Knowing Man: A Question of Realism
The fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the double helix coincides with the year of the SARS epidemic. Exultation and fear in the scientific world. Man cannot be reduced to the number of his genes, because he is a relationship with the Mystery

by Mario Gargantini

In recent months, the life sciences have been on the front page because of two apparently contradictory episodes, which moved them from the winners’ podium to the defendant’s box. On one side, celebrations were proliferating all over the world for the fiftieth anniversary of the “double helix,” the discovery that brought James Watson and Francis Crick the Nobel Prize for revealing the three-dimensional structure of the DNA molecule, furnishing the elements for explaining how genetic information is transmitted and understanding the phenomenon of the variability of living creatures. On the other side, the news of a viral epidemic, SARS, heretofore unknown and resistant to every attempt to defeat it, struck like a bolt of lightning. On one side was exultation for the opening up of new frontiers of knowledge and, on the other, fear of not being able to control these same basic components of living creatures, more and more often the object of manipulation and light-hearted experimentation.
These are, however, two sides of the same coin, two ways of developing the same theme: the human desire for an ever more profound knowledge of man’s nature, the biological fabric on which the warp and woof of every life is woven. So placing the accent on the gravity of SARS and the inability of scientists to blunt its threat does not diminish the positive nature of the discoveries of the past fifty years in biology. In the same way, extolling the greatness of Watson and Crick’s discovery should not move the problems connected with its applications into the background nor make us forget the intrinsic limits to knowledge of what the Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist John Eccles called “the mystery of man.”

Know thyself
One of the great names in twentieth century science, Erwin Schrödinger, observed that the purpose of science is the same as any other search for knowledge, and can be summed up in the ancient imperative, “Know thyself.” To our twentieth-century sensibility, this phrase sounds reductive in a purely psychological perspective: a self-knowledge limited to the level of character, behavior, and inclinations. Man is, on the contrary, a much more complex and extraordinary unity. The “I” that wants to know itself thus includes both the aspects tied to the biochemical base of existence and, on another level, all the questions and expressions that reveal the desire for meaning and happiness. The discovery of the DNA double helix, and all the knowledge that derived from it, can be read as a milestone along the journey toward knowledge of the “I.” This milestone has been followed by other fundamental steps, leading up to the publication in February 2001 of the results of the Human Genome Project, ie, of the complete map of the human genetic patrimony.

Two crucial discoveries
In these fifty years, according to Marco Pierotti, Director of the Department of Experimental Oncology at the National Tumor Institute in Milan, some fundamental steps forward have permitted the deciphering of the mechanisms that lead the flow of information contained in the four-letter DNA code to form proteins. Two crucial discoveries have contributed also to the enormous development of genetic engineering. The first is the discovery of the enzyme that enables the transcription of DNA from a matrix of RNA, uprooting the central dogma of biology, which held that the flow of information proceeds irreversibly from DNA to proteins through the intermediate RNA. The second is, in reality, an ingenious method, described by Kary Mullis in 1983, that enables the duplication, even a million times, of a given fragment of DNA; this method was crucial in the deciphering of the three billion letters making up our genome.

An automobile seen from outside
But, we ask Marco Pierotti, what does it mean “to know” DNA? What do we know when we know DNA? And what do we not know yet?
“ Knowing DNA means knowing the architecture of the genome. It is like admiring a fabulous car by looking at its exterior: a beautiful body with many esthetically outstanding details, with proximities and connections that suggest it works in a logical, integrated way. But we still lack the possibility to understand just how it works. What we have acquired in the studies of functional biology enables us now, thanks to the knowledge of DNA, to hypothesize solutions that earlier could not even be suspected. But there is still a lot to discover.
As always happens in science, the conquest of a new goal opens up broad horizons of not-knowing and raises more questions than answers. The ‘genome’ chapter was not yet finished and people were starting to talk about the post-genome era. Today, projects are already underway to decipher the human proteome, ie, to catalogue all the proteins of our organism and understand how they interact, with enormous implications above all in the field of pharmaceuticals.”

Moratoria and pauses for reflection
Biology’s advance thus seems unstoppable, despite attempts to place limits on it and renewed calls for moratoria or pauses for reflection. Scientists in general do not like to hear talk of limits, and biology seems today to embody more than the others the image of a science that does not accept barriers and wants to reach every goal. On the other hand, as the Spanish geneticist Julián Rubio noted, “Man, impressed by the astonishing and variegated spectacle of life, has always approached it with the typical dual attitude at the root of all science: curiosity to reveal its secret and the rush to exploit it for man’s benefit.” How can we keep this rush from being transformed into demand or an abuse of power against the fundamental rights of the person?
“ Unfortunately,” Pierotti adds, “the idea is widespread also in the scientific field that human values are a variable whose boundaries widen as our knowledge expands. This prideful conception is not realistic and clashes constantly with the drama of the human condition, as it is represented to us even when we simply read a newspaper. I maintain that we have to recover the awareness that knowledge is a gift and that the uniqueness of the human being in asking fundamental questions derives from his or her relationship with the Mystery. Only in this way can the problem of the limit of research be understood not as a restriction, but as a greater freedom and as a condition for answering questions about the ‘I’ in a better way.”

Scientific or normative terms
Today, the schizophrenia widespread also in so much of the scientific world leads to the most controversial problems being treated either in purely scientific terms, as though science were a higher level of knowledge, or in purely normative terms, using an alchemy of regulations, certifications, and authorizations. There is a norm for everything, as though it were norms that inspire and guide action. But the fact that norms are not enough emerges with every new scoop on the front of the life sciences. Every time that a taboo is broken, that a limit is overcome, everyone declares that it seemed impossible before, that it seemed the rules would have held true.
Perhaps, then, the point of departure should be another, simpler one, as Marc Gelman observed in a debate on cloning at the New York Academy of Science in 1997: “There is a wisdom in common people, in ordinary people who have been unfairly demeaned by people who view their lack of knowledge about ‘haploid’ and ‘diploid’ and ‘totipotent embryos’ as somehow a disqualification to have moral sensibilities. There is a strong and real understanding that we are not our own creators. And this technology undermines that fundamental belief in the most powerful and disturbing way possible.” Commenting on this statement recently, the Vice-President of the Italian Association of Cell Cultures, Augusto Pessina, added, “Each one who looks inside himself with sincerity and simplicity discovers that the experience the ‘I’ has of itself cannot be reduced just to biology. Romano Guardini said, ‘The eternal is not in a relationship with biological life, but with the person.’”
It may seem paradoxical, but in order to maintain consciousness of this fact and make it grow, continuing education is necessary. This is something that the tone of many of the DNA (see box above) celebrations does not seem to foster.