Reviews from the past: Mutants

This is one of my non-fiction reviews of a pop science book from 2004 (originally published on The Alien Online), a fascinating, touching and very human study of genetic variation in the human form by Armand Marie Leroi. You may have seen the TV series which followed on Channel 4 in the UK and Discovery in the US as Human Mutants; the book was shortlisted for the Aventis Science book award and won the Guardian First Book Award:

Mutants,
Armand Marie Leroi,
Published HarperCollins

What is human?



Humanity - the pinnacle of evolution. A creature which can walk upright, engage in sophisticated language, entertain abstract thought, manipulate its own environment. Humans are also the sum of the DNA. Being such a sophisticated form of life does have a drawback, however - the more sophisticated something is the more there is to possibly go wrong. The thousands of genes and electro-chemical signals which create a human child and regulate its growth can and do go wrong. Fortunately for most of us the genetic flaws which we all have (on average around 300 per individual) are normally not malignant. For some people throughout history and even today the story is quite different.

Leroi begins by explaining how it is the aberrations from the norm which can so often illuminate what the normal function of certain genes are. After his thoughtful introduction Leroi divides the book into different - although often related- areas, such as gender, skeletal structure and ageing. The first chapter begins suitably enough with embryonic development, both ‘normal’ and abnormal. Here we come face to face - or rather face to faces - with what is probably the best-known form of embryonic abnormality, the conjoined twin. As with the accompanying TV series Human Mutants we are introduced to the wood engravings of Ritta and Christina Parodi and also to the sad spectacle of their little skeleton; conjoined and on display in death as they were in their short life in 1829.

This is a common device in this book - Leroi frequently refers to historical cases of human mutation, from conjoined twins and court dwarves to African pygmies and hairy ‘wild-men’. This serves to purposes - it, of course, gives some historical range and depth to the cases being studied. Leroi examines not only the mutation but also the life of the afflicted person and the studies and theories made of them by academics of the time, contrasting it with modern science and theories of genetics, taking us from Classical theories through the Enlightenment, Nazi eugenics up to the Human Genome project. This offers not an overview of scientific evolution but also offers a view of the way in which those who are different have been seen by society over the centuries.

The second function this method of discourse provides is to humanise the cases being discussed. It would be too easy to view these mutations as merely interesting cases of study and curiosity, especially when Leroi is discussing modern scientific methodology. It is to his credit that these interesting cases remain interesting but also remain human. In a way this is a major part of Leroi’s argument - that no matter how unusual or distorted the body is, each of these people he discusses are individuals; they are human beings.

Naturally there is a form of voyeuristic pleasure to be had from this book; the author admits as much himself. It is hard for us not to look, or even gape sometimes, at some of the Cycloptic babies in jars in Dutch medical museums or 8-foot tall giants. Even when regarding an ‘Elephant Man’ with a scientific viewpoint there is arguably still a voyeuristic element present. Again it is to Leroi’s credit that he is able to admit to this without giving in to it totally - this is not a simple freak show like some old carnival. It’s a sensitive subject area to deal with, especially when discussing contemporary mutations such as Fibropdysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, a (thankfully) rare skeletal disorder where bones simply do not get the signal to stop growing. The skeleton continues new growth until the person’s body literally seizes up until a premature death.

Not all of the mutations here are of the spectacular variety however. There is also discussion of the everyday mutations that we see every day. The mutations which give some of us blue eyes and red hair and others brown eyes; make some people tall, some shorter; some with dark skin, some with pale skin, makes some average and others beautiful. Leroi ventures a little into controversial territory by discussing theories of race - an area of science which has all-too often been abused to justify political motivations (Nazi eugenics, US government enforced sterilisation of black men in the 30s).

