Things great and small

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As you likely know, Resonance Women’s Chorus, home to my major volunteer gig these days, just finished up the season with its marvelous concert on climate change. After being immersed in this earth-ish topic for months, it’s been fun to find myself stretched through other layers of reality by a handful of articles I've encountered—outward to this incomprehensibly vast cosmos of ours and inward to microscopic realms that touch on our very identity. Not trivial matters, but definitely fun.

(Before I get all wonky, check out these gorgeous roses I spotted on a walk the other day. If nothing else, they're testimony to two happy facts: it's spring and I'm out walking again. Hooray!)

So, as a hint of this perspective stretching I mentioned, I offer these few tidbits for your consideration. 

First, the microscopic: 

The first set of articles I read had to do with the relatively recent development of a new technique in the field of genetics. Not long ago, two geneticists developed a technique called CRISPR-Cas9, which gives scientists the ability to remove and add genetic material at will, altering an organism's genome—sperm, eggs, embryos—in a way that will be passed on to future generations. Here’s a video explaining it, if you're curious. The technique has already been used in rats, monkeys, and a few other species. Folks are pretty certain that it would work in humans. Genetic manipulation that is limited to non-germ cells (e.g., in GMO foods, gene therapy) already raises some ethical concerns. But this is about changes that will be transmitted to subsequent generations. Still unknown are how precise such changes can be (might I clip too much, insert too little?), how specific (what if I alter surrounding genes in the process?), and what the side effects might be (will eliminating, say, a gene that predisposes allergies also damage part of the natural immune response?).  

Aside from these technical issues, CRISPR raises huge ethical concerns—even theological ones. It could have great benefits in curing diseases, preventing birth defects, and so on. But it could also be used in questionable ways, like to engineer offspring sex, physical characteristics, intelligence, etc. Recently, a number of people working in the field called for a moratorium on this research in humans until these issues can be addressed. In the words of one scientist, “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny.” Another comments, “I personally think we are just not smart enough—and won’t be for a very long time—to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.”

Yet, just the other day I saw an article about scientists who had attempted to perform this research in human embryos. The experiment failed in most cases—the embryos died or the DNA was not altered as planned. In other cases, the results were as feared: in some, the DNA interrupted the process, resulting in some changed and some unchanged DNA. In other cases, non-target segments of the DNA were altered, a phenomenon some have called “collateral damage.” So the experiment basically confirmed that the scientists who had issued the warning were right. Still, this research also highlighted the possibility—even the high likelihood—that others will try again.

The questions this raises are just mind-boggling. What is identity? What does “I” mean if my DNA, the “building block” of my distinctive genetic makeup can be altered? And what does it mean to be a human being if the core features of human existence might be subject to alteration? If these techniques get perfected, who decides what traits are worthy of continuing and which are not? It is impossible not to hear the echo of early 20th century programs of eugenics in these questions.

But in a different microscopic domain, another story seems to bring good news: I wrote here before about scientists’ conclusion that viruses make up over 8% of our DNA. These viruses are evolutionary hitchhikers, organisms that infected our long-ago ancestors and that gradually became incorporated into our very genes. Now, that’s mind stretching enough by itself—nearly 1/10 of our DNA consists of viruses! But even more astounding is what these viruses do for us. In that earlier post, I noted that they may be responsible for the evolution of the placenta (the placenta! We’re talking here about the very beginning of our individual selves). And now, last week, I also learned that some such viruses—endogenous retroviruses—may “come alive” during the earliest stages of embryonic development. Retroviruses are not usually our friends—think HIV—but in this case, these endogenous retroviruses may actually serve to immunize the embryo against other viruses. 

Now, this is good news, but it still challenges any simplistic notions we might hold about ourselves as individual, self-contained, unitary beings. Just think about it … microscopic viruses—viruses!—stow-aways from pre-human history may be responsible for the placenta that supported our individual prenatal life and for our immunity to viruses that might otherwise have done us in. So don't you wonder wonder, where does the “I” in this process end and the “they” begin?

To leap from the microscopic to the telescopic ...

Two other recent stories escorted me back into my recurrent fascination with the cosmic. This past week was the 25^th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble telescope, which, as you likely know, has rewritten our understanding of the universe—and illustrated the book. The Internet was full of Hubble photo gems this week. In case you missed them, I’ll paste in a few, and you can click here for more and here for even more.  

                                                                                  

Hubble had some struggles from its earliest days (I’m tempted to say it was star crossed, but that seems too easy), with a microscopic flaw in the mirror that caused blurry views of even nearby objects. But with some clever fixes over the years by astronauts turned telescope experts, Hubble has taught us more about the cosmos than we ever knew there was to learn. As you may know from previous posts, I’m a totally amateur but enthusiastic observer of things astrophysical, so I’ve been paying attention to Hubble’s discoveries for years. This anniversary provided a delightful visual memoir of Hubble’s life so far, and I’m hoping for more.

And then, just today, I came across a short story about another recent Hubble-fueled finding: out there in the universe, there are “runaway galaxies,” and with Hubble's help, we’re starting to understand them. Scientists have known for some time about runaway “rogue” planets, which have either been ejected from their orbits around stars or somehow never belonged to a star system. They’ve also suggested the existence of runaway galaxies that are moving so fast they sail free from the “local cluster” of galaxies whose gravity generally holds galaxies together in a group. And now Hubble has spotted a runaway galaxy and tracked its trajectory as it veers away from its orbit and heads off into … somewhere. I love that the universe is so unruly.

