It’s been more than fifty years since I discovered the double-helix that would change everything. I can remember the moment so well, wondering how the world might look down the road, where I now stand. I pondered whether the science fiction of my time would become prophecy, or perhaps whether genetics and DNA would be thrown by the wayside as new discoveries or world events emerged. I was reminded of this moment while reading Zadie Smith’s incredible novel, White Teeth, in which a brilliant geneticist creates a genetically modified “FutureMouse.” When I was a child, the science fiction of the time seemed to focus on worlds beyond our imagination, such as Assimov’s Foundation Trilogy and George A. Smith’s “Venus Equilateral.” However, it seems to me that science fiction has now become less of a means to predict future events or hypothesize on other worlds or universes and now focuses on the social commentary of the present day.

In White Teeth, the proposed FutureMouse has had its life mapped out, programmed and designed by Marcus Chalfen, a brilliant geneticist driven to improve quality of life through controlling it. However, once it’s born, it escapes, almost as if taking control over its own life. Of course, all this speculation of control and freedom stems from the author controlling the book. But, I digress. What interests me is not the subject of the author’s commentary, but that she focuses on something that is already happening in science rather than speculating about the future as so many of the most classic and treasured authors of science fiction aimed to do long ago. As authors shift their focus from the future to the present, what does that say about the state of science in general? I’ll let the mouse speak for himself:

The Future(Mouse) is the present.

-James Watson

I am delighted and ecstatic to inform you all that I am now among the happy masses of proud parents. No, no, I have not pulled the switcheroo, as they call it, on another set of IVF test tubes. Instead, I am happy to say that I have adopted a magnificent young boy, Jeremy. He is blue eyed (autosomal recessive, chromosome 19) and brown haired (autosomal dominant, chromosome 4), four years old, and already he parts his soft, curtainous lips to reveal a loving, toothless smile every time I hold him. The adoption agency hesitated to allow an achondroplasia-afflicted man to father a flawless, beautiful, healthy young boy. However, once I informed them of who I was (“Hey, you’re that little fella from the TV, doin’ all that science) they immediately recognized that a man as intelligent and capable as myself could not be denied parenthood regardless of his size (“Well, normally I wouldn’t, but you’re a genius, so..”). Oh, the joys of parenting! Not only to care for another person, but for once I finally interact with someone at the same eye level! I fear, though, that he may become difficult to control in his pre-teen and adolescent years; he has a distinct advantage in athleticism and participates in his pre-school track program better than any of the other children.

I have been pondering my obsession with procreation, and although I have not yet directly produced an offspring, I feel that Jeremy is a delightful and perhaps better alternative to continuing my legacy through my own genes. After all, given the current state of young peoples’ social interactions, it is likely that if Jeremy were my own descendant, had he been born as I am, he would be mocked, ridiculed, and suffer from extreme anxiety thus preventing him from completing his studies. Surely, Jeremy now has the best of both worlds! My genius mentoring without the hindrance of my nature! Yet my fear has not been assuaged by removing the possibility of creating a son with my inherited stature, but rather I fear that my hopes of nurturing brilliance unto Jeremy may be compromised or shattered by a lack of natural ability on his part. Apparently, Jeremy’s family has a history of Alzheimer’s, and although it may not onset for quite some time (unless he develops the juvenile form) I fear that some sort of undiscovered genetic mutation may hinder him from absorbing what I aim to teach him.

Yet, in spite of all this, I now grasp the secret that eluded me and aggravated me for so long, that mysterious high shared by all who masqueraded their smaller versions of themselves as though they were some sort of discovery as worthy as mine in science. It is that feeling of an unlimited capacity to love–if that is in fact love, it might as well be–that elevates the ego and the self-image. I never imagined I would let myself succumb to elation, for I always imagined that it weakened the mind. However, I feel that it is no longer my own mind that I must nurture, but the nature of Jeremy’s that I must attend to.

With joy and elation, we wish you all well,

Ben and Jeremy

PS- Here’s a photo with me by him at his first track meet this year. I’ll be sending greetings to you all around the holidays. Cheers!

