So, there's an actor called Dustin Hoffman. And years ago, he made this movie which some of you may have heard of, called "The Graduate." And there's two key scenes in that movie. The first one is the seduction scene. I'm not going to talk about that tonight.
有一位演员叫做达斯汀·霍夫曼。 几十年前, 他拍了一部电影,你们可能听说过 叫做《毕业生》。 电影中有两个关键的场景。 一个是勾引的画面。 但是这不是我今晚的主题,
(Laughter)
(笑声)
The second scene is where he's taken out by the old guy to the pool, and as a young college graduate, the old guy basically says one word, just one word. And of course, all of you know what that word is. It's "plastics."
在第二个场景中, 他被一位长者带到游泳场边 作为一位毕业生, 长者只对他说了一个词, 仅仅一个词。 当然,你们都知道那个词 就是“塑料”。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And the only problem with that is, it was completely the wrong advice.
但现在问题是, 他给出的建议完全错了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Let me tell you why it was so wrong. The word should have been "silicon." And the reason it should have been silicon is because the basic patents for semiconductors had already been made, had already been filed, and they were already building them. So Silicon Valley was just being built in 1967, when this movie was released. And the year after the movie was released, Intel was founded. So had the graduate heard the right one word, maybe he would have ended up onstage -- oh, I don't know -- maybe with these two.
让我来给你们讲讲为什么错了。 因为这个词应该是“硅”。 为什么说应该是硅呢? 因为那时半导体的专利 已经得以注册, 人们已经建立了半导体产业城。 所以硅谷就是在1967年建立的, 正好是这部电影发行的那一年。 在电影发行的第二年 因特尔公司成立了。 所以说如果这位毕业生 听到了正确的答案, 或许他就会和这两位一样 出现在台上。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So as you're thinking of that, let's see what bit of advice we might want to give so that your next graduate doesn't become a Tupperware salesman.
那么,想想看 我们现在会给出什么建议, 不要让我们的毕业生 最后沦落为特百惠的销售员。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So in 2015, what word of advice would you give people, when you took a college graduate out by the pool and you said one word, just one word? I think the answer would be "lifecode." So what is "lifecode?" Lifecode is the various ways we have of programming life. So instead of programming computers, we're using things to program viruses or retroviruses or proteins or DNA or RNA or plants or animals, or a whole series of creatures. And as you're thinking about this incredible ability to make life do what you want it to do, what it's programmed to do, what you end up doing is taking what we've been doing for thousands of years, which is breeding, changing, mixing, matching all kinds of life-forms, and we accelerate it.
在2015年, 当你把一位毕业生带到游泳池边 你会说什么词呢,只说一个词, 你给人们的建议会是什么词呢? 我想这个答案应该是“生命密码”。 到底什么是“生命密码”呢? 生命密码是我们 为生命编程的各种各样的方式。 也就说我们并非在电脑上编程, 而是运用工具来编译病毒 逆转录病毒、蛋白质 DNA、RNA 动植物以及一系列的生物。 如各位所想,这项惊人的能力 可以让生命按照程序编写的一样 做你想让它做的事 得到你想得到的结果。 那些已经进行了上千年的事情: 各种生命形式的 繁殖、改变 杂交、匹配 我们加速了这一过程。
And this is not something new. This humble mustard weed has been modified so that if you change it in one way, you get broccoli. And if you change it in a second way, you get kale. And if you change it in a third way, you get cauliflower. So when you go to these all-natural, organic markets, you're really going to a place where people have been changing the lifecode of plants for a long time. The difference today, to pick a completely politically neutral term --
这并不是一件新鲜事 这株芥菜经过了基因修饰, 如果你以某种方式进行改变, 它就变成了西兰花。 如果你换一种方式, 它就变成了甘蓝。 如果用第三种方式, 得到的就是花椰菜。 所以当你去纯天然的有机菜场时, 你所看到的蔬菜 的生命密码在很久以前就被改变了。 如今所不同的 只是挑一个政治立场上完全中性的词 来形容它。
[Intelligent design]
[智能设计]
(Laughter)
(笑声)
We're beginning to practice intelligent design. That means that instead of doing this at random and seeing what happens over generations, we're inserting specific genes, we're inserting specific proteins, and we're changing lifecode for very deliberate purposes. And that allows us to accelerate how this stuff happens.
