Weissmann - The fevers of reason: new and selected essays

Praise for

GERALD WEISSMANN

Weissmann is Lewis Thomass heir.

Robert Coles

How I envy the reader coming upon Dr. Weissmanns elegant, entertaining essays for the first time!

Jonas Salk

Dr. Weissmanns juggling with the balls of global politics, biology, medicine, and culture in the framework of history is breathtaking.

Bengt Samuelsson, Nobel laureate and former chairman of the Nobel Foundation

The premier essayist of our time, Gerald Weissmann writes with grace and style.

Richard Selzer

An absolutely first-rate writer.

Kurt Vonnegut

As a belles-letterist, Weissmann is the inheritor of the late Lewis Thomas.... Like Thomas, hes a gifted researcher and clinician who writes beautifully. Unlike Thomas, he is an original and indefatigable social historian as well.

Boston Globe

He writes as a doctor, a medical scientist, a knowing lover of art and literature and a modern liberal skeptic. But more than anything else, Weissmann writes as a passionate and wise reader.

New Republic

Weissmann is a master of the essay form. His witty and elegant prose makes the toughest subject matter not only accessible but entertaining.

Barnes and Noble Review

[Weissmann] is a Renaissance Man.... Hell stretch your minds hamstrings.

Christian Science Monitor

[Weissmanns essays] intertwine the profound connections of science and art in the context of our modern era... to illuminate the ongoing challenges scientists face in dealing with scrutiny and criticism, from colleagues and from our broader society.

Science

Erudite, engaging, and accessible.

Library Journal

Essays that brim with knowledge and bubble with attitude.

Kirkus Reviews

Weissmann models his work after that of his mentor, Lewis Thomas.... His ideas... are every bit as important.

Publishers Weekly

ALSO BY GERALD WEISSMANN:

The Woods Hole Cantata

They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus

The Doctor with Two Heads

Democracy and DNA

The Doctor Dilemma

Darwins Audubon

The Year of the Genome

Galileos Gout

Mortal and Immortal DNA

Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter

First published in the United States in 2018 by Bellevue Literary Press, New York

For information, contact:

Bellevue Literary Press

NYU School of Medicine

550 First Avenue

OBV A612

New York, NY 10016

1995, 1998, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2018 by Gerald Weissmann

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Weissmann, Gerald, author.

Title: The fevers of reason: new and selected essays / Gerald Weissmann.

Description: First edition. | New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017039245 (print) | LCCN 2017043326 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942658337 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: ScienceMiscellanea. | MESH: Sciencehistory | Philosophy, Medical | History, 20th Century | History, 21st Century | Essays | Collected Works

Classification: LCC Q173 (ebook) | LCC Q173 .W4424 2018 (print) | NLM Q 126.8 | DDC 500dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039245

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a print, online, or broadcast review.

Bellevue Literary Press would like to thank all its generous donorsindividuals and foundationsfor their support.

This publication is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Book design and composition by Mulberry Tree Press, Inc.

First Edition

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease,

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

My reason, the physician to my love,

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

Hath left me and I desperate now approve

Desire is death, which physic did except.

Past cure I am, now reason is past care,

And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;

My thoughts and my discourse as madmens are,

At random from the truth vainly expressd;

For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

William Shakespeare (1609)

Le jeunesse est une ivresse continuelle; cest la fivre de la raison.

Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1665)

To Ann

toujours toujours l pour moi

Contents

Table of Contents

Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.

Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (2000)

N OT ONLY LOVE, as the Bard tells us, or youth, as the Duke suggests, produces fevers of reason. Weve learned that the fevers of Zika and Ebola can sear the mind; weve also learned that reason becomes toast when presidential Tweets go viral at dawn. Fevers of reason require treatment based on facts not fancy, brains not bravado.

Happily enough, messages of cool reason can also go viral, and at their best, inform and command. Thats especially true of scientific papers that introduce notions like the helical structure of DNA. To become viable, and go viral in turn, their progeny must survive the birth pangs of test, retest, and peer review. When a tested notion reaches adolescence, we call it a hypothesis (DNA makes RNA makes protein). When a hypothesis reaches maturity it becomes a theory (relativity) and, with time, becomes a law (gravity).

No such direct path for an essay. While the word comes from the French essai, a test, trial, or experiment, essays dont require independent proof. The essay form may have been set by Montaignes musing from the terrace of his chteau, but those boundless vistas are long gone. Essays today, mine included, are written in the realm of a viral Internet, where imaginary gardens of fancy have yielded to a thicket of facts and alternative facts through which reason is the surest guide.

In the first four sections of this book, the essays deal with four themes to which Ive returned over the years. Going Viral connects a 2016 Woods Hole lecture on gene splicing to a fictional discovery made in Sinclair Lewiss 1925 novel