Das Gottes-handwerk

The subject of Das Gottes-handwerk is “playing God” by

artificially synthesizing life in thelaboratory, and how that is perceived

historically and culturally and judged bysociety. In this small and excellently

written book, Joachim Schummer presents thehistorical, cultural, and theological backgroundfor understanding why “the creation of artificiallife” and attempts to “play God” are subjectsthat arouse great public interest and evenindignation. Sensation-driven recent reports onadvances in synthetic biology (SB), with thehelp of the popular press and mass media, havefed the public with exciting promises, just asoccurred with nanotechnology a decade ago. Asin that case, we have learned (again!) that SBwill provide solutions to all our problems in theareas of energy, health, environment, food, etc.In this review I will highlight some of the coreideas of the book.

What do the scientists who work on “creatinglife in the lab” aim to achieve? Statements abouttheir aims are accompanied in the media by emo-tional phrases such as “interfering with God�shandiwork”. The aims can only be understood byconsidering the specific cultural context in whichSB and other related areas of research (such asnanotechnology) have emerged. Schummer ana-lyzes this cultural context in detail. The sociology ofSB and how it is perceived and judged in Westernsocieties is deeply rooted in culture and religion.With this knowledge, it becomes much easier tounderstand the nature of the cultural reflexesmentioned above. It is no exaggeration to say thatSchummer analyzes precisely how these reflexes bythe public are intentionally induced, assisted by theimmense power of the media. This public aware-ness is, in fact, skillfully channeled for the promo-tion of specific commercial or scientific interests ofindividuals and groups. Unfortunately, such amodus operandi is usually at the long-term cost ofthe scientific reputation of the whole discipline and,even more seriously, of its social acceptance andtolerance. This is very remote from Francis Bacon�svision of a project by society aimed at creating life-forms designed optimally for human purposes, asenvisaged in his utopian novel New Atlantis (pub-lished in Latin in 1624 and in English in 1627).

Exactly what is meant by “the creation of life”?Unfortunately, there is no general consensusamong scientists, philosophers, and theologiansabout the definition of “life”. Consequently, asthe meaning of the word itself is disputed, the ideaof creating life can only refer to a vague scientificgoal. Thus, “the creation of life” is an ambiguous

expression that triggers different reactions in differ-ent interest groups. Consequently, any change inthe realm of something so ambiguously (un)definedcan always be proclaimed as a “creation”. Seen inthis context, it is not difficult to understand whyreports about “the creation of artificial life”appeared so frequently in the last century, andprobably will continue to do so in the comingdecades. In reality, the “artificial creations” beingtalked about by scientists up to now are only minormodifications, or at most re-syntheses of parts ofalready existing organisms rather than the “crea-tion” of new ones.

What about the “playing God” label? Histor-ically, the early signs of today�s indignation about“trying to play God” can be seen in the criticismsthat some medieval theologians directed at thealchemists. Their efforts to master simple chemicaltransformations were criticized and damned as anattempt to change the innermost workings of God�sCreation. However, many present-day historiansand researchers into cultural trends fail to noticethe fact that the old moral-theological world orderlater underwent a complete reversal, when wecompare it with today�s views. In pre-industrialtimes, the creation of life (even of complicatedforms) was regarded as legitimate, and actually astrivial fact, far from being something scandalous ordisreputable. The act of creation through eitherdivine power or the power of “The Word” wasreserved for “higher life-forms” such as other godsor humans, but was unnecessary for the sponta-neous emergence of life from nonliving matter, aprocess that was thought to occur for simple life-forms such as worms or flies. Even before Chris-tianity, in his History of Animals Aristotle wrote:“Animals and plants come into being in the earthand in liquids because there is water in the earth andair in water, and in all air there is life-giving heat …”.

In the past, the objections to the creation of lifewere not moral or theological, but rather wereconcerned with hygiene matters and with disgustthat might result from the spontaneous creation ofpests and molds. However, the theory of evolutionchanged views dramatically by revealing a funda-mental connection between, for example, amoebaand humans. Even the emergence of the radicalteaching of Creationism, with its strict denial thatlife could have been formed spontaneously, wouldnot have been possible without these advances inthe natural sciences. In other words, worms andprotozoa, which were previously regarded asworthless or as unworthy of study because theywere useless or even damaging for mankind, arenow seen as important, because in the light of thetheory of evolution they represent earlier stages inthe development of life towards mammals andhuman beings. Therefore, those who claim thatthese creatures are generated spontaneously or

Das Gottes-handwerkDie k�nstliche Herstellungvon Leben im Labor. ByJoachim Schummer. Suhr-kamp, Berlin, 2011. 239 pp.,softcover, E 12.00.—ISBN978-3518260395

Books

11041Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 11041 – 11043 � 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

could even be made in a laboratory could now beaccused of “playing God”, because now the ques-tion of the creation of humans (exclusively thedomain of divine planning and the forces ofCreation) is affected.