我们正在进行智能设计的实践 这意味着我们不能随意地进行试验 然后看看几代后会发生什么。 我们需要插入 特定的基因和特定的蛋白质, 然后根据我们的目的修改生命密码, 从而加速试验的结果。
Let me just give you one example. Some of you occasionally might think about sex. And we kind of take it for granted how we've changed sex. So we think it's perfectly normal and natural to change it. What's happened with sex over time is -- normally, sex equals baby, eventually. But in today's world, sex plus pill equals no baby.
让我举个例子。 你们当中可能有人会偶尔产生性欲。 我们已经对性爱的改变习以为常。 所以我们认为 这种改变非常正常和自然。 过去,性爱的发生 通常来讲,最后就意味着孩子。 但是,在今天的社会, 性+药=没有孩子
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And again, we think that's perfectly normal and natural, but that has not been the case for most of human history. And it's not the case for animals. What it is does is it gives us control, so sex becomes separate from conception. And as you're thinking of the consequences of that, then we've been playing with stuff that's a little bit more advanced, like art. Not in the sense of painting and sculpture, but in the sense of assisted reproductive technologies. So what are assisted reproductive technologies? Assisted reproductive technologies are things like in vitro fertilization. And when you do in vitro fertilization, there's very good reasons to do it. Sometimes you just can't conceive otherwise. But when you do that, what you’re doing is separating sex, conception, baby. So you haven't just taken control of when you have a baby, you've separated when the baby and where the baby is fertilized. So you've separated the baby from the body from the act. And as you're thinking of other things we've been doing, think about twins. So you can freeze sperm, you can freeze eggs, you can freeze fertilized eggs. And what does that mean? Well, that's a good thing if you're a cancer patient. You're about to go under chemotherapy or under radiation, so you save these things. You don't irradiate them. But if you can save them and you can freeze them, and you can have a surrogate mother, it means that you've decoupled sex from time. It means you can have twins born -- oh, in 50 years?
再次强调 我们认为这是很自然很正常的 但在人类历史中 几乎没有这样的例子发生, 动物身上也没有。 这样的改变让我们摆脱了束缚 因此性和怀孕不再有必然联系。 你可以想象到这样的结果 接着我们开始使用一些技术 一些先进的技术,比如“艺术”。 不是在绘画和雕塑意义上的艺术, 是指辅助生殖技术。 什么是辅助生殖技术呢? 这是一种类似体外受精的技术。 有时可能有人无法怀孕 那么选择体外受精 无疑是一个好选择。 但是通过体外受精 性、怀孕和孩子就完全分离开来。 所以你不仅可以决定生孩子的时间, 还可以将 受精的时间和地点分离开来。 所以你可以把孩子和 身体和性爱都分开。 再举个例子, 比如双胞胎。 你可以冻结精子,可以冻结卵子 你也可以冻结受精卵。 这意味着什么呢? 如果你是一位癌症患者, 这绝对是一件好事。 你即将要接受化疗和放疗, 所以你需要保存生殖细胞或受精卵 这样它们就可以免遭辐射。 但是,如果你可以 保存它们,冻结它们, 甚至可以找一位代孕母亲, 这就意味着 你可以使性脱离时间的束缚。 也就是说你可以生下 一对相差50岁的双胞胎?
(Laughter)
(笑声)
In a hundred years? Two hundred years? And these are three really profound changes that are not, like, future stuff. This is stuff we take for granted today.
或许相差100年? 200年? 这些影响深远的改变 这并不是将来的东西, 这是我们今天认为理所当然的事情。
So this lifecode stuff turns out to be a superpower. It turns out to be this incredibly powerful way of changing viruses, of changing plants, of changing animals, perhaps even of evolving ourselves. It's something that Steve Gullans and I have been thinking about for a while.
因此生命密码蕴含强大的力量。 它以一种难以置信地方式改变病毒, 改变植物,改变动物, 甚至可以让我们自己进化。 史蒂夫·加兰和我 对于生命密码有过一些思考。
Let's have some risks. Like every powerful technology, like electricity, like an automobile, like computers, this stuff potentially can be misused. And that scares a lot of people. And as you apply these technologies, you can even turn human beings into chimeras. Remember the Greek myth where you mix animals? Well, some of these treatments actually end up changing your blood type. Or they'll put male cells in a female body or vice versa, which sounds absolutely horrible until you realize, the reason you're doing that is you're substituting bone marrow during cancer treatments. So by taking somebody else's bone marrow, you may be changing some fundamental aspects of yourself, but you're also saving your life. And as you're thinking about this stuff, here's something that happened 20 years ago.