At the request of Dr. Benjason Mirones, I have decided to blog a sermon I gave at my Abbey a couple of weeks ago:

“Sermon to the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas Brno, 2008”
Gregor Mendel

My sons, my daughters, it is with great pride that I stand before you today. As the sun stretches its light limbs across the Austrian Empire, another day emerges. Another day that we should thank His holiness for the blessings we have received, for the happiness we will receive. I have been asked to speak on the role of religion in genetics, a field with which I am quite familiar. I do not wish to put any impure thoughts in your mind as I speak today, this is not a diatribe. Rather, I want to talk about the struggle that I have felt as not only a monk, but as a geneticist. My entire life, my findings were never taken seriously. This was largely because I was not only a monk, but because my experiments required a mental level that many theologians had failed to grasp.

I remember my schooling as a young adult, at a philosophical institute branching from Olmatz University. I did not take any classes in history or the natural sciences; they did not interest me. I never knew I would be putting together binomial equations in the coming years. I remember sitting in my lofted bed as a young boy, reading the small paperback novels that were sold at the candy shop. I pictured myself as an adventurer, a swashbuckler of the seas. I had no idea that I would be finalizing the particulars of how a material particle resting upon a chromosome would determine the transmission of varying hereditary attributes! But, my friends, I was preparing myself. I was preparing myself and I didn’t even know it. A few moments ago I told you that my studies were not accepted and widely read for two different reasons. The first was that I am a monk. As a man of the Book, no one thought I could possibly make advancements in a field dominated by the secular. But I did! I proved them wrong again and again. When they said that my experiments on Pisum sativum were not enough to completely qualify my argument, I moved onto the Phasoleus vulgaris. As I said in my paper of 1865, these tests gave results in perfect agreement. I had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that my findings and experiments were correct. And what did I receive? Nothing. It took 22 years after my first death for my papers to be dug up. Pushed to the back of the intellectual cabinet, my studies were regarded as merely posh, religious encirclements. Now, my friends, this may make it seem obvious why my work wasn’t accepted. But certainly, someone out there must have read it whom might have understood. Perhaps a Roman Catholic with an eye for the biological, perhaps he could have read my papers and come forth in support. Yet it never happened.

The main reason that my studies were never accepted is because they required a different level of thought that many scientists of the era had. I was discussing an area that had been unheard of up until that point. Points of debate surrounding my new laws of development were very rare. It was merely the fact that my secular colleagues did not have the theological minds to tackle my theory. Because of my expansive knowledge of God’s way and because of my years in the seminary, I was able to understand differentiating characteristics in plants. My schooling in fields of literature taught me how to step outside myself. I recognize the power of God, and the strength with which he holds me up. Because of the countless Bible passages I have read, the pieces of literature I have shelved, I was able to think critically about something many couldn’t.

Literature serves the purpose of teaching us to deal with problems that we wouldn’t normally deal with in the real world. By reading about fantastical problems that might never occur to me on my strolls through the garden, I was able to think about life outside the garden. I had reached the apex of creative and critical thinking when I made my discoveries. I had combined everything I thought could exist and everything I knew did exist, and they met in perfect harmony. Without religion in my life, I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today.

-Gregor

]]> http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/religion-and-genetics-2/feed/ 5 benmones http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/genetic-discrimination/ http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/genetic-discrimination/#comments Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:25:00 +0000 benmones http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/?p=11 ]]> Some thoughts…

The field of genomics and genetic discrimination has always interested me. As a founder of 161 US patents myself, the discovery of new knowledge in a progressive field such as genetics is quite fascinating. As interesting as pleiotropy and the numerous conflagrations between loci and alleles are to me, I am much more fascinated with the moral side of genomics. It really wasn’t until 1993, when the ELSI, or Ethical, Legal and Social Implications group within the human genome project released its first paper that I became truly interested. In their report, “Genetic Information and Health Insurance,” the fine people at ELSI essentially tried to convince Congress that no matter the medical status of any individual, past, present or future records should not be included in applications for health insurance. I thought the article was well thought out, they had clearly gathered enough evidence to present a point. With scholars from all walks of life, it seems the report was comprehensive enough to cover the entire American populous. Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with that report, which I will outline in this blog.

