Column: Our genetic future is in the hands of haploids

Probably I should have been paying attention back in high-school biology class, because then I might have a clue what they're talking about when they say they've cracked the human genome.

I thought somebody must surely be in trouble for that, but as it turns out they've been trying to decipher this genome for a couple of generations now.

They tell me it could help me live to be 90 years old, which I thought was pretty important, seeing as how Social Security might be going broke and my 401(k) hasn't exactly been setting records.

My immediate reaction was, "Oh, great. Now I have to work another 40 years."

Anyway, I thought I'd better look up genome in the dictionary to see what I might be missing.

Here's what it said: "Genome: A complete haploid set of chromosomes."

I hate when they do that, don't you? You look something up, and all it means is you have to look up something else.

So I looked up haploid. "Having the number of chromosomes present in the normal germ cell, equal to half the number in the normal somatic cell. Compare diploid."

Oh, great. Thank you very much. Now I remember why I wasn't paying attention back in high-school biology class.

OK. One more trip through the dictionary. "Diploid: Having a homologous pair of chromosomes for each characteristic except sex, the total number of chromosomes being twice that of a gamete. Compare haploid."

Thoroughly enlightened, I pitched my dictionary at one of the diploids sitting in the newsroom and turned to the news media. It's a reporter's job to explain complicated concepts in terms simple enough to be understood by anyone, including someone who mainly remembers from his high-school biology class that frogs still twitch even after they're dead and dissected into several pieces.

"Even scientists disagree," I read, "on exactly how to define a gene."

Well, that's exactly the kind of answer that led me into journalism. Get both sides of the story and let the public decide.

The real question, though, is how this mapping of the genetic code is going to affect me. And am I sure that I really want to have a map to my genetic code? I've tried following maps before, and I'd hate to go searching for a cure to cancer only to find out that my genetic map actually sent me to Ogallala, Nebraska.

Seriously, though, there are some complicated ethical questions to ponder. As with any discovery of such weight, the science has run far ahead of the legal and social debate.

Some insurance company, no doubt, is going to try to charge you more if they find out your genetic code makes you predisposed to cancer. What the genetic map won't tell you, however, is whether you're prone to making left turns in front of oncoming traffic.

That's the whole heredity vs. environment question, and certainly the debate will continue over which shapes us more.

Fortunately, the government is working hard to resolve some of the ethical issues so that we, the public, will be prepared when, say, America Online or Disney buys the rights to our genetic maps. (I'm foreseeing the day I get an e-mail from AOL offering to sell me my genetic code on CD-ROM.)

Unfortunately, as I checked a little further, I discovered the government agency working hard to resolve ethical issues is the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for Humane Genome Studies, located at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Now, I know that I gave the DOE a hard time just a couple of weeks ago for losing America's Nuclear Secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory. You're probably thinking I'm going to use this as an excuse to start bashing a very nice federal agency created to keep track of the price of gasoline.

But the fact is DOE did take my advice and kept looking until those darn computer drives with America's Nuclear Secrets turned up behind the copy machine. Lots of things get lost behind the copy machine, so I understand how that could happen.

When I heard where they found America's Nuclear Secrets, I went looking behind the copy machines at the Nevada Appeal just to see what was there. You never know. I found a couple pens, a rolled-up Reno Gazette-Journal and a fax from 1994, but nothing really important.

I'm sorry now I ever made fun of the DOE. And I'm sure the guys at Los Alamos who are in charge of figuring out the ethical questions of mapping genes have learned their lesson from the guys across the hall who lost America's Nuclear Secrets.

Because if scientists can make a map of a humane genome, I figure, they can remember to write a sticky note that says "Look behind the copy machine ... especially before somebody calls a congressional hearing."

If they can't, then I'd have to say they're either haploids or diploids. I'm not sure which.

(Barry Smith is managing editor of the Nevada Appeal.)