night i don't know whether other members will join us i talk to a few on the floor who would like to i promise to be as long winded as possible to give them an opportunity to get here even after one of them has to do something that may make it the first issue is we're talking about what the standard sort of be and it occurs to me that there would be three different levels of standards one is what i would sit in my own life i could necessarily convince my whole country to agree with me but i would not participate in certain activities second is what we do as a country and the third and presumably least rigorous standard would be what we could get the entire world to agree to in the end i think one of the witnesses made that point already there in terms of dealing with other countries there are two reasons why item ject is something done in singapore one is from a human rights and ethical perspective for example singapore might engage in an all out effort to breed out of singapore challenges the united states from a national security perspective so we might have international agreements on these technologies that are similar to our other international agreements on human rights where we recognise and that was our country's not even endangered by the deprivation of women's rights in afghanistan but we are appalled by it and we would work toward a world in which human rights would exist for women of all people and even bald women in the other area is where it's closer to the nonproliferation  aspect where the science going on in a particular country threatens our national security and i'd like our witnesses i know so it's probably done the most looking at international treaty proposals is is there a differentiation in diplomatic circles between treaties that would limit science for human rights concerns versus those that would limit the sciences for national security concerns it's a very interesting question and in some ways i don't believe that there has been a absolute differentiation among those two categories but i do think that different people in different countries have come to this question from different perspectives that have been both of the ones that you that you mentioned in but the key issue  obviously there are the two issues which you raise are one what are the basic inherent rights of an embryo and on that as i mentioned before there are significant cultural differences are significant religious differences with all its ism and christianity tend to be more conservative on these issues in general than christianity judaism and islam and judaism and islam tend to be more conservative than hinduism and buddhism these are vast over overgeneralizations so there are coming coming from different perspectives there are different ways of looking at the basic human rights issue but the one thing that everybody in a germline manner into humans that's something that will potentially affect the population as a whole so it's not a satisfactory answer to your question but i think that in some ways you raise an interesting point and that is the human genome being a commons there are two ways to affect that one is the decision of the parent not to continue to full term a particular called the human genome to the six billion power of the six billion human genomes we've got out there and the other separate from that is when you if you were to take one individual and add a gene that does not exist in any other individual now you have created something that did not exist among the six billion of us already and that that would pose a very different  understand but if singapore is going to maintain a lead over britain or it could achieve a lead over britain and in attracting scientists in developing technology they may want to go to twenty eight days rather than fourteen days and then i know that some other country will want to be in defense of singapore doctor billings back to the original question well i would focus on really two things first on the national security this for a long time we need better monitoring tools to know sensitively as we can when people are engaged in work like this that might lead to such things and when they gain access to the public dissemination  but this is not a you know this isn't a unique area of monitoring that's different than other kinds of weapons monitoring that might want to that you might want to regulate them for defense purposes or international treaty purposes so you know there are some unique aspects of the kinds of weapons that could be created but i think the regulatory rubric is pretty similar to what you've done before in the area of of  reproductive methods and as you say some of the areas of germ line modification i would only say i would be while i'm in favor of a ban on  intentional germline modifications i would only point out that the germ line is been modified over the years by in inherent biological mechanisms by exposures sense and and other things infectious agents the germ line because of the six billion other germ lines that are out there and because of a lot of redundancy and a lot of other things about the  earlier right before as and this however we've been able to deal with the mutations in evolution in the human genome over the last fifty thousand years pretty well on human d n a right now we are protected in this building by dogs they have a certain ability to sniff for explosives imagine if those dogs had greater in durance or better noses or they were just smarter and we could train them to do more is there any identical to the genes of human d n a well mixed and i'll let me just take the first crack at this richard jamie might have other things to say i mean the united states has we have rules about animal experimentation this country rather extensive on and anyone who's participated animal experimentation or research institute assuming you could do this in ways to minimize the experience of pain is  congressman that dolly is a good example i mean dolly had a lot of new traits some of them rather unders armful for both dolly and for the purpose that they dolly was created for and that will be the result of most unlikely for the best way to make the most meat in the cheapest way to do it is to go