I Have Landed (34 page)

No truly effective treatment for syphilis existed until 1909, when Paul Ehrlich introduced Salvarsan 606. Genuine (and gratifyingly easy) cures only became available in 1943, with the discovery and development of penicillin. Identification in the first stage, followed by one course of penicillin, can control syphilis; but infections that proceed to later stages may still be intractable.

I make no apologies for science's long record of failure in treating syphilis—a history that includes both persistent, straightforward error (the poisoning and suffering of millions with ineffective remedies based upon false theories) and, on occasion, morally indefensible practices as well (most notoriously, in American history, the Tuskegee study that purposely left a group of black males untreated as “controls” for testing the efficacy of treatments upon another group. In a moving ceremony, President Clinton apologized for this national disgrace to the few remaining survivors of the untreated group). But syphilis can now be controlled, and may even be a good candidate for total elimination (as we have done for smallpox), at least in the United States, if not in the entire world. And we owe this blessing, after so much pain, to knowledge won by science. There is no other way.

And so, while science must own its shame (along with every other institution managed by that infuriating and mercurial creature known as
Homo sapiens)
, science can also discover the only genuine mitigation for human miseries caused by external agents that must remain beyond our control until their factual nature and modes of operation become known. The sequential character
of this duality—failures as necessary preludes to success, given the stepwise nature of progress in scientific knowledge—led me to contrast Fracastoro's Latin hexameter with the stodgy prose of the 1998 article on the genome of
Treponema pallidwn
, the syphilis spirochete.

The recent work boasts none of Fracastoro's grace or charm (even in Tate's heroic couplets)—no lovely tales about mythical shepherds who displease sun gods, and no intricate pattern of dactyls and spondees. In fact, I can't imagine a duller prose ending than the last sentence of the 1998 article, with its impersonal subject and its entirely conventional plea for forging onward to further knowledge: “A more complete understanding of the biochemistry of this organism derived from genome analysis may provide a foundation for the development of a culture medium for
T. pallidwn
, which opens up the possibility of future genetic studies.” Any decent English teacher would run a big blue pencil through these words.

But consider the principal, and ever so much more important, difference between Fracastoro's efforts and our own. In an article written to accompany the genomic presentation, M. E. St. Louis and J. N. Wasserheit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta write:

Interestingly, Fracastoro knew that syphilis infected only humans, but he regarded this observation as a puzzle under his theory of poisonous airborne particles that might, in principle, harm all life. He discusses this anomaly at length in part 1 of
Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus:

Sometimes th'infected air hurts trees alone,
To grass and tender flowers pernicious known . . .
When earth yields store, yet oft some strange disease
Shall fall and only on poor cattle seize . . .
Since then by dear [in the British sense of “costly”] experiment we find
Diseases various in their rise and kind
Of this contagion let us take a view
More terrible for being strange and new

Thus the very property that so puzzled Fracastoro, and that he couldn't fit into his concept of disease, becomes a great blessing under the microbial theory.

Similarly, the deciphering of a genome guarantees no automatic or rapid panacea, but what better source of information could we desire for a reservoir of factual hope? Already, several features of this study indicate potentially fruitful directions of research. To cite just three items that caught my attention as I read the technical article on the decipherment:

1. A group of genes that promote motility—and may help us to understand why these spirochetes become so invasive into so many tissues—have been identified and found to be virtually identical to known genes in
B. burgdorferi
, the spirochete that causes Lyme disease.

2. The
T. pallidum
genome includes only a few genes coding for integral membrane proteins. This fact may help us to explain why the syphilis spirochete can be so successful in evading the human immune response. For if our antibodies can't detect
T. pallidum
because the invader, so to speak, presents too “smooth” an outer surface, then our natural defenses can become crippled. But if these membrane proteins, even though few, can be identified and characterized, then we may be able to develop specific remedies, or potentiators for our own immunity.

3.
T. pallidums
genome includes a large family of duplicated genes for membrane proteins that act as porins and adhesins—in other words, as good attachers and invaders. Again, genes that can be identified and characterized thereby “come out of hiding” into the realm of potential demobilization.

Science may have needed nearly five hundred years, but we should look on the bright side of differences between then and now. Fracastoro wrote verse and invented shepherds because he knew effectively nothing about the causes of a frightening plague whose effects could be specified and described in moving detail well suited for poetic treatment. The thirty-three modern authors, in maximal contrast, have obtained the goods for doing good. We may judge their prose as uninspired, but the greatest “poetry” ever composed about syphilis lies not in Fracastoro's hexameter of 1530, but in the intricate and healing details of
a schematic map of 1,041 genes made of 1,138,006 base pairs, forming the genome of
Treponema pallidum
and published with the 1998 article—the adamantine beauty of genuine and gloriously complex factuality, full of life-saving potential. Fracastoro did his best for his time; may he be forever honored in the annals of human achievement. But the modern map embodies far more beauty, both for its factuality and utility, and as Fracastoro's finest legacy in the history of increasing knowledge that we must not shy from labeling by its right and noble name of progress.

