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- "Transmetropolitan" by Warren Ellis

"Transmetropolitan", a graphic narrative series (comic) published by DC/Vertigo, depicts a technologically insane future where present-day consumer neuroses, freedom of choice and political depredations have reached their terrible logical conclusion.

Forget about fashion for making a statement about who you are. In "Transmetropolitan" people take on designer genes instead of ... well, designer jeans.

Old puns aside, we see "transients": pseudo-humans who have opted to splice in a little alien genome to their own in order to exercise their "right to change species" (for recreational or emotional reasons). Then we have the "downloaded": people who chose to forsake their mortal bodies for a consciousness transfer to a cloud of microscopic computer mechanisms (a concept borrowed from Austrian writer Hans Moravec's "Mind Children"). The "revivals": resurrected from cryogenic suspension into a future that they cannot understand and does not want them.

In the City of Transmetropolitan a "new religion is being created every second" as its denizens attempt to explore the human condition. Within this monthly strip writer Warren Ellis ([#1] www.warrenellis.com[/#] ) explores and satirises our present day foibles and dilemmas. And in the very best tradition of science-fiction (e.g. Verne, Clarke, Huxley) it also hints at what the future may bring. Like the submarine, space travel and Stalinism, the future often comes sooner than we think.

Gene horizon

Yesterday a "working draft" of the international publicly funded US$3 billion Human Genome Project was officially announced. The project aims to comprehensively catalogue the genetic blueprint of humankind and make the findings freely available. It offers unprecedented opportunities for understanding our complex biology, medical breakthroughs and big business.

What's a genome? According to the [#2] US Human Genome Project[/#] : "A genome is all the DNA in an organism, including its genes. Genes carry information for making all the proteins required by all organisms. These proteins determine, among other things, how the organism looks, how well its body metabolises food or fights infection, and sometimes even how it behaves."

In short the human genome contains all the "hard data" for our physical make-up and lays the foundations for our mental capacities too. A mapped-out genome will throw open the doors to a frenzy of research.

This is not just a landmark scientific discovery, but a potent psychological one. It has become a staple of our language to refer to human traits as being "in our genes". We receive regular reports of this or that gene responsible for "X" being discovered. And with each discovery we can breathe a little easier as cause is matched to effect. This is not without controversy as the furore over the controversial "discovery" of genes for criminality or homosexuality has indicated.

Indeed it seems that the each finding opens up greater social challenges and raises questions about the hidden bias within all scientific research.

Medical remedies will certainly be galvanised by the cataloguing efforts of the Human Genome Project. Gene therapy targets DNA-specific disorders such as cystic fibrosis, which is relatively uncommon in Asians, but prevalent in the west where it is something of a poster child for genetics.

But drug patents only last so long, the window for returns on capital invested is small and legions of generic manufacturers await to banalise new discoveries.

Pharmaceutical companies will inevitably balance their "humanitarian" products with more lucrative cousins boasting greater commercial appeal. Enter "lifestyle drugs" such as Prozac, Valium and Viagra. Modify your mood, your exhaustion, your appeal.

Although Viagra was coyly marketed as a remedy for flaccidity, we all know of more eyebrow raising "non-medical" uses. Valium has become a subsidy for unbalanced fatigue-ridden lifestyles, and long-time fans of the Simpson's may recall Homer happily chomping on Prozac cookie dough for relief.

When product development is intensely subject to popular demand, and executive decisions are "dictated" by the market, we may begin to see products emerge that challenge both our senses and sensibilities.

Fashionable genes

In Japan there is a lucrative market for cosmetic surgery, particularly altering eyes to make them larger, more rounded (more western?) and purple! Some segments of the Japanese youth seem bent on transforming themselves into Manga dolls.

The modern globalised consumer culture thrives on the cult of youth. Teenagers form one of the biggest spending groups on transitory, disposable products such as fashion, food, music and movies. It thrives on the politics of identity, posture, fame, sexuality and (an ultimately compliant) rebellion.

