Brave New Millennium - Part I

The following article is based on a series of pieces that recently appeared in my Depression and Bipolar Weekly:

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. By as early as 2003, by one prediction, we will have 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 manic depression. In a perfect world, there would be no place for these genetic rogues. Remember

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