So, I find this stuff fascinating in its own right. But this week, with my thoughts shifting from the issue of climate change—which is global, but local, in the planetary sense—to matters larger and smaller, I realized that both directions of my drift these recent days—the microscopic and cosmic—raise very similar questions: Who are we? What counts as human if much of our substance is actually other organisms? Who do we become  if we alter the genome that defines who we "naturally" are? Where is our place in a universe whose early beginnings over 13 billion years ago is just now coming into sight and whose extent, some would argue, is infinite? And that remains stubbornly errant.

If I drift back from the vast, cosmic question to this smallish, ordinary planet, I wonder at our arrogance to think we matter at all. If I move the other way, to the microscopic, I wonder if we realize how tentative and ephemeral our existence is. Either way, I'm struck by the astonishing improbability of it all. Which cycles me back to earlier musings on this very question, shared here many blogs ago.

I float in these dilemmas for a while, and then go about my business as if none of these questions mattered, as if they hadn't come to mind. Until they do again.

I wonder what that means. 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Solstice and other miracles

We’re officially in winter, now. Solstice passed, the sun turned around from its descent, and now the days are getting longer—although the coldest weather and heaviest snow are (historically, at least) still ahead.

It’s easy to understand why people have always understood this annual return of the light to be a miraculous thing. It’s easy to understand why major faith traditions mark this time in late December as a holy time. Thinking about this, I realize that many apparently "ordinary" things strike me as miraculous. I don’t mean “miraculous” in a religious sense, although some folks might understand these things that way. I simply mean that they are so remarkable in their complexity, so striking in their steadfast reliability (so devastating when they abandon us) that words fail. For instance:

Solstice. Consider that marvelous morning when you can wake up and know, simply know that the days will get longer now. This seems so simple, but think about what it means. These massive planets are circling around a star, with all of them exerting tremendous force on one another. This sun star is surrounded by other suns, some (we now know) with planets of their own. These collect in spiral arms and wheel around a black hole that steadily consumes everything, including light itself. This pinwheel flies through the universe (maybe one of several universes) at unimaginable speeds, moving among other galaxies, all  pushing and pulling on one another. And the space around them all is laced with dark matter and dark energy that we can’t  see even with our most powerful instruments, although they make up most of the matter and energy in the universe as we know it. 


Yet, despite the complexity of all this, our particular tiny planet moves around its particular medium-sized star with such precise timeliness that we know what day will be the shortest of the year. Miraculous.

The Hubble space telescope. Launched in 1990, repaired and up-graded numerous times, the Hubble telescope continues to transmit the most amazing pictures of far outer space (like the one above)—as well as lots of other data that are not nearly as interesting to us lay people. This telescope, orbiting outside earth’s atmosphere, has taught us more about the forces at work in our universe than all of the work done before its launch. Miraculous.

The heart. Last year, I had a medical event (turned out to be nothing) that sent me to the hospital for tests. Among those tests was a heart ultrasound. I got to watch the monitor during that procedure, and it honestly left me speechless. The kids would say it was “awesome,” and so would I, and I would mean it literally. I was awed, stunned by the thought that this rhythmic pattern had gone on for decades, all day, every day. The various chambers and valves alternately contract and relax, open and close with timing as precise on a miniscule scale as the movement of celestial bodies on a scale too vast to imagine. And they just keep doing it day after day after day. Miraculous.

Evolution. Thinking about this heart thing got me pondering on how it came to be, this brilliant, intricate, precise, beautiful system for circulating nutrients and waste. Some would argue that such beauty could only come from a divine creator. Personally, I believe that, whether or not the process is guided by a God, evolution has crafted this remarkable organ as well as the other organs and organisms that make up our world. In my mind, this makes it all not less but more astonishing. 


How many tiny steps, how many mutations and adaptations, how many dead ends did it take to create an opposable thumb so we could grasp? An ear, with all its internal intricacies? A brain? And how many steps to fashion the precise lines on the face of the alpine forget-me-not, the colorful patterns drawn in feathers on a blackbird’s wing. How many gradual adaptations formed the varied shells on Galapagos tortoises that allow them to feed on their particular island but that would make it impossible to feed on others? What prolonged process of change resulted in the odd system whereby a newborn kangaroo clambers the distance from its mother’s womb into her pouch? Miraculous.

The Post Office. I know this seems like a leap from the sublime to the ridiculous, but think about the service that the post office provides for pennies. I heard someone on the NPR program “Wait, Wait! Don’t Tell Me!” put it like this: For less than 50¢, you can send a letter to a particular individual at a particular address in a particular town in a particular state, and within a couple of days, it will be delivered to precisely that person. Imagine how much you would pay a messenger to make that delivery! I’ve thought about this often and have always found complaints about the post office misguided. But I’ve especially thought about it during these last few days just before Christmas. I've seen several postal carriers climbing over snow banks long after dark, using headlamps to find their way, delivering mail to people’s homes through the holiday madness. Sure, the post office messes up some times. But usually, they get it remarkably right. Miraculous.

There are so many other things I could mention: the Constitution, prenatal development, the Mars rovers, language, the curiosity of small children, the way spider's web catches the dew. All, simply awesome!