with genetically identical clone sheep were years from there maybe a decade from there so but that doesn't that that doesn't mean that just because dolly was a failed experiment that ten or twenty years from now it would also be  and can point to any i mean i'm trying to avoid the philosophical and just focus on the diplomatic we could be here all day if we were just to discuss our own personal views as to what's moral and what isn't human beings not derived from humans we're talking animals right so other than safety and animal welfare concerns i'm not aware of anything goes beyond that and i'm not aware of any humane society objection or certainly any i don't we have an awful lot of animal protection legislation in this country i don't think any of it would have been violated in any state by the actions that were taken  doctor and i would say for sure enough there there is no international standard but i would just add a couple of points one that the dog the existence of the category dog is a result of human manipulation of the wolf and so years if science goes forward and we're already having that even though there are already monkeys that are being genetically manipulated to incorporate some of the genetic material of jellyfish for example that already exists last week it was reported that in the south koreans were moving forward on cloning a dog that had cancer sniffing capability capability so i think this this process is certainly moving forward extremely rapidly and there's not any kind of international agreement to regulate it let me put forward the idea that the one area that we do need a treaty on in this is enhanced means to intelligence we may very well get animals that demand the minimum wage and as a democrat i think it should be higher minimum wage and planet of the apes i think is yeah i mean it is it one of the opportunities for derision is that the science fiction writers are so far ahead of everyone else in this whether it be the ethicists the futurists the congressman they've already made the movies some of those movies will come to pass but some will and planet of the of the animal issue so i think the two or three tier system makes a lot of sense and the issue is a perfect example of this say right now there is experimentation going on it is mixing human and animal d n a and even though there is sort of an emotional or certain queasiness about that a case can be made that there is some useful medical research that this helps make possible now however you know if it was possible to mix the human and animal g and a d n a and bring the resulting concept to term as a born live creature how do we feel about that so if in fact we were able to get a international consensus in the national remit that we would not do it would be in the same frame work as a human rights violation we would never bring make allow that sort of thing to happen and then it actually builds confidence in being able to use some sort of human animal experimentation in good faith as part of medical research but without having drawn that prior red line then the otherwise beneficial medical research merely pushes the envelope or runs the risk of either intentionally or unintentionally pushing the food and there are two  human and animal d n a the reason they're doing it now is to create tissues that can be used to research or treat human diseases  the other reason to make human and animal d n a is to create an animal with both human and animal characteristics and that that poses some whether that be through computer chips or genetic engineering or the combination of the two creates something that would be working now in robot soldiers but biological robot soldiers offers a whole new way to fight a war let's you know i would draw the absolute red line at in hand anything that creates an animal with enhanced intelligence beyond that of the animal and anything that enhances the human being above the average human being because as is i think the witnesses who pointed out every every gene we have can be viewed as a disease in the sense that well it's not working perfectly my heart's going to give out at age one hundred i'd like at the last to age where if i'm lucky to get out of a hundred i'd like it to last longer but when you start if if if you had an embryo with a heart that was going to give out at age forty who amongst us would say we shouldn't use genetic in techniques to give that person a full life but once you start enhan human beings above the average in the human hands meant business rather than the treatment business and then most especially in hansing human intelligence who all of us would be in favor of retarded or whatever the politically correct term is for those with dramatically reduced intellectual capacities for being treated  that person probably needs treatment on the other hand once you start trying to create a nation of super einsteins you pose a national security risk to other countries but what it lets putting aside where exactly that red line is i've drawn a red line that i think is a very permissive red line i think i've included on the permissible side of the red line things that each one of these would witnesses would say don't  that either but say we went with a red line that exclusively with unacceptable actions which are unacceptable in another country because they pose a national security risk to the united states the question is how do we develop a treaty that deals with those things now ranking member royce brought up the nonproliferation treaty and the judge in the biggest loophole in it  see you're taking notes because you know the questions go away and the big loophole is at least according to some you can be a signatory as a non nuclear state and control the whole fuel cycle which means you're allowed to get within a few months of the prohibited well still being legal and then you can either do a hidden program or pull out of the treaty or take a number of actions when we have fort knox we don't let you steal the gold from fort knox we also don't let you get within eight inches of the gold at fort knox and then and then trust our laws to prevent you from actually grabbing the gold bar what do we do to  have a biological treaty that not