Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey, they're welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks in the future and says, Billy Jean is
Speaker 1: not my lover. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm I'm Lauren foc
Speaker 1: obamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that sound of disapproval
Speaker 1: is to the terrible quote that they chose to start
Speaker 1: this episode. We're talking about, right, Billy Jane. Yeah, uh
Speaker 1: so Jeane therapy. Billy Geane therapy is when you have
Speaker 1: to listen to to Michael Jackson songs until you feel better.
Speaker 1: But that's a good therapy, is a good therapy. I
Speaker 1: I don't mind that at all. It's it's the dancing here. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: gene therapy is something that has incredible potential but definitely
Speaker 1: had a rocky start. And uh, you know, if you
Speaker 1: don't really know that much about DNA and jeans or chromosomes,
Speaker 1: if all that confuses you, go back and listen. We
Speaker 1: we record a pocast immediately before this one should have
Speaker 1: published just before this podcast did that goes into sort
Speaker 1: of gene one oh one, and so listen to that one.
Speaker 1: So you can get caught up. We're gonna be pushing
Speaker 1: on right now talking about gene therapy, which is an
Speaker 1: attempt to treat genetic diseases at the molecular level. So
Speaker 1: you're actually trying to address molecules that have some form
Speaker 1: of defective element to them and replace those with quote
Speaker 1: unquote good molecules are good genes. So a good point
Speaker 1: of distinction maybe to start with, would be, um, how
Speaker 1: is this different than all of the normal ways we
Speaker 1: fight diseases? Well, a lot of the ways we fight diseases.
Speaker 1: There's of course ways where we just try and treat
Speaker 1: symptoms where we're not actually addressing the underlying problem, possibly
Speaker 1: because there may not be a way of addressing the
Speaker 1: underlying problem, or you're just letting your body do the
Speaker 1: work exactly maybe and you're just trying to make yourself
Speaker 1: feel better while that happened. For example, if you have
Speaker 1: a cold, there is no cure or for the common cold, right,
Speaker 1: but there are lots of different ways you can treat
Speaker 1: your symptoms and try to manage symptoms have different levels
Speaker 1: of efficacy depending upon whom you ask, but that's one
Speaker 1: way of doing it. Or for example, if you take
Speaker 1: an antibacterial medication to try to clear something out of
Speaker 1: your system that's attacking those bacteria that are attacking your
Speaker 1: your body in some way, shape or form. Right, So
Speaker 1: that's another way where you're actually trying to fight off
Speaker 1: some sort of quote unquote alien invasion. Alien in the
Speaker 1: sense of it doesn't belong inside of you. Uh. Your
Speaker 1: body uses antibodies, which are proteins that attack foreign cells
Speaker 1: or sometimes its own cells, depending on how your immune
Speaker 1: system is functioning. Right. Right, there are cases where you
Speaker 1: have things like allergic reactions where your body goes into
Speaker 1: overdrive trying to kill something that doesn't actually need to
Speaker 1: be killed. I speak from terrible, terrible experience. Uh. So
Speaker 1: these are all normal or quote unquote normal ways that
Speaker 1: we use to fight off illnesses. But some illnesses, genetic illnesses,
Speaker 1: have to do with actual information that's in our DNA,
Speaker 1: that is defective genes that are encoded the wrong way
Speaker 1: and therefore are not producing the proper proteins the right
Speaker 1: way for certain processes. And there's lots of different types
Speaker 1: of genetic diseases that cover a wide range. So we're
Speaker 1: not gonna go and talk about all of them, because
Speaker 1: that's that alone would be a series of podcasts. But
Speaker 1: one common element here is that these diseases have these
Speaker 1: these faulty genes at the very core of the problem.
Speaker 1: And if we were somehow able to remove the faulty
Speaker 1: genes from ourselves and insert good, healthy genes in their place,
Speaker 1: we could end up possibly curing the disease. Or if
Speaker 1: we could figure out how to um turn on or
Speaker 1: off a gene that is doing the opposite thing right,
Speaker 1: right and keeping my jeans. You know, we didn't talk
Speaker 1: about this in the last podcast, but it does bear saying.
Speaker 1: And I think jeans are complicated, right, So you know
Speaker 1: you didn't say that, well, well in the s in
Speaker 1: the sense of like, if you think, think of Jeanes
Speaker 1: like a switchboard. Alright, So think about a switchboard where
Speaker 1: every single switch is connected to a an LED light.
Speaker 1: So you've got a bank of LED lights, and you've
Speaker 1: got a bank of switches, and when you turn on
Speaker 1: a switch an L a ED light comes on, and
Speaker 1: then when you turn it off, the LED light goes off.