Leroi explains that modern genetic research has shown some 80% of all genetic diversity is present in just about every corner of the globe. To be sure there are regional variations with some genetic traits obviously (sometimes visually) stronger in some places than others (such as red hair in Scotland or Ireland), but 4/5 of our genes are common in every land and amongst every people. In a way he is saying that there really is no such thing as ‘race’ in science; it only exists in political viewpoints. Again this is consistent with his message that despite every mutation every person here is a human being of equal worth to every other person. A white person, who became black, conjoined twins, dwarves, hermaphrodites, Europeans, Aborigines - all of them human. The human body can take many unusual twists and turns in its formation, yet it still remains the body of a human being. And, Leroi points out, we are all of us mutants. A successful species flourishes through biological diversity and that means mutations (something for you to think about next time you read an X-Men book).

This is a fascinating science book which treats a potentially controversial or even macabre or ghoulish subject with great sensitivity and respect. It’s a treatise on human development and on scientific progress and understanding. It’s about being human.

Rock the world

Geologists have found the oldest rocks on Earth, dating back some 4.28 billion years (a Thursday afternoon), in Hudson Bay, Canada, reports the BBC. You might think since the Earth is ancient it should be relatively simple to find rocks almost as old as our world itself, but since the Earth is a very dynamic world where even the very continents move many of the oldest rocks have long been crushed or slipped back into the interior of the world.

The Woolamaloo Gazette spoke to Billy Granite, a leading local rock, who said he and the entire Igneous, Metamorphic and Trans-sedimentary community were extremely pleased with this new scientific discovery. "Our rocky community is often disparaged by many religious groups, "Mr Granite explained, "they maintain that some mythical creator came along and waved a magic wand to make everything in a few days. Rock-kind find this a bigoted and ignorant view point as it completely dismisses the millions and billions of years stones and rocks have put into crafting our wonderful world and we think these religious bigots should shut up and give some credit to us. They're happy enough to use us to build their bloody churches but then spread lies about us."

While religious bigotry and ignorance to rock-kind is, sadly, fairly common, especially in certain parts of America, the problem can escalate to outright hate crimes and violence - only last month two fossils were attacked in a public park in Seattle by fundamentalist Christians. It can only be hoped that new scientific research helps to undermine the ridiculous position of the religious right.

Reviews from the past: Monturiol's Dream

Over the years I've written a large number of reviews of comics, books, graphic novels and movies and even the odd play (and now beer too). A lot appeared on the Library of Dreams, the first site I ever made and which I posted a lot of reviews on, along with some pics and some poetry I penned and which went defunct when the provider decided to stop making the free hosting free - the site stayed up for a good while after but I couldn't update it anymore. I was planning a new reviews site when my good mate Ariel suggested I contribute instead to The Alien Online and soon I was posting a lot of reviews to TAO, which grew to be practically a magazine online - reviews of comics, science fiction and fantasy were the backbone of TAO but we had articles and interviews and other features too, from a wide range of contributors, including several authors such as Adam Roberts and James Lovegrove.

When TAO finished its run it stayed up for a while too but now its gone too, so I was thinking, I still have a lot of those reviews tucked away in a folder and maybe it would be interesting to repost some of them myself. So now I'm slowly picking upon the Woolamaloo again I thought it would be a good time to start reposting some of them. I'm starting with one from 2003, a popular science book (although TAO was mostly SF we also posted on some interesting factual science works too) which I found absolutely fascinating:

Monturiol’s Dream,
By Matthew Stewart,
Published Profile Books



A socialist utopian dreamer tries to create a better world through science


Narcis Monturiol is a name I suspect that most people will not recognise, even those of us who fancy we have a fair smattering of the history of science. Born in Catalonia in 1819 Monturiol was one of those people who seem to be able to turn to whatever interest takes them and to be rather good at it. A remarkably intelligent man he was also very politically aware, his soul fired by the socialist dreams of a modern utopia where men and women (for Monturiol was a staunch advocate of the role of women) could live a better life. Despite his fervent belief in the progress to a utopian future he remained, unlike many others, committed to achieving this goal through non violent means. This gentle man, like many intellectuals around Europe in the 1800s, turned to the new sciences to create a better world.

