I am about two third’s the way through a fascinating and creepy sci-fi thriller, Darwin’s Children, by Greg Bear, concerning the action of viruses and how they affect us. This is not only about disease, but about evolution, as the title suggests, and not of the mechanical “survival of the fit” kind; rather, it is about how viruses might be a – or even the – greatest factor concerning our evolution. What is creepy is how viruses might lead us into the future – and it is not simply by random infection causing some to survive and some not, but rather the actual selection of evolutionary direction by the viruses themselves.
In the story, we are made only tangentially aware of how a certain retro-virus – one that had either become extinct in humans, or had been rendered ineffective – came alive again in the human species. In a single occurrence, one of our heroes, Mitch –acting as a lowly archaeologist – had dug up a Neanderthal family in a cave in the Alps, unknowingly unleashing an active retro back into the human population. It did not kill many post-partum humans, however – rather, it worked through the male (sperm) to enter thousands of fetuses, and through the very different chemistry of the womb, became active again, provoking great changes in this fetuses. Many of these children died in the womb, but others became our Darwin’s Children, modified in such a way as to become nearly another species. The modification gave different looks, and more importantly, different (and better) powers to these children, who through smell could detect not only emotional states in others, but also (somehow) wordless ideas, which they were able to transmit to each other on demand – and also, to manipulate to some extent thoughts in normal humans.
The drama of the book lies in the popular and political reaction to these children, which one can imagine; to make an exciting novel, the author has people rise to the extremes of hysteria and bigotry. However, what is most fascinating is the description of viral activity in very real (I believe) medical terms. We discover what science has known in real life for some time – that viruses manipulate their host environment to improve their chances of survival. It is here where we understand why this book is in the sci-fi section, for what it describes is unbelievable – except that it is fundamentally true. Viruses have changed us to benefit themselves in a dance of symbiosis that now and then goes over the edge into parasitism. It is then when viruses kill us, but only then. Otherwise, they remain benignly active in our systems, entering our DNA to alter it in ways that to us now seem quite normal - making us, that is, the humans that we now are.
That is, until they become threatened by the new sub-species. They, the viruses themselves, thus kick into gear a latent foot, hand and mouth disease that all of us possess, and are immune to, to kill off the new sub-species. They do this for survival, for Darwinian purposes, but we the reader are confused. How can viruses plot together like this? Who is controlling them, and how much are they controlling us?
We are given a few clues; one: the Neanderthal find was (I am guessing ahead) killed off by this retro-virus, which made US, Homo sapiens-sapiens (modern humans). The recombined retrovirus is thus poised to do the same to us to form a new sub-species. But still, what is directing it? Here we get the other clue: Kaye, mother of Mitch’s changed child, experiences an epiphany that feels to her much like God. It is all-accepting and loving, bringing her long-sought peace. We know that Kaye was partly changed by the virus while her daughter was in utero. Are viruses, then, like God? More: are viruses like cells, forming together by the billions a super-being that directs evolution? For as hard as the old viruses try, we know that they will be defeated – perhaps understanding this even before they fight the new, recombined virus. It is in them to fight for survival, but the new is also a part of them, from them, their child; and so might it also be in them to step aside, to accept the will (which arrived by chance, with Mitch discovering the Neanderthal family) of a greater whole?
Reading ahead, it seems that retroviruses might also cause de-evolution. We shall see. But we are lent to understand that evolution is a tricky thing, and that, to paraphrase the Bible, the small might in the end be stronger than the great. In any case, whether or not evolution appears random becomes a moot point, for it eventually does lead somewhere, towards greater organization and complexity. Where did this fundamental law come from? If viruses are the main engine of change, we have to ask: who made them that way?
