Dr. Aled Edwards
Jennifer Leonard: The show title, ReGenesis, implies this notion of science as our salvation or self-destruction. What do you think?
Dr. Aled Edwards: Every kind of invention or new way of thinking has the potential to do both, you’re right. But, to be honest, I do science because I’m a curious little kid. Curiosity spurs invention. This happens in the arts too. You wouldn’t ask a writer to do War and Peace all over again, right? And going back to the notion of salvation or self-destruction, you wouldn’t want a writer not to have the liberty to write an important text, even if its effects could be disastrous, as with Mein Kempf. Writers want to create. Scientists want to invent. We just have to continue to find ways to manage the effects and consequences of our creations.
JL: Marshall McLuhan is famous for saying that art is often the realm in which one gets the first view of what is yet to be played out elsewhere. Do you think we should be paying attention to artistic practices – like Biotech Hobbyist and Critical Art Ensemble – that explore issues of biotechnology?
AE: Sure. But the funny thing is, I’ve never heard of them! And I bet if I asked one hundred people in the lab, none would have heard of them. Maybe we should have?
JL: It’s interesting that the scientists themselves…
AE: Not just the scientists, the Moms and Dads of hockey teams out there too, I bet!
JL: Touché. It’s fringe.
AE: Well, biotech is fringe. So many people are afraid to think about things in this world of instant gratification. With art and science, you have to think. Otherwise, you just listen to the canned messages, which are usually fearful ones.
JL: As with the “anthrax,” “West Nile,” and “bio-terror” sound bytes in the news. How real are these threats?
AE: They’re real, but… how do I put this…? Okay, the biology part is scary. The delivery of the biology, however, is virtually impossible. It’s very difficult to actually get entire populations infected. There are cases with carrier viruses, as with patient O of the AIDS virus – chronic diseases are certainly more of a concern – Hepatitis C, HIV – but these get passed on as a result of natural selection.
JL: ReGenesis seeks to go beyond the headlines, to delve deeper into science. What are your hopes with the show?
AE: That people will start talking about the issues. And that kids will maybe think it’s not too uncool to be a scientist.
JL: Do your kids think you’re not too uncool?
AE: I tell ya, you go much higher on the dad-o-meter if you do something with TV.
JL: I’m sure their reality is one where the work you do as a genetic scientist is commonplace. With a longer perspective, say, back to the time when Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, it was the basis of sci-fi narratives.
AE: True. Biotech is “normal” for my kids, in particular, as my wife and I are both scientists.
JL: Alvin Toffler wrote in The Third Wave that since the unraveling of DNA we’ve become the designers of evolution. Do you agree?
AE: If designing life means altering or selecting genetic code to make people less prone to disease, then yes, I agree. It’s all starting to happen now. Stem cell science, for example, is so cool because it explores the question, “How does an organism develop? We really want to know, so it ain’t going to stop. There’s no doubt in my mind that one day soon we’ll have banks of extra liver and kidney tissue.
JL: How much of the ethical debates going on in the show echo the kind of discussions you’re having with your network of peers around the world?
AE: None. We very rarely devote more than a single-digit percent of our time to ethical issues. That’s the way science is structured. It’s a very competitive environment. As a young scientist, you ask, “Who can invent the best?” Ethical debates happen among those who enjoy thinking about science. Scientists simply invent.
JL: In your lab, are you the first to see up close the delicate beauty of a protein?
AE: Not anymore. I’m far more interested in the process of getting the job done as opposed to individual results. The Human Genome became available three years ago and it set us a very clear task: now we’ve got to figure it out. Other scientists weren’t as quick as I was to get rid of the old way of thinking, which is to worry about one protein and study it to anal-retentive detail. I say, “Look, there are 30,000 of them. Get over it. Let’s just get them all done and then we can go back and look at them deeply.”
JL: The way you were just gazing into that coffee lid, to illustrate the old scientific approach, reminds me of Narcissus, who was so mesmerized by the discovery of his reflection that he wasn’t able to see what was happening around him.
AE: Exactly! And that used to be me, too. Then one day I said, “Shit, where can I make the largest impact in science? Continuing to study a single protein or collecting them all in one place first?” It’s much more elegant to ponder the cup, to hypothesize about the lid. That’s how we’re all trained. That’s how the scientific process works. I got over it. So I’m a cup collector. So to speak.
JL: As your collection grows, aren’t you figuring out ways to…
AE: Do it faster?
JL: … process hundreds of proteins at a time?
AE: Yeah, yeah. But that’s more of a process-organization-engineering kind of trick as opposed to a scientific trick. Which is why I spend my time thinking about lab lighting and how people work with one another. That’s the key – and the reason we’ve been among the most, if not the most, successful group. We have guys in the lab who are just excellent people – “people” people. The lab managers make it a happy place to work, so our team members work their “you know what’s” off.