RNAi: THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE 2006 NOBEL AWARD IN MEDICINE

Blocking individual genes on demand: that is the meaning of this year’s Nobel Prize to Drs. Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello. Just imagine being able to choose a particular gene and block its expression – genes for cancers, degenerative diseases (Parkinson’s and Huntington’s), inherited anomalies (like cystic fibrous), and infections (like influenza and HIV) and so forth. Initially reported only eight years ago from studies done on the lowly roundworm, Caenorabditis elegans, these molecules are designed to operate not on the DNA-coded gene itself but on the messenger RNAs they produce – to destroy or inactivate the message. The result is that a given protein is not produced, and the gene is functionally silenced. This mechanism explains the strange results years earlier on petunia pigmentation when a double-stranded RNA was inserted into its cells and, instead of producing deeper color, caused less and variegated pigmentation. Basic, new human-genetics understanding was discovered from research on petunias and a roundworm!

This wonderful new tool for research is leading to important studies of gene action and opening possibilities for many new therapeutics. The importance of the discovery is indicated by the rapidity of the methods being adopted for wide-spread research and development, the short time from discovery to the award, and the honored scientists being younger than usual.

WHAT IS SO INTERESTING FROM APPLIED THEOLOGY VIEWPOINTS?

First, many religious people feel that humans are so very different from other forms of life because God created humans in the image of God. Scientists have no difficulty in thinking about basic similarities between petunia, roundworm, and human cells; much of their research is based on such a mind set. Creationists, in whatever form they present themselves, have to swallow hard over such ideas and are pushed to change their concepts of God. Thinking in terms of evolution keeps getting stronger and more useful with each new scientific discovery.

Second, we have a lot of Americans who disdain science, choosing instead religious faith in God being in control of every thing and every one all the time – every miniscule aspect of life processes, for example. Carried to its extreme and coupled with the presumed approach of the Battle of Armageddon and the second coming of Christ, there aren’t incentives to think far into the future, be proactive about environmental problems and global warming, and work hard to conquer diseases. This anti-science bias puts science and theology in unnecessary opposition.

Third, this negative attitude toward science has been imposed on numerous policies of the Bush administration. The result is a series of off-the-wall decisions being imposed on the American public and promoted in international politics in an effort to pander to radical fundamentalists. (For a short treatment of this subject, see Jimmy Carter’s, OUR ENDANGERED VALUES; for a more in-depth study, see Kevin Phillips’, AMERICAN THEOCRACY.)

Clearly, we need to get much more comfortable with modifying our theological positions to make them realistic in terms of the intellectual advances that keep coming from human endeavors. If that means changing and re-interpreting Biblical passages, so be it. Similarly Muslim terrorists will some day have to admit that Western civilization dominates the world intellectually and that their hope to change that established position is beyond their weak powers.

FAILURE TO CHANGE IS FAILURE TO LIVE WITH REALITY.