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Authors: Theodore Roszak
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black-strap molasses. Still, out of remembered friendship and honest respect, he was willing to take an occasional phone call for old times sake, provided she was willing to put up with his jibes.
But this time there was something different. As soon as she heard his voice on the phone, Julia could detect a note of eager curiosity in his words. He was calling to make some serious talk.
“I’d like to see your complete file for this case,” he said. “Including anything you have from other doctors who treated this boy before you.”
“Yes, I can send that,” Julia said.
“Do you know if he was ever checked out by a geneticist?”
“I don’t believe so. Why would anyone do that?”
“Progeria is one of the diseases we’d like to knock out of the human genome. Since it’s so rare, it pays to document every case we can.”
“Have you found something unusual?” she asked.
He quickly veered off into a gale of technical fine points, elaborate technical analyses that made him sound like a graduate student out to impress his professors. Whenever that happened, Julia let her mind float patiently above his words. There was no point in trying to follow what he had to say. Invariably she soon found herself lost amid research she had never heard of. She made an honest effort to keep up with progress in genetics, but she would have been frank to admit that the field had gotten beyond her, too beholden to techniques and methods that not even a conscientious physician could master. Medicine, once the province of priests and magicians, had always had its esoteric depths; still, not too long ago, in her mother’s time, the members of the guild spoke a common language; their lore dealt with the anatomy of the body, with a short list of medications, with a brief repertory of diseases. Now, within no more than a few decades, all this had changed. Genetic medicine was grounded in a chemical complexity that kept its discoveries more esoteric than the Latin vocabulary doctors were once expected to learn. Julia’s habit with Forrester when he rose to this rarified level of discourse was to listen for key words, terms she wished to hear or feared to hear — and then pounce. “Changes” was one of those words. When Forrester began to talk about “changes,” she interrupted him. He was telling her that something in Aaron’s genome had changed.
“In fact,” he said with excitement in his voice, “that’s putting it too mildly. More like an upheaval. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was looking at the genetic profile of a ten-year-old.”
“But you are. Aaron turned ten last week.”
“I mean a healthy ten-year-old. A super-healthy ten-year-old.”
“He’s been showing a steady improvement.”
“You talking about weight, bones, skin texture — that sort of thing?’
She detected the dismissive tone in his voice. She had heard it often before. “Yes, that sort of thing.”
He gave an snide sigh. “I’m talking about real changes.”
Real changes. How like a molecular biologist to put it that way. For those who study disease as it reveals itself under the lens of an electron microscope, the genetic blueprint of life is more real than the body whose arcane chemistry it is privileged to carry. Aging is, therefore, essentially a flawed portion of that blueprint, an unfortunate chemical quirk. Julia and Forrester had argued the question many times. What does it mean to grow old? Make a list. Hair, skin, bones, ears, sinew, gonads. We grow old in a dozen different ways and places. To Julia’s naked eye, aging looked like a general deterioration; her job was to patch, patch, patch.
Forrester saw things differently; he had stopped being fatalistic about aging. Shakespeare may have believed we have no choice but to finish our hour upon the stage of life “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Not so Forrester. He believed Shakespeare’s
But this time there was something different. As soon as she heard his voice on the phone, Julia could detect a note of eager curiosity in his words. He was calling to make some serious talk.
“I’d like to see your complete file for this case,” he said. “Including anything you have from other doctors who treated this boy before you.”
“Yes, I can send that,” Julia said.
“Do you know if he was ever checked out by a geneticist?”
“I don’t believe so. Why would anyone do that?”
“Progeria is one of the diseases we’d like to knock out of the human genome. Since it’s so rare, it pays to document every case we can.”
“Have you found something unusual?” she asked.
He quickly veered off into a gale of technical fine points, elaborate technical analyses that made him sound like a graduate student out to impress his professors. Whenever that happened, Julia let her mind float patiently above his words. There was no point in trying to follow what he had to say. Invariably she soon found herself lost amid research she had never heard of. She made an honest effort to keep up with progress in genetics, but she would have been frank to admit that the field had gotten beyond her, too beholden to techniques and methods that not even a conscientious physician could master. Medicine, once the province of priests and magicians, had always had its esoteric depths; still, not too long ago, in her mother’s time, the members of the guild spoke a common language; their lore dealt with the anatomy of the body, with a short list of medications, with a brief repertory of diseases. Now, within no more than a few decades, all this had changed. Genetic medicine was grounded in a chemical complexity that kept its discoveries more esoteric than the Latin vocabulary doctors were once expected to learn. Julia’s habit with Forrester when he rose to this rarified level of discourse was to listen for key words, terms she wished to hear or feared to hear — and then pounce. “Changes” was one of those words. When Forrester began to talk about “changes,” she interrupted him. He was telling her that something in Aaron’s genome had changed.
“In fact,” he said with excitement in his voice, “that’s putting it too mildly. More like an upheaval. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was looking at the genetic profile of a ten-year-old.”
“But you are. Aaron turned ten last week.”
“I mean a healthy ten-year-old. A super-healthy ten-year-old.”
“He’s been showing a steady improvement.”
“You talking about weight, bones, skin texture — that sort of thing?’
She detected the dismissive tone in his voice. She had heard it often before. “Yes, that sort of thing.”
He gave an snide sigh. “I’m talking about real changes.”
Real changes. How like a molecular biologist to put it that way. For those who study disease as it reveals itself under the lens of an electron microscope, the genetic blueprint of life is more real than the body whose arcane chemistry it is privileged to carry. Aging is, therefore, essentially a flawed portion of that blueprint, an unfortunate chemical quirk. Julia and Forrester had argued the question many times. What does it mean to grow old? Make a list. Hair, skin, bones, ears, sinew, gonads. We grow old in a dozen different ways and places. To Julia’s naked eye, aging looked like a general deterioration; her job was to patch, patch, patch.
Forrester saw things differently; he had stopped being fatalistic about aging. Shakespeare may have believed we have no choice but to finish our hour upon the stage of life “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Not so Forrester. He believed Shakespeare’s
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