我们先说一些危险的情况。 就像所有有力的科技一样, 比如电力、汽车 还有电脑, 生命密码也可能会被用于歧途。 这吓坏了很多人。 当你在使用这些科技时 你甚至可以把人变成怪物。 大家记得希腊神话中 动物互相交配么? 有一些治疗的结果 甚至会让你改变血型 或者他们会把男性细胞 和女性细胞放入对方体内, 听起来无比可怕。 其实你发现这就是 你在癌症治疗过程中 替换骨髓的过程。 从别人身体上得到的骨髓 也许会改变你自己的基本情况, 但同时也救了你的命。 如果你仔细想想, 这个技术已经存在20年了。
This is Emma Ott. She's a recent college admittee. She's studying accounting. She played two varsity sports. She graduated as a valedictorian. And that's not particularly extraordinary, except that she's the first human being born to three parents. Why? Because she had a deadly mitochondrial disease that she might have inherited. So when you swap out a third person's DNA and you put it in there, you save the lives of people. But you also are doing germline engineering, which means her kids, if she has kids, will be saved and won't go through this. And [their] kids will be saved, and their grandchildren will be saved, and this passes on.
这是艾玛·奥特。 她是个在校大学生。 她主修会计。 她是两种体育的校队成员 还作为学生代表进行了毕业演讲。 这都没有什么特别的, 但是她是第一个三亲家庭的孩子。 为什么? 因为她很可能通过遗传 得了一种 线粒体疾病。 当你把第三个人的DNA 植入这些人的体内, 他们就可以活下来。 同时使用生殖工程学的技术, 如果她有孩子,她的孩子也将 永远免于这种疾病的侵害。 她的后代, 和她的后代的后代 都会被挽救。
That makes people nervous. So 20 years ago, the various authorities said, why don't we study this for a while? There are risks to doing stuff, and there are risks to not doing stuff, because there were a couple dozen people saved by this technology, and then we've been thinking about it for the next 20 years. So as we think about it, as we take the time to say, "Hey, maybe we should have longer studies, maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that," there are consequences to acting, and there are consequences to not acting. Like curing deadly diseases -- which, by the way, is completely unnatural. It is normal and natural for humans to be felled by massive epidemics of polio, of smallpox, of tuberculosis. When we put vaccines into people, we are putting unnatural things into their body because we think the benefit outweighs the risk. Because we've built unnatural plants, unnatural animals, we can feed about seven billion people. We can do things like create new life-forms. And as you create new life-forms, again, that sounds terribly scary and terribly bothersome, until you realize that those life-forms live on your dining room table. Those flowers you've got on your dining room table -- there's not a lot that's natural about them, because people have been breeding the flowers to make this color, to be this size, to last for a week. You don't usually give your loved one wildflowers because they don't last a whole lot of time.
这让人们紧张。 所以20年前, 很多专家表示 为什么我们不先研究一下 再推广这些技术呢? 使用这些技术是有风险的 但是不用这些技术问题就会继续, 我们已经使用这些救了很多人。 我们已经思考了20年。 这期间我们不停地说: “也许我们需要更长时间的研究”, “也许我们要做这个 也许要做那个”, 凡事都是有两面性的。 用科技治愈致命的疾病也不例外。 治愈致命的疾病 其实是非常反常的。 如果人类死于大量的传染病 比如脊髓灰质炎,天花,肺结核, 那是非常正常的。 在人体体内疫苗就是一件 很不正常的事, 但是我们认为利大于弊。 因为我们培养了特殊的植株 特殊的动物, 我们才可以养育这70亿人。 我们可以创造新的生物 乍一听创造新生物实在太恐怖 太可怕, 其实你在餐厅的桌子上 就可以看到那些新生物。 餐厅桌子上买回来的鲜花 和自然完全沾不上边, 因为人类一直在选育固定的颜色 固定的尺寸, 以及强大的生存能力。 你通常不会放野花在这 因为它们活不了多久。
What all this does is it flips Darwin completely on his head. See, for four billion years, what lived and died on this planet depended on two principles: on natural selection and random mutation. And so what lived and died, what was structured, has now been flipped on its head. And what we've done is created this completely parallel evolutionary system where we are practicing unnatural selection and non-random mutation.
