
The left must guard against all varieties of determinism, and against the rendering of complex ideas into narrow, one-dimensional ideologies. Science has to be more than the linear quest for the single key, the theory of everything that can be printed on a postage stamp.
Complexity is an essential element in understanding ourselves and the world around us. It pays homage to our ignorance – the ignorance that invariably accompanies advances in knowledge.
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