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.
有一位演員叫做達斯汀.霍夫曼。 多年前,他拍過一部電影, 你們可能有人聽過, 片名叫《畢業生》。 片中有兩個關鍵場景。 第一個場景是色誘。 但我今晚不會談這個。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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."
第二個場景是, 他被一個長者帶到泳池邊, 那長者對這年輕的大學畢業生 基本上只說了一個字, 就一個字。 當然,你們都知道是哪個字。 「塑膠」。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And the only problem with that is, it was completely the wrong advice.
那件事唯一的問題就是, 它根本是個錯誤的建議。
(Laughter)
[大錯特錯!] (笑聲)
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.
讓我告訴你錯在哪。 那個字應該改成「矽」。 而它必須改成矽的原因是: 當時半導體技術剛被研發出來, 專利已經送件, 並開始生產。 1967 年這部片上映時, 矽谷才剛起步。 電影上映後的隔年, 英特爾才創立。 那畢業生當年要是聽到了對的字, 也許今天在台上的就是他, 搞不好…… 還是跟這兩個傢伙。
(Laughter)
[史蒂夫.賈伯斯和比爾.蓋茲] (笑聲)
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.
當你在思考這件事時, 讓我們順便想想該給什麼建議, 好讓未來的畢業生 不會變成特百惠的業務員。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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,當你把一位大學 畢業生叫到泳池邊的時候, 你會給他們什麼建議? 你只能說一個字,就一個字。 我認為答案是「生物工程」。 「生物工程」是什麼? 它代表我們能用來 設計生命的各種途徑。 設計的不再是電腦程式, 而是用生物科技來設計病毒、 反轉錄病毒、蛋白質、 DNA、RNA、 植物、動物或各種各樣的生物。 這樣的神奇能力 ──讓生命為你所用, 照著設計運作── 從本質上來說, 其實是幾千年來, 我們一直在做的事, 像是育種、修改、 雜交、配對 各種的生命形式, 只不過速度大幅加快了。
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 --
這不是什麼新概念。 這個不起眼的野生甘藍已被改造: 用第一種方式改造它, 你會得到青花菜; 用第二種方式,你會得到羽衣甘藍; 用第三種方式的話, 你會得到花椰菜。 所以,當你走進這些 純天然有機蔬果市場時, 你實際上進的 是個植物生命已被 長時間改造的地方。 不同以往的是 ──挑個政治正確的字眼──
[Intelligent design]
[智慧設計]
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我們已經開始使用智慧設計。 這意味著,不同於以往的隨機 和依靠世代交替進行演化, 我們插入特定的基因, 插入特定的蛋白質, 開始非常刻意、 有目的性地改造生命。 這讓我們能夠加速變化的發生。
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.
讓我舉個例子吧! 「性行為」可能偶爾會略過你的腦海。 我們視如今性事的樣貌為理所當然, 而且對這樣的改變習以為常。 性行為最終的結果── 一般來說,是寶寶。 但,在現今世界, 性行為搭配避孕藥,就沒有寶寶了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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?
儘管我們對此完全習以為常, 但在大部分的人類史上並非如此。 對動物而言也不是。 它賦予了我們控制權, 讓性與受孕得以分離。 當你正思考後果的同時, 人類又更進一步, 玩起了「ART」。 不是繪畫、雕刻那種藝術(art), ART 是「輔助生殖技術」的縮寫。 「輔助生殖技術」是什麼? 「輔助生殖技術」包含了體外受精。 做體外受精有很好的理由。 有時候,你就是無法 用其他方法受孕。 當你這樣做時, 你就把性、受孕、寶寶 彼此分開來了。 所以,你不僅控制了 什麼時候有寶寶, 還控制了寶寶在何時、何地受精。 所以,你把寶寶 從身體和行為分開來了。 當你在想我們還做了些什麼的時候, 想想雙胞胎吧! 你可以冷凍精子、卵子, 你可以冷凍受精卵。 這代表什麼? 若你是位癌症病患,這就是好事。 你可以在做化學治療或放射治療前, 把這些東西存起來, 不讓它們受到輻射。 但若你可以保存、冷凍它們, 而且還能夠請代理孕母的話, 代表何時懷胎也控制在我們手中。 也就是說,你可以讓雙胞胎中的 另一個出生在……50 年後?
