2084 The End of Days Read Free Page B

eyes were on her.
    “…My name, as most of you will know, is Dr Marcie Bloom Venters. As most of you also know, I’m originally from New York City and I studied for my doctorate in genetic sciences at Harvard Medical School. For the last three years I have held the post of Collegiate Professor of Clinical Genetics at Bart’s specializing in fertility and embryology. I am here this morning to deliver my presentation to you on the ‘Techniques and Advantages of the Super-storage of Procreative DNA’. In particular, I will discuss the mass storage of human stem cells, male sperm, female eggs and fertilized embryos. I realise that this might be a very controversial subject, as I can see from the swollen ranks of the men and women of the press.”
    A small ripple of subdued laughter drifted out from the dimness of the auditorium. Marcie always liked to inject a little humour into her presentations. It was a good way to engage the audience and check they were still awake in what could be a dry and technically complex subject matter. She pressed on into the presentation and demonstrated her sublime knowledge of the subject. Marcie drew the audience into the scientific world of human DNA. The geneticist outlined the growing problem of infertility across the globe, which in some of the Western developed countries was approaching 1 in 3 men and 1 in 4 women. In some developed countries, such as the UK, serious genetic abnormalities in embryos and foetuses were as high as 1 in 30. Marcie explained that although many of the causes of the high instances of infertility and abnormality which had emerged in the late 21 st century had still not been fully identified it was generally accepted that the causes were in the main man-made. The causation elements were not really the area that Marcie was dealing with, although she retained a strong concerned interest in the outcomes of the investigations into that sector of genetics. The area she felt needed development and funding was for a vast network of storage facilities across the globe, a superstore of human DNA, which had screening facilities to check for the purity levels of fertility of sperm and eggs and the screening out and removal of DNA with genetic defects, disease and abnormalities. The advantages, she argued, would be, in the short term, to help the growing army of couples who currently had fertility problems to tap into a vast storage bank of DNA to enable them to conceive and, in the long term, to progress towards the eradication of certain diseases and abnormalities, providing humanity with a future purification process for its gene store. Marcie discussed the funding issues allied to setting up this network and outlined the key centres around the world where she envisaged a DNA network being sited. There would be three in the UK, ten across Europe, twelve each in the USA, India and Russia, twenty in China and various others to be sited in Japan, Africa, Central and South America and Australasia. A key disadvantage to the system, in Marcie’s opinion, was that it was foreseen that the League of Islamic Nations would not participate in this genetic undertaking and, in fact, would be positively excluded from the network. As a scientist Marcie explained that in some ways the DNA superstore network would be politicised by this exclusion.
    Marcie finalised her presentation by summarising all her key points and then prepared to open up the auditorium for questioning. She took a gulp from the bottle of water she had brought with her and raised the lighting in the room. As her audience came into focus out of the diminishing gloom she felt a little quiver of nerves and a small knot tied itself in her stomach. Marcie was a good presenter but this was the part that made her most uncomfortable, particularly in having to deal with those bloody journalists. They always twisted her conclusions by quoting them out of context. The question flashed across her mind as to why Ruthie had