The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This much is undeniably true: we’ve thrown open the black box of the cell. To snap the lid shut now might be to foreclose the possibility of a magnificent future. To keep it jammed open without guidelines and rules would be to assume that we’ve reached some tacit global agreement about what is permissible and impermissible in the manipulation of human reproduction and development—which, assuredly, we have not. We used to think about the fundamental features of our cells as our destiny, manifest. We are now beginning to treat these properties as legitimate arenas of scientific annexation—manifest destiny. These debates—the manipulation of reproduction and development, or of embryos to change their genes—are ricocheting around the globe as I write this (and I wrote extensively about the promises as well as the perils of these technologies in The Gene). The arguments won’t be resolved easily, for they impinge not just on the fundamental features of cells, but also on the fundamental features of humans. The only way to find a reasonable answer, or even a compromise, lies in a continuous engagement with evolving debate about the limits of scientific intervention, and the advancing front of cellular technologies. Every human is a stakeholder in this debate. It involves the one, the many, and the “many many.”