(Laughter)
[兄:嘿!兄弟! 弟:你誰啊?] (笑聲)
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.
可以 100 年後嗎? 200 年後呢? 而這三項重大改變 不是未來的事情。 如今這已經廣為人們接受。
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.
所以,生物工程是一種超能力。 這種難以置信的超能力 可以改造病毒、 改造植物、改造動物, 甚至改造我們自己。 史蒂夫.格蘭斯和我 已經思考這件事一陣子了。
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.
讓我們冒一些險吧! 每種強大的科技,像是電力、汽車, 或是電腦,都有被濫用的可能。 這讓很多人感到恐懼。 當你使用這個技術時, 你也有可能把人類變成奇美拉。 記得希臘神話裡的混種動物嗎? 這個技術中的一些治療方法 最終將改變你的血型。 有時候,他們會把男性細胞 放到女性身體裡面,反之亦然。 聽起來很可怕, 但你必須瞭解這麼做的原因── 有些癌症療程中,會進行骨髓移植。 當你移植了他人的骨隨, 你可能會有些本質上的改變, 但同時也救了自己一命。 在你思考的同時, 我們說說 20 年前的案例吧!
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.
這位是艾瑪.奧特。 她最近成為一位大學錄取生。 她念的是會計。 她是學校兩個校隊的隊員, 畢業時是畢業生代表。 然而,她最特別的地方, 在於她是世界第一個 擁有「三親」的人類。 為何是「三親」? 因為她或許有來自遺傳的 致命線粒體疾病。 所以,把第三人的 DNA 抽出, 然後移植過去, 你就挽救了那個人的生命。 但你也同時在做生殖工程, 意思就是如果她有孩子, 你也救到了她的孩子, 而且不僅如此。 她孩子的下一代、 下下一代都因此得救, 並將代代相傳。
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.
這讓人們緊張。 所以 20 年前,各方當權者說, 為什麼我們不再研究一下? 一件事情做了會有風險, 不做也有其風險。 這個技術已經實際拯救了很多人, 而我們已花了過去的 20 年在思考。 當我們思考, 並說:「嘿!我們應該 要做更長時間的研究; 我們應該要做這個跟那個……」 同時必須意識到,採取行動 有其後果,不採取行動也是。 像是治療致命的疾病── 當然,完全是非自然的方式。 人類染上流行傳染病死亡很正常, 小兒麻痺症、天花、肺結核 都是著名的例子。 當我們注射疫苗時, 就是把非天然的東西 放進人體, 因為我們認為注射疫苗的 利益大過於風險。 因為我們創造了 非天然的植物、動物, 我們得以餵飽 70 億人口。 我們可以創造出新的生命形式。 這聽起來讓人提心吊膽, 且坐立難安, 直到你意識到,這樣的生命 就存在於你的餐桌上。 你餐桌上的花── 它們一點也不天然, 因為人們已經把這些花, 育種成特定顏色、 特定大小、能活一星期。 你不太會送你的愛人野花, 因為它們沒辦法活很久。
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.
這些事, 完全顛覆了達爾文的理論。 40 億年以來, 兩條準則決定了地球上生物的生死: 「天擇」和「隨機突變」。 什麼會活著、死去或是被建構, 這樣的準則如今已被徹底改變。 我們所做所為, 創造了完全平行的演化系統, 進行「人擇」與「非隨機突變」。
So let me explain these things. This is natural selection. This is unnatural selection.