In my day, I was called a technocrat. If there were any technology questions or decisions about management in the company, I was there. I had learned how to standardize everything, making it possible for me to see how my company policies were reflected in the people that worked for me. I remember an article in the February 29 Detroit Free Press article in 1935. I had written a letter to Matt Woll, the VP of the American Federation of Labor in Washington, D.C. He had written me a few weeks before, asking me whether or not I wanted to lower wages at Ford. Thousands of businesses were lowering wages across the country, hoping to survive the awful Depression. I was easily able to answer his question for a number of reasons. First, you must understand something about Fordism. It has been described in a number of ways, socially and professionally. In a managerial setting, it has been used to describe assembly-line economics. An individual adding one and the same piece at a time is easier for a bigger group, and much more expedient. Up until the 1980s, nobody understood how Fordism could be applied purely and scientifically economically. Mr. Woll approached me with a problem, and using my economic knowledge in a scientific manner I was able to solve it.

The way I kept business running at Ford is simple. I recognized the variable in my money making equation very quickly. Purchasing power. Sure, I could produce hundreds of cars of day, but if nobody was there to buy them, what was the point? Today, purchasing power, or retail sales, make up about 65-70% of the gross national product. Back in the Thirties, by charging fairly low prices for automobiles and making loans readily available to consumers, I was able to generate buyers no matter what. By applying a science I understood to a problem, I could easily answer his question. Lowering wages in my company would result in less purchasing power. If my supply schedule remained the same, but paying less to many of the workers who buy my product, my demand schedule will go down. If my demand is less than the supply, I am out of luck. Higher wages do tend to bring lower costs in the end, as more money can flow in and out of the wonderful thing we call the economy. The article that was published detailed my response to Woll, and I was met with jubilation from my employees at work the next day. Keeping wages high not only pleased my employees and made them work harder, but also improved our relationship.

You may be wondering what my scientific economic theory has to do with genetic discrimination. Over the past decade, insurance providers and employers have known that genetic testing is available to them. Unfortunately, they are not legally allowed to pressure potential employees into these tests. I am going to quickly explain to you the answer to this problem, applying my theory of Fordism. First, you must look at the goals of the insurance provider. They must be able to alleviate financial concerns for all of their clients when these individuals are placed in a situation when they need help. However, the return on the fees charged by the company to their clients each year must be greater than the money put out to support these individuals in times of need. Usually this works, more people have health insurance than actually need it every year.

Now we must identify the variable in the insurance company’s equation that brings them more money. In this case, it is healthy people. The more healthy people, the less money they have to put out. The less healthy people, the company will spend more money than they get back. A bit different from my discussion of lowering wages, the demand schedule increases with more sick people, while the supply schedule remains static. This of course, might lead to problems. Therefore, I would contend that genetic discrimination is necessary for the survival of health insurance companies. The survival of health insurance companies is integral in my very own, as well as many others existence. Therefore, it seems logical that genetic discrimination is necessary for my very existence. I understand that there are certain social boundaries that are crossed during the testing. A humanitarian myself, I recognize the value of the individual. I remember sitting in my Highland Park plant, lounging in the rafters as thousands of new immigrant workers below me learned English, flocking to my factories because of the lucrative five dollar work days. I looked across each individual’s face, and wondered where he had come from. Sitting in those rafters, I feel asleep thinking about their places of origin. I dreamt of overstuffed trains, the dry heat of the morning that many felt as they walked the decks of the junkers that came over from Europe. I slept that entire day, and missed 2 appointments. One of the appointments was with a man who wanted to sell me 512 acres of land in Mississippi.

Eventually, that land was bought up and quite a successful mall was built. I lost the opportunity to earn money I could have potentially gained. From that day forward, I swore to never get caught up in the men who worked my machinery at Ford. I must treat them as means to an end.
Frankly, I don’t see how my stance on genetic discrimination could be called illogical. If someone offered me a wrench with a screw missing, I certainly would not take it. If I gave all my employees wrenches with one screw, I would be in the poor house. Why should insurance companies take clients with one screw?