It consumes and regurgitates its own culture ("Pop will eat itself") amply demonstrated by legions of identically clad fans united by the medium of the T-shirt. Youths discriminate friends, peers and parents on lines of taste and cool. One is encouraged to accumulate as coherent a set of fetishes as possible and "be" them.

It will not be a massive leap for marketing departments in biotechnology companies to make customised genetic alteration a commercial reality. (I hope that I shall not be held responsible for that idea.)

Jeans on the behind, genes on the mind

This is a market that may show no limits (6 billion potential customers at least). We may make our bodies perfect, but will they ever match the image of desire in our minds?

Scientific discoveries always challenge our values and the new genetics will certainly be no exception. The scenarios sketched out in "Transmetropolitan", "Brave New World", the tale of Icarus and other cautionary works are compelling because they describe the collision of our lofty aspirations with our human foibles, warts and all.

Commentators have already pointed out the dangers of a new eugenics (noteworthy in our ethnically polarised post-Cold War geopolitics), biochemical elitism (You'd like your children smart, tall, or both, tuan?), biological warfare and wholesale genetic modification of flora and fauna. But, pundits have also pointed out holy grails such as the elimination of hereditary diseases, cancers, plagues and the like.

"New

genes? Your credit card, please."

Anyone who has ever been close to a sufferer of a disability or illness with genetic roots will hardly begrudge worthy medical efforts, but the global fiasco over genetically modified crops has demonstrated ample cause for worry when the power of the gene is placed in the hands of private commercial interests.

Amory Lovins, author of the acclaimed "Factor Four" and "Natural Capitalism", has warned that the genetic modification of nature is cause for worry as this "new botany aligns the development of plants with their economic, not evolutionary, success". Nature is merely "a set of limits to be evaded when inconvenient". ("[#3] The Tale of Two Botanies[/#] ").

Similar questions begin to be raised with the banalisation of human genetic modification. When will the rich (for it is they who will be first) encounter "inconvenient limits" and turn to the lab? What will this do to our notions of a meritocracy? It will surely contribute little to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

We reside in a culture where humans are groomed for economic success over any evolutionary or spiritual reason. It could become a genetic "arms race" to be the fittest, fastest and smartest. Homo economicus would signify a truly physical evolution, not just a social one.

In "Remaking Eden", Princeton university biologist Lee Silver envisioned a world 350 years from now where pressure from wealthy parents has pushed genetic and cloning technology to the point where society is stratified into 10 percent "gene-enriched" and 90 percent "naturals". This paves the way for a hereditary class of "genetic aristocrats" who form an entirely different species to the "naturals".

Finding the human in the posthuman

The genetically liberated citizens of "Transmetropolitan" are still a human lot despite their appearance and biology. They still love, fear and exult. They are still terrorised by abuses of power, failures of politics, injustice, corruption and the inequities of class struggles.

Transforming our genetic structure may "solve" many of our biological problems and some psychological ones, but we will still struggle to find meaning in our lives. The human spirit is only transformed for the better through experience tempered with compassion and wisdom. Science cannot alter that, neither can wealth nor class. How indeed will our spiritual systems and great religions adapt to this?

So while investors and technophiles look forward to the post-human age of frontier biology as a brave new world of expansion, others worry over the unpredictable consequences of such discoveries. It's a feeling of being on the edge of history, and a fine time to reflect on what it means to be human.

How wonderful, how frightening.

"Transmetropolitan" by Warren Ellis is published by DC/Vertigo. See [#4] www.transmetropolitan.com[/#] A Newsweek report on the Human Genome Project can be found at: [#5] http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/st/a18147-2000apr2.htm[/#] An interactive [#6] guide[/#] to the Human Genome Project (requires Flash).

YIN SHAO LOONG has worked on gene therapy research in the past. A follow-up article will examine the views of Malaysia's major religions and local scientists on bioethics.