讓我稍做說明。 這是天擇。 這是人擇。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
狗的人擇過程是這樣的: 人類幾千年前在中亞開始養狼, 將牠們馴化成了狗。 接著把牠們變成大狗, 變成小狗。 但若你把紐約第五大道上 愛馬仕包包裡的吉娃娃, 拿去非洲大草原野放, 你就能看到天擇的運作了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
地球上很少有東西 能比玉米田更不自然。 你怎麼都不可能在原始森林裡, 看到植物排列得如此整齊、 生長得如此一致、 生物相又這麼單一。 在玉米田裡, 你決定了什麼活、什麼死。 你做的就是人擇。 麥田、稻田裡的狀況也是一樣的。 城市、郊區裡的狀況仍是一樣的。 實際上,地球表面有一半 已經被人類改變, 什麼活、什麼死 都取決於我們的念頭。 這也是你在曼哈頓市中心 看不到灰熊逛大街的原因。
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.
那隨機突變是什麼? 這就是隨機突變。 這位是安東尼奧.艾方塞卡。 他有個綽號叫「章魚」。 他是 2000 年的最佳救援投手。 隨機突變讓他的雙手 各有六根指頭。 事實證明,這突變對投手很有用。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
那非隨機突變是什麼? 非隨機突變有:啤酒、 酒、優格。 各位有幾次走過森林時, 看到純天然的起司? 或純天然的優格? 我們改造這些東西很久了。 有趣的是, 我們技術因此更加純熟。 我們從優格裡面發現了 CRISPR 這個強大的 基因編輯工具。 開始自行設計細胞後, 前十名暢銷藥物中 有八種靠此技術生產, 包括你用來治療關節炎的 第一名暢銷藥──復邁。
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.
生物工程這玩意兒。 它真的是種超能力, 是種設計生命的方法。 沒有什麼東西,比生物工程 更能衝擊我們生活。 思考生物工程時, 讓我們用五大原則, 作為我們起步的指引。 我以此拋磚引玉。
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.
原則一: 我們必須扛起用這技術的責任。 我們必須扛起責任, 因為我們是掌控者。 這並非隨機突變。 這是我們的行為和選擇。 這不是,「啊就發生了啊!」 它不會隨機發生。 它不會是他人的決定。 是我們使用了這技術, 就像賣場裡的原則: 你把東西弄壞了,你就得買。
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.
原則二: 我們必須體認到多樣性的重要。 曾有至少 33 種原始人, 遍佈世界各地。 除了我們其他大部分都絕跡了。 但正常且自然的狀態, 是地球上同時存在不同人種。 這也是為什麼多數人 有些尼安德塔人的血統。 部分人有些丹尼索瓦人血統。 在華府有些人這血統特別濃厚。 (華府與丹尼索瓦洞縮寫同為 D.C.)
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
原則三: 我們必須尊重別人的選擇。 有些人選擇絕不改造。 有些人選擇改造一切。 有些人選擇改植物,不改動物。 有些人選擇改造他們自己。 有些人選擇讓自己演化。 多樣性並非壞事, 因為即使我們認為人類非常多樣, 我們離滅種卻曾無比接近, 以致我們都是同一個 非洲母親的後嗣, 後果就是, 光 55 隻非洲的猩猩 所帶有的基因多樣性 就勝過了 70 億人所帶有的。
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.
原則四: 我們應該保留地球的四分之一, 讓生物在這些地方完全自然地演化。 那些地域無須毗鄰, 也沒必要都綁在一起。 應該有部分海洋,部分陸地。 我們不應控制這星球上的 每個演化決定。 我們要讓人工演化系統運作, 也要讓自然演化系統運作。 讓這兩個系統並行真的很重要, 不要讓它失衡了。
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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."
最後一點: 這是人類史中 最令人興奮的冒險旅程。 這是人類前所未有的強大超能力。 不參與其中並不明智── 就因為你害怕它, 就因為你逃避它。 你可以參與它的 道德研討、政策制定, 或者是事業經營。 你可以想想醫學的未來、 產業的未來, 希望將這個世界引領何處。 這將是我們所有人的失職── 若你未曾意識到那個泳池邊的人, 告訴你的那個字,就一個字, 是否就是「生物工程」。
Thank you very much.
非常感謝各位。
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