Speaker 1: If that's all jeanes were, we'd be set. That would
Speaker 1: be so easy to fix. But what actually happens is
Speaker 1: you have to flip like seven random switches all across
Speaker 1: the board to make the light come on, right, and
Speaker 1: if you also turns a few other lights on, and
Speaker 1: it also makes a weird quacking noise. Right, we're back
Speaker 1: to the potypus. If you and if you turn, if
Speaker 1: you turn one switch off, maybe the quacking noise goes
Speaker 1: off and three of the lights go off, but then
Speaker 1: five more lights come on. It's so complex and it's
Speaker 1: only and it's within this this uh network of g
Speaker 1: means and how they all express themselves. Keeping in mind
Speaker 1: that some genes can express themselves in multiple ways. That's
Speaker 1: why it's it's not so easy as just say, you know,
Speaker 1: turn that one switched the button. Yeah, the word for
Speaker 1: what all of the genes produced together is the phenotype.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the external expression of when you've got
Speaker 1: all the switches switched on. And so the goal of
Speaker 1: gene therapy is to address these faulty genes and to
Speaker 1: fix them in a way that is not harmful to
Speaker 1: the patient, which can also be very difficult because again
Speaker 1: it's really complex. Sometimes when you're when you think you're
Speaker 1: fixing one thing, you might be actually creating a much
Speaker 1: larger problem or maybe just a different problem. And I've
Speaker 1: got some really interesting examples that are terrifying about that.
Speaker 1: You can't wait to get to that. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about mutations. You know, how how do
Speaker 1: genes mutate in the first place? Uh? And there's actually
Speaker 1: quite a few ways. First of all, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about genes, you're talking about this this data essentially that's
Speaker 1: encoded in DNA, and that data gets copied over and
Speaker 1: over and over again during cellular division. You get copies
Speaker 1: of your d N a uh, and sometimes changes happen
Speaker 1: when these copies. Sometimes sometimes mistakes are made, so to speak.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like, you know, if you were
Speaker 1: to ever make a copy of a copy of a
Speaker 1: copy of a copy on a photocopy, or you know
Speaker 1: that final copy doesn't look as good as that original one.
Speaker 1: In a very basic way, that's kind of similar to
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here. Also, environmental factors can cause
Speaker 1: changes to your genes, so right, or even you know
Speaker 1: what what chemicals are in the food you eat, the
Speaker 1: water you drink, or the other stuff that you drink,
Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of stuff. I think things like
Speaker 1: stress can affect your genes to some extent. So you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different factors here. It's very,
Speaker 1: very complex, and most of those changes that are going
Speaker 1: to happen are going to happen in um somatic cells,
Speaker 1: in your bodily cells, not in your um sex chromosome
Speaker 1: cells that are are passed on too, or your chromosomes
Speaker 1: period that are passed on to your children. UM, that's
Speaker 1: that's a epo genetics, and that's a whole different, whole
Speaker 1: different issue. But but some of the changes can lead
Speaker 1: to like we talked about in our stress, some of
Speaker 1: them can can potentially be inherited. Whether or not that
Speaker 1: ends up expressing itself in offspring is another question. So
Speaker 1: one interesting thing I think about inherited genetic diseases is
Speaker 1: that for the most part, they're recessive. So in order
Speaker 1: for you to have a full expression of a genetic disease,
Speaker 1: you have to have inherited two copies of the mutated
Speaker 1: gene to really inherit the disorder. When you think about this,
Speaker 1: isn't that surprising, right? You wouldn't You wouldn't expect for
Speaker 1: most genetic diseases to be in dominant genes because uh
Speaker 1: in in any species, because if it were a dominant expression,
Speaker 1: then those those life forms, whatever creature you're talking about,
Speaker 1: most of them probably wouldn't get to an age where
Speaker 1: they could reproduce, and that gene would eventually phase its
Speaker 1: way out of the overall population. But if it's a
Speaker 1: recessive gene, then not that many comparatively speaking, will display
Speaker 1: this or will express this gene, this trait of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this whatever the genetic diseases um. So it can actually
Speaker 1: continue to exist within a population longer than it would
Speaker 1: if it were a dominant gene. So that I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting. But let's let's talk about kind of
Speaker 1: the history of gene therapy itself, so we kind of
Speaker 1: find why it could be potentially really helpful in the
Speaker 1: fields of medicine. It was back in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: when there was a paper that was authored by a
Speaker 1: parent Friedman and Roblin who the pair wrote a paper
Speaker 1: called gene Therapy for Human Genetic Disease question mark because
Speaker 1: they were actually asking the question could gene therapy potentially
Speaker 1: address this? And they proposed replacing defective DNA with good
Speaker 1: un quote DNA uh. They also cited the first attempts
Speaker 1: at gene therapy experiments going back all the way to
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. Now, this paper was written in seventy two, UH,
Speaker 1: and in fact, other sources I saw said that the
Speaker 1: experiments that happened in the seventies and eighties were in
Speaker 1: large part unauthorized trials, which that leads to some pretty
Speaker 1: serious setbacks in gene therapy. As when I get up
Speaker 1: into the nineties, I'll talk more about that, UM, but
Speaker 1: gene therapy isn't as far along as it potentially could be.
