(Posted September 5, 1997 ? Issue 15; archived September 19, 1997)
Editor's Note: In their intriguing book, Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee explore the ways in which
our society has magnified the significance of DNA to the point where it is no longer mere matter, but has taken on a variety
of spiritual, historical, and mystical meanings. In this essay, DNA is compared to early Christian relics, and is used to
bring to life humans as diverse as the original Native Americans and Abraham Lincoln.
A
contemporary molecular biologist - one of the pioneers of
a technology widely used in genomics research - has founded
a company that will produce cards or jewelry containing DNA
cloned from musical superstars, athletes, and other secular
saints. Kary Mullis, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for
developing the gene amplification technique called
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), explained to the New York
Times that the purpose of such cards will be to educate
people about DNA. [1] He has even proposed selling cards
with DNA from various primates as a way to illustrate
evolution for school children. "The idea is that teenagers
might pay a little money to get a piece of jewelry, a
bracelet or whatever, containing the actual piece of
amplified DNA of somebody like a rock star," Mullis has
said. [2] And
along the way, they may learn a little
molecular biology: "People could use the cards as totems or
relics, but they could also learn about genes by comparing
different stars' sequences." [3]
Mullis's DNA cards may be understood as a form of contagious
magic, the mystical construct that, for example, underlay
the widespread distribution of pieces of the True Cross (on
which Christ died) and other Christian relics in the fourth
and fifth centuries. In contagious magic, an object that
comes in contact with a revered person (or a part of that
person's body, such as hair or bone) is believed to be
equivalent to the person's whole self, no matter how small
or how distant in time. A fragment of bone, a single hair,
or a bit of cloth or wood from an object once touched by the
person can, in the words of The New Catholic Encyclopedia,
"carry the power or saintliness" of the person "and make him
or her 'present' once again." [4] Such
objects, commonly called relics, played an important role in early
Christianity. At the height of the "cult of relics,"
fashionable noblewomen wore around their necks amulets
containing such objects as a purported splinter of the True
Cross. By the middle of the fourth century, wood from the
True Cross "filled the world," though "miraculously the
original cross remained whole and undiminished in
Jerusalem." [5] The
rage for relics had the advantage of
bringing the saints directly to the people, and the remains
of saints became a symbolic exchange commodity that fostered
the spread of Christianity at a pivotal time in Church
history. [6] They also became the basis of a brisk and
lucrative trade in medieval relics, often enriching church
officials.
Like
the True Cross in the early Christian period, the bits
of celebrity DNA produced by Kary Mullis and his company
could "fill the world" without becoming depleted. "We just
have to get a little piece of skin, clip a nail, or
something from the person, prepare the DNA [and] copy it
through PCR." The resulting bit of biological material
could then be encased in bracelets, Mullis suggested. "You
could say 'here is a sequence' from Mick Jagger, something
to do with his lips, say. The jewelry will look like
something your gypsy grandmother gave you and in there will
be a little speck of DNA." A bit of DNA from a dead
celebrity might be particularly appropriate, Mullis told
Omni magazine. "If we could get permission to use someone
like Elvis Presley, we could do a gene of the month, and you
could have a collection like stamps." Instead of jewelry,
however, the company decided to produce something similar to
"a baseball card, with the person's picture and some of
their DNA worked right into the card, and some sequence
information printed on the back."
Mullis, like early Church leaders, is interested in
spreading the faith by bringing celebrity DNA to the people.
Molecular relics promise to make the revered person
"present" for the follower. And, like relics in the fourth
century, DNA cards will educate their owners, enrolling them
in the molecular paradigm. Mullis is explicit about this
agenda: comparing them to Christian relics, he intends the
DNA cards to be a form of popular promotion of molecular
genetics.
Molecular
relics have also appeared in stories about the
investigation of Lincoln's DNA. In February 1991, the
National
Museum of Health and Medicine appointed a committee
to study the technical and ethical feasibility of obtaining
DNA contained in bits of Lincoln's hair, bone, and blood
stored in museums. Scholars have long theorized that
Lincoln might have suffered from Marfan syndrome, a rare
genetic condition characterized by weakness in the bones and
joints, eyes, and heart. Anecdotal evidence links Marfan to
high intelligence, and Marfan patients are often tall, with
long limbs and fingers, fueling speculation that Lincoln
suffered from this disease.