Regards,

H. Ford

]]> http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/genetic-discrimination/feed/ 3 benmones http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/religion-and-genetics/ http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/religion-and-genetics/#comments Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:19:26 +0000 benmones http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/?p=10 ]]> Hello,

As many of you know, I have endured a tumultuous relationship between my scientific and religious halves. I think that this Island might be found as a proper medium to discuss this relationship, and possibly draw some conclusions and potential issues to be discussed within our group.

Before I enrolled at Christ’s College at Cambridge to attain my BA, I remember reading a book by John Pearson, D.D. It had quite a simple title; I believe it was An Exposition of the Creed. After reading this book, I could not doubt the Bible. Strictly and literally, I knew I had to accept the creed of God. It wasn’t as if the book changed my life, but was rather the last piece in reaffirming my faith. For a number of years after that, I was fairly orthodox. Why, I even remember on the Beagle when I quoted the Bible as some omnipotent authority to answer a question a shipmate had about morality. I believed in God, I lived the way God wanted me to live.

Unfortunately, that all changed on the 23rd of April, 1851. My daughter Annie succumbed to a horrible illness and died among sweat stained blankets and cold tea. When Emma would go to church on Sunday, I would merely stroll around the neighborhood, amusing myself with other things. Of course, my Unitarian Emma never missed a day of church; she was a dedicated woman.

When asked to discuss the role of religion in science, or more specifically the role of religion in genetics, I tend to cringe. I find myself very confused even thinking about such a topic. I know that this wonderful universe and all it encompasses could not have come from mere chance. There is no way! I remember being asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to speak on the union of science and religion. I declined the request, what benefit could it serve?

Now, before I get too hasty I want to make one thing clear. I am not an atheist. It is quite possible for a person to be a zealous evolutionist as well as a theist. These two diverse academic fields do not clash, but rather are easily conjoined. I believe in the existence of God, but I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation. Jesus Christ is not the Son of God, such a thing could never exist. However, there was a first creation. As I stated before, this is a very confusing concept for me. It seems that there is a limited role of religion and science, but it is still very important. Without the creation of the world, I could have never completed the studies that occupied so much of my life, and until I can answer whether the world has been designed intelligently or by chance, I must concede to my theist feelings, however ambiguous they may be.
Now, the big question. Should religion play a role in genetics? My answer: No. To me, it seems that religion might be heavily related to science, but it is not interwoven. In other words, we do not find religion dotted around different sectors of a certain theory. To cancel out different variables, the actions of one of Christ’s disciples are unimportant. It seems that religion occupies a block in science. Imagine the following metaphor. You just bought tickets to a hound race a couple of towns over. Sitting in the grandstand, you watch as the slender dogs mill around in their tie-stalls. The gun goes off, the doors to the tie-stall fly open and the dogs are off. Consider religion as the starter’s gun. Religion provides the gunpowder and bullets to get the race going, but it is scientific theory that finishes the race. It is up to the athleticism of the dogs, the wetness of the track, the temperature outside that determines the winner. The scientific theory, in this metaphor, is the race itself. It is up to the individual dog once the race begins to determine the final result. Of course, you came to watch the race, but without the gun the race might have never started.

It is quite a confusing theory, and there may be no correct answer to the aforementioned question. It is only in the various personal experiences of scientists insofar as religion that might determine specific theories. If a sense of divinity is strong in an individual, his findings might be considerably different. I am very curious as to your responses to my question…

Regards,

-Charles

After two days of waiting in that attic, I decided to leave. Looking back on it, I can’t believe I did that. I guess you can attribute it to a child’s curiosity, but anyone who ran out into the street on that hot summer day was a fool. As my bike wobbled down to the family restaurant, I began to get worried. The riots looked awfully bad on TV, who knows how bad they would look in person. My dad always told me that things were always actually bigger than they looked on TV. In response I would always tell him that was completely reasonable. After all, how were real people going to fit in that little box? My fears multiplied as I got to within about a quarter mile of the restaurant. I decided it would be safer to go the back way into the restaurant, maybe there was no shooting there. Gliding my hospital pink Schwinn between the stacks of empty boxes and overflowing trashcans, I came on the back door of the renovated Zebra Room. I liked it more before the renovation, and even through all the chaos of the current day, I could vividly picture what the place used to look like. Soft lamps overhanging groups of bar stools, seemingly huddled around the rickety tables. The white and black stripes of an apparently enormous zebra wrapped its way around the room. Not anymore though. Before the fire, the place was all leather and “American” like my dad used to say. We had conformed to what the people wanted, and our business was more successful.

