First published in What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society - News from the Goetheanum pp 5-10, Vol.18, No. 1, Jan/Feb 1997.
Perdita: .. the fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnations, and streaked gillyflowers
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
Polixenes: Wherefore gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
Perdita: For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes: Say there is;
Yet nature is made better by no means
But nature makes that mean: so over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art
Which does mend nature - change it, rather - but
The art itself is nature.
Perdita: So it is.
Polixenes: Then make your garden rich in gillyflowers
And do not call them bastards
Perdita: I'll not put
The dibble in earth to set one slip of 'em!
---- Winter's Tale, Act IV, Scene 3, circa 1610
With these words, Shakespeare vividly characterises the polarity in people's views about
biotechnology, a polarity which exists to this day. He was referring to the 'traditional
biotechnology' of grafting, fermentation and cheese-making. But it is, of course, not
these old crafts which cause all the hoo-ha at present. Since the mid 1970s scientists
have been able to reach deeper into the bosom of nature and over the last two decades a
'new biotechnology' has arisen which many refer to as 'genetic engineering'. The explosion
in knowledge about DNA, the molecular basis of genes and thus inheritance, combined with
the discovery of dozens of bacterial enzymes which allow molecular biologists to 'cut and
paste' DNA at will has given rise to a gene technology which far outstrips traditional
breeding methods in speed and, so it is claimed, accuracy. Genes are transferred not only
between species, but also between higher taxa such as animals and plants. Transgenic
techniques have yielded genetically modified organisms (GMOs) such as cows and sheep that
produce valuable human proteins in their milk for use in medicine; tomatoes with delayed
softening; cotton and maize that kill insects; and oilseed rape which is resistant to
herbicides. Work is also under way in the UK to produce pigs with organs the 'pigness' of
which is concealed from the human immune system so that such organs can be used for
'xenotransplantation', thus meeting the desperate shortage of organs for treating people
who suffer from organ failure. Other medical applications include the current laboratory
diagnosis and screening at the molecular level for many genetic disabilities, as well as
the hoped for gene replacement therapies which include inserting 'correct' genes or
cultures of transgenic cells into the patient's body.
Ifgene beginnings
This burgeoning of our apparent power over nature creates a host of ethical, social and legal problems which the molecular biologists themselves began to bring to public attention in 1975. The first products of the new technology began to emerge in the late 1980s. It was in 1989 that a working group of 12 Dutch scientists from different disciplines who had in common an interest in anthroposophy began to meet regularly to deepen their understanding of the issues gene manipulation raises in all its areas of application. This was to be part of a process of judgement-forming (Oordeelsvorming, Urteilsbildung). The group informed the public by issuing a book and a free newspaper as well as by putting on public conferences involving leading biotechnologists and their opponents. The atmosphere of impartiality and power-free dialogue (machtfreies Gespräch) which was created earned the group respect from the Dutch governmental regulatory agencies and one of the group's members, Henk Verhoog, a bioethicist at Leiden University, was invited into one of the country's leading ethical committees.
Collaboration between this group and their colleagues in the Science Section of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Switzerland, led in early 1995 to the setting up of an international network to prepare for a conference entitled The Future of DNA in Dornach in October 1996. The network took the name The International Forum for Genetic Engineering or Ifgene for short. Ifgene's national coordinators: John Armstrong (USA); Christine Ballivet (F); Edith Lammerts van Bueren (NL); David Heaf (UK); Manfred Schleyer, Sebastian Lorenz and Meinhard Simon (D); and Johannes Wirz (CH) met at intervals to share their visions of the forum's task and to plan the international conference.
It was realised at the outset that The Future of DNA needed a context. It could not just appear out of the blue. The process of 'developing viewpoints and public awareness' had to begin well in advance. And so it became a research project in its own right. Unlike the usual public genetic engineering debate, the task was not only one of discussing facts, analyses, expectations and perspectives of modern biology, but also of trying to throw light on the implicit, often unconscious and barely examined scientific presuppositions. This was to be extended to the areas of application in farming, health and socioeconomic development.