only prohibits what's behind the red line but keeps countries from getting within striking distance of the red line while still being legal science i think the red line needs to focus more on the applications what you can and can't do because if we try to limit the science knowledge find the way and it will find a way and i think it's better to focus on this is what's permissible and this is what's not permissible in terms of applications but it's almost exactly contrary to what we'd want to do in the nuclear if you or i were interpreting in the proper way the n p t treaty and other words  we would want somebody to say well i'm going to go to ninety five percent enriched uranium but it's just because i want to see what happens when i enrich uranium a curious guy  scientific another words a pure heart does not let somebody get within a few inches of a gold bar can we do that in this biologic or are we doomed to a treaty that does nothing more than says develop all science acquire all capacity put yourself in a position to do that which threatens american national security but as long as you claim a pure heart and don't actually act you can put yourself within a week of being be able to do something terrible but as long as you profess that you do not intend to cross that line you're fine i don't think it's about what people profess they're going to do or doing now i think the essential point will be what people are doing and what what they are what countries are doing and what they're allowed to do as i said i don't think that it's going to be feasible to say what kind of research that countries can do other than research where we say that the research itself crosses a specific line that we have articulated maybe about human animal hybrids it may be about reproductive cloning but this knowledge will find a way and the other thing is that the language that's going to be used in some ways this is similar to the nuclear analogy the language that will be used to describe the research will be the language of disease eradication and it won't be wrong people who are doing that research will say we have the ability to eliminate these types of cancers and all of these  capabilities will be transferable and to do is find a way to not squash the science but keep the applications of that science from crossing certain ethical boundaries so you would let a country develop all the science you wanted and be on all sides of the technology necessary to do something terrible and  in a position where with a few months of research they could do something terrible and threatening so long as they've got a professed reason to do all of the to do all the research reason terms such as all the science and things like this until we really do the kind of study inventory detailed examination of all the issues and how they relate it will be difficult to come up with an easy answer but do you want to say also that this is where at some level and again this is partly a challenge but i think a real opportunity it is going to force humanity as a whole to grapple with some very deep questions about what is it about our common humanity that we value how much do we value and what do we do to make sure that say we're clear we know which red lines we don't want to cross what then do we want to do what margin of safety do we want to build in so that we don't belong to dr hayes nothing forces us to be rational and in fact the most likely outcome of the technologies we're talking about is that that which we consider human is not the dominant species on the planet by the end of the century that's the most likely outcome we're trying to wrestle with that and offer some other alternatives but i have been in politics and government log enough to know that just because it's got to happen doesn't mean it happens dr billings mr sherman i would ask for you to consider why you're not discussing research and engineering in pure weaponry by other countries rather than biotechnologies because you know some country being innovative in creating a new gun is probably a much bigger threat frankly directly to you to american lives than some this country is certainly spending enough money to make sure our guns are bigger than their guns and i would not propose that the subjects of this hearing get even one percent of the funding or the attention of the bigger and more practical more immediate question which is how do we make sure our guns are bigger than their guns think that fact is we've done a great job at that and i think that that has to do it i hope that that has in part to do not only with just our industries and our spending but with our intelligence and assessment of other people's capabilities what's going on elsewhere and our ability to respond recently quickly to that that's why in my written comments i emphasize the issue of monitoring particularly for safety purposes what's going on what to me what techniques are being applied to humans here and elsewhere and whether those are the assessment of those are safe but i'll select return for one moment to your question about enhancing the intelligence of animals that have been as as you may know experiments published that have claimed to show through genetic manipulation the enhancement of intelligence of animals and you know the problem has then how did you measure that that outcome it was in this case how fast a lab animal did amaze and they learned that faster after the genetic manipulation these rather unhappy lab animals in other ways and that's that's you know one of the big areas i would say of caution is one thinks about some of the questions you ask because you know  a very complex system can have rather amazing unintended results and i have no doubt that the things we're here to discuss cannot be accomplished by today's science we should thank that he did not create a physical universe in which the kinds of things we're talking about here was easy to accomplish had we created and he created a physical universe in which creating a nuclear weapon was scarcely more difficult than creating the steam engine i doubt we would be here to discuss it at all and but just to say that  the creation of useful new life forms has not yet occurred to my knowledge dolly