这一切的一切 都完全颠覆了达尔文的理论。 40亿年前, 地球上生物能否生存 取决于两个原则: 自然选择和基因突变。 而这两个原则 现在已经被完全颠覆了。 我们正在 创造一个完全并行的进化系统 这个系统里我们尝试着 非自然选择和定向变异。
So let me explain these things. This is natural selection. This is unnatural selection.
让我来解释一下: 这是自然选择。 这是非自然选择。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So what happens with this stuff is, we started breeding wolves thousands of years ago in central Asia to turn them into dogs. And then we started turning them into big dogs and into little dogs. But if you take one of the chihuahuas you see in the Hermès bags on Fifth Avenue and you let it loose on the African plain, you can watch natural selection happen.
狗这个物种实际上 是几千年前的中亚人通过驯养狼 得到的物种。 然后我们开始把狗培育成大狗 或者小狗。 但是如果你带着一只第五大街上的 某个爱马仕包里的吉娃娃 去非洲平原放生 你就可以看到自然选择的发生。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Few things on Earth are less natural than a cornfield. You will never, under any scenario, walk through a virgin forest and see the same plant growing in orderly rows at the same time, nothing else living there. When you do a cornfield, you're selecting what lives and what dies. And you're doing that through unnatural selection. It's the same with a wheat field, it's the same with a rice field. It's the same with a city, it's the same with a suburb. In fact, half the surface of Earth has been unnaturally engineered so that what lives and what dies there is what we want, which is the reason why you don't have grizzly bears walking through downtown Manhattan.
地球上没有比玉米地更不自然的了。 如果你进入原始森林 你永远不可能看到 同一种植株 在同一时刻 整齐的排列, 什么别的植物都没有。 你在种植玉米的时候, 你决定了什么生什么死。 你在进行非自然选择。 麦田也一样,稻田也一样, 城市也一样,郊区也一样。 事实地球上一半的地区 都是人工控制的结果 这些地区我们决定物种的生死。 所以你不可能在曼哈顿的街区 看到灰熊走来走去。
How about this random mutation stuff? Well, this is random mutation. This is Antonio Alfonseca. He's otherwise known as the Octopus, his nickname. He was the Relief Pitcher of the Year in 2000. And he had a random mutation that gave him six fingers on each hand, which turns out to be really useful if you're a pitcher.
基因突变是什么呢? 这就是基因突变。 这是安东尼奥·艾方塞卡, 他还有一个外号叫做章鱼 他是2000年的最佳替补投手。 基因突变让他每只手都拥有 六根手指。 这对他投球帮助很大。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
How about non-random mutation? A non-random mutation is beer. It's wine. It's yogurt. How many times have you walked through the forest and found all-natural cheese? Or all-natural yogurt? So we've been engineering this stuff. Now, the interesting thing is, we get to know the stuff better. We found one of the single most powerful gene-editing instruments, CRISPR, inside yogurt. And as we start engineering cells, we're producing eight out of the top 10 pharmaceutical products, including the stuff that you use to treat arthritis, which is the number one best-selling drug, Humira.
那什么是非随机突变呢? 啤酒,葡萄酒,酸奶 都是非随机突变。 你在森林里走的时候 看见一块纯天然的奶酪的几率有多大呢 纯天然酸奶呢? 这些都是非随机突变的结果。 有趣的是, 现在我们对于突变了解的更多了。 我们在酸奶中发现了 基因编辑的有力武器 CRISPR。 我们开始控制细胞 利用这个工具制造 十种最常用药物中的八种 包括治疗关节炎的 特效药,修美乐。
So this lifecode stuff. It really is a superpower. It really is a way of programming stuff, and there's nothing that's going to change us more than this lifecode. So as you're thinking of lifecode, let's think of five principles as to how we start guiding, and I'd love you to give me more.