Speaker 1: I think in part because of some overenthusiastic but perhaps
Speaker 1: misguided trials, and so in labs that were in the
Speaker 1: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and in the National
Speaker 1: Cancer Institute conducted experiments which showed cells from a patient
Speaker 1: with a d A deficiency UH that's out of no
Speaker 1: scene d M in as deficiency, which affects the immune
Speaker 1: systems ability to fight off infection. Those could be corrected
Speaker 1: in a tissue culture using a retrovirus to insert corrected
Speaker 1: genes into the cells. And this is actually still how
Speaker 1: they're mostly proposing to do gene therapy. Right. Virus it's
Speaker 1: one of the ways. UH. Viruses have some issues, but
Speaker 1: viruses are really good at penetrating cells. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what they do in order to replicate, right, And we've
Speaker 1: said before that sometimes it makes more sense not to
Speaker 1: try and copy or outdo mother nature, but to just
Speaker 1: use it, Yeah, coopt what mother nature is already doing. Right.
Speaker 1: If you take a virus and you strip out all
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes it dangerous, essentially it's ability to
Speaker 1: self replicate and any other uh, information that would otherwise
Speaker 1: alter your cells, and then put in the stuff you
Speaker 1: want to have injected into a cell, and then introduce
Speaker 1: that into the tissue or patient. Then it does the
Speaker 1: work for you. I mean, it's a perfect machine of viruses.
Speaker 1: Is a machine designed to inject DNA into foreign cells.
Speaker 1: Right now, there are some problems, uh. First of all,
Speaker 1: I mean there's everyone's always worried about the idea of
Speaker 1: using viruses in the first place, especially they don't understand
Speaker 1: a lot about how viruses work. But it's also not
Speaker 1: ideal for every situation. For example, if you want to
Speaker 1: treat something that is found in brain tissue, virus is
Speaker 1: a bad idea because viruses are too large to penetrate
Speaker 1: the blood brain barrier. So you've got to find something
Speaker 1: that's even smaller than a virus, your typical virus to
Speaker 1: be able to penetrate that barrier to deliver the good
Speaker 1: DNA to brain tissue. They are developing um I think
Speaker 1: that they are currently developing some methods specifically with Parkinson's
Speaker 1: disease that that may use viruses. But there there's the
Speaker 1: main approach I've seen is using liposomes and creating essentially
Speaker 1: a plastic coding for liposomes that would allow it to
Speaker 1: move through the blood brain barrier effortlessly compared to most
Speaker 1: viruses which would not be able to penetrate it. They
Speaker 1: are also playing with different kinds of virus is these days.
Speaker 1: I think originally retroviruses were what we're being used in
Speaker 1: these days, um lent of viruses are being used things
Speaker 1: like um HIV actually that have a really long incubation
Speaker 1: period and can infect non dividing cells. So it interesting
Speaker 1: winds up doing. But continue, continue with your time, back
Speaker 1: to the history. So we've we've got this this retrovirus
Speaker 1: that was used in this early experiment, they showed that
Speaker 1: it could be done. In six they began to experiment
Speaker 1: to introduce correct genes into bone marrow cells and animals
Speaker 1: to see how safe it would be as a treatment.
Speaker 1: So they're using the animal's actual bone marrow cells to
Speaker 1: deliver good quote unquote DNA and the conclusion was that
Speaker 1: it was safe, but they didn't get the correct gene
Speaker 1: to enough cells for it to be considered effective. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, bone marrow just wasn't the right vector
Speaker 1: for delivering this kind of treatment. It worked, but non
Speaker 1: a level that would have created enough change for it
Speaker 1: to be a good treat it. So in they try
Speaker 1: white blood cells instead of bone marrow cells, and that
Speaker 1: increased the number of cells that were affected. So they thought,
Speaker 1: ha ha, here we're onto something. Uh. And in there
Speaker 1: was an experiment with tumor infiltrating lympho sites t i
Speaker 1: L cells UH that showed that using a virus to
Speaker 1: insert DNA material would be a safe form of treatment. Now,
Speaker 1: this experiment was more about inserting a DNA marker into
Speaker 1: t I L cells. It wasn't about putting in good DNA.
Speaker 1: It was about identifying this cell as a t I
Speaker 1: L cell. But the one of the other pieces of
Speaker 1: information they got was, oh, well, this could work for
Speaker 1: other applications beyond just marking a cell. We might be
Speaker 1: able to actually do gene therapy using this approach. Sotumber four,
Speaker 1: the National Institutes of Health treated a four year old
Speaker 1: girl with a d A deficiency. They also treated nine
Speaker 1: year old girl with a d A deficiency, and this
Speaker 1: was one of the first approved of trials for g therapy.