Monturiol’s contribution to this better world would be a remarkable device - a submarine. To modern readers this may seem almost laughable, but Narcis was in deadly earnest. While others around the globe had struggled to create somewhat poor submersibles barely worthy of the name he would create a proper, sea-going submarine. At a time when the best attempts had produced small vessels that could stumble along a few feet under the water with a breathing hose sticking up through the waves (such as those used in the American Civil War) Monturiol would settle for nothing less than a fully functioning craft that could sustain life for hours and cruise the deep depths.

During times of great political turmoil he fired his friends and other residents of Catalonia with his dream. Constantly struggling with cash flow Monturiol, with no backing from any big company or government, used his collective to help him design, build and launch his ‘artificial fish’ the Ictineo. Lined with portholes so that they could see the marvels of the underwater world the Ictineo would have been remarkably impressive for a team of engineers working in a naval dockyard. For a self-taught man working within a socialist co-operative it was a stunning achievement.

The Ictineo was powered by several volunteers turning cranks. Monturiol, through much experimentation and thought had hit upon the idea of a double hull design to help the submarine sustain its integrity in the crushing depths - a design every submarine follows to this very day. Monturiol turned to chemistry and devised a mixture of compounds that would be mixed to generate fresh oxygen without ruining the cabin’s atmosphere with noxious gases as a by-product. The Ictineo could thus sustain a number of crewmen for many hours beneath the waves, giving ample time for exploration of the depths.

His attempts to raise more investment cash by attracting the government were not so successful however. Despite the backing of engineers and local Catalan politicians the admiralty was unimpressed. Monturiol even, reluctantly, added a canon to his ship to show that it cold be used offensively. Being the man he was he devised a method to fire this while still submerged. Fair to say this would have been a devastating weapon if it had been explored further. Monturiol rationalised this to himself by reasoning that this would level the playing field between navies such as Spain’s and France’s against the omnipotent might of the Royal Navy. Still the Spanish admirals were not impressed.

Once again Monturiol was rescued by friends, fellow socialists and the local Catalan people (who often came down to Barcelona’s harbour on a Sunday walk to see the marvel of the Ictineo diving and surfacing). A new co-operative managed to raise enough funds to being work on the Ictineo II. Monturiol was feted by the local population and politicians as a great inventor. Emboldened he sets to work on a much larger submarine. Ictineo II is capable of diving to depths of over thirty metres and sustaining life for many hours safely and comfortably. Monturiol devises manipulators on the hull to allow him to interact with the marine environment. His chemical knowledge allows him to create a mixture that will give him underwater illumination. The human-powered crank engine is replaced by a steam engine. Once again this amazing, self-taught man invents an astonishing way to power a steam engine underwater. Instead of a fire to stoke the boiler Monturiol uses a chemical reaction to generate heat to boil the water and drive the engine. This reaction also produces oxygen for the cabin and he employs more chemical means to scrub carbon dioxide from the air. The Ictineo II is, to all intent purposes, a fully functioning modern submarine.

Bear in mind that this is the mid 1860s. No-one else in the world would come up with anything so advanced for decades, yet here was a self-taught man who had made the fiction of Captain Nemo a reality before Verne ever wrote his wonderful novel. This was a man who took a concept which was science fiction and sculpted it into reality. He works out aqua dynamics, engineering principles of double hulls to withstand pressure, devices for interacting with the undersea environment and submersible locomotion and navigation, all by the 1860s. Unlike the many others around the world who tried to create a submarine - and usually failed, often fatally - Monturiol publishes detailed descriptions of his designs and methods so that others can copy and improve upon them. Still his utopian dream behind it all, a belief that this new type of artificial fish could help usher a new era in for humanity.