Forgive my digression. The last thing I remember about that July day was when my father ran out of the back of the restaurant, screaming and wild eyed. He looked like a crazed man, like he had just seen a ghost. It wasn’t a type of fear that might creep over me in the middle of the night, as I wondered about the creaking in my closet. It was a type of shaking fear, as if his whole soul had been squished and turned upside down, as if the black had been sucked from his pupils. I remember hysterically crying, but I remember the look on my father’s eyes even more.

The type of fear my father felt that day as he ran out of the burning family business is almost identical to the way I felt throughout my entire childhood. My father was suddenly alone. The patrons who used to frequent the restaurant had suddenly turned on him. His whole way of life had been turned upside down. Everything that he had known was destroyed to the core. After a stint in the Korean War, he had come home to a life that he was going to be very comfortable with. He had an established identity within the community, and made friends with people who accepted him as one of the best restaurateurs in the area. When the riots came, that identity was destroyed. He couldn’t go back to his store if he wanted to. I felt the same way. There was nowhere that I could go if I wanted to. My entire life, I struggled with being out of place. It wasn’t like nobody understood me, it was just as if there wasn’t a problem. I was subconsciously denying my status regarding the 5-alpha-reductase-deficiency. I had created an identity that I could physically not adhere to. Milton was the same way. Suddenly, he had created an identity that was impossible to live. I was doing the same thing, acting like a girl when I really wasn’t. I was trapped with no way out, largely because of what I had done to myself. It wasn’t even me, though, dear reader! I had no part in the way I was raised. My parents taught me to be a girl, so I quickly became one. America taught my father to work hard and become a restaurateur, and he did. As both of our identities were ripped away from us, we crumbled under the pressure (even though we both got right back up).

So, now you may ask, what is natural? To me, natural is something that you create for yourself. My Greek ancestors were heavily concerned with fate, and they might even say my deficiency is fate. Brought on by the “unnatural” joining of a brother and sister, I jumped out of that womb kicking and screaming, ready for the world. It was up to me to make that incestual relationship natural. Just because someone shoves me out of the way, telling me I’m not natural doesn’t mean I’m going to skip town (like I did when I ran to San Francisco). I believe that natural is what you make of it. Sure, the joining of my grandparents was not natural; but we made it work. I consider myself a successful person, regardless of my sexual status. I have created an identity that is inherently natural to me. Maybe it is not natural to you, but the process of self-identification that I went through made me more natural than you will ever be. In struggling with who I was, I became much more in touch with my spiritual side. I learned a lot about the world and consider myself much more natural than many of my colleagues. I have to cut this blog short, Julie and I have to catch a show in downtown Berlin.

Until next time,
Cal

Today, my eternal fame has been secured by the flip of a coin. Yes, I have acquired a lasting legacy for myself today by merely flicking my thumb and observing the side of a quarter which faced skyward, glinting at me with its own immortal eyes. Or was the quarter tails? I cannot recall. In any case, today Francis and I flipped a coin to decide whether we should call the double helix the Watson-Crick structure or the Crick-Watson structure in our submission of our findings to Cambridge. Sure now, once and for all, the Watson name will live on in remembrance of my great discovery.

And yet, I am dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the randomness of it all, the entire process of discovery. I cannot help but consider many times throughout my journey a discovery seemed to fall out of the sky, granting me its ownership for no particular reason concerning my abilities. And now, thanks only to a flipped quarter, my name occupies the first space of our duo, and as history has proven, the first name is always remembered and revered above the second. Has our sense of history in general been decided upon randomly, as if by the flip of a coin? Have the names and places we have come to know as great entities been improperly classified? Surely, in the annals of history, someone got far too much credit—perhaps everyone.