Speaker 1: So this approach was not incredibly effective at first, although
Speaker 1: the last information I could find both patients are leading
Speaker 1: normal lives now they do not have this a d
Speaker 1: A deficiency apparently anymore. But the the delivery methods have
Speaker 1: improved significantly since nine. There was actually very few successes
Speaker 1: in early gene therapy experiments all the way through the
Speaker 1: eighties into the nineties, and that was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why gene therapy took had a real rough go
Speaker 1: in the early days. Right, not a big surprise. We're
Speaker 1: talking about something incredibly sophisticated that we have admittedly only
Speaker 1: a you know, a sliver of understanding, Like there's so
Speaker 1: much we don't know about genes, right, and we hadn't
Speaker 1: mapped the human genome until right, So it's it's not
Speaker 1: a big surprise that it took a while because we
Speaker 1: were still learning about what we were doing while we
Speaker 1: were doing it. Um Dr Claudio Born and none of
Speaker 1: the Vita Salute. San Rafael University in Milan experimented with
Speaker 1: gene therapy delivery systems using a hematopoetic stem cells to
Speaker 1: deliver genes. So now we're trying other methods of stem
Speaker 1: cells was another vector in researchers used gene therapy to
Speaker 1: treat babies who had a d A deficiency and moving
Speaker 1: up to nine. This was this was a terrible year
Speaker 1: for gene therapy. It was a terrible tragedy as well.
Speaker 1: So there have been very there's been a lot of trials,
Speaker 1: very few successes, but the entire discipline of gene therapy
Speaker 1: suffered a serious setback because Uh, there was a patient
Speaker 1: who was undergoing gene therapy to treat a liver disease
Speaker 1: at the University of Pennsylvania. That patient's name is Jesse Gelsinger.
Speaker 1: Jesse Gelsinger uh died during the trial and it was
Speaker 1: the first death attributable to gene therapy. That led to
Speaker 1: increased scrutiny of gene therapy programs across the entire world,
Speaker 1: and a lot of conclusions were drawn that many, not
Speaker 1: not all, but many of these trials did not follow
Speaker 1: terribly rigorous standards, or perhaps were not designed in the
Speaker 1: most ethical manner. The the desire to try and be
Speaker 1: the first to UH to have a working gene therapy
Speaker 1: might have been guiding people to act recklessly, particularly with
Speaker 1: the lives or well being of patients. And it raised
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism about gene therapy in general. So
Speaker 1: even the people who were following very stringent, strict scientific
Speaker 1: processes and being as ethical as possible were brought under
Speaker 1: the microscope, and there were a lot of questions about
Speaker 1: when is it actually acceptable to move from the experimental
Speaker 1: stage where your work ing on some isolated tissue or
Speaker 1: you're working with an animal not a human being, UH,
Speaker 1: and then move that to human trials, When is that
Speaker 1: actually an acceptable moment in gene therapy? And the whole
Speaker 1: thing kind of brought the discipline to a crawl for
Speaker 1: a couple of years, and there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: scrutiny there obviously, because this is this is potentially very
Speaker 1: useful but also very dangerous type stuff. In two thousand two,
Speaker 1: researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Copernicus Therapeutics created
Speaker 1: the liposomes UH that there were twenty five nanometers across,
Speaker 1: so a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. That's
Speaker 1: incredibly tiny, and that they wanted to use to carry
Speaker 1: therapeutic DNA through pores in the nuclear membrane. And that
Speaker 1: same year, sickle cell disease was treated in mice using
Speaker 1: gene therapy for the first time and showing that that
Speaker 1: could be an effective treatment. Two thousand three, the University
Speaker 1: of California used liposomes coated in paul ethylene glycol. That's
Speaker 1: what I was talking about earlier, the PEG material, which
Speaker 1: that was determined to be a good vector for delivering
Speaker 1: gene therapy to the brain because again most viruses, not all,
Speaker 1: but most viruses are too large to penetrate the blood
Speaker 1: brain barrier. And then in two thousand six, National Institutes
Speaker 1: of Health used gene therapy to treat melanoma and showed
Speaker 1: for the first time that gene therapy could be a
Speaker 1: viable treatment for cancer. Now that's the history. Lesson, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what's going on kind of around that time too.
