Breaking The Secret Code

In 1942, 29 men joined the United States Marine Corps for a special mission. Some were just schoolboys who lied about their ages in order to serve their country. Their assignment: create a secret code that could not be broken, a code that would help win the war with the Japanese in the Pacific. They succeeded admirably.

By the end of the war, their ranks had swelled to more than 500, and they successfully sent more than 800 critical messages during the battle of Iwo Jima alone. In order to guard its secrecy, no written version of their code was allowed in battle areas. All had to be committed to memory.

These brave soldiers were Navajos, fluent both in English and their own Navajo language. The spoken code they ingeniously conceived and created was never broken. They became known as the Navajo Code Talkers.

I mention this marvelous code because another "secret code" is much in the news recently. Amid great fanfare, scientists have announced that the human genetic code has essentially been deciphered. This, they say, is the biological equivalent of putting the first man on the moon.

American scientist James D. Watson won the Nobel Prize for Physiology for his work in discovering the double-helix structure of DNA in the early 1950s. Since then, monumental efforts have been expended to identify and place into proper order the 3.12 billion chemical base pairs present in human DNA and to identify within that DNA the estimated 50,000 human genes.

This "code," the blueprint of life, is incredibly complex. If all the code were printed on paper, the sheets would supposedly stack as high as the Washington monument, 555 feet.

Speaking of this achievement, President Clinton said, "Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift." While I agree with his assessment, I do find it a bit curious.

DNA testing has been used for purposes from determining parentage to establishing guilt in a crime. DNA is found in every human cell, living or dead. The DNA code--"the language in which God created life," in President Clinton's own words--is also found in unborn children.

That's why I find the President's statements puzzling. Not only has he vetoed legislation that would stem the slaughter of the unborn, he has appointed judges agreeable to snuffing out the flame life, "the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift."

Though the Navajo Code Talkers committed their code to our country's fight for freedom, codes are subject to misuse. Recognizing this potential danger, President Clinton cautioned that the genetic code must never be used to segregate, discriminate or invade the privacy of human beings.

I pray that our president will see both born and unborn children as human beings stamped with the same marvelous code and will not use this new found knowledge to further discriminate between them.

Copyright 2000 James McAlister

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