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Bova's cautionary medical thriller, the uncut version of his 1996 novel Brothers, explores the political, social and religious ramifications of what could be humankind's greatest medical breakthrough—organ regeneration. When biotech lab director Arthur Marshak discovers a way to grow replacement organs and limbs within a patient's own body, the uproar from religious extremists, conservative politicians and sensationalized media coverage threatens to derail the project. When Marshak decides to let a science court in Washington, D.C., rule on the validity of human organ regeneration, the subsequent travesty of a tribunal not only imperils his career but also his tempestuous relationship with his estranged brother, who happens to be married to Arthur's ex-fiancée. Even an implausible love triangle and a cast of two-dimensional characters can't dim the forcefulness of Bova's message: the singular significance of science in modern-day society.
The book itself is very interesting. The characters are diverse, although it's too bad the "bad guys"--of which there are many--are mostly caricatures. The end of the story can be guessed early on, but it's the journey that matters here. Just for the plot I would give this book a 8 out of 10.
Now the main topic of this book happens to be induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), a topic that I covered recently. Embryonic stem cells are totipotent at first; they can make any kind of sales you need. As they multiply and begin to specialize they become pluripotent: they can make some types of cells, but not others. Then, as the cells continue to specialize, they produced by cells, hair cells, skin cells. That's differentiation. Now tumor cells, like cancer, don't differentiate. And they don't stop multiplying. They don't know when to stop, so they just keep multiplying and multiplying. The cells are essentially immortal in this broken state.
So what if stem cells could be controlled? We could potentially heal any disease, any infirmity, and regrow limbs and organs... essentially becoming immortal. Minus accidents and murder, of course.
Putting his words in his character's mouth, Ben Bova writes that, "Far from playing God, I think we are doing God's work. If you believe in a supreme deity, why would he -- or she -- give us the ability to understand these things if were not intended to use them to make life better? Does God intend for us to wither away and die at three scores years and ten? If so, why has he given us the knowledge to extend our lifespans? Why allow us to discover medicines? Why have we been able to understand what causes disease and genetic defects? If we fail to use this knowledge we would be spitting in God's face, telling God that we reject the wisdom he has granted us."
That's a direction that, as a Christian, I happen to agree with quite readily. The problem is that Ben Bova sets up Christians as a whole as the bad guys, the unreasoning blockers of science. The book also discusses the role of scientists and how they've become a new type of 'priesthood'; an idea that was covered by William Dembski in a recent ICE article.
Ben Bova quotes Dr. Stephen J. Gould, a noted paleontologist: "The myth of a separate mode based on rigorous objectivity and arcane, largely mathematical knowledge, vouchsafed only to the initiated, may provide some immediate benefits in bamboozling a public to regard us as a new priesthood, but must ultimately prove harmful in erecting barriers to truly friendly understanding and in falsely persuading so many students that science lies beyond their capabilities."
Essentially, scientists are not inhuman robots that take evidence and data and spit out unbiased results. Emotions, politics, greed, envy, and a myriad of social components form the modern practice we call Science. These components cannot be ignored but at the same time they can often serve as a smokescreen to hide the real science.
Ben Bova describes this environment like this: "the so-called quiet groves of academia are more like a jungle. It found that out while I was still a graduate student, but I didn't let it bother me. It's just part of the academic world, the backbiting, the personality clashes, the jockeying for position... at least in the sciences you had your research and saw to it that it got published with your name on it... when I got an assistant professorship in the Department of molecular biology, the competition and gossip and infighting did not stop, they became more intense. There were a handful of us snotty new assistant professors, each of us full of our own self-importance and determined to reach that one cherished goal: a full professorship. Batman tenure, a safe position for life, an academic home that no one could threaten. [And I might add, this is why tenure is denied to those who disagree with the establishment. And how new ideas are quelled if they threaten the life's work of already tenured professors.]
And this is where the character Reverend Simmonds comes in. He is a religious preacher that got the idea that this technology is from the devil. He ignores all the scientific evidence and continues to insist that this is a plot to support abortion, despite the technology not requiring embryonic stem cells. Interestingly enough, he chastises another character for working as a doctor--healing people--on a Sabbath...which is what the Pharisees did to Jesus. While he does have some redeeming traits, for the most part he seems to be interested in getting in front of a camera, thus growing the size, and monetary value, of his flock. His primary right-hand man who is brilliant with finances and marketing, but also does not believe in God.
To give you an idea of the type of religious people we're talking about I will relate two scenes.
"He'll send them all to hell!" Simmonds roared. "And they'll deserve it! Those who have no faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will be condemned to spend eternity in hellfire! Don't let these fiendish scientists, these tools of Satan, lead you on the road to everlasting damnation! Accept God's plan, not the evil enticements of secular scientists. Save your souls, don't worry about your bodies. God will take care of you in this life and the next."
[And the main character rightly thinks:] for a man who didn't worry about his body, I thought, Simmonds wears expensive shirts. [In the next paragraph this character explains the common rationale of atheists everywhere.]
"You want me to sit in this wheelchair the rest of my life?" [said Spider.]
"I don't want to interfere with God's plan," said the young man. A little smugly, Larry thought.
"You think God wants me to stay crippled?" Spider demanded.
"You brought it on yourself, didn't you? Nobody forced you to ride a motorcycle."