It should also be noted that the first scientificideas about the creation of new life-forms wereborn in Germany in the second half of the 19thcentury, at a time when, as organic chemistry wasbeginning to develop, attempts were made todisprove, by means of organic syntheses, the ideaof a “vital force” (vis vitalis). At the beginning ofthe 20th century, Emil Fischer formulated theprogram of “chemical synthetic biology”, in thespirit of the ideal of progress from pure imitation ofnature to the domination of nature, with theultimate goal of the chemical synthesis of life.Since then, many reports about the “creation ofsynthetic life” followed at regular intervals, most ofthem now forgotten.

Each of the 16 chapters in the book can be readindependently, and is a journey through a multitudeof facts that, separately, are already familiar to eachof us. However, most of us never thought of themfrom a broader historical and cultural perspective.For example, Chapters 7 and 8 present an excellentanalysis of the media coverage of “life creation”during the last hundred years or so. They describe atime-line that extends from the report on the“chemical synthesis of life” by the German-Amer-ican parthenogenesis researcher Loeb in the 19thcentury, via Danielli�s experiment of 1970, in whichpatchwork amoeba were reported as “the firstsynthesis of a living cell”, up to the recent experi-ments by Craig Venter on “artificial cells”. Devel-opments such as the revival of the theory of rigidgenetic determinism, and the attempts to emanci-pate SB from molecular biology, biochemistry, andgenetics by emphasizing “synthesis of life” as aforemost research goal, are all brilliantly described.

This excellently written book is highly recom-mended for everyone who wants to understand themain protagonists, driving forces, mechanisms, andthe cultural and social background of “high-impact” modern science.

Nediljko BudisaInstitut f�r ChemieTechnische Universit�t Berlin (Germany)

DOI: 10.1002/anie.201105161

Excellence in anOverlapping Culture

This book is largely aboutthe history, the work, the

people, and the culture of theNational Chemical Laboratory

(NCL), one of the over 200 nationallaboratories in India that operate within

the framework of some 15 scientific agenciesor departments of the Government of India,most of which were set up after IndianIndependence in 1947.

NCL is one of India�s finest research laborato-ries, and has made significant contributions, both inbasic research and applied sciences, and the author,L. K. Doraiswamy, has been one of India�s fore-most chemical engineers, but the book does notmeasure up to these standards.

The first part, of nearly 90 pages, describesmostly the history of Indian science and then thehistory of the Council of Scientific & IndustrialResearch (CSIR) of which NCL is a constituent.This part of the book is eminently readable, but itwould have been more relevant if the book wasabout all of Indian science after Independence.

The rest of the book comprises three types ofcontents: firstly, content of interest to everyone;secondly, content of interest to those directlyconcerned with NCL, such as the description ofprojects that failed, in Part IV of the book; andthirdly, content that consists of items too trivial tobe of interest except to a very few, if any, readers.The second and third types dominate the book. Theattempt to include “everything” often obscures theelements of uniqueness for which the laboratory isjustifiably known, such as catalysis, bamboo tissueculture, and Damodaran�s discovery of one of the20 constituent amino acids of proteins. Part IV ofthe book, about NCL�s contribution to industry, isperhaps the most valuable, although even this couldhave been shortened. Chapter XVI, which reviewsthe culture and the environment that has prevailedin the NCL over the last six decades, makes veryinteresting reading.

An example of “contamination” of the excep-tional with the mundane is the section on chemicalbiology (pp. 298–301), where about equal space isgiven to the excellent work on peptide nucleic acidsand to the setting up and use of an automated DNAsynthesizer and the PCR machine, which shouldnot even have been mentioned. Much of what is inChapters XIV and XV, such as the description ofthe guest house, the hostel, the medical centre,recreation facilities, and the shopping centre—facilities that are by no means unique—would beof no interest to a general reader. Then in ChapterXVI there is a repetition of Ratnasami�s work on a

Excellence in anOverlapping CultureThe Big History of IndiasNational Chemical Labora-tory. By L. K. Doraiswamy.Routledge (Taylor & Fran-cis), New Delhi, 2010.625 pp., hardcover.—ISBN978-8189643003

Books

11042 www.angewandte.org � 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 11041 – 11043