Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

Amid growing demand for permitting import of animal feed derived out of Genetically Modified (GM) crops, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the countrys apex biotechnology regulatory body, is expected to take up a report on the guidelines for import of Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles (DDGS) derived out of GM corn at its meeting scheduled in New Delhi on Monday.

A sub-committee constituted by the GEAC, headed by Lalitha Gowda, a retired scientist from the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) in Mysuru, has already submitted a report on the guidelines for import of DDGS for livestock and aqua feed.

The GEAC meeting to discuss the report assumes significance in light of the severe scarcity of corn, a key source of animal feed for the burgeoning poultry industry in the country, following the failure of maize crop on account of drought and disease. A number of applications from the poultry industry seeking permission to import GM corn and soyabean are pending.

The sub-committee also included representatives from the agriculture and poultry sectors, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, National Dairy Research Institute, and the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. Though its report has been submitted, it up to the GEAC to a take a decision on permitting import.

The report was submitted along with an elaborate background note on DDGS. Corn that is grown in the United States and many other countries is GM corn, which is also used for producing bio-ethanol. After the starch content in the corn is fermented, the remainder is rich in protein and other nutrients and can be used as animal feed. This byproduct, DDGS, is also used as animal feed in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Dismissing the concerns expressed by anti-GM crusaders over the import of animal feed derived out of GM crops into the country, a food scientist ruled out the possibility of GM food entering the food chain when human beings consume livestock fed on a GM diet. Any food that we eat gets digested and broken down into very small molecules or building blocks. So when it gets broken down into the building blocks, it cannot reform again. The body cannot absorb Genetically Modified DNA.

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Report on GM corn-derived animal feed likely to be taken up today - The Hindu

In the battle against heart disease, more than 400,000 coronary artery bypass grafting surgeries are performed in the U.S. each year.

While veins from a patients leg are often used in the surgical procedure, tissue-engineered vascular grafts (TEVG), which are grown outside the body using a patients endothelial cells, are proving to be an effective and increasingly popular technique.

The most common reasons for TEVG failure are conditions like blood clots, narrowing of the blood vessels, and atherosclerosis. But what if these grafts could be engineered to detect and even prevent those ailments from occurring?

A team of Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences students set out to answer that question for their project in this years International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition. The project, dubbed FlowGlo, seeks to use receptors that exist within the walls of human blood vessels to detect shear stress, a warning sign that a blood vessel may be narrowing.

Shear stress is important to detect because it is a marker of a lot of different cardiovascular diseases. When there is narrowing of a blood vessel due to a blood clot, shear stress jumps exponentially, maybe up to 10 times its normal level, said Teagan Stedman, S.B. 22, a bioengineering concentrator. Our idea is to link the activation of these receptors due to some level of shear stress to a modular response.

Shear stress is a function of viscosity and how rapidly different layers of fluid are flowing over each other through a blood vessel. Because the walls of the vessel must move and roll with the strain of blood flow, receptors naturally activate at different levels of shear stress.

For instance, when shear stress rises above 4 Pascals, channels open in one specific protein receptor, Piezo1, and calcium ions enter the cell, signaling the activation. The students engineered Piezo 1 and two other protein receptors to present different colored fluorescent proteins when that activation occurs.

Down the road, instead of using a fluorescent protein, you could possibly swap it out so the cells secrete some kind of clot busting protein to break up the clot and treat it on site, said Patrick Dickinson, A.B. 22, an applied math concentrator. Current clot-busting medication is delivered through an IV, and it is system-wide and much less targeted, so there are greater risks for side effects. We think this could be a more targeted treatment in the long run.

As part of their project, the team gathered feedback from Elena Aikawa, Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Director of the Vascular Biology Program at Brigham and Womens Hospital, who studies tissue-engineered vascular grafts. They also conducted a survey to better understand public perception of genetic engineering ethics, since their technique would require engineered cells to be implanted in the human body.

As they gathered qualitative data, they worked long hours in the lab on intricate experiments. Since beginning the project this summer, the teammates overcame many challenges caused by the difficulty of cloning cells. Relying on the support of their mentor, Timothy Chang, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Pamela Silver at the Harvard Medical School, they brainstormed, troubleshot, and learned volumes about synthetic biology along the way.

I learned that biology is messy, Dickinson said. In a lab setting, there is a lot that is hard to predict. We certainly encountered a lot of frustration and stress along the way, but it was a good window into what research really is.

