Uncorking The Gene Genie

How to summarise the world in the last weeks? Could do a lot better, methinks. We swing between marvel at what humans can achieve and horror at what they do. But in the space of 10 days, we heard of a scientific discovery so boundless, so brilliant that it will affect the shape of medicine and many other things for the next two centuries or more. But at the same time, we heard of how humanity's depredations are creating a real possibility that there won't be an Earth as we now know it, in two centuries. And bombers struck Iraq again.

The discovery is the human genome. That's the entire genetic code for humans. It has vast potential. Huge. The implications are stupendous, especially for medicine.

It also confirms Darwin's theories on evolution. Sir John Sulston, one of those involved in the unravelling of the code, said, "it is great to be getting the molecular correlates of what Darwin hypothesised 150 years ago".

But it also turns out that there's less to humans than was thought. It had been assumed that there would be 100,000 genes in the gene map, and maybe even 140,000. But there's only 30-35,000. By comparison, a fruit-fly has 13,000 and a cress plant 26,000. Which begs a question - if we're only twice as elaborate as a fruit-fly, how did we get so complicated?!?

And how did we become able to guide a spacecraft down onto an asteroid after five years in space? That's some feat. I'm talking about the Near Shoemaker satellite. It was sent into a slow-motion crash-landing on Asteroid 433, which is better known as Eros. This is the first time any spacecraft has touched down on any small body out there.

Near Shoemaker set out on February 17th 1996. Hung about and did things - it took a lot of photos and so on. Then its masters dropped it on the rock at six miles an hour. That could prove as important to the future of humanity as the human genome project - if a large asteroid is ever identified on a collision course with earth!! After all, such a body is generally thought to have been the cause of the sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs. So, being able to blow one up, if it were necessary, would be useful.

So, all that's great and massively impressive. But at the same time, yachtsman Sir Peter Blake was on the blower from Antarctica to environment ministers to report that the ice of King George's Sound is "melting at an alarming rate". He said he had just sailed through open water that had been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years.

In Blake's view, as reported in the Independent on Sunday, "there is no doubt in my mind that massive changes are taking place". So, we're now threatening our own species at exactly the same time as we are promising to save it.

And the problem will grow, not shrink. With the coming to power of GW Bush, it is unlikely there will be any agreement on lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Which means... more ice melting. More trouble in store.

The problem is that while we can see the problem, and know what has to be done, nobody is willing to sacrifice their creature comforts. The central heating, the car, the fast-food, and so on. But if we don't control our consumption, we won't have anything to consume!

On another subject, I see that the Dunbrody was launched last week. This is the replica famine ship that was built in New Ross. It was launched by an Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who said it would help people to draw on the rich legacy of our emigrant experience. Indeed.

Bertie Ahern reminded those at the launch of the times when the Irish were faced with hardships and prejudice, and urged them, that is to say us, to promote equality and tolerance and reject racism. He noted the symbolism of the fact that the Dunbrody was built with wood from Africa and Ireland, and the wood was cut with a saw that came from the Harland and Wolff shipyard.

And he's quite right too. But once again, we have the situation where we can see the problem and the solution, but can't get it together to actually implement it. The people responsible for racist attacks don't go to the launch of the Dunbrody. But they know plenty about the sufferings of the Irish people. Indeed, many will be loud in lamenting the hard times suffered by the Irish in ages gone by. But they espouse a blinkered, small-minded Irishness, not the kind of expansive and generous one suggested by the Taoiseach, nor indeed, by the implications of the human genome project.

Anyhow - just as I thought it was time for a good old rant, even for despair, along comes 78-year-old Helen Hunt from Limavady in County Derry. Her lawn backs onto the town's cattle market, a site that Linley Properties has been hoping to turn into a #5M shopping complex. So they offered her #250K for the lawn. But she refused to sell.

In fact, she refused to sell at any price. She has lived there since she was born. "This is my home," she said, "and I love my garden. I love watching the birds nesting there every year and I love watching the wild bees every year in the ivy on my garden wall.

"'I'm not too fussed about what people think of me," she added. "The money doesn't interest me in the slightest. My garden means more to me than any amount of money."

In a time of teeth-gnashing greed and speed and aggression, when two of the most senior Government ministers appear to make a virtue of an increasingly polarised and voraciously consumerist society, Helen Hunt stands like a beacon of hope for humanity. It's true! They're not all apes in disguise!!

The Hog