 

 

I
N
1999
THE
K
ANSAS
B
OARD
OF
E
DUCATION
VOTED
6
TO
4 to remove evolution, and the big bang theory as well, from the state's science curriculum. In so doing, the board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of a new millennium might exclaim, “They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore.” The new standards do not forbid the teaching of evolution, but the subject will no longer be included in statewide tests for evaluating students—a virtual guarantee, given the realities of education, that this central concept of biology will be diluted or eliminated, thus reducing biology courses to something like chemistry without the periodic table, or American history without Lincoln.

The Kansas skirmish marks the latest episode of a long struggle by religious fundamentalists and their allies to restrict or eliminate
the teaching of evolution in public schools—a misguided effort that our courts have quashed at each stage, and that saddens both scientists and the vast majority of theologians as well. No scientific theory, including evolution, can pose any threat to religion—for these two great tools of human understanding operate in complementary (not contrary) fashion in their totally separate realms: science as an inquiry about the factual state of the natural world, religion as a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values.

In the early 1920s, several states simply forbade the teaching of evolution outright, opening an epoch that inspired the infamous 1925 Scopes trial (leading to the conviction of a Tennessee high school teacher), and that ended only in 1968, when the Supreme Court declared such laws unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. In a second round in the late 1970s, Arkansas and Louisiana required that if evolution be taught, equal time must be given to Genesis literalism, masquerading as oxymoronic “creation science.” The Supreme Court likewise rejected those laws in 1987.

The Kansas decision represents creationism's first—and surely temporary
¹⁰
—success with a third strategy for subverting a constitutional imperative: that by simply deleting, but not formally banning, evolution, and by not demanding instruction in a biblical literalist “alternative,” their narrowly partisan religious motivations might not derail their goals by legal defeat.

Given this protracted struggle, Americans of goodwill might be excused for supposing that some genuine scientific or philosophical dispute motivates this issue: Is evolution speculative and ill-founded? Does evolution threaten our ethical values or our sense of life's meaning? As a paleontologist by training, and with abiding respect for religious traditions, I would raise three points to alleviate these worries:

First, no other Western nation has endured any similar movement, with any political clout, against evolution—a subject taught as fundamental, and without dispute, in all other countries that share our major sociocultural traditions.

Second, evolution is as well documented as any phenomenon in science, as firmly supported as the earth's revolution around the sun rather than vice versa. In this sense, we can call evolution a “fact.” (Science does not deal in certainty, so “fact” can only mean a proposition affirmed to such a high degree that it would be perverse to withhold one's provisional assent.)

The major argument advanced by the school board—that large-scale evolution must be dubious because the process has not been directly observed—smacks of absurdity and only reveals ignorance about the nature of science. Good science integrates observation with inference. No process that unfolds over such long stretches of time (mostly, in this case, before humans evolved), or beneath our powers of direct visualization (subatomic particles, for example), can be seen directly. If justification required eyewitness testimony, we would have no sciences of deep time—no geology, no ancient human history, either. (Should I believe Julius Caesar ever existed? The hard, bony evidence for human evolution surely exceeds our reliable documentation of Caesar's life.)

Third, no factual discovery of science (statements about how nature “is”) can, in principle, lead us to ethical conclusions (how we “ought” to behave), or to convictions about intrinsic meaning (the “purpose” of our lives). These last two questions—and what more important inquiries could we make?—lie firmly in the domains of religion, philosophy, and humanistic study. Science and religion should operate as equal, mutually respecting partners, each the master of its own domain, and with each domain vital to human life in a different way.

Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery. Evolution cannot be dismissed as a peripheral subject, for Darwin's concept operates as the central organizing principle of all biological science. No one who has not read the Bible or the Bard can be considered educated in Western traditions; similarly, no one ignorant of evolution can understand science.

Dorothy followed her yellow brick road as the path spiraled outward toward redemption and homecoming (to the true Kansas of our dreams and possibilities). The road of the newly adopted Kansas curriculum can only spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance.

A
FAMOUS
V
ICTORIAN
STORY
REPORTS
THE
REACTION
OF
an aristocratic lady to the primary heresy of her time: “Let us hope that what Mr. Darwin says is not true; but, if it is true, let us hope that it will not become generally known.” Teachers continue to relate this tale as both a hilarious putdown of class delusions (as if the upper crust could protect public morality by permanently sequestering a basic fact of nature) and an absurdist homily about the predictable fate of ignorance versus enlightenment. And yet I think we should rehabilitate this lady as an acute social analyst and
at least a minor prophet. For what Mr. Darwin said is, indeed, true. It has also not become generally known, at least in our nation.

What strange set of historical circumstances, what odd disconnect between science and society, can explain the paradox that organic evolution—the central operating concept of an entire discipline and one of the firmest facts ever validated by science—remains such a focus of controversy, even of widespread disbelief, in contemporary America?