生命密码就是这些东西。 它真的超级强大。 真的就像在编码生物一样, 再也不会有比生命密码对于人类的改变 更大的改变了。 所以在思考生命密码的时候, 在开始准备使用它的时候, 我们要遵守五个原则。 我希望各位可以给我更多启发。
So, principle number one: we have to take responsibility for this stuff. The reason we have to take responsibility is because we're in charge. These aren't random mutations. This is what we are doing, what we are choosing. It's not, "Stuff happened." It didn't happen at random. It didn't come down by a verdict of somebody else. We engineer this stuff, and it's the Pottery Barn rule: you break it, you own it.
原则一: 我们要承担对生命密码的责任。 之所以我们要肩负起责任 是因为我们是使用者。 这不是随机的突变。 这是我们的选择,我们的工作 这不是“事情就这样发生了” 这既不是随机发生的。 也不会随着 别人的决定而消失。 我们制造了它, 根据珀特里·巴恩的原则: 你破坏了规则,你就要对它负责。
Principle number two: we have to recognize and celebrate diversity in this stuff. There have been at least 33 versions of hominids that have walked around this Earth. Most all of them went extinct except us. But the normal and natural state of this Earth is we have various versions of humans walking around at the same time, which is why most of us have some Neanderthal in us. Some of us have some Denisova in us. And some in Washington have a lot more of it.
原则二: 我们必须明白并且 鼓励物种的多样性。 曾经至少有33种原始人 存在于这个世界上。 除了我们之外绝大多数已经灭绝。 但是正常情况下的地球 应该有不同种的人类同时存在 这也是为什么很多人有尼安德特人 和丹尼索瓦人的特征。 一些华盛顿的政客好像 有更多类似的特征。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Principle number three: we have to respect other people's choices. Some people will choose to never alter. Some people will choose to alter all. Some people will choose to alter plants but not animals. Some people will choose to alter themselves. Some people will choose to evolve themselves. Diversity is not a bad thing, because even though we think of humans as very diverse, we came so close to extinction that all of us descend from a single African mother and the consequence of that is there's more genetic diversity in 55 African chimpanzees than there are in seven billion humans.
原则三: 尊重他人的选择。 有人选择不改变, 有人选择改变, 有人选择改变植物 但是不改变动物, 有人选择改变自己。 有人选择进化自己。 多样性是好的, 尽管我们认为 人类多样性已经很丰富了, 但是因为我们来自 同一位非洲母亲的基因, 我们也有灭绝的危险。 而且它的后果是, 55只非洲黑猩猩的基因的多样性 都比70亿人类丰富得多。
Principle number four: we should take about a quarter of the Earth and only let Darwin run the show there. It doesn't have to be contiguous, doesn't have to all be tied together. It should be part in the oceans, part on land. But we should not run every evolutionary decision on this planet. We want to have our evolutionary system running. We want to have Darwin's evolutionary system running. And it's just really important to have these two things running in parallel and not overwhelm evolution.
原则四: 我们应该让四分之一的世界 遵循达尔文的原则。 这四分之一的世界不用连在一起, 也不用被绑定在一起看待。 但是要有部分的海洋和部分的陆地。 我们不应该决定 地球上每一个物种的进化。 我们需要我们的进化系统的运行。 我们也需要达尔文进化系统的运行。 我们需要两个系统并行 而不是压倒性的人工进化。
(Applause)
(掌声)
Last thing I'll say. This is the single most exciting adventure human beings have been on. This is the single greatest superpower humans have ever had. It would be a crime for you not to participate in this stuff because you're scared of it, because you're hiding from it. You can participate in the ethics. You can participate in the politics. You can participate in the business. You can participate in just thinking about where medicine is going, where industry is going, where we're going to take the world. It would be a crime for all of us not to be aware when somebody shows up at a swimming pool and says one word, just one word, if you don't listen if that word is "lifecode."
最后我想说, 这是人类有史以来 最激动人心的冒险。 这是人类拥有过的最大的力量。 如果因为你害怕 因为你想逃避 从而错过了参与进来的机会, 这将是令你遗憾终生的事。 你可以从伦理的角度参与进来 你可以从政治的角度参与进来 你可以从商业的角度参与进来 你可以仅仅通过思考 制药业和工业的未来 通过思考我们和世界如何共处 而参与进来。 如果有人出现在游泳池 告诉我们了一个词,仅仅一个词 如果那个词是“生命密码” 如果我们没有听,没有注意 那么这将是全人类的遗憾。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)