Speaker 1: More recent. I want to stress that when I look
Speaker 1: at information about gene therapy, I still very often see
Speaker 1: phrases like last resort, right I think that usually these
Speaker 1: experiments and and this research that's going on is on
Speaker 1: children with terrible fatal diseases, and and so frequently it
Speaker 1: is it is a last resort, right, and its and
Speaker 1: it's just well, I just wanted to stress this. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we have moved past some of these
Speaker 1: early days, like, there's still a whole lot of caution
Speaker 1: about it, and there should be. I mean, because again,
Speaker 1: we there's still so much we don't understand that that
Speaker 1: it needs. We need to have caution, not only just
Speaker 1: to be ethical and safe and give the patient as
Speaker 1: good a chance at recovery or treatment as possible, but
Speaker 1: also just so we keep our own expectations in check
Speaker 1: and we don't sit there and think, oh, if I
Speaker 1: just change out this one little strand of information within
Speaker 1: this person's cells, everything's going to be fine. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's important to realize that there's so much we don't
Speaker 1: know that we have to proceed with caution, because until
Speaker 1: we know all that information, we could potentially do more
Speaker 1: harm than good in our treatment. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: uh interesting studies I found was related to vaccines. So
Speaker 1: right now a vaccine is pretty much always preferable as
Speaker 1: the way to prevent somebody from contracting a disease. Sure,
Speaker 1: but what about in the case of a disease where
Speaker 1: we just can't get a reliable vaccine like HIV UM Now,
Speaker 1: the human immunodeficiency virus, it's difficult to create a vaccine
Speaker 1: because of the structure of the virus. Antibodies have to
Speaker 1: recognize elements on the external structure of a virus UM
Speaker 1: to in order to want to attack it, to to
Speaker 1: recognize it and prevent it UM. But HIV is kind
Speaker 1: of stealth. It doesn't have those external structures, which is
Speaker 1: difficult to recognize UM. And so there's been all this
Speaker 1: difficulty creating a vaccine. But some recent research, especially some
Speaker 1: stuff published in Nature in two thousand eleven, found that, well,
Speaker 1: at least in a trial on mice, the immuno deficiency
Speaker 1: virus is susceptible to gene therapy that would prevent transmission UM,
Speaker 1: and so a gene therapy could be sort of like
Speaker 1: a preventative measure to keep you from contracting HIV. Of course,
Speaker 1: the trouble is, as with all these other cases we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, it it's it's dangerous basically, right, and
Speaker 1: there there are other diseases and conditions where we have
Speaker 1: little to no treatment right now, Like it may be
Speaker 1: that all we can do is treat some symptoms, but
Speaker 1: we can't treat anything that's underlying that. So everything from
Speaker 1: Parkinson's to Alzheimer's, that these kind of a lot of
Speaker 1: blood blood related genetic disorders right a lot of these
Speaker 1: different genetic disorders, we really have no way of treating
Speaker 1: anything beyond some symptoms in some cases, like in some
Speaker 1: we don't even have ways of treating the symptoms necessarily.
Speaker 1: So that's one of those things that people are really
Speaker 1: looking at. Gene therapy is potentially being another attempt to uh,
Speaker 1: to treat something that otherwise we pretty much can only
Speaker 1: just try and and and increase the patient's comfort as
Speaker 1: much as possible because there's nothing else we can do.
Speaker 1: Um in those cases, I think are the ones that
Speaker 1: are going to have the most attention to acted at
Speaker 1: them for the near term. For gene therapy. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: wanted to correct myself really quick, really quickly from from earlier.
Speaker 1: Lenty viruses are a genus within the retrovirus family, but
Speaker 1: they but they're they're specific properties are important. I was
Speaker 1: talking about them like they're two totally different things. That is,
Speaker 1: that is an untruth right there. I knew that, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't so in all these cases, and especially because
Speaker 1: the science is still pretty preliminary. We're talking about last resort,
Speaker 1: we're talking about it's still something we're not very sure about,
Speaker 1: and we were only using cases where there's no other option. Really, right,
Speaker 1: But what if we got a lot better at it, sure,
Speaker 1: to the point where we can actually treat these diseases,
Speaker 1: people can lead healthy lives. These genetic disorders become a
Speaker 1: thing of the past. I see the future you're painting, right,
Speaker 1: and so its future where gene therapy is just completely safe.
Speaker 1: It's run of the mill. It's it's like vaccines are today.
Speaker 1: So you know, your chance of having a problem is
Speaker 1: one in some huge number. And we're having a sporting
Speaker 1: stars cheating by having gene therapy to make their blood
Speaker 1: more oxygen absorbent. Exactly. Oh well, well, guys, you're you're
Speaker 1: like totally I was. I was right there in the
Speaker 1: happy future where everybody was healthy, and now you're you're
Speaker 1: twisting it. What's going on? You're talking about gene doping.
Speaker 1: Gene doping, tell me about gene doping, Lauren, Well, gene
Speaker 1: doping doesn't exist right now, but we're we're afraid could
Speaker 1: happen in some kind of terrible future. Is is that? Yes?
Speaker 1: That that that people would use gene therapy in order to,
Speaker 1: you know, do do the same kind of things that
Speaker 1: medications are that illegal medications in most sporting worlds are
Speaker 1: are used for now, the whole blood doping stuff, the
Speaker 1: phrase comes from blood doping, which is where you know,
Speaker 1: you draw your own blood and you keep that out
Speaker 1: in store. It let your body regenerate more to replace it,
Speaker 1: and then right before the big race, you shoot yourself
Speaker 1: back up with your blood so you've got extra red
Speaker 1: blood cells. You can get even more oxygen to your muscles,
Speaker 1: your superman yeah, relatively speaking, Yeah, But what if instead
Speaker 1: of all that, you could alter your genes? Right, there's
Speaker 1: a gene called 'm airy throw poteen. I think I
Speaker 1: got that right in one we're going to go with it.
