THE WORLD is still euphoric about the recent announcement that scientists have mapped the entire genetic make-up of the human body. But Professor Susan Greenfield had some news for the public recently genes aren't the be all and end all of everything.
In a rousing, often humorous presentation on "the Future of the Brain", the professor made it clear that like the spark plug in a car, genes are part of a wider functioning system and that no one gene generally determines certain characteristics, such as whether a person is a bad housekeeper or a terrible cook. Instead, people should pin the blame on their environment.
During the two hour function at Le Meridien Jamaica Pegasus, Professor Greenfield, who graces the halls of the prestigious Oxford University, fielded questions from medical and scientific interests as well as high school students. She noted that there were millions of highly personalised connections in the brain which influenced its function. It would take 32 million years to even get a surface count, she said, using the gene-caused Huntington's chorea and Alzheimers diseases as examples to demonstrate what happens if the connections are destroyed or broken down.
She urged the world to be careful about its interpretation and manipulation of DNA because negative and positive future developments in health care and genetics were based, she said, on whether scientists used their art for good or ill purposes.
On the good side were:
a) developing cures for certain diseases;
b) perhaps having a chip which had a person's biographical data so treatment and prescriptions could match individual needs; and
c) cloning organs for transplant.
On the bad side were:
a) eugenics, engineering people to fit certain specifications the case of Adolph Hitler, for example; and
b) employment or insurance discrimination against people because their genetic information show that they are predisposed to certain diseases.
However, the biggest future threat, she said, was a scientifically ignorant society.
Professor Greenfield, who heads the Royal Institution of Great Birtain, also expressed concern that the explosion of the digital age/technological age would mean a standardisation of the society's thought process and loss of its imagination, that inner world, which helps to distinguish humans from machines. Areas of the brain develop because they are exercised, she said, citing research, which showed that persons who played the piano and those who imagined that they were playing the piano showed similar brain development in affected areas.
Among the interested who came to hear the last in the late Sir Florizel Glasspole's lectures in science were students who said that they learned much about the brain. Many also said that they were now inclined to become scientists. This was welcome news for Professor Greenfield, who appealed for more students to be come involved in this area because in the future, more of them will be needed to figure out life's puzzles.
