WEB TEXTS for NATURE WARS

Back to Syllabus

WEEK Ten/Eleven

DANTE: The Divine Comedy (Paradisio, 133-154)

(These lines occur as Dante struggles to enter the higher reaches of the Heavenly sphere. His muse, Beatrice, instructs him to look back down past all the planetary spheres to consider the earth from his new vantage point.)

“Beatrice began to say: ‘You are so near the highest blessedness, that your eyes should be sharp and clear. So, before you make your way deeper into it, look down, and see how great a world I have placed under your feet: in order that your heart may be presented, as joyfully as it can to the triumphant crowd which comes, delightedly, through this ethereal sphere.’

“I turned my gaze back through each and every one of the seven spheres, and saw this globe, so that I smiled at its pitiful semblance, and I approve that wisdom greatest which considers it least: since he whose thoughts are directed elsewhere may be called truly noble.

“I saw the Moon, Artemis, daughter of Latona, lit without that shadow which gave me reason before to consider her rare or dense. I endured the face of Helios, your son Hyperion, and saw how Mercury, son of Maia, and Venus, daughter of Dione, move around and near him. Next, Jupiter appeared, moderate between Saturn his father’s cold, and Mars’s his son’s heat, and the changes in their position were clear to me. And all the seven were revealed to me, how large, how fast they are, and how distant from each other in orbit.

“The threshing-floor that makes us so fierce, appeared to me from mountains to river-mouth, as I revolved with the eternal Twins: then I turned my eyes to the lovely eyes again.”

WEEK ONE

From Antigone:

CHORUS singing

strophe 1

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year.

antistrophe 1

And the light-hearted race of birds, and the tribes of savage beasts, and the sea-brood of the deep, he snares in the meshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man excellent in wit. And he masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wilds, who roams the hills; he tames the horse of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain bull.

strophe 2

And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come: only against Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling maladies he hath devised escapes.

antistrophe 2

Cunning beyond fancy's dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good. When he honours the laws of the land, and that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold, proudly stands his city: no city hath he who, for his rashness, dwells with sin. Never may he share my hearth, never think my thoughts, who doth these things!

---

WEEK TWO

Still from Schindler’s List

 
 Photograph of Bodies at Belsen-Belsen
 (see: http://shamash.org/holocaust/photos)

---

WEEK FOUR

BOOK REVIEW OF MERCHANTS OF IMMORTALITY:

Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension by Stephen S. Hall

By Shannon Brownlee
Senior Fellow

The Guardian (London)
August 14, 2003

When my son was about 4 years old, he asked me one of those questions for which there seems to be no easy one. "Who," he asked, "decided that people would grow up, have babies and then die, and then their children would grow up and have babies and die?" I may have replied something like "Nobody knows," but as a former student of biology, I knew that there is an answer to part of his question - why do people age and die? The answer is the "Hayflick limit," the biological law that says cells reproduce themselves only a certain number of times before falling into senescence.

Leonard Hayflick discovered that the cells of all creatures begin to disintegrate after a set number of divisions, largely because they are no longer able to carry out such tasks as exporting wastes and accurately copying the DNA inside their nuclei. Human cells, he found, will divide about 50 times in a Petri dish before running out of gas. This discovery suggested that body parts lose the capacity to repair themselves when the cells reach their allotted span. Before Hayflick's finding in the 1970s, biologists believed that cells could replenish themselves indefinitely. The Hayflick limit sparked insights not only into the question of why we decline and die, but also into cancer, whose cells reproduce ad infinitum. It has also helped spawn the branch of biotechnology devoted to life extension. Few serious scientists believe that human beings can live forever, but this hasn't stopped biotechnology companies with names like Elixer, Osiris and Geron from capitalizing on the possibility that tinkering with the genetic and metabolic machinery controlling cellular senescence will one day allow us to slow the inexorable march toward death.

These merchants of immortality, as author Stephen S. Hall calls them, are betting that embryonic stem cells, the primogenitors of all cell types in the body, hold out the promise of treating a host of diseases, from Parkinson's to diabetes to torn rotator cuffs. Stem cells are also the focus of one of the nation's most urgent ethical and political debates because they are derived from embryos.