Speaker 1: E p O that regulates how many red blood cells
Speaker 1: are created in your body and um and when it's
Speaker 1: functioning normally, it'll shut off when you've got enough, But
Speaker 1: if you wanted a few more in there to boost
Speaker 1: you know, Unfortunately in trials, it's difficult to get them
Speaker 1: to turn off. Once you've turned them on, and then
Speaker 1: you're just like a blood sprinkler, crazy blood bags like toad,
Speaker 1: just blood shooting out your It was it was, it
Speaker 1: was pretty. It was pretty tragic, and and and and many,
Speaker 1: you know, many other things can go terribly wrong, which
Speaker 1: is why we're not doing this right now. Okay, but
Speaker 1: so Jeane doping this paint, say, it's it's a mersure
Speaker 1: of the the future we were talking about in this
Speaker 1: dystopian future. It's a future where you can mess with
Speaker 1: your genes, you can just do stuff right, so like
Speaker 1: in BioShock, you can just you know, yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: beyond beyond the ability to do things like determine what
Speaker 1: color eyes your children are going to have or what
Speaker 1: sex your child will be. That too, write, but I
Speaker 1: think you might be little too far. Here we go,
Speaker 1: here's where the X Men come in. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: I knew we were going to get there. I knew
Speaker 1: we're going to get to the X Men. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I mean, we are talking about the potential in the future.
Speaker 1: Let's say that we have perfected as close as you
Speaker 1: can to perfecting anything anyway, uh, some gene replacement therapy
Speaker 1: or gene alteration to the point where we can genetically
Speaker 1: modify human beings so that they are the best of
Speaker 1: the best. So before we get to X men territory,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about Connunian Song territory, Wrath of con
Speaker 1: type stuff. These are the These are the people who
Speaker 1: are genetically engineered to be intelligent and strong. They were
Speaker 1: meant to be warriors to end up ending a conflict,
Speaker 1: and then once the conflicts over, what do they do next?
Speaker 1: Then we should have been into space. So there's that
Speaker 1: that future. But you're talking about even going beyond that.
Speaker 1: Let's say that that's even the possibility where we're able
Speaker 1: to make people the quote unquote the best people they
Speaker 1: could be based upon the genetic information they carry inside them.
Speaker 1: You're talking about going even further than that and giving
Speaker 1: people abilities that are not even human. Right. Yeah, Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so this raises a problem I have with the x men. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is one problem you have with the x mentor
Speaker 1: this is the problem that it isn't it's the main
Speaker 1: it's an Okay, So the x men is the x men.
Speaker 1: It is what it is because I could go out
Speaker 1: of my hands. I could go on about cable for hours. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's not talk about the summers. I can kind of
Speaker 1: see clause. I can kind of see it like no
Speaker 1: cla like like, let's say, though, that wasn't actually a mutation, right,
Speaker 1: Wolverine got claus but no, no, he has bone clause.
Speaker 1: They were coded in adamantium. Yea, his claws are actually bone. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're good to get as Matt, when Magneto stripped him
Speaker 1: of all of his adamantium skeleton, his bone claws remained.
Speaker 1: This is excellent. Okay, so I can actually kind of
Speaker 1: see clause. I mean that seems like a long way off,
Speaker 1: but it's it's within the realm of physical possibility. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing I want to make a distinction about. Actually,
Speaker 1: there are two things. Um. One is physical possibility. I
Speaker 1: don't think Gambit makes any sense. Well, he has that
Speaker 1: really thick Louisiana accent. It's really hard to understand what
Speaker 1: he's saying. The problem with Gambit isn't that, um, he
Speaker 1: has incredible powers. It's that the incredible power he has
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense in terms of physics. Sure, so you're
Speaker 1: saying that the ability to touch something and make it
Speaker 1: molecularly vibrate to the point where it explodes makes no sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't see how that could ever be a property
Speaker 1: of the human body. How different How could you transfer
Speaker 1: that energy in such a way like, yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: mechanism for it. Yeah, I would say probably the same
Speaker 1: thing about like shooting cold rays. I mean that that
Speaker 1: just seems it's not necessarily so much that it's a
Speaker 1: problem with DNA, it's a problem with physics, like how
Speaker 1: do you make rays of cold come out of here? Right?
Speaker 1: We do not have the you know, genesis for laser
Speaker 1: beams to shoot out of our eyeballs, so therefore it's unlikely.
