Now we've done it. We cracked it, decyphered it, unlocked it. Hard-pushing humans that we are we've figured out the alphabet which makes up the book of life. If you were paying attention this week you didn't miss it. Two competing U.S. research projects have completed the conprehensive task of laying out the Human Genome. Not impressive enough for you? Let's just say they don't call it the most significant scientific achievement in the history of humanity for nothing.

     Kiddies, Pandora's Box is wide open.

     Science hasn't wowed us up much these days. Except for the constant advances in computing technologies, progress in the other scientific fields is going on at a crawl. We still don't know if there's life out there. We haven't found a cure for cancer. We still can't time-travel. We still don't know why so many think N'Sync are geniuses. The great mysteries are still there, as inpregnable as ever, still mistifying. The annoucement made this week has some far-reaching connotations, some of them we can't even imagine yet. But let me paint you some pictures to frame.

     For starters, mapping out the Genome will in the future be able to let doctors know what diseases you're predisposed to. A visit to Doc ten years from now will have you giving out your genetic map contained within a credit card of sorts. Then Doc will be able to tell you wheter you'll develop colon cancer at age 67 or get Alzheimer's at 72, or he'll tell you whether there's a large probablity you could father the next Albert Einstein or Mark Mcguire. Doesn't sound bad. With this info, preventive medicine will be applied to avoid must diseases.

     But picture this, now that the genome's been alphabetized we might be able to be rid of these diseases absolutely. Perhaps when your children are born, their genetic maps will be swiftly studied and a quick'n'dirty genetic treatment will make them uncapable of developing cancer. The same might be applied to us--gene therapy might prevent some of us already here from getting tennis-sized brain tumors.

     Now, now--knowing mankind, things can go awry. Some mad scientists could eventually use genome information for the wholesale manufacturing of clones. Imagine someone sticks you with a needle on the street one day and 20 years later there are a dozen "yous" around the world engaging in all sorts of shadow activities. If not clones, we might even find a way to "mutate" our genes and give ourselves abilities only seen in comic books--sorta like The X-Men coming true.

     There's also the very scary thought of people using the genome to create perfectly beautiful and top-class psyched individuals. The supermodels and movie stars of the future might be genetic-experiments in lookism taken to its most cringing consequences. The NBA champions of 30 years from now might be eight feet tall and be able to dunk baskets fifteen feet up in the air.

     And the men who completed this wondrous project didn't comment much on it, but we might just find a way to live for a long, looonng time. Centuries even. Just a tweak on some genetic sequences here and we might be able to live an extra fifty years...and look 26 years old all the while.

     Yep...we've opened Pandora's Box. God, look out--we can't go back and you might be next.