What will become of Linus Pauling? What will his name evoke in fifty, sixty years? It seems remarkably unfair and inaccurate that his entire existence on earth be marginalized, reduced to the status of “runner up to Watson and Crick.” He botched one simple moment in his life—he was the greatest chemist of the time—and developed a triple-helix strand of DNA which proved incorrect. With his error, I took the advantage, reducing his helixes by one, and increasing my reputation by infinity. What’s more, before it was clear that Pauling was out to get the prize, Francis and I had been told by Sir Lawrence Bragg told us that DNA was off limits to the Cambridge unit because it belonged to the workers at King’s. It was his entry into this game that enabled us to win.

As my sister Elizabeth typed my manuscript for Nature to announce the discovery, I could not help but feel the moment had been compromised. It had not been earned. My achievements were no more the result of my own intelligent design than my own genetic makeup. If they are merely the product of unpredicted, random events, then it is not truly by my will that I attain my goals, but simply being in the right place or the right time.

It could be that I am simply dealing with success at this time–I hear it is as stressful as it is joyous. Perhaps it is a bit presumptuous of me to assume that my breakthrough will have the impact I describe, however, one must understand that this discovery of DNA is not just a discovery of a new fact of life–it is THE fact of life.

Cordially,

James

]]> http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/history-just-a-flip-of-the-coin/feed/ 2 jasonwire http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/naturally/ http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/naturally/#comments Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:04:09 +0000 jasonwire http://jrwbym.wordpress.com/?p=7 ]]> Friends and fellow officers of this great land,

Though I rarely partake in the opiate of the masses that is modern television, I will make two concessions on occasion for one of two programs: Animal Planet’s Meerkat Manor (something about those creatures just moves me to tears, but alas, I digress) and the Nightly News. I found myself frustrated at Animal Planet for replacing its regularly scheduled Meerkat Manor episode with a mockery of the natural world called “World’s Funniest Animals.” Instead, I switched to the Nightly News, expecting some doltish pundit giving unwarranted commentary on some obscure nation’s foreign policy, but instead I found breaking news in Texas as an enormous polygamist ranch was uncovered recently. This place, called Yearning for Zion Ranch, allegedly forced young girls to marry older men in addition to a laundry list of other atrocities.

This sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is facing criminal charges which may or may not be well-evidenced: we do not yet know at this point. However, I feel that I must sympathize with the members of this sect for the unfair prejudices society is holding against them due to the uncommon nature of their practices. In the United States, polygamy is illegal, but why? Because it is not natural? Tell me, great congress, great senate, what is natural? One heterosexual parent couple raising two healthy children? Imposing these values upon an entire nation of people is an injustice done unto even those who reject polygamy, for even if someone does not wish to exercise a form of liberty, a liberty lost is a crime against a human under any circumstances.

Of course, one might ask why I feel the need to sympathize with a religious group, a cause in which I have no interest, for certainly I have proven before (and will continue to prove) that God is merely our predecessor, if he even exists at all. However, it is the censorship of scientific liberty that is the glass ceiling of evolution, a glass ceiling that I aim to shatter with my research. While polygamy is not by definition scientific, it is still a choice, a personal choice such as choosing to explore the plasticity of the human form. Why must archaic morals hinder our progress?

Evolution by natural selection is dead. The weak and feeble are no longer filtered through natural means, and certainly we have committed ourselves to refraining from removing these lesser people from the gene pool. Because of this, we have been handed two alternatives: de-evolve, or embrace technology and nontraditional practices to move forward with humanity. I think that Henry will agree with me when I say that any sense of the word natural died with the industrial revolution.

-Dr. M.

Recently, the U.S. Congress moved to ban genetic discrimination in both the workplace and regarding insurance companies’ policies to its customers. For many Americans, this is realized as a good and logical step to securing the liberties which they hold so dear to their hearts (as well as exercising those “liberties” regardless of how the rest of the world feels). However, are we not turning a blind eye to truth, the purest, barest truths of our own existence? A man who wishes not to reveal his genetic predisposition to homosexuality may hide his nature from his environment, but he will never hide the truth from himself. It is this refusal to recognize the true nature of our humanity—the malleability of it, the ambiguity of it—that is the reason for such legislation to be even dreamt of! Of the truths we held so dear in that late eighteenth century, did we not find ourselves, the purest expression of autonomy and agency, to be a similarly valuable, self-evident truth?