Speaker 1: Magnets or being able to control magnetism, I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: we all have an electric field, like like living things
Speaker 1: create electric fields, and electric fields can affect magnets because
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic effect there, you know. But being able to
Speaker 1: control entire huge hunks of metal, well anyway, all that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's just bones. I can see bone claws, I
Speaker 1: can see it would be it would be very strange,
Speaker 1: but having weird bone claws that come out of your
Speaker 1: hand Okay, that seems like a more physically acceptable or
Speaker 1: or even sending an incredibly heightened immune system. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: I was going to say Logan's other mutant power is
Speaker 1: regeneration and so and I can see how having an
Speaker 1: extremely quick working immune system would would be a thing. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: most like mammals don't regenerate like that, but like reptiles can. Sure, right,
Speaker 1: you lizard can slower, slower speed. But yeah, we've talked
Speaker 1: about using things like gene therapy for regenitative medicine, so
Speaker 1: that kind of fits in with that, right, So I
Speaker 1: think this is, uh, that kind of thing is not
Speaker 1: so much beyond the realm of possibility. But the other
Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about with x men and
Speaker 1: genetics is this idea that all of these powers tend
Speaker 1: to be presented as if they're created by a single mutation. Right,
Speaker 1: it's called the X gene within the within the cannon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a single gene. And depending on which bit
Speaker 1: of media of the X men you are consuming, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's it's it's an on or off option, which is
Speaker 1: not how you can actually you can actually be treated
Speaker 1: to a point where your your mutant nobility is turned
Speaker 1: off as is seen and I think the third of
Speaker 1: the X Men films that I never saw. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like the idea that this one gene could
Speaker 1: have essentially unlimited expressions is kind of interesting. I can
Speaker 1: see that by say, um, either genetic engineering so top
Speaker 1: down control of your DNA sequence, or millions of years
Speaker 1: of evolution, maybe we could get bone claws that shoot
Speaker 1: out of our hands. You don't think we're going to
Speaker 1: get to the point where we can teleport the bone
Speaker 1: claus No, but the bone claws that shoot out of
Speaker 1: your hand would not be one mutation, right right. The
Speaker 1: problem is it's a it's a misunderstanding of what mutations
Speaker 1: look like when they happen. You don't A mutation doesn't
Speaker 1: cause a like complex, fully formed working apparatus that was
Speaker 1: not previously there. You can you know, mutations that turn
Speaker 1: into wings probably start as little tiny flaps and have
Speaker 1: to be amplified over generations of success in more causes.
Speaker 1: You know, your your ear lobe to be directly connected
Speaker 1: or a little bit floppy when where it matches up
Speaker 1: with your head, and and you know which is a
Speaker 1: great mutant power, but floppy ear, floppy ear that was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite like eighth tier X Men floppy
Speaker 1: ear that was one of the lesser known powers of
Speaker 1: Omega Red floppy ear. So anyway, getting back into this discussion,
Speaker 1: you know, the there's also a confusion about how mutations
Speaker 1: are passed on, and that if a mutation is passed on,
Speaker 1: it must therefore be beneficial to whatever creature has that mutation.
Speaker 1: But because we're talking about very complex this ums, sometimes
Speaker 1: that mutation can go along with other traits that are advantageous.
Speaker 1: The mutation itself may or may not be It might
Speaker 1: not be a problem, but it might not necessarily be advantageous.
Speaker 1: So it's not that you know, whatever creature currently exists
Speaker 1: in its uh you know, the like that if you
Speaker 1: were to take a representative animal from any species and say,
Speaker 1: this is an example of all the traits that are
Speaker 1: the most advantageous for this animal. Because this animal is alive,
Speaker 1: therefore it has all the traits that were beneficial. That's
Speaker 1: that's facetious. Orry, you know, it's not not true at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's much more complicated than that. So
Speaker 1: when you hear about mutations and mutations being passed along,
Speaker 1: sometimes they are beneficial and sometimes that's exactly the reason
Speaker 1: why the creatures that are alive now share that particular mutation.
Speaker 1: It's because it was one that gave them an advantage
Speaker 1: in whatever ecosystem they evolved in. But other ones, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just they happen to pee back on with traits
Speaker 1: that were very advantageous for survival, and that's why they
Speaker 1: too have survived those mutations. But it's complicated stuff. Like
Speaker 1: you said, it's not just one thing that manifests itself
Speaker 1: immediately and fully formed. Uh format you know, things like
Speaker 1: like birds. Now we essentially understand to be the evolutionary
Speaker 1: descendant of dinosaurs actually, like they are dinosaurs, yeah, tree,
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things where it took a
Speaker 1: long time for us to figure that out, right. It
Speaker 1: was like, you know, we we didn't have that direct
Speaker 1: that understanding of that that line of descent until relatively recently.