The primary risk in the condition is that the aorta will
burst - many Marfan victims die relatively young as a
consequence of heart problems. The historical debate about
Lincoln as a victim of Marfan syndrome has explored whether
the disease could have taken his life at any time even if
John Wilkes Booth had failed to assassinate him in April of
1865. "Was the slain president doomed by a disease?" asked
a headline in a New York Times account of the plan. The
"genes define the essence of the person," noted one
journalist covering the debate over Lincoln's DNA: "Some
scientists suggest that genetic evidence might also one day
show whether Lincoln suffered from chronic depression, as
several biographers suspect, or from other conditions that
affected his decision-making." [7]
In this
narrative, President Abraham Lincoln - the entire
social, historical, cultural, and biological actor - can be
retrieved from relic-like body parts stored in museums in
Washington, D.C. His DNA seems to "make present" the
historical figure in all his complexity. Molecular analysis
of DNA can reveal the structure of his intelligence and his
emotional state, even his decision-making style. And unlike
Lincoln's own writings, his speeches, his correspondence or
the correspondence of those who knew and observed him in
action - unlike these archival documents chronicling his
actions and his words - DNA can tell us what his true fate
would have been had he not been killed by an assassin.
Indeed, Lincoln's DNA, extracted from his remains, is an
external text that need only be deciphered by contemporary
molecular biologists.
As
an immortal, historical text, DNA has also been called on
to answer questions about geographical migrations and
cultural interchange in the distant human past. The Human
Genome Diversity Project is an international plan to use DNA
from 500 distinct populations scattered around the world in
an effort to understand human history. Blood samples
containing DNA, to be collected from members of populations
as diverse as the Yanomami of Venezuela and the Chukchi of
northern Siberia, will be preserved and stored in a
repository for future analysis. The project's promoters,
most prominently the Stanford University population
geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, suggest that this
collection of DNA can explain: the Bantu expansion in
Africa, when the first agriculturalists appeared 2,000 years
ago; the origins of Native Americans and the timing and
number of their migrations across the Bering Strait; and the
relationships between linguistic groups around the world.
Whether such questions can be answered by analysis of DNA
has been questioned by critics of the project, including
some anthropologists who played a role in planning it.
For us the Genome Diversity Project is another example of
the common construction of DNA as an immortal text, in this
case a text in which human prehistory is written. In order
to use comparisons of DNA to determine when and how human
populations migrated across the Bering Strait, geneticists
must make many assumptions about rates of change in DNA,
geographical shifts, and early human culture. Like
archaeologists they must work with fragmentary and
incomplete evidence that cannot necessarily answer the
questions put to it. Yet the range and ambition of the
questions proposed suggests geneticists' faith in the
molecular text as the "Bible" or "Book of Man," as well as
their hopes that DNA can reveal even the most arcane truths
of ancient human history. [8]
Richard Dawkins,
in his popular 1976 book The Selfish Gene,
called human beings "survival machines - robot vehicles that
are blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules
known as genes." [9] Dawkins
may seem materialist and antireligious, but his extreme reductionism, in which the
DNA appears as immortal and the individual body as
ultimately irrelevant, is in many ways a theological
narrative, resembling the belief that the things of this
world (the body) do not matter, while the soul (DNA) lasts
forever.
Tell us about your favorite essay.
Endlinks
Genetics and Public
Issues Program at NCGR - gateway page for the GPI area of the National Center for Genome
Research. The GPI program is dedicated to providing information on
genetics research to the public and to industry leaders and
policymakers. Links from the gateway page lead to Genetic Odyssey
(information and opinion on various selected genetics topics),
Continuing Medical Education, Bibliographies, the Genome Sequence
Database, and more.
Chance
is a Fine Thing - a lengthy review in New Scientist of Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount
Improbable (Viking, 1996), by John Cornwall, senior research fellow and
director of the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College,
Cambridge.
Bio Online - provides
links to resources for information and services regarding
biotechnology research and commercial enterprises. Menus include News
and Events, Corporate Biotech, Resource Directory, Research and
Education, Career Center, and Industry and Government.
Bio Valley Bio
Links - extensive list of links to a wide variety of bio resources, including
Informational Resources and Links, Genome and Other Databases,
Electronic Publications, Publishers, and Searchable LifeScience Company
Directories.
The Heart
of Robert the Bruce - a brief essay telling the story of Robert the Bruce's heart, which, at
his own request, was removed from his body on his death, and was carried
into battle by his knights to help ensure their victory. The embalmed
relic was examined by scientists in 1996; DNA testing was also carried
out on a sliver of Robert's bone in an attempt to determine the cause of
his death.
The Celebrity Collection - a
suspense novel by J.D. Lasica about a businessman whose quest for
celebrity DNA leads him into grave-robbing.
