Editorial: Gene project can bring only good

The use of genetics in research has proved to be a powerful but highly controversial tool. The considerable benefits promised by science, such as improved health and better nutrition, always raise equally compelling concerns about ethics and the unplanned effects on the environment.

But genetic research is not just about looking forward to a brave new world free of disease and malnutrition, it can also help to solve some of mysteries of the human past. For instance, recent DNA studies back theories that all humans came out of Africa and that they had common ancestors.

Now a group of scientists has embarked on an ambitious project to use genetic techniques to map the migratory pathways that members of the human species followed to populate the globe. The Genographic project, as it is called, aims to collect genetic samples from 100,000 people over the next five years which will be used to fill in the gaps of human prehistory. Although the task seems a long way from the ethical conundrums raised by putting human genes into animals in the name of medicine, it is not without controversy.

Native American leaders have advised their people not to give samples and some Maori have followed suit. Grounds for objection seem to fall into two broad categories, the ethical and the political.

The first category will be familiar enough to anyone who has followed the debate about genetic engineering. It is based on a deep-seated concern that remoulding the building blocks of life may well have unforeseen, and dire, consequences. As Dr Paul Reynolds of Auckland University's Maori research centre, Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, put it: "The collection of DNA through blood samples goes against our view of the body as tapu, or sacred, which also leads on to the misuse of the body and body parts by some researchers."

This is all very well, except that DNA samples are already taken for forensic purposes and have proved invaluable in solving intractable mysteries of past crime, such as the Teresa Cormack case. Whole new - and unnecessary - controversies would open up if people could be excluded from such testing on the basis of, say, race or creed.

It follows, therefore, that there is no good ethical reason to prevent genetic research being used to tackle the larger questions of human history. All the more so as the scientists conducting the research have given absolute assurances that the genetic material collected will not be patented and will be used only for historical and anthropological research.

The second category arises from worries about how interpretations of the past can affect the future. Wellington lawyer Moana Jackson questioned the project's motives in these terms: "I'm sure part of it will be to try to strengthen some of the existing theories about the arrival of indigenous peoples in various countries, and that has a sordid history because it has been used to diminish indigenous rights."

Once again, this is not a sufficient reason for rejecting the project. It is hard to see how a refinement of the date that a particular land, say New Zealand, was originally settled can have a material effect on people's rights in the 21st century. Regardless of whether the Maori came 800 or 1200 years ago, it was still long before Pakeha first set foot on these shores.

Pitched against these dubious objections are more powerful reasons to support the Genographic project. The quest for origins and explanations is an essential part of what it is to be human. If human beings are to fully understand themselves they need to know where they came from. In the past the answers were related as myths, but science has gradually replaced myth with fact. Thanks to archaeology and some genetic research, we already know humans came from Africa. This project seems to provide the best hope of completing the work. It is based on the premise that all people are related and aims to tell the story, not just of one or two groups, but of the whole human family. That cannot be a bad thing.