Leading readers from the science of the Hayflick limit to the politics of stem cells takes some deft and thoughtful writing. Hall manages to traverse this terrain with the help of his central character, Michael West, a former antiabortionist and creationist who converted to the church of molecular biology. West believes it is his mission to find the means to extend life, and neither ethics or legislation is going to get in his way, and in the 1980s he founded Geron Corporation, which was devoted to life-extension. By the time his own board had booted him from the company, he had moved on to stem cells and begun raising private funds for researchers who were at the earliest stages of finding and understanding them.

West's story makes for compelling reading, but there would be little reason to care about him if not for his knack for being at the center of some of the most troubling controversies surrounding biotechnology and medicine. It was West's second company, Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT), that grabbed headlines two years ago with the announcement that it had created a cloned embryo made from a cow egg and human DNA. He made the news again last year when ACT ballyhooed the creation of a cloned human embryo. West and his company promised they had no interest in creating cloned babies; they simply wanted to be able to harvest embryonic stem cells. The announcement naturally sparked a worldwide furor. The Vatican condemned the science, and Congress launched another round of hearings to consider banning both human cloning and embryonic stem cell research.

That a public debate as momentous as the one over cloning and stem cells came to be driven by a messianic opportunist like West is a testament to the thoroughness with which abortion politics has cowed more legitimate scientists into silence and prevented a rational discussion of the issues. As Hall puts it, West "was not the most august or the most credible, or the most respected, member of the scientific community to be making the case for stem cells, to say nothing of the way he wanted to push the public debate, pedal to metal, on human cloning. But it was also true that no one else in the scientific community cared to venture so far out on a limb."

One result of scientists' reticence was President George W. Bush's decision to limit federal funding to research on 60 existing stem cells lines, or cells that have been coaxed to grow on their own in the lab. It was an attempt to arrive at a Solomonic solution: Publicly funded research could go forward, but no more embryos would be sacrificed in the name of science. The decision has instead had the unintended but predictable consequence of driving researchers into the arms of the private sector. It turns out the administration vastly overestimated the number of existing cell lines. There were perhaps six sets, not 60. Researchers will need a lot more varieties of stem cells if the science is going to advance, and the only source is private industry. That means stem cell research will proceed largely hidden from public scrutiny.

Even worse, in Hall's view, the president's edict means that basic researchers will be forced to enter time-consuming and expensive contracts with the private companies that control the majority of viable cell lines.

"Merchants Of Immortality" is a highly readable and important book. Hall is an expert explicator, able to make the most difficult biology easy to understand. But he is at his best when describing the characters involved in the science and politics and when chronicling recent events. It seems that Hall sides with biologists like West, who would have the rest of us believe that stem cells will be the future of medicine and that science should be allowed to pursue cures unfettered. Whether or not you agree with that assessment, this book will provide new insights into the intersection of science and politics.

It also provided me with additional information for my son. Altering the human lifespan dramatically would require a delay in development. In other words if you want to live to 150, you can't just tack on 60 extra years as an adult; you also have to extend infancy, childhood and adolescence. Children might not reach maturity until they were 30 or 40 years old. Now there is a thought to scare away any parent from life extension.

Copyright: 2003 The Guardian (London)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
WEEK FOUR
 
From King Lear:
 
ACT III
 Scene II.
 
 Another part of the heath.
 
 Storm still. Enter Lear and Fool.
 
 Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
 You cataracts and hurricanoes. spout
 Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
 You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires,
 Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
 Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
 Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
 Crack Nature's moulds, all germains spill at once,
 That makes ingrateful man!
 Fool. O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than this
 rain water out o' door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters
 blessing! Here's a night pities nether wise men nor fools.
 Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
 Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
 I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
 I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
 You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
 Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
  A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man.
 But yet I call you servile ministers,
 That will with two pernicious daughters join
 Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head
 So old and white as this! O! O! 'tis foul!
 Fool. He that has a house to put 's head in has a good head-piece.
 
 The codpiece that will house
 Before the head has any,
 The head and he shall louse:
 So beggars marry many.
 The man that makes his toe
 What he his heart should make
 Shall of a corn cry woe,
 And turn his sleep to wake.
 
