Perfect People

  The nurse, Yvonne, told her the best thing to do if she felt sick was to look at a fixed point. So she stared ahead now, then glanced up for a moment at a gull that seemed to be drifting through the air above them.

  ‘Dr Dettore—’

  ‘Leo,’ he said. ‘Please, call me Leo.’

  ‘OK. Leo.’ She hesitated for a moment, gathering her thoughts and her courage. ‘Leo – why is it that you are so unpopular with the press and with so many of your fellow scientists? That recent piece in Time was pretty harsh, I thought.’

  ‘Are you familiar with the teachings of Chuang Tze, Naomi?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Chuang Tze wrote, What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.’

  ‘We see the caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly as a transition of great beauty, darling,’ John said. ‘But to the caterpillar it’s a traumatic experience – it thinks it is dying.’

  Dettore smiled. ‘In the old days either politicians or the Pope threw scientists in jail if they didn’t like what they were doing. A little pillorying from the press is OK, I can handle that. The question I haven’t asked you both yet is: why are you doing this? I could just knock out the bad gene group for Dreyens-Schlemmer disease and your next child would be fine. Why do you folks want to take over from nature and design other advantages into your child?’

  ‘We only want to have the bad stuff taken out,’ Naomi said. ‘As you will understand, the pain never goes away. We couldn’t go through it again.’

  ‘It is very simple,’ John said. ‘Naomi and I are not wealthy; nor do we have high opinions of ourselves. We don’t think we are Dr and Mrs Beautiful or Dr and Mrs Genius, we’re people who feel we owe it to our child to do the best we can for him – or her.’ He glanced at Naomi and after a moment’s hesitation she nodded.

  Looking back at Dettore, he continued, ‘You are proof that the genie is out of the bottle. You’re providing this service and there will soon be other clinics, too. We don’t want our child developing cancer or diabetes or schizophrenia – or anything else Naomi and I have family histories of. We don’t want him or her saying to us in forty years’ time that I was a scientist, I knew what was possible, that we had the opportunity to give this child a really fabulous chance in life and we didn’t take it because we were too mean to spend the money.’

  Dettore smiled. ‘I have a waiting list that’s building up so fast, it’s now running at three years. I can’t give you any names, but several of the most influential people in America have been to this clinic. Some folks are jealous, some are scared because they don’t understand. The world is changing and people don’t like change. Not many people can even see too far ahead. A good chess player can see five, maybe ten moves ahead. But how far do most people’s visions extend? We’re not very good as a species at looking into the future. It’s much easier to look back at the past. We can edit out the bits we don’t like, reinvent ourselves. But there’s nothing about the future we can edit or reinvent. Most people are prisoners of the future just as much as they are prisoners of their genes. Only the people who come to my clinic know they can change it.’

  Naomi walked over to the sofa and sat back down, absorbing what he was saying. She felt a small pang of hunger, which was a good sign. Starting to feel better. ‘This fifty per cent chance of rejection – if that happens, how soon before we can try again? Or if I miscarry later?’

  ‘Six months – the body needs that length of time to get strong again after the drugs we’ve given.’

  ‘And what we have paid – that allows us three attempts – three visits here? And beyond that we’d have to pay over again?’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that.’ Dettore smiled.

  ‘One thing we haven’t asked you about,’ Naomi said, ‘are any possible side effects for our child.’

  Dettore frowned. ‘Side effects?’

  ‘There’s always a trade-off in life,’ she said. ‘What you do with the genes – are there any negative effects as a result?’

  He hesitated; the tiniest flicker of doubt seemed to cross his face, like the shadow of a passing bird. ‘The only thing that’s a negative, if you could call it that, is your child will have accelerated growth and maturity. He or she will grow up faster than other kids, mentally and physically.’

  ‘A lot faster?’

  Dettore shook his head. ‘But it will be significant.’

  ‘Can you tell me a little bit to set Naomi’s – and my own mind – at rest about the legality of what we are doing?’ John asked. ‘We know that it’s fine here, because this ship is not subject to United States federal law – but what about when we return?’

  ‘The regulations are changing all the time, as different countries try to get their heads around the whole subject, and scientific and religious arguments about the ethics vary. That’s why I’m running this offshore and will stay offshore until the dust settles. You are not breaking any law by being here and conceiving your child here.’

  ‘And we can go back to the US freely?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘You can go anywhere in the world freely,’ Dettore said. ‘But my strong advice would be to keep quiet about it and avoid getting embroiled in controversy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, looking up once more at the list of her bad genes on the screen on the wall. One tiny egg contained about twenty thousand genes but that only made up a very small part of the total DNA. The rest? It used to be called junk DNA but it was now known that most of it seemed to play a role in how these twenty thousand genes get expressed. Some of it might even make you the person that you were. Every human cell contained clusters of genes – for the colour of your eyes, for the length of your arms, for the speed at which you learned things, for diseases that would kill you.

  And for the way that you behaved?

  Smiling suddenly, feeling a need to lighten things up a little, she said, ‘Tell me, Dr Dett— er, Leo,’ she said. ‘On this list, with all the boxes that you want us to read through’ – and now she looked pointedly at John – ‘is there a tidiness gene?’