Implementing this approach took different forms in the different participating countries. The Dutch group continued as vigorously as before. Ifgene USA established an Internet Web site to announce meetings, display reports and articles and put interested individuals in touch with one another worldwide. Ifgene UK, Germany and Switzerland held public meetings. A French working group quickly formed, but found that scientists established in university posts were reluctant to participate in the forum.
The whole enterprise also needed hard work on fund-raising. In addition to the generous slice of the overall budget which came from the Goetheanum, a large part also had to be sought elsewhere. Some came from anthroposophical sources in different countries, but a major portion was covered by donations from non-anthroposophical sources, such as Unilever, the Wellcome Trust, the Oakdale Trust, the Fetzer Foundation, Ciba-Geigy and Britain's only dedicated gene therapy company, Therexsys. Surprisingly, even a government, namely that of the Netherlands, made a grant. The Ifgene team also owes a big thank you to the scores of individuals who helped financially either by waiving expenses or sending donations.
The future of DNA conference, 2nd - 5th October 1996
Ifgene's international conference broke new ground in the conference culture of the Goetheanum. It was the very first time that non-anthroposophical lecturers, workshop leaders and other key speakers were in the majority. In addition to the customary conference ingredients which filled the mornings and afternoons, a somewhat more adventurous form of interaction was added in the evenings which took the shape of a round-table discussion between leading personalities on the gene scene. It is impossible in this report to go into the details of the ten workshops which were dedicated to more specialised topics such as gene therapy, xenotransplantation and GMOs in farming. Therefore this report will confine itself to the sessions where the whole conference body was present.
Johannes Kühl, who recently took over the leadership of the Science Section at the Goetheanum from Jochen Bockemühl, opened the conference with an address of welcome to the two hundred or so participants. In the first evening lecture by Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich, a practical philosopher of nature, the two poles characterised in the above quotation from Shakespeare were formulated as questions: are we supposed to leave our planet untouched as if we had never been here, and if not, how far may we go in changing the planet? Somewhat mischievously, Meyer-Abich identified Goethe as the founder of the new biotechnology. He substantiated this with quotes from Goethe about the plant archetype and his comments in a letter to a chemist, but no-one rose to the bait! He went on to argue that culture is what mankind adds to the unfolding of nature and asked whether limits of culture could be identified in the development of biotechnology. Though we were given no answers, hints at a possible fruitful direction were exemplified by several contrasts, for example the gentle yet powerful way which nature harnesses energy through photosynthesis compared with the way we do it. The emphasis on questions carried over into the ensuing discussion when the chairman, Henk Verhoog, in answer to a passionate eulogy for genomic medicine rejoined somewhat startlingly, 'Do you want to eliminate all disease from the world?' The following three mornings were each filled with three lectures and plenum discussions.
DNA-thinking in science and society
Carla Keirns, deputising for Susan Lindee who was prevented from giving her lecture in person, showed how, especially in the USA, popular ideas of the gene, DNA and heredity seem to determine fate, identity and social place, thus facilitating institutional goals for employers and schools and defining individuals as 'simply DNA writ large'. She argued that DNA functions as the contemporary equivalent of the Christian soul, containing the essence of the individual, and conferring genetic 'immortality'. Ernst Peter Fischer, biophysicist and science historian, amply demonstrated just how vague the concept of 'the gene' is even in its scientific usage. Yet it is just this 'fuzziness' which accounts for its success both within and beyond the bounds of science. It cannot be understood as an empirical entity but, like other concepts such as atom, field or energy, as an archetypal one. Archetypes, he argued, influence the 'synchronicity' of events which are not causally related nor a matter of chance and they hold the key to the future of DNA.
