Peace: It Begins with the Body

The year 2000 was an important one in human history. Of course, most people will remember it as Y2K, the year when many feared that our digital world would come crashing around our fingers. Some had an apocalyptic view and envisioned the end of the world or of civilization as we knew it. Few will recall that in the same year that so many were able to breathe again as the anticipated disasters failed to materialize, scientists released the first working draft of the human genome. The race to sequence the human genome was almost over; a complete draft was released three years later, thirteen years after the Human Genome Project had begun.

A new era in human science had begun. Scientists were now able to look at the blueprint of life and many anticipated that knowledge of the variation of DNA among individuals would revolutionize the ways to diagnose, treat and, possibly prevent a number of diseases that have vexed us for years. Significant budgets have been devoted to that task. Leading the way is the United States National Institutes of Health which is the home of the National Human Genome Project.

To me it is ironic that we are willing to spend millions of dollars to find cures for diseases with a genetic base while we spend nothing on a similar approach that would bring peace to all of humanity. Let me explain.

The link between genetic diseases and the sequencing of the human genome was established by the Dulbecco in his article in which he advocated for the sequencing of the human genome. In his search for the elusive universal treatment for cancer he had observed that the shift to malignancy in natural cancers was not caused by changes in the environment of those cells but by changes in the structure of the genes. We already had methods of treatment for cancer but surgery, radiation and chemotherapy were all destructive methods, and each could only be applied on an individual basis.

He realized that cancers cannot be eradicated one tumor at a time and reasoned that we could possibly make the current treatments unnecessary if we could reverse the structural changes in the genetic code that caused the shift to malignancy, or even correct the instructions that caused cancer to form in an organism. Before that could be done we would have to understand the genetic map. The goal would be to restore cancer-stricken bodies to their natural homeostasis.

But success in this area would not be a universal cure for cancer nor would it prevent cancer because the structural change in the genes is caused when cells divide naturally. Correcting genetic flaws in an individual would affect all the cells in that individual but that correction would not be passed on to that individual’s progeny.

The same argument applies in the search for human peace but we must first come to terms with the fact that the human race is an organism, and the fact that our individual DNA that defines who we are as individuals is a copy of the DNA that defines who we are as a species.

Each of us is to the human species what each of our cells is to our bodies. We can no more rid the body of cancer one tumor at a time than we can bring peace to humanity one trouble spot at a time. Ignorance is not the cause of violence and war. In fact, most wars are started by educated humans. The answer lies in getting us to see each other the same way normal cells see each other.