I am not at the point in the book where Kaye’s “god” is explained. Perhaps the author will have something sublime to tell us. But we can take two things from the book that are probably true: that nature works both in a morally neutral way, but also with a design. Perhaps the virus is our original sin, as Kaye calls it at one point, which brings us hardship and strife. But it also is bringing us somewhere, to a place that looks promising if we don’t all die off first. Perhaps that is the other side of the coin – that original sin must lead us to salvation. In religious terms that would highlight the redemptive qualities of Kaye’s loving god, working through our darkness to bring us back to the light with the most subtle of forces: the lowly, microscopic virus. FK
In the story, we are made only tangentially aware of how a certain retro-virus – one that had either become extinct in humans, or had been rendered ineffective – came alive again in the human species. In a single occurrence, one of our heroes, Mitch –acting as a lowly archaeologist – had dug up a Neanderthal family in a cave in the Alps, unknowingly unleashing an active retro back into the human population. It did not kill many post-partum humans, however – rather, it worked through the male (sperm) to enter thousands of fetuses, and through the very different chemistry of the womb, became active again, provoking great changes in this fetuses. Many of these children died in the womb, but others became our Darwin’s Children, modified in such a way as to become nearly another species. The modification gave different looks, and more importantly, different (and better) powers to these children, who through smell could detect not only emotional states in others, but also (somehow) wordless ideas, which they were able to transmit to each other on demand – and also, to manipulate to some extent thoughts in normal humans.
The drama of the book lies in the popular and political reaction to these children, which one can imagine; to make an exciting novel, the author has people rise to the extremes of hysteria and bigotry. However, what is most fascinating is the description of viral activity in very real (I believe) medical terms. We discover what science has known in real life for some time – that viruses manipulate their host environment to improve their chances of survival. It is here where we understand why this book is in the sci-fi section, for what it describes is unbelievable – except that it is fundamentally true. Viruses have changed us to benefit themselves in a dance of symbiosis that now and then goes over the edge into parasitism. It is then when viruses kill us, but only then. Otherwise, they remain benignly active in our systems, entering our DNA to alter it in ways that to us now seem quite normal - making us, that is, the humans that we now are.
That is, until they become threatened by the new sub-species. They, the viruses themselves, thus kick into gear a latent foot, hand and mouth disease that all of us possess, and are immune to, to kill off the new sub-species. They do this for survival, for Darwinian purposes, but we the reader are confused. How can viruses plot together like this? Who is controlling them, and how much are they controlling us?
We are given a few clues; one: the Neanderthal find was (I am guessing ahead) killed off by this retro-virus, which made US, Homo sapiens-sapiens (modern humans). The recombined retrovirus is thus poised to do the same to us to form a new sub-species. But still, what is directing it? Here we get the other clue: Kaye, mother of Mitch’s changed child, experiences an epiphany that feels to her much like God. It is all-accepting and loving, bringing her long-sought peace. We know that Kaye was partly changed by the virus while her daughter was in utero. Are viruses, then, like God? More: are viruses like cells, forming together by the billions a super-being that directs evolution? For as hard as the old viruses try, we know that they will be defeated – perhaps understanding this even before they fight the new, recombined virus. It is in them to fight for survival, but the new is also a part of them, from them, their child; and so might it also be in them to step aside, to accept the will (which arrived by chance, with Mitch discovering the Neanderthal family) of a greater whole?
Reading ahead, it seems that retroviruses might also cause de-evolution. We shall see. But we are lent to understand that evolution is a tricky thing, and that, to paraphrase the Bible, the small might in the end be stronger than the great. In any case, whether or not evolution appears random becomes a moot point, for it eventually does lead somewhere, towards greater organization and complexity. Where did this fundamental law come from? If viruses are the main engine of change, we have to ask: who made them that way?
I am not at the point in the book where Kaye’s “god” is explained. Perhaps the author will have something sublime to tell us. But we can take two things from the book that are probably true: that nature works both in a morally neutral way, but also with a design. Perhaps the virus is our original sin, as Kaye calls it at one point, which brings us hardship and strife. But it also is bringing us somewhere, to a place that looks promising if we don’t all die off first. Perhaps that is the other side of the coin – that original sin must lead us to salvation. In religious terms that would highlight the redemptive qualities of Kaye’s loving god, working through our darkness to bring us back to the light with the most subtle of forces: the lowly, microscopic virus. FK
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