The anatomist Jaap van der Wal, speaking from vivid experience of his own and his students' reactions to the dissecting room, contrasted two possible approaches in science: onlooker (reductionist) and participant (holist). The DNA code, the parts, is a secondary reality from which the whole cannot be derived. 'The primary reality is the bauplan of the organism,' he said, 'but people have grown accustomed to treating what is secondary as primary. The human being unfolds in spite of, not because of, its DNA.'
Henk Verhoog set the tone for the ensuing plenum discussions by calling for value clarification. Participants were asked to accept an opposing point of view and try to understand how its author reached it. The discussion puzzled mainly over the way to unite Wal's two worlds. We cannot cross the threshold from participant to onlooker and expect simply to step back again. A higher viewpoint becomes necessary to achieve unity. Scientists were dubbed as 'addicted' in their role as onlookers. 'No, just intrigued!' rejoined a molecular biologist. If I roll a ball and deduce the law of its motion, am I onlooker or participant? While dissecting or applying biotechnology, am I not also participant? Yes, if we always look to nature for guidance. Faced with trisomy-21 (Downs Syndrome), for instance, by all means do gene diagnosis, but do not forget to look at the phenomenon, the real human being you have before you. Of course, this triggered the abortion debate and took the discussion off course.
DNA and living organisms
The second lecture trilogy was initiated by Guenther Stotzky, a microbial ecologist from New York University, who spoke about the possible consequences of artificial 'novel' DNA entering the soil microenvironment and persisting there for long periods as 'cryptic' DNA adsorbed to clays. Because soil teems with bacteria and bacteria can easily pick up DNA and exchange it with one another, the possibility of gene transfer from the added GMO is very high. He described experiments with an herbicide and an insecticide which showed that cryptic DNA can produce unexpected latent effects in soils which would be unacceptable to both farmer and environmentalist. He cautioned that GMO releases should all be taken on a case by case basis.
Mae-Wan Ho, molecular geneticist turned biophysicist and holistic biologist, who in the ensuing discussion urged even closer observance of the precautionary principle by calling for a moratorium on commercial GMO releases, focused her presentation on the present demise of the old genetic paradigm and its replacement by the new organicism. She said that a technology based on what she argued was the discredited linear view of information flow, from DNA to enzyme to observable characteristic, is still being sold to the public. The real picture is an epigenetic web or net of interrelations and, at the ecological level, at least the possibility of undesirable horizontal gene transfer between species is supported by dozens of references in recent literature. She traced the manifestation of the Zeitgeist of the organicism movement leading from Goethe and the romantics to the Cambridge Theoretical Biology Club of the 1930s/40s, though not yet having a firm foothold in science. A video of the internal morphology of live larvae revealed non-invasively by the beautiful colours arising in polarised light microscopy, was shown as one example of a possible organicist experimental approach.
Johannes Wirz, molecular biologist and Goethean scientist, abandoned his planned contribution in favour of a more autobiographical one centred on his 'travels' in the two worlds identified by Wal (see above). In wanting to know how living beings develop, his researches took him into the minutiae of genetic control of fruit fly development in Walter Gehring's lab at Basel. He found himself doing things he did not like. On the one hand he faced the accumulating reams of gene sequence data, miles from what a fly really is. This he illustrated by showing a gene 'sequence gel' pattern and pointing out that nobody, not even the expert, could tell what organism it comes from. On the other hand, he was concerned about the animals he used as factories for the immunochemicals he needed as well as the growing pile of radioactive waste he generated. He moved to the Goetheanum research laboratory to learn how to study the whole organism in its context, but by and by his research on adaptive mutations came up against a barrier which could only be crossed by recourse to reductionist technique. This seeming paradox he resolved with the statement that one can only progress in molecular biology if one already has an understanding for the inner or essential nature of an organism. The two are thus complementary to one another and part of a whole.
