THE ASCENDANCE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
553
phate groups on the outside and the four bases (A, T, G, and C) neatly
paired on the inside of the helix. The structure appeared in
Nature
of
April
26, I9
53, just a year after the
Partisan Review
symposium.
I'd suggest that in the fifty years since, our country and our culture
have been influenced at least as much by the double helix and its prac–
tical consequences as by the intellectual concerns addressed by
Partisan
Review.
Two recent extensions of DNA science have jarred the temper
of our time. The first was the reproductive cloning of Dolly the sheep
by Ian Wilmut in Scotland
(I997),
and the second was the deciphering
of the complete human genome by Celera Genomics and a public con–
sortium
(200I).
Our country and our culture have responded by resur–
recting what John William Draper called
The Conflict Between Religion
and Science
(I874).
The imminent success of the human genome project was guaranteed
at a Washington press conference in June of
2000.
From the podium,
President William Jefferson Clinton told the world that reading the
human genome was "like opening up the book of life." On his right
stood Craig Venter, head of Celera, the private company that had set the
pace of the quest. To the president's left was Francis Collins, leader of
the NIH-or public-arm of the Human Genome Project. The two sci–
entists had arrived at that podium by different paths. Collins is a self–
confessed born-again Christian, who once told science writer George
Liles
(MD Magazine,
March
I992),
"You've got to accept who Christ
was and what He said, or reject the whole thing ... I do think that the
historical record of Christ's life on earth and his Resurrection is a very
powerful one." Sentiments of this sort seem to have made Francis
Collins palatable to those in Congress who might not otherwise favor
governmental support for genetic research. One notes that fans of Holy
Writ have recently pushed reproductive cloning offshore and placed a
moratorium on therapeutic cloning. Craig Venter, on the other hand, is
an entrepreneurial, no-nonsense, ex-Navy corpsman, who insisted, in a
lecture at the Marine Biological Laboratory, that "the human genome is
not the book of life, it is not the blueprint of humanity, it is not the lan–
guage of God, and it is certainly not the parts list of humanity." He
tends to agree with British scientist Sidney Brenner, who, in
Science,
February
I6, 200I,
said that "President Clinton described the human
genome as the language with which God created man. Perhaps now we
can view the Bible as the language with which man created God."
Francis Collins and his ilk notwithstanding, I'd argue that the
vis a
tergo
behind the ascent of science in our time is what Jacques Loeb
called
The Mechanistic Conception of Life
(I9I2),
or reductionism