  6

  Naomi’s diary

  I’ve only caught a glimpse of two other passengers, a man and a woman – he looks a bit like a younger George Clooney and she looks like Angelina Jolie – one of those naturally beautiful women who always make me feel so damned inferior; what is it about them? John asked Dr Dettore how many other couples – patients – are here on this ship, and he wouldn’t say. Dr Dettore says he cannot talk about anyone else – total patient confidentiality. But I’m curious. So is John.

  Apparently everyone is now on board this strange cruise, and we’re heading south towards the Caribbean, to warm weather and a couple of nights alongside a quay in Cuba. Dr Dettore says Cuba isn’t a signatory to any of the human embryo treaties, so it is not a problem to go there. He also says John will be able to get a good cellphone signal there. But we won’t be able to go ashore, which is a shame. I’d like to have seen a little of Cuba.

  Finally ate properly tonight, some salad and fish. John had urgent emails that couldn’t wait, so he used the satellite phone – nine minutes – $81! I left him working on them and went for a walk up on deck – too blowy – then down below. Really eerie – just endless long, narrow, silent corridors with doors along them. It could be a ghost ship, sometimes. Just carrying us away. I needed the walk to try to clear my head. All the concentration today. All these boxes, all these gene groups – clusters – you can have removed, or enhanced if you want – all you have to do is put a tick. The enormity of choices and decisions is making me realize what a lottery human life is. Poor little Halley got a shitty deal.

  It is going to be very different for the new baby. Our first choice is the sex. We’ve told Dr Dettore we want a boy, and it may sound silly at this stage, but John and I have been discussing names. Luke is our favourite. We haven’t fully decided on that name, but John is keen and it’s growing on me. Luke. Close to Luck. br />
  He’s going to be lucky for us.

  7

  ‘There is a whole science of how metabolism, energetics and sleep are all integrated by circadian rhythm, and this has a profound effect on children’s success in life, Naomi,’ Leo Dettore said. ‘Have you ever wondered how, for example, company CEOs and senior politicians are only able to get through their workload because they can survive on less sleep than most of us? What we’re looking at on the list now is the group of genes responsible for our circadian rhythms. We have the capability to reconfigure their architecture in what are called “pacemaker neurons” that keep the body as a whole in sync. By fine-turning these genes, we can reduce the risk of heart disease, fat accumulation, inflammation, diabetes and even reduce the need for sleep to just two hours a night.’

  Naomi looked down at the list. There were ticks in the boxes against twelve of the two hundred or so of the options they’d covered so far. This was their second morning on the ship, and their third session with Dr Dettore. The sea was calm and her seasickness had all but gone. Today she was able to concentrate better.

  It was hot outside, but the air conditioning in this office seemed to be turned up higher than yesterday, and wearing just a light cotton top over her jeans today, Naomi felt cold. Her discomfort was increased by a steady dull ache in her right thigh where, earlier this morning, the nurse had given her the first of fifteen daily fertility-booster injections with a needle that looked like it had been designed to anaesthetize elephants.

  ‘A baby who only sleeps two hours a night would be a nightmare,’ she said. ‘You’ve had children – surely you—?’

  Dettore, beside her on the sofa, raised a hand. ‘Absolutely! That would be a total nightmare, Naomi, I totally agree. But this would not be a problem you’d have to worry about as a parent. Your child would have normal sleep patterns until mid-teens, then it would be a gradual process from around fifteen years old until eighteen. His whole sleep system would start benefiting him at the crucial period of his studies, enabling him to hit the real world with maximum advantage over his peers.’

  Naomi glanced around the stateroom for some moments, thinking, toying with her watch band. Ten to eleven. At the rate they were progressing it was going to take them months to work all the way through the list. ‘Isn’t it dangerous to tamper with people’s sleeping rhythms? How can you be sure that you’re not going to cause him psychological problems?’ she asked.

  ‘Sleep deprivation can lead to psychological problems, sure, Naomi. This is different – two hours’ sleep for your son would be the equivalent of eight for anyone else. Now, if you do the calculations, say against someone who routinely needs eight hours’ sleep, over a normal human lifespan you will effectively be gaining your son an extra fifteen years of conscious existence. That’s quite a gift for a parent to give a child. Think how much more he would be able to read, learn, accomplish.’

  Naomi glanced at John but was unable to glean anything from his expression. Then she turned back to the geneticist. ‘Nothing we’ve ticked so far will make him a freak. We’ve taken decisions about his height in the hope he will be six foot tall like John, rather than a shortie like me, because for a man there are definite advantages in being tall. Other than that, all we’ve done is to try to eliminate the horrible disease genes. We’re not interested in designing the shape of his nose or the colour of his eyes or his hair. We’re happy to leave things like that to chance.’

  John, making a note on his BlackBerry memo pad, nodded.