Of course we know today that the submarine as it was developed in the decades after Monturiol’s death was used more principally as a terrible weapon of war. And yet some glimmer of his original idea can still be seen today. Submersibles that can touch the very floor of the ocean - something Monturiol longed to do - and explore the myriad of new life found there in the darkest depths. Knowledge of our environment, tectonics and evolution have all been enhanced immeasurably by underwater exploration. How many of us thrilled to Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when we were younger? What would Monturiol have made of the fantastic sights millions could view in their own home watching Blue Planet?

Monturiol’s Dream is a fascinating and utterly delightful scientific history. The history of those turbulent times in European and Spanish history are absorbing enough in their own right - the beginning of genuine attempts to have politics for the masses and a striving to make a better world using modern reason and science. The technical brilliance of Monturiol is undeniable and makes for remarkable reading. What I took most from this gorgeous little book however was the same thing I took from the finest SF novels - sense of pure wonder. This is a quite wonderful tale of a very gentle man who really wanted to change the world. Not for honours or riches, but because he believed it was the right thing to do, to create a finer world. Perhaps on some levels he did. Hopefully Matthew Stewart’s fine book will go some way to restoring Monturiol and his work to the place he deserves in the history of science.

Creationist whackos get science teacher fired

Yup, once more the intellectually feeble throwbacks who constantly espouse 'intelligent design' (which is basically the utterly discredited Creationism dressed up in laughably bad science clothes) have made a move to decrease the IQ of the world a bit more: they used a flimsy excuse to get a science education officer in Texas fired. Christine Castillo Comer's crime? She forwarded an email as an FYI which she had received from one science educational professional to some interested groups about a talk by an author in the area, an author who has looked into the fake 'science' these Intelligent Design wankers keep trying to sneak into school curriculums while also trying to have evolutionary teaching curtailed (no, they haven't realised the 19th century is over).

Her boss's boss dropped her in it claiming simply forwarding this message was tantamount to the education board endorsing it, which is ridiculous since she didn't express an opinion, simply passed on details of a scientific talk to science professionals. Besides which anyone who works for a government department or large corporation knows full well their emails are usually issued under a 'the ideas expressed in this email do not necessarily promote the ideals of the blankety blank department'. Interestingly enough this boss is a political appointee - a Bush-loving one. And the head of the board openly endorses Creationist nonsense and talks yet hangs out one of his science professionals for simply passing on details of a talk involving scientific matters to other scientific professionals.

Sadly this sort of attack on actually using our brains to logically interpret massive amounts of careful scientific date amassed over many decades by many people from paleontologists to genetic researchers is not confined to a few religious crackpots in Jesusland (as Richard Morgan terms the Texas area in his recent novel Black Man) since there have been attempts to push this nonsense in schools in the UK too. This really does infuriate me - NPR has a radio interview with Christine on their site and the whole thing stinks of a political-religious set-up for these right wing fundamentalist eejits to shove someone out the way so they can then install a new person who will agree with their retarded ideology. And if you are a Creationist don't bother explaining to me why your view point is valid, because it just isn't. You're entitled to hold your view but please feck off and don't inflict it on others much less try to infect schoolkids with your idiocy. If you believe this crap you are an anti-intellectual moron brain-washed by fundamentalists who like using their religion as a way to gain more control over people and what they can say or think - and that's the nub of it, these idiots don't just believe this fairy tale nonsense themselves, they demand it be taught to the rest of us. Thankfully the few attempts here have been laughed at in much the same way as trying to each that the Earth is flat would be, but these idiots keep trying... (link via Boing Boing)

Giant steps are what you take, walking on the Moon...