"You stupid little shit!" Spider screamed. "I was driving a school bus!"
Unfortunately, this is not just a caricature. There really are people who call themselves Christians that are this unfeeling.
The main thrust of Ben Bova's argument comes at the end when the main character gives a speech from pages 455 to 457. "What we are fighting against here is nothing less than ignorance -- colossal, cynical, egotistical ignorance that feeds the fears of the crowd against anything new, anything unknown." Science itself is said to be in competition with religion, law (or politics), and social customs. I think this is a false assertion and that Ben Bova is unbalanced in his treatment of Science. Science works WITH all the other considerations, and should not be put on a pedestal, where all must bow before the great Science. At the same time he's quite right that ignorance combined with a little bit of religion can cause a lot of problems.
This is a problem that the modern Church body has to deal with: to have a modest fusion of theology, philosophy, and science. I do not believe in Stephen Jay Gould's concept of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) and would instead prefer COMA - Completely Overlapping Magisteria. What differentiates the two is that science is supposed to be open-minded about its investigations. The problem is that it is not open-minded as to the cause and nature of life.
NOMA defined as Gould intended really means Science dictates the rules and boundaries...at least that's how I read him. It seems to me that even if you attempt to more narrowly define the terms of NOMA (ie science and theology rather than religion) you still run into problems. Theology invariably runs into the supernatural realm impinging on the natural realm in some way or another. As you know, in Christian theology, "In the beginning was the Word." and God had just about everything to do with bringing the cosmos and all it contains into existence. That seems to over-lap directly into science no matter how narrowly you define it. It is for these reasons I take NOMA to be self-refuting. If NOMA is a statement of either Science or Religion (or Theology if you prefer), then it violates its own principle because either Science or Religion is telling the other where the boundaries are. If its neither a statement of Science nor Religion, then what is the third magesterium that gets to dictate to the other two where their boundaries are fixed? Or is it "Magesteriums all the way down"? At present, I don't see a good way around this problem for NOMA.
Picture a target consisting of a bullseye surrounded by 4 concentric rings. You are the bullseye.
The first ring is Biology
The second is Chemistry
The third is Physics
The 4th is either God or absolutely nothing (and it isn't absolutely nothing)
Think about it. Gould couldn't possibly have believed that the 4th ring didn't exist. To Gould and most Darwinists, the 4th ring is Philosophical Naturalism, the prime mover of Darwinism itself.
We are dependent upon Biology which is dependent upon Chemistry which is dependent upon Physics which is dependent upon God.
We are dependent upon God.
Amen?
We must also keep in mind that Ben Bova is an ardent atheist and Darwinist, which is why he approaches this topic matter the way he does. Ben Bova has an agenda beyond science and stem cells. He writes, "God is a lazy engineer. We can do better. The human body is a slipshod design. It's the result of an accumulation of accidents and adaptions [the Modern Synthesis in a nutshell]. That's why it doesn't work as well as it should [an alternate explanation involves the Curse and the resulting degeneration, but I don't have time to get into detail within this review]."
Going further, he writes, "Take this regeneration work. Turns out there's a protein that induces neurons to grow. It's called noggin. Silly name, but that's what its discoverers called it. If you or I or our host here had designed the system, we'd design a protein that makes the neurons grow. Right? Noggin doesn't do the job directly. It suppresses the activity of another protein that prevents neurons from growing. Instead of a chemical that says, 'Grow!' We've got a chemical that stops another chemical from saying, 'Don't grow.' The whole human body is like that. More redundant systems than a NASA spacecraft. Nothing works directly. Enzymes telling other enzymes to stop repressing still other enzymes. Hell, when you stop to think that we are the results of an amoeba trying to reproduce itself, you realize what a haphazard set of mutations we really are."
The ironic thing is that a paragraph later this character admits, "Right now we're just trying to figure out how to rebuild it, piece by piece." Gee, so a mindless process is smarter than him.
To Ben Bova this implementation is an obvious hallmark of unintelligent design. To me, as an engineer, this is an obvious byproduct of parallel processing...a very sophisticated system at that. In fact, in just the last couple years software engineers have found themselves facing this very problem.
You see, the hardware engineers at Intel and AMD designing the processors in our computers have hit a hard limit. They thought they would just keep ramping up the frequency of a single processor; something that software engineers relied on in their design of software. But instead they found that parallel processing is the way to go, which is why we have multi-core processors in every day computers.
So the onus is put on the software engineer, who had to redesign the implemntation for pretty much all software for efficiency. And like the human body modern software has functions whose sole purpose is to monitor and stop other functions. Then you have other functions that oversee those functions. So when Ben Bova calls this implementation 'haphazard' he's actually insulting all software engineers.
Shortly later in the book, it's sheer irony when, in attempt to get around a problem, the characters suggest that they create another substance that stops the first substance from working. This is the exact solution that Ben Bova criticizes! I'm pretty sure he did not realize he was doing this...
As an aside, at one point Ben Bova repeats the myth that chimp's DNA is only about 2 percent different from our own. This is now known to be false. An exact percentage is still forthcoming, with some guessing it'll be in the seventy to eighty percent range.
Lastly, I'm sure our blogger Merry the Muse will have some comments on this story considering her interest in Ben Bova.
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