British researcher John Gurdon and Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka have discovered that ordinary cells in the body can be transformed into primitive cells which, like stem cells, can turn into any kind of tissue. They won the Nobel Prize Monday for their work, which was completed about six years ago. THOUGHTS LIKE THESE prompt the cynical to object. Yes, they admit, all branches of science made the human species shine. We have a scientific miracle exploring Mars, sending pictures to us on Earth, analyzing the red planet, teaching us about another corner of the universe. We can prowl on the ocean bottoms. We are learning more and more about the gases that envelop Earth and support life. But, they say, science hasn’t taught us how to get along with our neighbors or even take good care of our own countrymen.
While the medical implications of their study won’t be fully realized for decades, this discovery holds enormous scientific promise. It may be possible, for example, to coax ordinary cells in the bodies of the victims of diabetes to generate insulin, curing the disease. The possibilities for human engineering seem limitless.
Moreover, the work done by Gurdon, Yamanaka and their colleagues around the scientific world — a world without national borders, this pair demonstrates — has eliminated the necessity of destroying human embryos in order to obtain stem cells.
It is not only exciting to see the limits of human knowledge being expanded so dramatically, it is enormously comforting. Science and scientists — words derived from the verb to know — keep reminding us that study, experimentation and contemplation can solve the most daunting problems.
Gurdon and Yamanaka remind us that the enormous progress that has been made in medicine, most of which has occurred in the lifetimes of today’s grandfather generation, is still roaring ahead. Not only will most diseases be banished, as so many already have been, but pathways are opening now to the replacement of injured or nonfunctioning body parts.
Life has been extended for our species. Now the prospects for improving the quality of those extended years grow brighter.
But that’s not really true.
The level of violence around the world has dropped even as the world’s population has increased. A smaller portion of the world’s population goes to bed hungry. There have been no wars between major nations for half a century.
The number of democracies — nations in which the citizens have real power — has grown very substantially and shows every sign of continuing to grow. Expanding economic freedom has cast a web around nations, drawing them into a one-world interdependency that makes war ever less likely because it not only causes blood to flow but also destroys wealth and halts progress.
We — meaning all of us, everywhere — are taking a lesson from science and creating better patterns of human behavior.
Heading for Utopia? Nope. Just a world that steers itself away from self-destruction. That may be as close to perfection as we can get.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