Now that the competition has concluded, the teams work will be included in the iGEM Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a repository of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems.

For Rahel Imru, it is gratifying to know that future iGEM teams and research groups from around the world could someday build off the research she and her peers have done.

While the weeks leading up to the competition were a whirlwind, the experience was well worth the effort, said Imru, A.B. 21, a biomedical engineering concentrator.

This was my first lab experience, so I definitely learned a lot, she said. I look back and see how much weve grown. Maybe we didnt get all the data and results we wanted to by the end, but for the size of our team and the time that we had, seeing what we are able to accomplish is especially rewarding.

Read this article:
Glowing with the flow - Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

(Mike Blake/Reuters)

Bioethicist Jacob M. Appel wants the bioethics movement to educate your children about the policy and personal conundrums that involve medical care and health public policy. He claims that most of us give little thought to issues that may arise, such as end-of-life care and prenatal screening. Then, when an issue arises, people are unprepared to make wise and informed decisions. From, The Silent Crisis of Bioethics Illiteracy, published in Scientific American:

Change will only occur when bioethics is broadly incorporated into school curricula [at an early age] and when our nations thought leaders begin to place emphasis on the importance of reflecting meaningfully in advance upon these issues

Often merely recognizing such issues in advance is winning the greater part of the battle. Just as we teach calculus and poetry while recognizing that most students are unlikely to become mathematicians or bards, bioethics education offers a versatile skill set that can be applied to issues well outside the scientific arena. At present, bioethics is taught sporadically at various levels, but not with frequency, and even obtaining comprehensive data on its prevalence is daunting.

Is this really an appropriate field for children? Consider the issues with which bioethics grapples and whether elementary-, middle-, and high-school children have the maturity to grapple with them in a meaningful and deliberative way (not to mention, the acute potential that teachers will push their students in particular ideological directions):

Even if some students are mature enough to grapple with these issues thoughtfully, the next problem is that bioethics is extremely contentious and wholly subjective. Its not science, but focuses on questions of philosophy, morality, ideology, religion, etc.. Moreover, there is a dominant point-of-view among the most prominent voices in the field e.g., those who teach at leading universities and would presumably be tasked with writing the educational texts. These perspectives would unquestionably often stand in opposition to the moral values taught young students by their parents.

Appel is typical of the genus (if you will). He has called for paying women who plan to abort to gestate longer in their pregnancy so that more dead fetuses will be available sufficiently developed to be harvested for organs and used in experiments. He advocates mandatory termination of care for patients who are diagnosed as persistently unconscious to save resources for what he considers more important uses. He has also supported assisted suicide for the mentally ill.

Appels perspectives are not unique in bioethics. The movement went semi-berserk when President George W. Bush appointed the conservative bioethicist Leon Kass to head the Presidents Council on Bioethics one even called him an assassin for opposing human cloning research as many worked overtime to discredit the Councils work in the media.

Indeed, activists without a modifier like Catholic or pro-life before the term bioethicistare overwhelmingly very liberal politically and intensely secular in their approach. Most support an almost unlimited right to abortion, the legalization of assisted suicide, genetic engineering (once safe), and accept distinguishing between human beings and persons, that is, they deny universal human equality.

Some wish to repeal the dead donor rule that requires organ donors to be dead before their body parts are extracted an idea that admittedly remains somewhat controversial in the field. Most mainstream bioethicists deny the sanctity of human life and many think that an animal with a greater cognitive capacity has greater value than a human being with lower cognition. Add in the sectors general utilitarianish approach to health-care issues, such as supporting rationing, and the potential for propagandizing becomes clear.

With such opinions, often passionately held, how long would it be before early bioethics education devolved into rank proselytizing? But Wesley, Appel might say. the classes would be objective! Every side would be given equal and a respectful and accurate presentation.

Sure. If you believe that, you must think current sex education curricula and high school classes in social justice present all sides of those issues dispassionately and without attempt to persuade the students to particular points of view and cultural perspectives.

I have a deal for Appel: In-depth courses in bioethics should not be taught before college unless I get to write the textbooks! I promise to be objective and fairly present all sides. Honest!

Do you think he and his mainstream colleagues would approve of that deal?

Neither do I. And we shouldnt go along with his idea for the very same reason.

