Powerful 'Script' raises innumerable questions

In the landmark story "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke, a visitor to Tibet arrives at the precise moment that Tibetan scholars finish their lengthy, millennia-old chronicle, after which the end of existence is predicted.

As the incredulous guest watches in both awe and horror at the story's end, he notes that "one by one, the stars were going out."

Nicholas Wade, a science journalist for the New York Times, has written a book about the very code of life itself, "Life Script," a chronicle no less shattering and affecting as Clarke's story. Wade's book provokes the imagination while raising a variety of ethical questions. At the same time it explains the mysteries and vagaries of the genome, the "wondrous map" of human genes that has recently been sequenced by scientists.

The book, subtitled, "How the Human Genome Discoveries Will Transform Medicine and Enhance Your Health," is a compelling read from start to finish, even as it deals with more subject matter than it can handle. It would have been enough just to describe the genome to the lay reader, but the author goes well beyond that.

One of the flaws in this book, for a mainstream audience, is that Wade supposes the reader a fair scientific background, as opposed to more accessible pop science works such as "The Dancing Wu Li Masters," by Gary Zukav, a primer on physics, or "Lives of a Cell," by Lewis Thomas, which simplifies biology for those without a solid life sciences background.

To relate to the scientific material in this book, a rudimentary knowledge of molecular biology is very helpful. The genetic code is essentially written in four letters, A, C, G and T, which are the first four letters of the amino acids adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, that sit at the bases of DNA molecules, the so-called double helixes first described by Watson and Crick.

Just to give you an idea of how vast the code for the human genome really is, picture these letters, written in uninterrupted sequence, in 300 thick volumes, each one roughly the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica. This kind of cute scientific insight is kind of a trick, but it is one that the average reader can relate to, as opposed to much of the more detailed material in the book.

"Life Script" is really two books. The first half deals with the struggle between C. Craig Venter, a brilliant scientist who announced last week that he was stepping down as CEO of Celera, the biotech company that accelerated the race to sequence the genome, and the National Institute of Health, the organization that wished to arrive at the finish line first to assure its findings would be part of the public domain.

The second half of the book, however, defines the role that understanding of the genome will play in medicine, when drugs will be synthesized and prescribed due to information obtained from a patient's DNA, and the ability of these advances to extend both life expectancy and natural life span. The result of these advances raise a number of troubling ethical and philosophical questions, questions which are not to be lightly trodden upon.

Wade is a reasonably adept wordsmith, especially in the passages where he deals with the ethics of gene research. "Evolution having done its part," he writes, "our childhood will have ended and we will indeed hear the voice of Mephistopheles. But Faust heard a good angel, too. He just made the wrong choice."

But he falters a bit while getting bogged down in the scientific explanation of genes, chromosomes, DNA, telomeres, SNP's, and other terms that are child's play for seasoned science watchers. A good science writer takes delight in explaining his subject, as Wade obviously does. But in the throes of this passion, Wade often forgets his reader is not as well-grounded in the subject as he is.

"Life Script" deals with multiple issues, the quest for immortality, the right for privatization of scientific data, the ugly specter of eugenics, and the muddy theological waters of gene manipulation. But in the end it is a powerful read. This research is, by leaps and bounds, the most significant scientific development of the new century.

The human genome is the very roadmap by which the future of our species will be determined. Who doesn't want to go along for the ride?

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