DNA-Laced
Ink Foils Counterfeiters - Art Guard, Inc., will dissolve a bit of your DNA in a special ink,
which can help ensure that your signature cannot be counterfeited (as
long as you keep track of the pen).
Purchase
You may purchase this book (276 pp.) directly from:
Amazon.com in cloth
(Amazon.com price $16.07 - you save 30%) and
paperback (Amazon.com price $10.36 - you save 20%)
A
contemporary molecular biologist - one of the pioneers of
a technology widely used in genomics research - has founded
a company that will produce cards or jewelry containing DNA
cloned from musical superstars, athletes, and other secular
saints. Kary Mullis, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for
developing the gene amplification technique called
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), explained to the New York
Times that the purpose of such cards will be to educate
people about DNA. [1] He has even proposed selling cards
with DNA from various primates as a way to illustrate
evolution for school children. "The idea is that teenagers
might pay a little money to get a piece of jewelry, a
bracelet or whatever, containing the actual piece of
amplified DNA of somebody like a rock star," Mullis has
said. [2] And
along the way, they may learn a little
molecular biology: "People could use the cards as totems or
relics, but they could also learn about genes by comparing
different stars' sequences." [3]
Like
the True Cross in the early Christian period, the bits
of celebrity DNA produced by Kary Mullis and his company
could "fill the world" without becoming depleted. "We just
have to get a little piece of skin, clip a nail, or
something from the person, prepare the DNA [and] copy it
through PCR." The resulting bit of biological material
could then be encased in bracelets, Mullis suggested. "You
could say 'here is a sequence' from Mick Jagger, something
to do with his lips, say. The jewelry will look like
something your gypsy grandmother gave you and in there will
be a little speck of DNA." A bit of DNA from a dead
celebrity might be particularly appropriate, Mullis told
Omni magazine. "If we could get permission to use someone
like Elvis Presley, we could do a gene of the month, and you
could have a collection like stamps." Instead of jewelry,
however, the company decided to produce something similar to
"a baseball card, with the person's picture and some of
their DNA worked right into the card, and some sequence
information printed on the back."
Molecular
relics have also appeared in stories about the
investigation of Lincoln's DNA. In February 1991, the
National
Museum of Health and Medicine appointed a committee
to study the technical and ethical feasibility of obtaining
DNA contained in bits of Lincoln's hair, bone, and blood
stored in museums. Scholars have long theorized that
Lincoln might have suffered from Marfan syndrome, a rare
genetic condition characterized by weakness in the bones and
joints, eyes, and heart. Anecdotal evidence links Marfan to
high intelligence, and Marfan patients are often tall, with
long limbs and fingers, fueling speculation that Lincoln
suffered from this disease.
In this
narrative, President Abraham Lincoln - the entire
social, historical, cultural, and biological actor - can be
retrieved from relic-like body parts stored in museums in
Washington, D.C. His DNA seems to "make present" the
historical figure in all his complexity. Molecular analysis
of DNA can reveal the structure of his intelligence and his
emotional state, even his decision-making style. And unlike
Lincoln's own writings, his speeches, his correspondence or
the correspondence of those who knew and observed him in
action - unlike these archival documents chronicling his
actions and his words - DNA can tell us what his true fate
would have been had he not been killed by an assassin.
Indeed, Lincoln's DNA, extracted from his remains, is an
external text that need only be deciphered by contemporary
molecular biologists.
As
an immortal, historical text, DNA has also been called on
to answer questions about geographical migrations and
cultural interchange in the distant human past. The Human
Genome Diversity Project is an international plan to use DNA
from 500 distinct populations scattered around the world in
an effort to understand human history. Blood samples
containing DNA, to be collected from members of populations
as diverse as the Yanomami of Venezuela and the Chukchi of
northern Siberia, will be preserved and stored in a
repository for future analysis. The project's promoters,
most prominently the Stanford University population
geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, suggest that this
collection of DNA can explain: the Bantu expansion in
Africa, when the first agriculturalists appeared 2,000 years
ago; the origins of Native Americans and the timing and
number of their migrations across the Bering Strait; and the
relationships between linguistic groups around the world.
Whether such questions can be answered by analysis of DNA
has been questioned by critics of the project, including
some anthropologists who played a role in planning it.
Richard Dawkins,
in his popular 1976 book The Selfish Gene,
called human beings "survival machines - robot vehicles that
are blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules
known as genes." [9] Dawkins
may seem materialist and antireligious, but his extreme reductionism, in which the
DNA appears as immortal and the individual body as
ultimately irrelevant, is in many ways a theological
narrative, resembling the belief that the things of this
world (the body) do not matter, while the soul (DNA) lasts
forever.