Read more here:
Keep Bioethics out of Elementary and High Schools - National Review

PeakPx

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook when he was 19 years old. By 25, his company was valued at over $5 billion. At 28, he took Facebook public. Now, at the age of 35, he is among the top 10 richest people in the world.

When we think of entrepreneurs, we tend to think of the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world youthful visionaries who disrupt traditional businesses with a new and better ways of doing things.

New research, however, challenges the view that youth is advantageous to entrepreneurial success. Perhaps a better entrepreneurial archetype is that of Herbert Boyer. Boyer founded Genentech at the age of 40 based on his breakthrough discoveries in genetic engineering. Or, consider the story of David Duffield. Duffield founded Workday, a financial and human capital management software company, in his 60s, after spending a career in application software. Now, Workday has a market capitalization of over $40 billion.

The data is increasingly showing that its never too late to start a business. Below are five research-backed reasons why entrepreneurial success may come quickest to those who wait.

1) The stereotype of the very young and very successful entrepreneur is exactly that a stereotype.

It turns out that the media may be the biggest culprit in perpetuating the belief that entrepreneurship is a young mans game. For example, the website TechCrunch gives annual awards to the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. The average age of award recipients from 2008 to 2016 was 31. Inc. magazine and Entrepreneur magazine also publish lists of entrepreneurs to watch. In 2015, the average age of entrepreneurs who made this list was 29. Compare that to the average age of a typical startup founder (42) to see the discrepancy.

2) Not only are older entrepreneurs more common, they are more successful.

42 is the average founder age of all S-corporations, C-corporations, and Partnerships that registered in the United States between 2007 and 2014. Examining the performance of these companies reveals yet another trend: companies with older founders tend to outperform companies with younger founders. Looking at the top 1% of startups (in terms of company performance), the average founder age increases to 43. Looking at the top 0.1%, the founder age increases even more, to 45. Moreover, the average age of startup founders who achieved a successful exit (as defined by an acquisition or an IPO) is 47.

3) Entrepreneurs working in major entrepreneurial hubs are no younger than other entrepreneurs.

Another misconception is that startup founders practicing in the hottest entrepreneurial hubs think Silicon Valley and New York City are younger than in other areas of the country. Again, the data does not show this to be the case. The average age of entrepreneurs in California, Massachusetts, and Silicon Valley is also 42. And, in New York City, the average entrepreneurial age is only one year younger than average (41).

4) The average age of new entrepreneurs entering the market over the past decade has increased.

Given the rise of technology and technology-related entrepreneurship, one might guess that the average entrepreneurial age has fallen in recent decades. Again, the data suggest the opposite. The average founder age has risen from 41.8 in 2007 to 42.5 in 2014.

5) Certain fields attract entrepreneurs that are older than average.

Not surprisingly, there is truth to the idea that technology is a young mans game. However, the age spread is not as wide as one might think. For instance, startup founders operating in the software publishing industry are, on average, 40 years old (two years younger than the overall average). That said, there are other fields that attract older entrepreneurs. For example, the average age of founders in the pipeline transportation of natural gas, basic chemical manufacturing, and paint, coating, and adhesive manufacturing industries are 51, 48, and 48, respectively. Startup founders operating in oil and gas extraction and engine, turbine, and power transmission equipment manufacturing are also significantly older than other types of entrepreneurs.

Conclusion. The novelist George Eliot famously said, Its never too late to be what you might have been. This is sage advice for all aspects of life, but it might be especially relevant in the case of entrepreneurship.

Here is the original post:
Five Reasons Why Its Never Too Late To Start A Business - Forbes

FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- China is in the midst of one of the largest outbreaks of pork disease in history, more than half-a-million pigs wiped off the map by a swine fever so insidious it's been likened to Ebola.

May would be quick to look at something like this and say "that's terrible, but it's not like it's going to happen here in the U.S., certainly not Colorado."

But, experts insist that not only is it possible, it could one day be intentional.

There are terrorists who online are looking for biological weapons," said Asha George, executive director of the U.S. Commission on Biodefense.

Thats why George and others with the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense are visiting Colorado State University in Fort Collins this week. They say theres a real threat that it could easily happen here.

"Right now, we have an African swine flu problem in China that really isn't getting the attention it deserves, said former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle, who sits on the commission. But, it could easily spread to American livestock, as well."