In the ensuing discussion, the mention of 'moratorium' sparked off a lively and lengthy exchange of views. Stotzky, whose actual data did much to justify such a call, argued for more research on the long term effects of GMO's under field conditions in order to determine risk probability. This rules out a moratorium, even for commercial releases, but accommodates an in depth case-by-case scrutiny including well-designed post-release monitoring. 'The trouble is,' he said, 'that companies don't want to do this.' He argued that, in any case, companies do not want their transgenes to persist on farms. They want to be able to sell new ones each year. Another speaker did the thought experiment of replacing 'GMO' with 'tractor' in the context of a developing country. Sending tractors seemed a great idea until they ground to a halt through lack of spares and maintenance. We need a technology appropriate to the context, yet genetic engineering would seek global solutions. As another put it: we need maximum global cohesion with maximum local freedom. Normative ethics requires that people have to be free agents. If gene technology threatens freedom, ethics is compromised. The discussion led over into the relative importance of cognition (thought) and feeling in ethical judgement-forming. Their inseparability was illustrated by how feelings (sensing) are needed even for the reductionist to make measurements on, for instance, a scale. This broadening of the discussion brought to their feet gene activists and animal rightists as well as medical technicians who had experienced what they saw as hopeless and unethical research on patients. Feelings poured out. The discussion bordered on chaos. But chaos precedes creation. Verhoog pointed out that Dutch Ifgene had come to the realisation that values have to be sought in relation, both inner and outer, to the being concerned. Peter Grünewald, a general practitioner from the UK, urged us to develop a loving relationship with the phenomenon (organism, person) so that our feeling life accords more with its reality than our own inclinations. Manfred Klett, from the Natural Science section at the Goetheanum, with an illustration of the perception of farm as organism, added that we even feel our ideas. This becoming one with our ideas can lead to action.
DNA and human biography
The medical geneticist Hansjacob Müller, illustrated with actual cases, how powerful a tool DNA analysis could be in the diagnosis of genetic disease. He told how the Human Genome Project, a worldwide analysis of the DNA sequence and function of the human being, stands to bring huge changes to the way medicine is done in the future. But Müller warned that this molecularisation of medicine is causing doctors to lose sight of the human being. Gene testing also raises difficult ethical questions. For his part he will not use such tests without prior genetic counselling. One may be permitted to ask here whether the very existence of such counselling itself already presupposes a particular world view.
Koos Jaspers, a molecular geneticist who works with the Dutch Ifgene group, showed from his work on precise molecular mechanisms in the rare disorder xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), that context was all important for gene expression. 'You cannot get more in the gutter than working with the genes,' he said, 'You have to get back to the whole human being again'. He argued that the use of so-called 'knockout mice', which have specific genes deleted in the hope that they will serve as research 'models' for human disorders, is fraught with difficulty. Exactly the same gene deletion often gives a totally different set of disease symptoms in the mouse. He asked what significance a particular gene has for 'self-fulfilment' and pointed how genomic medicine, for instance for a person diagnosed as a breast-cancer gene carrier, may simply shift the level at which a person experiences and struggles with a disorder from the somatic, in that the cancer could be avoided, to the spiritual, in that difficult choices have to be made. However, Jaspers showed how an actual gene diagnosis in 'XP' children helps parents greatly in their care of them.
Paediatrician and Medical Section leader at the Goetheanum, Michaela Glöckler, gave the final lecture of the conference, taking us onto quite a different plane. She reminded us of the fact, now more widely accepted, that the soul/spiritual condition of a person affects the immune system. It is worth noting here that body cells which produce the antibodies essential to immune function have to rearrange their genes to code for whatever antibodies are needed. Thus a link between mind and gene, at least in somatic cells, is not implausible. Glöckler led us hintingly to the question 'Could our soul/spiritual history affect our gametes?' Certainly life is unthinkable without its context, a context which not only involves the sun, but also the other celestial bodies. Human life is a series of metamorphoses in which the forces for growth and life can become transformed into the forces of thought. Reincarnation and karma play their part in the process and help for example, to account for the differences between twins with identical genomes. From the start the child influences its surroundings, its context, thus bringing about very different results, even in the same family.
