Brave New Millennium Part I - Looking to the Future

The biggest news of the new millennium is likely to occur in the next few years in the aftermath of the mapping out of the human genome - well ahead of schedule - a billion-dollar project dedicated to translating nature's Rosetta Stone. Amazingly, the genetic alphabet consists of but four recurring letters that are typeset into 35,000 genes along a relentless script of 3 billion base words responsible for everything that comprises the individual, from the color of hair to the inner workings of the brain.

We may be a long way yet from actually deciphering the text, but already our initial efforts in cracking the code are beginning to yield spectacular results. Already, we are on our way to having enough genomic information to estimate a person's risk of disease according to his or her genetic makeup.

We will also begin to see the development of drugs based on a radical new premise. Today, pharmacology works on the "one drug fits all" principle, with the paradoxical effect of fitting very few. In another decade or two, we will have drugs tailor-made to a person's genetic specifications. If we can believe what the scientists are telling us, routine gene scans will successfully predict patients' responses to any given number of biochemical interactions. The hit-and-miss technique of trying medication after medication - often with heartbreaking results - will be a thing of the past.

If we take a few deep breaths, we might also dare hope that these drugs will be guided with laser-precision to their targets, leaving the rest of the our brains reasonably intact. Indeed, the wonders of gene technology may even embolden some of us to think of the depression or bipolar genomic equivalent of the Salk vaccine.

Tomorrow's moms and dads, needless to say, will be seeking to produce perfect children. A recent article in the British Medical Journal discusses the prospect of designer babies as if it were an inevitability. In this brave new world of genetically-engineered humans, concerned parents would ensure their offspring were free of such diseases as cancer and cystic fibrosis, and for good measure had blue eyes and could skate like Wayne Gretzky. An overreaching government might even order parents to produce these kind of babies.

Naturally, the gene doctors would hastily do away with all those nasty little chromosomes responsible for depression and bipolar disorder. In a perfect world, there would be no place for these genetic rogues. Remember the day when the World Health Organization announced there was no more smallpox on earth? Imagine a world cleansed of clinical depression and bipolar disorder.

Of course, this would mean a civilization with no Lincolns, no Churchills, no Michelangelos, no Beethovens. The list goes on and on. I for one cannot contemplate a planet stripped of its very finest talent, and that leaves me with this unsettling question: By saving our children and grandchildren, are we actually condemning the human race they are part of?

But no one right now seems to be worrying about such things. Kay Jamison on a recent talk show said that there is a feeling of discovery amongst neurologists similar to what existed in the space program a generation ago (or words to that effect).

Dr Alexander B. Niculescu III of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, writing in Medscape, believes the brain is ready to yield its secrets. After all, he informs us, "the brain is an organ like all others, only more complex."

Sort of like a souped-up liver, a gall bladder with RAM, a pancreas with feelings, but basically a bag of molecules like any other part of the body. "For all intents and purposes," he writes, "psychiatry is becoming brainology."

We are closing in, he says, on what may well be the Holy Grail of brain research - the ability to assess mental processes while an image of brain activity is taken, followed immediately by the taking of a tissue sample for molecular biochemical analysis (from cloned material).

It's almost as simple as taking a radio apart and putting it back together. And our reward may be the unlocking of our dreams and emotions and perhaps our very consciousness.

But wait, not so fast, says science writer John Horgan. In a book, "Undiscovered Mind," Horgan argues we're not even close, and in a recent issue of New Scientist, he forcefully sets out his heresy in highly readable form.

Compared to the brain, he says, E=MC2 is child's play. Outwardly, he acknowledges, the picture has never looked brighter. "Researchers," he writes, "forever seem to be on the brink of uncovering the key to aggression, depression, addiction, schizophrenia, even consciousness itself. The problem is they never get there. A century's worth of investigations has not produced a paradigm powerful enough to push Freud off his pedestal."

Ah, Freud. Horgan could well have substituted the word, witchcraft, to make his point. Even neuroscience, he says, the field best equipped to kill off this long-discredited father of psychology, "has not made its punches count." Despite all the wonders of PET scans and the rest, there has been, he concludes, "virtually no payoff in diagnosing and treating mental illness."

Sure, neuroscience has revealed to us the working parts of the human brain, but it has no idea how these parts interact. More significantly: "There may be no unifying insight that transforms chaos into order."

No Eureka! that heralds our deliverance shouted from a dark lab somewhere in the world. Instead, a bunch of eggheads delivering papers at conferences paid for by the drug companies - is that our true fate? We who have lived with our depressions and bipolar know that Horgan may be on to something, that life is far more complicated - and our conditions infinitely more devious and subtle, not to mention our entire brains - than what the experts tell us.

The breakthrough we cry out for may yet be on the way, one that addresses our true needs. Never say never. Just don't spend all night waiting up for something to happen.

Part II.

For three free online issues of McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly, email me and put "Sample" in the heading and your email address in the body.

Science articles All articles

Post your opinion here.

John McManamy

Pre-order my book on Amazon

Pre-order now

Newsletter

Your online source for issues that matter to you.

For free samples, email me and put "Sample" in the heading and your email address in the body.

Find out more.

Bookstore

Shop for depression and bipolar books online here.