The bi-partisan commission says it goes beyond naturally-occurring outbreaks. There are intentional threats, as well.

"The state department suspects countries like Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and even Syria - what theyre trying to do is pursue an advantage using asymmetric warfare," George said.

And terrorist groups possibly pose the most imminent threat.

"Its not difficult to contemplate a situation where instead of airplanes into buildings it's pathogens against humans, pathogens against livestock or crops, said Ken Wainstein, former homeland security advisor and commission member. And it could have a devastating impact."

The commission says the impact to human life and the economy would be catastrophic.

"And because things move around this planet so quickly, we can have a very serious threat at our doors within 24 hours," said Alan Rudolph, vice president of research at Colorado State University.

The decision to hold the forum at CSU was no coincidence. U.S. leaders say the university is leading the charge in biodefense.

"This and Kansas State University are the only two places weve held these discussions, Daschle said. This is where people and resources and real focus and priority lies."

The team says the U.S. must develop real countermeasures like antibiotics and vaccines to isolate threats that could cause incalculable destruction.

"In the absence of those countermeasures, we're screwed," George said.

"Were here sounding the alarm that maybe in the past and present, we're not taking the biothreat seriously enough," Wainstein said.

The commission started as a blue-ribbon study panel and eventually evolved. It delivered its first report to Congress in November 2015 and continues to make strides in biodefense.

As for whats happening in China, George said the economic impact is global. "Sixty percent of all the pigs are either already infected or they're just killing them," she said. Thats a huge, huge hit.

The U.S. battled an Avian influenza outbreak in chickens and poultry a few years ago.

When you start adding things like synthetic biology and genetic engineering, suddenly we have this massive problem that we need to deal with," George said. We cant ignore outbreaks and epidemics until they end up here and then suddenly everybody's freaking out.

The biological threat against this nation is real, Wainstein said. It's real as it relates to humans, as it relates to animals and as it relates to crops.

The commission says bringing the conversation to universities like CSU helps to open-up the conversation, spark new ideas on how to prevent bio-threats and helps the nation understand what they're role we each play.

Colorado State is right in the middle for good planning for that experience, Daschle said. With the resources and leadership to understand and study animal health.

The threat is exacerbated by lack of good countermeasures like antibiotics and their overuse that has resulted in bacteria becoming immune or resistant, Rudolph said. And these universities are now essentially ecosystems of innovation.

See the article here:
CSU ground zero this week for biodefense meeting on threats to livestock, crops and human life - The Denver Channel

The following was adapted from a speech delivered at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

Frankfurt, the financial hub of Europe, is home to one of the biggest stock exchanges in the world, where everything is about quick deals and quick money. It is home, too, to a book fair, which also happens to be one of the biggest in the world, and where everything, likewise, is about buying and selling, though the trade is in booksalbeit only the newest ones, which appear in their hundreds of thousands each year. On the occasion of the fair, it is worth thinking about one of literatures most important characteristics: its slowness.

Im not thinking of how long it takes to read a book but of how long its effects can be felt, and of the strange phenomenon that even literature written in other times, on the basis of assumptions radically different to our own and, occasionally, hugely alien to us, can continue to speak to usand, not only that, but can tell us something about who we are, something that we would not have seen otherwise, or would have seen differently.

Some sixty years before the birth of Christ, Lucretius wrote his only known work, On the Nature of Things, a didactic poem about how the world is made of atoms. The atomic reality that Lucretius describes is not an isolated phenomenonit is not a separate realm of electrons and nuclei, electromagnetic fields, particles and waves. In Lucretius poem, the atomic dimension exists side by side with the world as we see it every day, with its grassy plains and rivers, its bridges and buildings, its cows and goats, its birds and its sky. Lucretius knew that the two domains are sides of the same coin, that the one does not exist without the other. There is little doubt in my mind that the world today would look different if the progress of science had been anchored in our human reality instead of losing sight of it, for in that recognition lies an obligation and an unceasing correction: we are no greater than the forestwe are no greater even than the tree. And we are made of the same constituents.

Lucretius poem was long forgotten. But when, eventually, it was rediscovered, in the early fifteenth century, it marked a significant prelude to the dawning Renaissance, and, not only may it still be read todayit continues to speak to us, telling us things we have forgotten, or things we perhaps never truly understood.