is not the best way to get mutton and the lab rats that you're talking about while they may do mazes well are not the overall superior lab rat does not mean that we are not within a decade or two of a military or diff or civil defense dog that's more useful than the dogs we have now or more useful than what you could get by breeding a poodle the cocker spaniel we're synthetically created algae just to start more simple yes and and i don't think that we are go to get in in agreement to prevent the use of genetic engineering to create superior animal or plant life forms it's just too useful  the question is do we single out the intelligence of the animal is something that we do not mess around with or are we in a circumstance where the country with you know that another seemingly more even more analogous model is the bio weapons convention why did you pick the n p t and what in terms of a model for dealing with what we're talking about here  how does the n p t compare with bio weapons convention i'm neither an expert in the n p t nor in the bio weapons trees but what i will say is that the reason why the n p t model made sense to me is because it dealt with a technology that had both incredibly positive and beneficial uses and incredibly negative potentials and the challenge in this kind of situation is how can you regulate abuse while empowering  positive applications and that's something which i think is in some ways unique to the n p t although there may well be be other models and that's that's the challenge for us because it as i said in my testimony the people who are opposed to this very positive research all together will use the same language of regulation and global governance in order in their attempts to squash it altogether and for those of us tonight certainly put myself in this camp who think that this is critically important research and work that needs to be done and that it's very natural healthy and good for human beings to be following many of these these directions in our research and applications we need to figure out what the model think and they can balance the good in the  drafting it is easier to draft a prohibited by all allowed by all and allowed to some because that allows you to have nuclear plants and have a few countries control trusted to every country in the world so we do have that is i do have one other line of question questioning and that is right now in these areas is the general practice sometimes a requirement of ending that research programs publish the results of what technology is going on today where we might very well as a nation decide that should be the secret in the in the bio area thousand twelve influenza virus was constituted and the scientists who did that to publish that information and which virus again was at the one hundred twelve influence of virus so how many they were published how to recreate but most deadly disease of modern times precisely and it was literally within a few weeks there was an op ed in the new york times written by i think it was bill joy on the one hand and one of the human genome scientists so here's people on if you soldier performance program creating technologies to improve soldiers combat performance it appears as if this technology is not focused on mental capacity on intelligence so much as  in durance but also avoiding sleep which is at most an inch away from intelligence i wonder whether the same technologies will be available to across there's all kinds of research i mean there was an article in time magazine last week about the number of people in the armed forces who are on prozac the students who are cramming for exams and the majority i believe of the people in the  find applications that provide competitive advantages in all of these areas and traditionally military has been one driver i know there are many people in the armed forces who are looking at a range of  methodology for enhancing the ability of our armed forces some of which include bio bio technology strategies and but i do think that when we think about what our armed forces are going to do and what types of genetic enhancement we make might be appropriate twenty thirty forty years from now we should seek to have one standard for everybody if somebody is in the armed forces or not in the armed forces and it really shouldn't matter because the issues that we're discussing here have such major consequences for the world as a whole and for our species that any limitations that we would seek to put on any other parts of the population should also somewhat familiar with that said without darpa in this conversation or darpa is exceeding everything that all the rest of us are doing in this regard and so i think this is where the question of national security in the if you will the simplistic sense and global security in a more mature sense becomes an important consideration and one issue before us diplomatically is does it make sense to try to achieve a tremendous lead over other countries in the in from that position try to negotiate the things that will not work and i think are you saying they've got the science wrong the certain things they think are practical just are exactly exactly and that there are probably as you say conventional drugs and robotics and so forth that will produce more rapidly the outcomes that our military people want genetic engineering but it would be interesting to put aquarium i think i need a respectful not a response so at least if they're doing it it hasn't leaked out to the point where any of us have learned about it from the us but sources gentlemen you have shown human endurance you have not shown super human endurance to my knowledge and that of you has been genetically engineered in order to endure a three hour hearing with a break  and the watchword may be in this area we're looking at other countries if we don't do it they will and that will continue to be the truth in less we have not only  an international treaty but one truly comprehensive in its scope in truly practical and effective in its enforcement thank god that the universe is difficult in the in making these scientific developments and we have a little time to go far beyond where we are now thank you for your