Speaker 1: The I think the t rex had featheries, don't they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of dinosaurs had feathers. Yeah, yeah, which totally
Speaker 1: changes my view of what dinosaurs should look like, you know,
Speaker 1: based upon the way I learned about him when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. Of course, when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: It was shortly after the dinosaurs had died out. So
Speaker 1: I feel like we've strayed a little bit. Maybe, so
Speaker 1: we were talking about X men in terms of mutations,
Speaker 1: well mutations and sort of top down control. Maybe what
Speaker 1: the x chene does is is set off a whole
Speaker 1: crazy like nuclear reaction of other changes in human DNA.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what it did, like a Domino effect, but
Speaker 1: not Domino the character. We're actually talking about Domino the
Speaker 1: little things that fall over correct. But to bring it
Speaker 1: back to the real world, let's so, so let's say,
Speaker 1: is not the real world? Yeah, so we're we're ruling
Speaker 1: out the shooting fire, shooting cold stuff like that, but saying, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe you could have bone claws or whatever. Um, is
Speaker 1: it ethical? Is it ethical to voluntarily mess with our
Speaker 1: genes if we have the power to do it. It's
Speaker 1: a good question. I mean, it really all depends upon
Speaker 1: your definition of what ethics are I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: and also what messing with and also and also whether
Speaker 1: or not the person who's getting messed with is doing
Speaker 1: so voluntarily. That clearly would have a huge impact if
Speaker 1: it's because if you're telling you about you know, making
Speaker 1: choices for an unborn child, then you are making determinations
Speaker 1: that are going to affect that child's life, and the
Speaker 1: child has no say in the matter. But then if
Speaker 1: you're leaving it all up to just biology, the child
Speaker 1: really doesn't have a say in a matter of what
Speaker 1: you can So is it better to leave it up
Speaker 1: to chance? Is it better to make determinations? And if
Speaker 1: it's better to make determinations, how far should that go?
Speaker 1: I believe there was a court case relatively recently in
Speaker 1: the UK where UM, one of the associations of the deaf,
Speaker 1: got together and and protested a bill that had gone
Speaker 1: through the government that said that UM, certain kinds of
Speaker 1: genetic testing and certain kinds of genetic selection are okay, like,
Speaker 1: for example, testing to to make sure that your child
Speaker 1: is of hearing. And they were like, why can't deaf
Speaker 1: parents choose to have a deaf child? Well, and and
Speaker 1: to be fair, I mean, the deaf culture is a culture.
Speaker 1: There is there is an entire deaf community, and anyone
Speaker 1: who has not ever interacted with anyone who actually is
Speaker 1: part of the deaf community. Just because your deaf does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean you are in the deaf community, right,
Speaker 1: But they have a very strong sense of identity and
Speaker 1: they you know, that's a that's part of their culture.
Speaker 1: It's something that they value, and to discount it is
Speaker 1: pretty tough. I mean, that's kind of that's that raises
Speaker 1: some pretty tough questions. Yeah, if you have your own language,
Speaker 1: you've definitely got something going on. Oh yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: and you know, and at a certain point, who is
Speaker 1: you know, what what kind of lawmaking bodies are allowed
Speaker 1: to legislate that, legislate that? And at what point is
Speaker 1: it bad for people to decide? At what point? At
Speaker 1: what point do you have a government decide what it
Speaker 1: is that makes a person and then says anything that
Speaker 1: doesn't fit this definition isn't a person. Therefore they don't
Speaker 1: get getting into terrifying Third Reich style. Yeah, right, Well,
Speaker 1: what I was going to say is that all this
Speaker 1: makes me feel creepy. In one reason is that at
Speaker 1: the at the far end of the scale, we've all
Speaker 1: decided that eugenics is bad. Yes, but uh so, how
Speaker 1: close is this to eugenics? That's a good question. And
Speaker 1: I think one thing we can be thankful for right
Speaker 1: now is that we've got plenty of time to ask
Speaker 1: those questions. And to come to some conclusions. Obviously, we
Speaker 1: can't draw any right now, or at least I'm not
Speaker 1: prepared to. This is a complicated issue that I think
Speaker 1: about that you know, we're so far away right now
Speaker 1: technologically speaking and medically speaking, that we've got time to
Speaker 1: have these discussions. And just to be clear, we are
Speaker 1: in these ethical considerations. We're talking about voluntary changes. We're
Speaker 1: not talking about stuff you would need to save your
Speaker 1: life or or whatever the case might be secure deadly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're talking about things like being able to determine if
Speaker 1: your kid is going to uh have a genetic predisposition
Speaker 1: to being athletic, that sort of stuff, or you know,
Speaker 1: even more subtle changes in or or influence. This isn't
Speaker 1: a child's genetic makeup. So again, we're not really there
Speaker 1: at this point, but it is the conversations that are
Speaker 1: interesting and worth having absolutely, yeah, and and and working
Speaker 1: towards a point where we can use gene therapy to
Speaker 1: help cure diseases without also causing cancer on the side,
Speaker 1: that would be good. Yeah yeah yeah. So um, all right, well, anyway,
Speaker 1: that kind of wraps up our our conversation. We're probably
Speaker 1: gonna talk a lot more about x men as soon
Speaker 1: as we sign off here um and possibly then move
Speaker 1: on to other pantheons within the Marvel universe. Uh, we'll see.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, I suggest for all of you
Speaker 1: guys out there listening, if you want to be involved
Speaker 1: in our conversation, go to FW thinking dot com. That's
Speaker 1: the website where we've got everything, the podcasts, the blog post,
Speaker 1: the video series, links to other articles that talk about
Speaker 1: the same sort of concepts that we're talking about here
Speaker 1: to go into greater detail. We're gonna find a lot
Speaker 1: of awesome information there and we look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you. We will talk to again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this topic and the future of technology, visit
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking dot Com. Problem brought to you by Toyota.
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