Literature works slowly not just in history but also in the individual reader. I remember the first time I read the Danish poet Inger Christensen and, in particular, her long poem alphabet. This was in the mid-nineties, some twenty-five years ago now. alphabet is a list of things occurring in the world; in Susanna Nieds English translation, it begins like this:

apricot trees exist, apricot trees existbracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,citrus trees; cicadas exist;cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;killers exist, and doves, and doves;haze, dioxin, and days; daysexist, days and death; and poemsexist; poems, days, death

At the time, twenty-five years ago, I found this poem beautifulthere came from it a very special kind of existential glow. But it did no more than flame up for me in the moment. Then, a few years ago, it resurfaced in my mind. I dont know why. But I read it again, and it had taken on new meaning. Firstly, I sensed a grief in its evocation of objects, animals and plants, as if somehow a shadow were now hanging over them. It could have been the knowledge that at some point we are to die and leave them behind, but it could also have been the knowledge that they might die and leave us behind. There are many animal species we no longer can take for granted.

Secondly, I was now aware of how the poem formally intertwines culture and nature. The entities listed in the poem do not occur randomly but are structured, in two waysalphabetically, and according to the principles of the so-called Fibonacci sequence in mathematics, whereby each number is the sum of the two preceding ones: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. This pattern occurs throughout the natural world, in the genealogy of bees, in the branching of trees and flowers, in petal numbers, pine cones, pineapples, and sunflowers. This underlying structure, to which nature itself is at once oblivious and obedient, belongs quite as much to mysticism as to mathematics. In the words that the poem isolates, calling forth their singular entities and phenomena, the world becomes at once familiar and alien to us, at once sensuous and abstract, comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time.

Christensen is clearly related to Lucretius. The word that Lucretius used for atom is the same word he used for letter of the alphabet. This was also true of the first of the Greeks to write of the atom: they, too, employed the term for letter of the alphabet. Lucretius repeatedly compares atoms with letters; just as the same few letters may be combined in endless ways to express everything between heaven and earth, the same few atoms may be combined to create heaven and earth and everything in between.

Science and literature alike are readers of the world. And, sooner or later, both lead us to the unreadable, the boundary at which the unintelligible begins. In one of her essays, Inger Christensen writes that that boundary, between intelligible and unintelligible, exists within us; science, she writes, conducts the conversation between readability and unreadability using terms such as chaos theory, fractals, and superstrings only because to use the word God would seem overbearing.

Everything exists side by side. Atoms, letters of the alphabet, literature, science, the world. And insight and destruction.

The world in whose midst we now stand, with its skyscrapers and cars, its airports and its banks, also emerged slowly, and, if we were to pinpoint its beginnings, the great upheavals that occurred in Europe around the time of the rediscovery of Lucretius book would be key. The Italian scholar and humanist Poggio Bracciolini unearthed On the Nature of Things in January, 1417. He most likely found the book, perhaps the only copy then in existence, in the German monastery of Fulda, no more than a hundred kilometres from Frankfurt. Some thirty years later, around 1450, Gutenberg developed the printing press. That, too, happened in this region, in Mainz, only forty kilometres from here. Also around this time, the legend of Faust, the learned vagabond who sold his soul to the Devil, took shape in Germany. The roots of the Frankfurt Book Fair go back to that same periodthe first one took place in 1454.

It remains unclear quite how the legend of Faust emerged, but history does make mention of a real Johann Faust, who matches the description, and who is said to have been born twenty-six years after that first book fair, in 1480, at a place called Knittlingen, not a hundred and fifty kilometres from Frankfurt. He is described as a learned charlatan purporting to be skilled in magic, and he appears to have wandered the region with sojourns at its various universities. We know he was in Wrzburg in 1506, a hundred and ten kilometres from Frankfurt, and in Kreuznach in 1507, a hundred and thirty kilometres from here. And we know, too, that in 1509 he was awarded a degree from the University of Heidelberg, only ninety kilometres from here. So we can by no means rule out that Faust, too, attended the book fair at Frankfurt.

Another historical candidate is a certain Johann Fust, who lived from 1400 until 1466. Fust was a goldsmith and a business partner of Gutenbergs, in Mainz, forty kilometres from Frankfurt.

But what about the Devil? Where was he?