  Dettore topped up his glass of mineral water. ‘Park the sleep issue for now – we’ll come back to it later. We’ll move on to the next group on the list – these relate to the clusters of muscular, skeletal and neural genes that will affect his athletic abilities. We can redesign some of these groups to enhance your son’s hand-eye coordination. That will help him at sports like tennis, squash, baseball and golf.’

  John turned to Naomi. ‘I think that’s interesting. It’s not something that could do him any harm.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not comfortable about that at all. Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Neither of us are particularly good at sport,’ John said. ‘Why not give him a little help? It would be like coaching him before he’s born.’

  ‘Before he’s conceived,’ she corrected him, tartly. ‘I’ll tell you what my problem is: if we make him an absolute whizz at these sports, he could end up so much better than all his friends that he won’t have anyone to play with. I’m not interested in creating some sporting superman – I just want my son to be healthy and normal.’

  After some moments John conceded, ‘You have a point, I hadn’t seen it that way.’

  She pressed her hands together partly for warmth and partly from nerves. ‘Now,’ she said to the geneticist, ‘the next group we come to does interest me – us. John and I read up all the literature you gave us on this last night. All the genes relating to the body’s energy levels?’

  John said, ‘You’re able to enhance oxygen conversion efficiency, and to modify the metabolic pattern? What this means, if we’re understanding it correctly, is that our son would be able to convert more energy from less food than normal people, and go longer on this food?’

  ‘Essentially, yes,’ Dettore said. ‘Better maximization of the nutrients, more efficient conversion of starches, sugars, proteins, better storage and release mechanisms, more elegant insulin controls but without any additional appetite.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘These are good things – they’re going to mean he stays in shape easily and he won’t have weight problems.’ She was silent for a moment and then she said, ‘I’m comfortable about these in a way that I’m not about tampering with his sleep patterns.’

  John leaned forward and poured himself some more coffee from the metal pot on the table, grinning. ‘You sleep too much, darling.’

  ‘Rubbish! I need my sleep.’

  ‘Exactly my point. If you’re not woken, you can easily sleep nine hours, even ten. Dr Dettore is right in one sense – it wastes so much of your life.’

  ‘I like my sleep!’

  ‘And if your genes were programmed so that you only needed two hours, darling, you’d like those hours of sleep just as much.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Then she looked away, out of the window. There was a container ship in the distance, sitting high on the horizon, looking so elevated it might have been mounted on a plinth. ‘You have to understand where I’m coming from in my own mind in all of this, Dr – er – Leo. I just want my child to be free of any risk of the disease that killed our son. It’s great that you can also eliminate the other bad genes John and I are carrying, for prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, depression, diabetes. I want to give our child advantages in life, sure, what parent wouldn’t, but I don’t want him to be too different from other human beings, do you understand that? I don’t want him to be a freak.’

  Dettore sat upright, folded his arms and rocked back and forward a few times, like a big child himself. ‘Naomi, I hear what you’re saying. You want your kid to be just a regular guy with corners of talent and occasional brilliance, right?’

  ‘I – I suppose, yes. Exactly.’

  ‘I’d go along with that, except there is one thing you have to take into account. You have to compare a model of the world today, with a model of what the world will be like when your son becomes an adult. You’re twenty-eight years old, and the world is not substantially different to when you were a little girl. But, in twenty-eight years’ time?’ He opened his arms expansively. ‘I’m telling you that in twenty-eight years’ time the world will be different. There will be a genetic underclass that will create a divide bigger than you can imagine. You compare the knowledge, skills, advantages you have right now over some poor young woman your age brought up in the Third World, working on a paddy field in China, or maybe in the bush in Angola.’

  Dettore stood up, went over to his desk and tapped his computer keyboard for some mo
ments. A map of the world appeared on the large wall screen opposite them. There were some pink blotches, but mostly the countries were in white.

  ‘There are seven billion people in the world. Do you know how many of them can read or write?’ He looked at John, then Naomi.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘If I tell you that twenty-three per cent of adults in the United States, the most technologically advanced nation in the world, are illiterate, does that give you any clues? Forty-four million who cannot read in the United States, for heaven’s sakes! It’s less than a billion in the whole world who can. Less than twenty per cent. Just those pink areas on the map. The average rural dweller in the Third World receives less information in his or her entire lifetime than is contained in one issue of the LA Times.’

  A phone rang; he glanced down at it, then ignored it and after a few moments it stopped. ‘Naomi,’ he said gently, ‘you may not be comfortable with this fact, but you are already a member of a master-race. I don’t think you’d want to go trade places with too many other people on this planet. I don’t think you’d want your child to be brought up on the Russian steppes, or in a Himalayan tea plantation, or some settlement out in the Gobi Desert. Am I right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you’d be prepared to take the risk that your son ends up in a kind of intellectual Third World?’

  She looked at him and said nothing.

  ‘These are early days,’ Dettore said. ‘In thirty years’ time, all children from families or nations that can afford it are going to be genetically enhanced. You see the options you have on that list we’re working through? At the moment they are just options, but when you start living in a world where every expectant mother is ticking her way through that same list, are you going to leave all the boxes blank? No way! Not unless you want to have a totally disadvantaged kid – one who won’t be able to keep up or compete in the world.’