Śyāmasundara: There is a scientific subject which has become very popular now, called genetics, which has to do with the origins of life.
Prabhupāda: Well these so-called scientific theories are popular now and unpopular after few years. That's all. Again something popular. They are not science. Science cannot be popular now and unpopular after some days.
Śyāmasundara: But it's only because they have just discovered it.
Prabhupāda: Discovering, partial, that's like... They cannot discover. The things are there passing on, so many things, passing on.
Śyāmasundara: What it means in essence is that they have analyzed the individual cell of the living entity and they have found in each cell a set of genes, forty-six in each cell. These genes contain the blueprint for the whole body, like the seed of a tree contains the whole tree. So it is possible, they say, by rearranging these genes or changing them slightly that a new type of person can come out, or a new type of living entity, from the original.
Prabhupāda: Definitely. What we call the jīva, they might be talking of the jīva or genes. The genes, the jīva, they can have any nice type of body.
Atreya Ṛṣi: Can the scientists control that, the type of genes, the kinds of body, the child will get? The theory is...
Prabhupāda: Not theory... Just like we give dimension of the soul, so that statement is given by some man. Just like one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair, we get information from the Purāṇas. So this statement is also given by a man, but he is not ordinary. He is not ordinary. So any extraordinary man can give it.
Śyāmasundara: These genes are visible through a microscope, so they are not...
Prabhupāda: This is also visible. When I say that one ten-thousandth part of the hair, it is visible. Otherwise how I say? But it may not be visible to you. (indistinct)
Śyāmasundara: I mean these genes are not the same as the jīva in this case.
Prabhupāda: That is different thing. But jīva can be given any type of body. That is not difficult.
Śyāmasundara: So they say that each person is different from every other person because the arrangement of the genes in his cell is uniquely his, but the same genes will be passed on...
Prabhupāda: (indistinct) That depends on the father and the mother.
Śyāmasundara: The same genes will be passed on to their children, so they will have characteristics like their parents in that way.
Prabhupāda: That is the body—this body.
Śyāmasundara: So they are considering that by altering these genes in certain ways, they can make very highly intelligent persons come out or very low-bred persons come out.
Prabhupāda: But that is already there. What is their credit?
Atreya Ṛṣi: They want to control more.
Prabhupāda: What is the control? It is already there. It is not under your control.
Śyāmasundara: Their idea is that they can make xerox copies of whatever type of personality they like.
Prabhupāda: That's right; xerox copy means the original sample is already there. So what is the credit there?
Devotee: There may be only one very, very intelligent person, but by their method they may think that they may create a whole society.
Śyāmasundara: I'll read you some of their predictions. They're very frightening. They say by 1980—that's eight years from now—that they will be able to create synthetic life in the form of artificial viruses which will be used to cure some forms of genetic diseases. Artificial life. In eight years they say they will have artificial life.
Prabhupāda: And that artificial life?
Śyāmasundara: Small viruses or living organisms, very small. But by the year 2000 they say they will be able to keep...
Prabhupāda: 2000!
Śyāmasundara: Yes. That's twenty-eight years from now. They say that they will be able to deep-freeze embryos, that means unborn babies, as insurance against nuclear holocaust and for interplanetary colonization. In other words, they can send these unborn babies in frozen form to other planets and have an arrangement for them to be born and grow in the spaceship and then go out.
Prabhupāda: Don't waste your time with these rascals.