If nothing else, we know that he was once in Wartburg, two hundred kilometres from here. In the early fifteen-twenties, the Devil was seen there by a monk who, late one night, sat immersed in his work, translating the Bible into German. The monk called himself Junker Jrg, though his real name was Martin Luther, and he was so enraged at the Devil for interrupting him in his labors that he hurled an ink pot at him.

Here then, in this strangely hybrid world of superstition and rational thought, magic and science, witch burnings and book printing, the reality we now inhabit was founded. The invention of the printing press made it possible to accumulate and disseminate knowledge on a scale hitherto unseen. Here began the slow separation of science from religion which so radically altered our view of the world and ourselves that today we can scarcely believe that anything was ever any different.

So what was the Devil doing there, in the foundation of what was to become the world as we know it?

It can be held, of course, that the Faust legend is a Protestant formation narrative: the tale emerged at the time of the Reformation, and Fausts sin is not necessarily that he seeks knowledge but that he does so while removing himself from God. And, to Goethe, who also hailed from Frankfurt, Fausts sin was secular: he sought knowledge without knowing love.

But its hard to ignore the thought that where man strives for knowledge, the Devil will never be far away. It was the Devil, in the shape of a serpent, who enticed Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, leading to man being banished from Paradise, and it was the Devil whom Faust evoked in his efforts to penetrate the secrets of nature.

With all our technological advances, from the printing press to the airplane and the nuclear-power station, there seems to follow a shadow, unseen and yet perceptible, for the consequences of these advances manifest themselves before our eyes. Karl Benz, who, in 1885, built the first motorcar in a workshop in Mannheim, only eighty kilometres from Frankfurt, could hardly have realized that, in the future, his machinewhich would join places and people together, opening cultures to each other and increasing the radius of human life so considerablywould claim the lives of one and a quarter million people each year, in car crashes. Nor could he have known that carbon-dioxide emissions from cars would be a cause of global warming, rising sea levels, burning forests, growing desert areas, and the extinction of animal species.

This phenomenon, whereby the well-intended action of the one spirals into uncontrollable evil when the one becomes the many, is referred to by French philosopher Michel Serres as the original sin. Diabolically, although each of us may wish only good, by our collective deeds we end up committing evil.

The Devil is associated with transgression; he is its very figure. And, since the endeavor to wrestle from nature its innermost secrets is a transgression, Faust must accordingly seek the Devils help.

The Devil exists to us because transgression puts us at peril. The insight is as old as culture itself. And Faust was as relevant in the fifteen-hundreds as he was in the eighteen-hundreds, when Goethe wrote about him, and in the nineteen-forties, when Thomas Mann wrote about him in his novel Doctor Faustus. Doctor Faustus begins with a scene which, when I read it for the first time, at the age of nineteen, etched itself into my memory. Two young lads, with the oddly sounding names Serenus Zeitblom and Adrian Leverkhn, grow up together in the depths of Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, and, at the beginning of the novel, Adrians father performs for them some scientific demonstrations. These concern how dead, inanimate matter may behave as if it were alive. Adrian, who will later sell his soul to the Devil, is amused by his fathers reverence of the mysteries of nature and shakes with laughter, whereas Serenus is aghast.

I dont know why that scene etched itself into my memory at the time, when I was nineteen, but I do know why I keep coming back to it: there, in that room, the living and the dead, the authentic and the inauthentic, alchemy and science, the Devil and modernity, all came together. And none of the elements present in that room has become any less significant to us since Mann brought them together, in the nineteen-forties; rather, they have become consolidated, for, since then, the atom has been split, and we have isolated and analyzed DNA, and now ventured into genetic engineering. The scientific opportunities this presents are hugeplants may be improved, food production increased, organs may be grown, even new life created. Man, we could say, has at last become like God. But, in one ancient text, nearly three thousand years old, we can read about what happened to someone else who wanted to become like God:

For thou hast said in thine heartI will ascend into heaven,I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;I will be like the most High.Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell,to the sides of the pit.

Or, to use the words of perhaps the greatest German poet of them all, Friedrich Hlderlin, born a hundred and sixty kilometres from Frankfurt: Nothing makes with greater certainty the earth into a hell, than mans wanting to make it his heaven. Yet the mutual proximity of insight and destruction tells us nothing of the sequence of these things, and the same Hlderlin wrote something else, which is equally true, in one of his unworldly and exquisite poems: But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.

Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken.

See the rest here:
The Slowness of Literature and the Shadow of Knowledge - The New Yorker