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  Feb. 16, 2001

Sloterdijk Meets Venter

By Frank Schirrmacher

LYON. "Leave him alone now!" The U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands almost
shouts at the German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk. She wonders why he
doesn't ask Craig Venter about his work, she says, adding the man decoded
the genome, and the only thing Sloterdijk wants to know is why.

Later, Sloterdijk says her intervention saved a conversation in which he
insistently questioned the motives behind Venter's work. The encounter
turned into something that almost resembled a therapy session -- there was
talk of Venter's parents and grandparents as Sloterdijk's sensitive
language slowly penetrated the man's armor.

Why did you decode the genome? Sloterdijk poses every conceivable
variation to the question, always adroit and increasingly dangerous as the evening
proceeds. Venter answers: Because I wanted to show that I could do it. And
why did you decode the human genome? Venter: Because when I was in
Vietnam, I experienced what human life, what pain and sickness are. Of course,
Sloterdijk does not simply repeat the same question over and over. But
Venter never fails to notice the theme, which always returns to the same
note: Why? "Because I wanted to have a bigger yacht," Ventner snaps back,
somewhere around the 49th minute. Later: "Because nothing is ahead. Death
is the end." But is not DNA a materialist variation on the idea of
immortality? "DNA is dead," Venter says. And again: "Death is the end. We
have to use what little time we have."

The ambassador had neither wanted nor anticipated this development. She
interrupts Sloterdijk's questions, the singsong that almost seems to sap
Venter's will, like frog-like Gollum going mad from his own incessant
croaking in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." "We must speak of the last
things," Sloterdijk insists, adding: "What makes him tick?" We could
almost translate that to: What beats in his breast?

Venter points to a poster on the wall. Height: 1.44 meters (56.59 inches).
Width: 1 meter. It is colorful and full of tiny letters, but it is a
scientific publication. One sentence made of 3 billion letters. A
supplement to the upcoming issue of "Science," vol. 291, no. 5507. Title:
"The Sequence of the Human Genome." Author: J.C. Ventner et al.

On the eve of publishing the human genome, the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung invited Venter, Sloterdijk, the Swiss botanist Klaus Ammann and
the U.S. presidential adviser on biotechnology, Ambassador Cynthia P.
Schneider, to a discussion in the French city of Lyon. "That is my latest
publication," Venter says, pointing to the poster. "Nobody thought I could
do it." Sloterdijk speaks up for the copyright, saying Venter may have
published it, but he is not the author of the human genome. "Ninety-six
percent of the human geneticists who will see this poster," Venter
replies, "could not tell you if that's the genome of a man or a mouse."

Venter's antagonist, Francis Collins, also brought a publication to Lyon.
On three consecutive days, starting Tuesday, "Hugo," Europe's
state-subsidized human genome project, will publish the human genome --
"Hugo" in Europe, Venter in the United States. "Hugo," say a lot of
people, is good. Venter, many say, is bad. The one is public, the other is out to
make a profit. Whatever else Venter is, he is the key to the international
biotech revolution.

"I like talking to philosophers," says Venter in Lyon, much as if he had
been asked how he liked his dessert. "I've studied you pretty well," says
Sloterdijk. "I like it when philosophers study me," says Venter, on his
guard, head moving forward. Now everyone will think that at the end of the
day, the philosophers won't know either whether it was Venter they studied
or a mouse.

So what do those see who study Venter? Nobel laureate Francois Jacob tells
how Jacques Monod made his decisive scientific breakthrough -- his
discovery of the structure of allosteric proteins. Asked how he had
arrived at his answer, Monod replied: "I have been trying for several weeks to
identify with an allosteric protein. And today, I suddenly realized -- in
fact felt with my whole body what a tremendous potential such a
symmetrical structure has." So what did Venter identify with? This intuitive
identification, this almost artistic flash of inspiration is alien to his
work, of course. Computers were crunching numbers -- to be precise, the
biggest and fastest computers in the world. James Watson once flew into a
rage and told him monkeys could do what he did.

He encrypts himself. Wherever he goes, he is always asked three questions,
none of which has been answered. First: What makes him do it? Second: Does
he plan to have the genome patented? Third: How is he going to make money
with his work? These are the three riddles asked of this Gollum. And those
who pose them feel as if they shrink to Hobbit-like dimensions. Only
Sloterdijk, the German philosopher, retains his normal stature. He savors
the news that Venter doesn't know what makes him do it -- a little chink
in his armor.

"I don't need a Nobel Prize," says Venter, "and I'm not a god either." He
started off as a typical Californian beach boy -- an eminently readable
specimen, complete with surfboard, long hair and an incipient career in
public health administration.

Since then he has become as unreadable as his code. Ammann, the director
of the Botanical Gardens in Bern, endorses Venter's standpoint. The point is,
he says, calmly and soberly, that we are now on the threshold of
irrevocable changes. Take peanuts, for example. Millions of people suffer
from a nut allergy. Green genetic engineering has now produced a peanut
which does not cause an allergic reaction. It follows that "real" peanuts
should now be marked "dangerous food." "You're asking the wrong
questions," says Ammann. "Seeds are exposed to radioactive radiation and if an
interesting mutation develops, we sow it to see what happens. We have done
it for decades. And this roulette is supposed to be better than
controlled, green genetic engineering?"

Now, on the eve of the human genome's publication, it is clear that our
discussion of humanity's biological future sounds very much like the
language of the genome ACTTG. "You only live once," is Venter's message --
and what a remarkable message it is, in this age of grotesque cloning
fantasies. The philosopher from Germany wanted to know just one thing: How
can we be sure of getting it right this one time?
 

Feb. 12, 2001

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