HUMAN GENOME

INTRODUCTION

JBS Haldane, in his prophetic essay "Daedalus, or Science and Future" (1924) is the first man who foresees Future societies in which biologists would invent a new kind of algae in order to solve hunger in the world; and also in those societies "ectogenesy" would be a common practice. He imagines "ecto-genetic" children grown up and fed in artificial wombs (incubators) and modified by eu-genetic selection. In 1924 nobody knew anything about the biochemistry of genes. He also raises the question that any "biological invention" would be rejected as a "perversion", but they would be accepted gradually (progressively) and it would also be shocking the old ways of behaving and difficult to believe that those ways of behaving were clearly upheld.

Haldane arose a question that appeared in a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley later (1932).

In Brave New World human beings are born and developed putting embryos into mechanical wombs. Giving more oxygen to some embryos and hurting others deliberately they can obtain people with different levels of intelligence. They follow clonation to produce more people.

After being born every breed (race) suffers a brainwashing to accept their own fate (destiny) and value themselves more than other races. When they become adults, with the use of drugs they get under control. "Soma" of the drug of euphoria guarantees happiness to everybody. This way they obtain "alpha", "beta", "gamma", "epsilon".

Nearly 70 years after the edition of Brave New World we have progressed a great deal (if we can call that progress). Nowadays it is still not possible to grow up embryos in artificial wombs, but test tube fertilisation in a mother's womb or in a hired mother's womb has become a quite common practice (deed). Scientists believe that human beings will be created in laboratories in twenty years.

Genetic revolution has been one of the most spectacular revolutions during the 20^th century, and it will be highly developed during 2001. On June 26^th, private and state firms make public (disclose) that the first draft about human "genome" has been finished. What do scientists really know up to now? Finishing the 1^st draft about human "genome" has led us towards "post-genomic" period.

Discovering more about human "genome" it's only the beginning. The most difficult has yet to come: we have to find out genes within "genome", decode "proteoma" and be able to know which function every gene has.

Genetic engineering, altogether with decoding the "human genome" have led us towards a new period. Where can the limits be set up? (Which are the limits?).

That nightmare, as many people say about Aldous Huxley Brave New World, is already here, future is here. News like the clonation of Dolly the sheep, techniques of genetic engineering applied to manipulation of food, "crazy" cows, xeno-transplanting? Shock us every day. Reality overcomes fiction.

The subject Scientific news and science fiction aims to involve pupils in the main scientific developments, those which have a real incidence in our world, those which shock us, worry us or give us hope.

We think it is really important for pupils to be informed, to discuss and have an opinion about the main scientific and technological discoveries they have to be critical and value or balance all the good and bad things about those discoveries. On the whole biotechnological and scientific development make us wonder about many subjects, which nowadays it is difficult to have an answer for tall those questions.

Our descendants and we will have to look after the good performance of those new discoveries. We hope we will be able to use those new discoveries well for our own sake and for nature sake.

AIMS

The aims of Scientific News and Science fiction are:

1. Let pupils be informed about present great scientific and biotechnological discoveries and developments of those discoveries.

2. Make pupils be interested and develop skills for arguing, keeping a critical attitude and being able to develop their own opinion about recent scientific news, and the application of those discoveries within the fields of feeding, chemists, medicine, etc.

3. Make pupils become aware of the responsibility we all have in relation to any discovery and its application. We all have to look after the correct application of those discoveries in order to protect humanity and preserve the planet.

METHODOLOGY

1. Each lesson starts reading a tale or seeing a science fiction film, which deals with the subject to be studied afterwards. After that there is a discussion about the tale or film.

2. The teacher explains the main ideas about each subject.

3. Pupils have to look for and bring news from TV, magazines, newspapers, dealing with the subject.

4. Some activities are put into practice in the biology lab if the subject dealt allows.

5. Pupils have to present a debate: Pupils are distributed into different groups for example, genetic engineers or scientists, multinationals, ORG or people who are critical, journalists. That makes the debate more interesting and stimulating. Each group has enough information in order to support their ideas. Besides every group-continues looking for more information about that subject with the help of Internet or other sources of information such as magazines.

6. Debate session. Journalists introduce the subject of that day and the people representing the different options to be supported. Then each group takes their turn to speak. Each group explains their ideas and opinions.

7. Meanwhile one group is explaining their theory, to write down a question or any doubt they have.

8. When all groups have explained their ideas, journalists act as moderators of the debate. So they are in charge of saying whose turn it is and they also ask their own questions.

9. When the debate is over, journalists must summarise the main ideas and conclusions.

10. Each group must summarise their own ideas, translate them into English so that other countries which are interested in the project could know what is going on.

11. After each subject (theme) there is a self-testing sheet.

SYLLABUS (INDEX)

1. Human Genome.

2. Biotechnology. Clonation. Will human beings be clonated in the future?

3. Genetic engineering.

4. Prions? "Crazy" Cows.

5. Transplantation? Xeno-transplantation. Cell culture "Superhuman".

1. Human Genome.