Last January President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine issued an edict on conferring Order of Yaroslav the Wise Fifth Degree on US citizen Yury S. Verlynsky, director of the Chicago- based Institute of Reproductive Genetics, “for outstanding personal contribution to research in the area of reproductive genetics and prevention of hereditary human genetic diseases as well as for his long and fruitful scientific activity.”
By cruel irony, the world’s first Institute of Reproductive Genetics is based precisely in Chicago instead of Kharkiv, Ukraine. For it is here that S. Verlynsky studied and grew as a researcher. He is proud of having been a disciple of the great Ukrainian scientist V. G. Shakhbazov, Meritorious Scientist and Technologist of Ukraine, Meritorious Professor at Kharkiv’s V. N. Karazin National University, full member of the Higher Educational Academy of Ukraine, and longtime chair of the university’s Department of Genetics.
MEDICAL EXAMINATION BEFORE CONCEPTION
The problem of reproductive genetics can be briefly defined as follows: can the human intellect and art interfere in the sacrament of conception? The first encouraging answer to this question was extracorporeal — artificial in-vitro fertilization of the oocyte (egg cell) in the mid-1970s. This scientific achievement has long been put to practical use.
Researching the genetic code of living beings opened a new page in tackling this problem. It turned out that it is possible to decipher the living organism’s development program! This has already been done by US and British geneticists.
It is only theoretically possible today to clone living beings and create full-fledged organisms the way Lego toys are constructed. Practice shows that cloned animals considerably lose out on viability to conceived organisms.
Yet, a breakthrough has been made today in treating genetic diseases that are preprogrammed well before the birth. What makes Verlynsky’s discovery significant is combination of the achievements of genetics which the scientist studied in Kharkiv and those of medicine in artificial fertilization and transplantation of the oocyte.
The gene of a hereditary disease emerges not always with a certain probability. In other words, some egg cells carry the gene of a pathology and others are quite healthy. Is this some genetic roulette? The scientist discovered the way to win this roulette. It is possible to separate the healthy oocytes form pathological ones at a very early stage of the organism’s development and implant the former into the mother’s womb. A few years ago Chicago doctors announced that a child was born, who had been tested for hereditary cancer when he was still an embryo not yet implanted into the uterus. The doctors helped the couple raise a healthy boy.
“Two generations in the father’s family had had a carcinogenic gene,” Yury Verlynsky told a Reuters correspondent at the time. “This was the first couple genetically tested for the syndrome. As the father carried the gene, a fertilized oocyte was tested. If the mother had had this gene, we would have tested an unfertilized oocyte.”
The Institute of Reproductive Genetics admits patients doomed by nature to having genetically unhealthy children or not to know the joys of parenthood at all. A woman, herself a geneticist, knew in advance she would fall victim to Alzheimer’s disease (senile dementia) at the age of forty. This ailment usually develops in old age, if at all. Incidentally, former US President Ronald Reagan is now suffering from it. But that lady was programmed to contract the early form of the disease at the not nearly so advanced age of forty
Verlynsky helped the patient. Her child will be quite healthy, although he will in fact become an orphan even before he turns twenty. Today, the Institute of Reproductive Genetics has branches all over the world, including Russia (Tomsk, Saint Petersburg, Belarus (Minsk), and Ukraine (Kyiv).
Like any other outstanding discovery, Dr. Verlynsky’s method has drawn mixed reviews. For example, it has raised concerns over whether it is ethical for parents to be able to choose the best features of an unborn child as well as over the possibility of abusing this method in order to produce so-called preprogrammed babies. Verlynsky himself also ponders the contradictory social consequences of his discovery. His utterances also add fuel to the fire of debates. Consider two: “We are not doing the Lord God’s job, we are only helping Him,” and “In the twenty-first century, humanity will practice sex for satisfaction only, while extracorporeal fertilization will serve the purposes of reproduction.”
WHY CHICAGO AND NOT KHARKIV?
Prof. V. G. Shakhbazov, Dr. Verlynsky’s mentor, knows the answer very well.
“Prof. Shakhbazov, could you tell us about the Kharkiv period of your illustrious disciple?”
“As far as I remember, Yury came from Tomsk, Siberia. He was admitted to our university’s Biology School in 1963 and graduated in 1968. In his fourth year of studies he decided to major in genetics. It was still a relatively new branch of biology in the Soviet Union. We all remembered the times when it had been banned.
“I was then chair of the Genetics and Cytology Department. Seeing a divine spark in the student, I did my best to help him develop. He was a very gifted, hardworking, cheerful, and witty young man. On our advice, he began to study for his Ph.D., with me as his scholarly supervisor. After successfully working for four years, my doctoral student brilliantly defended a dissertation on human cytology in 1972. Even at that time, in his dissertation, he put emphasis on the practical, medical, application of genetics.”
“What was the further destiny of your follower?”
“Naturally, he began working at a medical laboratory, one at the Kharkiv Research Institute of Endocrinology and Hormones. Yet, Verlynsky’s creative mind prompted him to concentrate on reproductive genetics research, in which he eventually achieved success. The practical result was the possibility of overcoming genetic diseases and raising a healthy younger generation. Verlynsky displayed plenty of youthful zeal to advance the idea of establishing a specialized medico-genetic laboratory at the institute where he worked. He kept me informed about all his steps, for the dissertation supervisor is, naturally, the best person for a young scientist to turn to.
“As he found no positive response at the institute, we together drew up a project of establishing a lab of this kind based at another research institution or at our university. We were together received by oblast-level public health officials. Still, medical personal chose not to support this research. I remember quite a furious way those doctors (some of them are now considered Kharkiv’s leading medical luminaries) reacted to our initiative. It is difficult to say whether it was professional envy, misunderstanding or rejection of genetics. Finding no support, Verlynsky decided to go abroad.”
“In other words, the Institute of Reproductive Genetics might have been established in Kharkiv rather than Chicago?”
“Yes, and ten or so years earlier. We did have a chance to overtake the US. The proof of this is great interest in this problem and the emergence of a large number of reproductive health clinics abroad and in the USSR. A clinic of this type successfully functions in Kharkiv also, but they have taken only the first steps of in-vitro fertilization. The outside world was doing this as far back as in the early 1980s...”
“But perhaps this is enough? Maybe, the Americans have already gone too far, choosing to help the Lord God do His job? What problems do genetic discoveries, such as breaking the genetic code, entail?”
“Breaking the genetic code cannot in itself open the secrets of life. What researchers have been able to do is read the sequence of the letters of this text the way we are able to read the sequence of letters in a book written in an unknown language. It is still very far to understanding their meaning. Even if we understand some words in such a book, we will not grasp its overall sense. The same applies to the genetic code. Thus research will be still going on for decades. It is important, though, not to be too self-confident and not to run ahead of time.”
“But hasn’t Verlynsky given the world a powerful instrument which the official authorities might abuse?”
“It would be more exact to say that this instrument has been provided by modern genetics as a whole and current gene engineering techniques. Yet, Verlynsky’s discovery provides for one of the most effective applications of this instrument today. In my opinion, Verlynsky’s discovery can still do humanity much more good than evil. And it is, of course, unfortunate that an individual who could have brought his fatherland so much acclaim has to do this for a foreign state.”
