Fueled by news of a closely guarded meeting at Harvard Medical School, the media abuzz are about the prospect of synthesizing a human genome. Biologic Institute’s Douglas Axe, however, offers sobering reassurance.

Why sobering? Because both reporters and scientists have engaged in some giddy, tipsy speculations about what genome technology has in its power to do, now or ever. Dr. Axe writes at The Stream:

Biology has progressed to the point where bluffs about reinventing life can have a disquieting realism to them, but the truth is that our understanding of life is so woefully incomplete that there won’t be anything beyond bluffs for the foreseeable future.

Our present situation is similar to that of audiences viewing the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey when it first appeared. One of the film’s characters was a futuristic version of artificial intelligence called HAL — the main computer aboard a spaceship. In one of the film’s most eerie scenes, HAL decides to sacrifice astronauts for the sake of the mission:

Dave (tensely): Open the Pod bay doors, HAL!

HAL (calmly): I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Through no fault of the filmmakers, that scene has lost its initial impact. In 1968, only a handful of people had access to computers, which made these “thinking” machines deeply mysterious to everyone else. This scene was almost believable back then, which made it all the more eerie.

We’re well past 2001 now, and not only has HAL never materialized, but familiarity with computers has caused even the specter of HAL to evaporate. With grade schoolers carrying Siri around in their pockets, we can’t take the threat of computational mutiny seriously anymore.

A realistic picture of the limitations of genome technology should be similarly reassuring. The truth is that scientists can’t even read the human genome yet — at least not the way we usually think of reading. They merely call out the letters, the way a child does who can’t yet read. Actual reading goes beyond letter recognition to understanding, which is in short supply when it comes to the human genome. For all the A’s, C’s, G’s and T’s the genome project gave us, we’re left with very little idea what this three-billion-letter text actually means.

Official sources tend to make it look as though scientists know a whole lot more than they really do. “Having the essentially complete sequence of the human genome is similar to having all the pages of a manual needed to make the human body,” we’re told. Should we believe this? If and when it proves true, we should. That will be the day when much of the mystery about how our bodies are knit together is removed by our ability to read the answers straight from our genomes.

“Why are my teeth coming in all crooked when hers are all straight?”

“Good question! Let’s sit down and take a look at your manual to find out.”

To be perfectly frank, there’s so little hint of that day coming that it’s very reasonable to question whether it will ever come.

As for plans to “write” human genomes — well, these tend to be exaggerated in the same way. Scribe-like copying is all we’re really capable of, which isn’t what we normally think of as writing. Genuine writing skills presuppose the more basic reading skills, which simply aren’t there. Rest assured, then, that scientists aren’t going to reinvent humanity anytime in the foreseeable future.

Yes, from “calling out the letters,” to genuine reading, it’s an enormous leap. And from that to writing? Even bigger.

Vastly underestimating what we don’t know, and perhaps will never know, is a vice common in thinking about the life sciences. Intuition can be a source of caution against hype.

That’s, in fact, a theme of Dr. Axe’s new book, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed.

Undeniable will be published on July 12 by HarperOne, but you can pre-order before then and participate in an exclusive, private conference call with Dr. Axe and talk- show host Michael Medved. You’ll also receive digital versions of three complete books from Discovery Institute Press: Debating Darwin’s Doubt, The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos, and Science & Human Origins. Go to the new Undeniable website for easy instructions.

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