 For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a
 glass.
 
…
 
 Storm still.
 
 Lear. Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy
 uncover'd body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than
 this? Consider him well. Thou ow'st the worm no silk, the beast
 no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here's three
 on's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself;
 unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked
 animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Collie, unbutton
 here.
 [Tears at his clothes.]
 Fool. Prithee, nuncle, be contented! 'Tis a naughty night to swim
 in. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher's
 heart-a small spark, all the rest on's body cold. Look, here
 comes a walking fire.
 
…
 
Scene VI.
 
 The country near Dover.
 
 Enter Gloucester, and Edgar [like a Peasant].
 
 Glou. When shall I come to th' top of that same hill?
 Edg. You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.
 Glou. Methinks the ground is even.
 Edg. Horrible steep.
 Hark, do you hear the sea?
 Glou. No, truly.
 Edg. Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect
 By your eyes' anguish.
 Glou. So may it be indeed.
 Methinks thy voice is alter'd, and thou speak'st
 In better phrase and matter than thou didst.
 Edg. Y'are much deceiv'd. In nothing am I chang'd
 But in my garments.
 Glou. Methinks y'are better spoken.
 Edg. Come on, sir; here's the place. Stand still. How fearful
 And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
 The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
 Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down
 Hangs one that gathers sampire-dreadful trade!
 Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
 The fishermen that walk upon the beach
 Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
 Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
 Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge
 That on th' unnumb'red idle pebble chafes
 Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,
  Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
 Topple down headlong.
 Glou. Set me where you stand.
 Edg. Give me your hand. You are now within a foot
 Of th' extreme verge. For all beneath the moon
 Would I not leap upright.
 Glou. Let go my hand.
 Here, friend, is another purse; in it a jewel
 Well worth a poor man's taking. Fairies and gods
 Prosper it with thee! Go thou further off;
 Bid me farewell, and let me hear thee going.
 Edg. Now fare ye well, good sir.
 Glou. With all my heart.
 Edg. [aside]. Why I do trifle thus with his despair
 Is done to cure it.
 Glou. O you mighty gods! He kneels.
 This world I do renounce, and, in your sights,
 Shake patiently my great affliction off.
 If I could bear it longer and not fall
 To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,
 My snuff and loathed part of nature should
 Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him!
 Now, fellow, fare thee well. He falls [forward and swoons].
 Edg. Gone, sir, farewell.-
 And yet I know not how conceit may rob
 The treasury of life when life itself
 Yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought,
 By this had thought been past.-Alive or dead?
 Ho you, sir! friend! Hear you, sir? Speak!-
  Thus might he pass indeed. Yet he revives.
 What are you, sir?
 Glou. Away, and let me die.
 Edg. Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,
 So many fadom down precipitating,
 Thou'dst shiver'd like an egg; but thou dost breathe;
  Hast heavy substance; bleed'st not; speak'st; art sound.
 Ten masts at each make not the altitude
 Which thou hast perpendicularly fell.
 Thy life is a miracle. Speak yet again.
 Glou. But have I fall'n, or no?
 Edg. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.
 Look up a-height. The shrill-gorg'd lark so far
 Cannot be seen or heard. Do but look up.
 Glou. Alack, I have no eyes!
 Is wretchedness depriv'd that benefit
 To end itself by death? 'Twas yet some comfort
 When misery could beguile the tyrant's rage
 And frustrate his proud will.
 Edg. Give me your arm.
 Up-so. How is't? Feel you your legs? You stand.
 Glou. Too well, too well.
 Edg. This is above all strangeness.
 Upon the crown o' th' cliff what thing was that
 Which parted from you?
 Glou. A poor unfortunate beggar.
 Edg. As I stood here below, methought his eyes
 Were two full moon,; he had a thousand noses,
 Horns whelk'd and wav'd like the enridged sea.
  It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father,
 Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours
 Of men's impossibility, have preserv'd thee.
 Glou. I do remember now. Henceforth I'll bear
 Affliction till it do cry out itself
 'Enough, enough,' and die. That thing you speak of,
 I took it for a man. Often 'twould say
 'The fiend, the fiend'-he led me to that place.
 Edg. Bear free and patient thoughts.