This afternoon at the Edinburgh Film Festival I caught the UK premiere of the documentary by David Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon, detailing the glories (and the tragedies) of one of the biggest undertakings humans ever launched themselves on, the Apollo programme. As soon as I saw this in the EIFF programme this year I knew I was going to see it. I was born at the height of the Space Race; Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong's astonishing, history-making flight to the Moon on Apollo 11 was still a year and a half away. I grew up with an astronaut space suit costume to play in while Gagarin and Armstrong were on posters as my boyhood heroes (they still are, some things you never grow out of); the idea of space exploration has lived inside me my entire life and as I approach the big four-oh birthday on the last day of this year I get a little sad that those promises of holidays in space we were told the future would hold have never materialised and it looks less and less like that boyhood dream will ever come true.

But still it weaves a magical spell on me; as the footage of those enormous Saturn Vs ascending the heavens on a column of fire flickered across the screen I could feel the old excitement rising - the boy in me is never far from the surface and images and ideas like this always bring it out. Much of the footage has never been seen before and is literally out of this world. The story of our first tentative steps out of the cradle of the Earth to our nearest neighbour is told in their own words by many of the NASA astronauts who made those epic journeys, voyages of discovery that stand in a long line of human endeavours such as the explorations of James Cook, Magellan or those unknown Polynesian sailors who crossed vast oceans on small boats made of reeds.

One of those men featured was David Scott, an Apollo commander - a man I actually met a few years back when his publicist came in to my old bookstore to say he was across the road in the Balmoral Hotel doing interviews with the Scottish press and would we like him to come across and sign some copies of the book he had co-authored with his friend the Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (the first man to walk in space; his friend Arthur C Clarke would name a spaceship in his honour in the sequel to 2001). An ordinary day at work and then suddenly there I am chatting to a former astronaut and shaking hands with a man who had walked on the Moon; a man who got to live that boyhood dream of mine. Naturally I got one of those signed copies for myself; I've many signed books in my collection but only one signed by an author who has traveled far enough into space to look back and see the entirety of our world hanging in the void. We've all seen the pictures, but it wasn't until the crew of Apollo 8 voyaged around the dark side of the Moon that humans actually saw the entire Earth from space. They took the famous 'Earthrise' photograph, our world rising in the dark above the surface of the Moon, the furthest humans have yet been from our world.

Only a tiny handful of humans have ever seen that sight with their own eyes to this day, all now old men - to look at them in this film you could easily mistake them for someone's favourite uncle of grandfather. But in their prime these men dared death, road on a column of scientific dragon's fire further than anyone in the entire history of the world and in the process changed the way we see our little, beautiful world. It's so sad we've pulled back from those days; I'm not stupid, I'm well aware of my history and understand much of the colossal cost of the space programme was only met because of politics of the Cold War. And yet I can't help but feel we let ourselves become that much smaller as a species when we stopped pushing at the final frontier. Yes, I know we can spend the money on problems right here on Earth, but if we weren't so busy squabbling among ourselves we wouldn't need to waste so much on creating weapons - then we could spend that money on feeding and taking care of people here on Earth and have enough to explore, to go where no-one has gone before.

I still want to go.

Simpson

Not the yellow cartoon variety this time, but Doctor James Young Simpson, one of Edinburgh's many noted contributor's to medical science and also the first man to be knighted for services to medicine. On the way home tonight the bus was stopped further back from a junction than usual because of the sheer business of the city during Festival time. I looked up from my book and noticed that ten feet up on the western wall of the ultra-posh Balmoral Hotel is a plaque I've never noticed before, despite passing it a thousand times (just the wrong spot to be noticed as you are walking past). And the plaque commemorates the spot where a pharmacy used to stand before the hotel; it was here that the chemist prepared the chloroform that James Young Simpson would use in 1847 as he experimented with anesthesia and pain relief for medical procedures. Many resisted his work at first (which sounds crazy to us - imagine many medical procedures without anesthesia?!?!) as 'un-natural' but its use took off when Queen Victoria gave in an used it to ease childbirth. I'm sure more than a few mothers will silently thank that chemist and Simpson for starting a line of modern medicine that eases the miracle of birth :-). Simpson I knew about, but I had no idea that plaque was there or the chemist's business either.