In the plenum discussion the abortion issue was clearly inseparable from the implications of genomic medicine and diagnosis. Jaspers' work on 'pre-embryos', somatic stem cells fused in the test tube, came under closer scrutiny: were they animals or is there something human about them? He draws the line at working on aborted tissue and therefore uses viable cell lines from volunteers. Verhoog reminded us of how Lindee's findings regarding the social impact of DNA thinking are a hair's breadth away from a new eugenics, one that is now in the hands of individual members of society. A response to this ran: if we fail to prevent the birth of babies with gene defects how can we be accountable to their parents? Glöckler responded with a picture of the role of pain in life. It is an awakener, a teacher. Whole world outlooks, lifestyles and other factors change what otherwise would not. These effects spread from a focus into surrounding society. Of course, if one has no energy for this, the option is to get rid of the handicapped. But then life is in danger of becoming superficial. Verhoog informed us that merely questioning the new eugenics in Dutch Ifgene meetings led a genetic disabilities interests group to write to the government warning it not to listen to such people. In this vein, Müller warned that it would be wrong to go too far in the direction of romanticising genetic disability. Many sufferers deplore the way in which they are forced to live.
Round-table discussions
As if the packed daytime programme were not enough, the discussions continued in a very different form in the evenings. But first came a real treat in the form of stunning musical interludes spanning Monteverdi to Ellington by Trio Avodah who, for many, reached the heights when through music and noise, they brought the atmosphere of a shebeen to the Schreinerei.
Then five people with a long or intense connection with the subject of the conference held a 'round-table' discussion, chaired by Bas Pedroli, an ecologist from the Netherlands. The purpose of this was to get closer to the life circumstances which had led the participants to the kind of work they are doing. Thus it was a deeply personal event which called for a certain courage from the participants as well as a sympathetic ear from an audience which was later on invited to participate. The group comprised Brian Goodwin, a developmental biologist; Barbara Hohn, a molecular geneticist; Herman de Boer, a biotechnologist; Reinhold Salgo, a physicist and patent attorney who helped oppose the European 'oncomouse' patent application; Albrecht Lindemann, an oncologist and gene therapist (first evening); and Pia Malnoe, a molecular biologist (second evening). Here is not the place to enlarge on the vivid biographical details which emerged. Instead, it is worth noting one outstanding point which is pivotal for our future dealings with DNA: Pedroli's questioning led Malnoe to the statement that the scientist merely discovers what is possible, it is up to society then to decide whether or not to realise the possible; in the career story of Herman de Boer, the 'spiritual father' of 'Herman the (transgenic) Bull', there was a point where he felt that the realisation had gone too far, even for him as scientist. This illustrated that ethical individualism is inseparable from everything we do in life, and is even part of the knowledge process itself.
Reflections and future
The process of reflecting on the outcome of the conference was formally begun before it ended. The Dutch sociologist, Guido Ruivenkamp, who had no hand in planning the conference, was invited to give his personal impressions of the whole event. His fundamental criticism was that the conference reflected the schism in society between ordinary people and science, between consumer and biotechnologist. What he wanted to hear more about next time was biotechnology as a social/technical ensemble.
Afterwards, enthusiastic comments from participants demonstrated that above all, the conference had met a real need at the present time for an open forum where views could be shared without antagonism and in an atmosphere of deep listening. Calls were made for Ifgene to continue its work. One testimony was an eloquent, almost poetic, account of his experience of the Goetheanum and the conference which Petran Kockelkoren, a Dutch bioethicist, sent to the Dutch Ifgene coordinator. In it, quoting Augustine, he voiced more succinctly a key point already touched on above: 'Non intratur in veritatem nisi per charitem' - one cannot enter into the truth without love.