Now, perhaps you might say (And Henry, I know this is what you will say, but please check your politically correct sympathy at the door), “That poor, poor Benny, that sad, little man. What a brave man for shouldering the burden of—what did you call it again?” I have said time and again, to be brave, you have to have a choice. I have said this in response to my own condition, my own mutation, for I did not pull the trigger in the game of genetic roulette; no, my lot has been cast to me and I live with it as the left-handed man lives in constant oppression from the right-handed majority. I am not brave, I am a person. Now, given this choice to acknowledge or deny the nature of ourselves, the cards we’ve been dealt, now and only now may we truly be brave in and of ourselves. Now, more than ever, may we truly be courageous and we may all live happily, mutant hand in hand, knowing that it is our “deficiencies” which identifies and individualizes us, and simultaneously unites us in mutual understanding.

I do not wish to ruin the lives of the women who could be denied affordable quality insurance due to their genetic predisposition to breast cancer or keep the bipolar man from finding a good job in the corporate world. No, I feel that measures must be taken to be secure equal opportunities for realizing the good life for all people, especially realizing that nearly all of us are genetically flawed in some way. However, I refuse to believe that the advent of genomics should be interpreted as an opening of Pandora’s box, but instead I call humanity to arms to defend and celebrate that which truly separates us from one another as well as unifies us.

United in Deformity, One Nation Against Conformity,

Dr. Benedict Lambert

It is with great pleasure and pride that I write to you on this day, this moment, to induct this space as the official Inaugural Colony of the Ethereal Nation of the Island of Dr. Wirones. This day has been the result of many hours of hard, intellectual labor within the deep, tangled minds of each of you virtually sitting here today, and I would like for each of us to personally congratulate each other for what we have accomplished, together, in the last 12 weeks.

“Great minds think alike.” There is perhaps no cliche, no idiom, no turn of phrase more vulgar and offensive to our pursuit of truth and knowledge than this four-word phrase. It is a certainty that conformity, like-mindedness, and groupthink are the foundations of the de-evolution of our humanity and of our prosperity, for if a thought, an idea, or even a truth has not been contested and tempered within the kilns of our minds, it is unworthy of our endorsement. Sadly, though, the general opinion in opposition to this cardinal sin against great thought has been equally incorrect. To think, “Great minds think for themselves,” is to abandon the unity inherent among us as humans, as people. If ever there were a purpose for life, if ever there were a facet of our existence worth fighting for, it is each other. If we lose that connection, we lose the harmonious wavelength that each of us hears in the cries of celebration in the streets and sees in the eyes of young love. Truly, great minds do not think for themselves, selfish and sociopathic minds do. Instead, great minds–your minds–think together. Think for each other. Great minds do not create themselves as the genes that make up the brain physically constructs each neuron. The mind itself has little ability for true self-improvement. Instead, the greatest minds have been the products of the efforts of many men and women driven together toward a common goal.

I stress the importance of this cohesive nature of our goals because it is the reason for our being here. The great mind serves no purpose hidden within think darkness of a book’s leaves. The great mind yearns for company, it seeks and hunts opposition and review, which is how all of our minds have led us here, to the Island of Dr. Mireones, to discuss the issues which continue to stoke the fires of our brains. Here, we welcome any thought, any discussion regarding what makes us truly human and truly worth, well, thinking about.

You may find that even once you leave this country, this place will follow like a distant relative. In some cases, this may be welcomed, but in others, in some provinces more treacherous, foggy, and slippery than others, the new weight of greatness may be more difficult to bear. But remember that though the road to great thought is sometimes very much uphill, we are the road. We are at once the river and the vessel to truth, and together, as a fleet, no ship shall sink.

Enjoy your stay,

Dr. Benjason Mirones

Supreme Chancellor of Thought

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