Four Legs Good (eBook)

Robert Linhardt (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
134 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-4215-6 (ISBN)

Some scientific experiments, such as Einstein's Gedankenexperiment, cannot be carried out in the real world, others like the one in this story, should not be carried out in the real world. A flawed set of scientific experiments performed in 2024 causes a breakdown in the barrier between humans and a neighboring species. These experiments rely on the Nobel Prize winning molecular biology technique known as CRISPR, surgical intervention, and the use of artificial intelligence. The science described is believed to be accurate, the outcome is purely speculative fiction and to the author's knowledge such a study has never been performed. The story's epilogue examines the impact of the project' on society over the subsequent 50 years. The book is written both for the general reader, without a deep understanding of science, and as a moral lesson for scientists.

Chapter 2. Professor Meyer and Family

Carl Meyer was a child of the late 1980’s. His two sets of grandparents had been born in Eastern Europe and had emigrated with only the clothes on their backs to New York City in the mid-twentieth century, one family during the Hungarian uprising and the other during the Prague Spring. Carl’s father and mother were raised as a secular Jew and a Catholic, respectively. Both of Carl’s parents, first generation Americans, were achievers, becoming engineers and working hard at various companies up and down the East Coast, before moving back to New York City to retire.

Carl followed in his parent’s footsteps. He was born in New York City, grew up in smaller East Coast cities and returned to New York City to attend Columbia before moving to Harvard for his graduate studies and postdoctoral work. All of his education was in the best departments of Ivy League schools. Carl was agnostic, highly motivated, and scientifically brilliant.

Carl met his wife Julie in Cambridge where he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, and she was an undergraduate engineering student in the co-terminal bachelor’s and Master of Science program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). By the time they had both completed their studies they had fallen in love and were subsequently married at Julie’s parents’ home in Chicago.

Julie, five years younger than Carl, had grown up in downtown Chicago. Her family had been in the U.S. for many generations and had started several very successful businesses. Julie, an only child like Carl, came of age during a period in which Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education was being strongly promoted for girls and she attended Chicago’s best STEM prep school. She had grown up around computers and had learned coding as her second language at summer camp at the University of Chicago. Confident of her skills and achievements she only applied to a single university, MIT, and received early admission. Julie’s confidence extended into her personal life. She knew her own mind and her parents were not surprised that, when only 22-years-old, she announced her engagement to Carl.

Both Carl and Julie had extremely strong résumés and could have found great positions anywhere, but Julie was newly pregnant, so they decided to relocate to the Midwest to be close to her parents. While waiting for their move, Julie gave birth to a baby girl who she and Carl named Brooklyn. Carl joined the University of Iowa faculty and Julie began working as a founding employee of a small university-based startup company developing computer-aided educational resources for the disabled.

This was the first time that Carl and Julie would live and work in what they considered to be a small town. They had always enjoyed living in big cities as they were able to walk or take a bus or subway everywhere. The couple were both somewhat high-strung and simply not well-suited for a daily, stressful suburban commute and they were thrilled to continue to be able to walk to work. Unlike most of the new faculty joining the university, they decided to live downtown, just off the university’s campus. They put a down payment on a brick house built in the 1920’s that fronted on the street and had a small backyard.

Downtown had not grown much over the past 50 years since there was no empty space available for expansion and the Midwest had not yet learned the East Coast tactic of vertical growth. All the growth in Iowa City had come from the edges outward in the form of characterless, suburban tract houses occupying newly abandoned farmland. Iowa City also had begun to merge with adjacent small towns, like Coralville. The Coralville Strip, with its chain restaurants and giant box stores on both sides of U.S. Route 6, extended northwestward from its border with Iowa City to the Coral Ridge Mall. One day this sprawl might extend all the way to Cedar Rapids spawning a rural Midwestern version of car-centric Los Angeles.

Fortunately, the Meyer family had everything they needed in their downtown neighborhood and were the rare single car family. It was here that Carl, Julie, and their daughter Brooklyn would spend their next 20 years. There is a certain comfort in living in an old house at the seemingly unchanging center of a small town. During stressful times they could take solace in their home and its surroundings.

Carl’s career progressed rapidly. He was a research superstar and within five years he was promoted and tenured. Carl ran a large, well-funded lab populated with many of the best students and scientists in the state. He supervised a research group consisting of both postdoctoral scientists and graduate students and his group was known for its energetic, innovative, and multidisciplinary research in medicine.

Carl was a 35-year-old man of average build with short dark hair, clean-shaven, and sporting a year-long tan. All the members of his team were in their 20’s, except for his wife Julie, who had just turned 30. The scientists in the group were all energetic and highly motivated to publish impactful scientific papers and build their research reputations.

Carl was in his academic prime as it is well known that a scientist’s most important work is typically accomplished before the age of 40. His group had several on-going projects, but with his promotion he had been given more laboratory space to allow him to expand his research group. For a research-intensive professor, this was an opportunity that had to be quickly seized. Moreover, with his daughter about to start school he would be relieved of some of his co-parenting duties and would now have additional time to focus on his research.

Carl needed to make a concerted effort to establish a new research direction from which he could build an international reputation. He spent most of his time thinking of new ideas, writing grant proposals and papers, solving research problems, and mentoring his students. Carl also taught a single course each semester and served on a few departmental and university committees. His university duties required long hours, so he was always distracted, mostly thinking of new research ideas, and designing and interpreting experiments. During the time he spent with his family he was often only half-present. When playing with his five-year-old daughter he would typically think just of science.

Julie Meyer’s start-up company located in neighboring Coralville had been incredibly successful. In the five years she had been with the company it had grown from three to nearly 30 employees and she had been promoted to the position of Director of Research. Julie, had been surprised that she had advanced so rapidly in her company without having a doctoral degree. This was certainly uncommon in a university town where almost everyone had a Ph.D. However, Julie had a lot going for her. She had business savvy, having grown up around her family’s successful company. Julie was young, athletic, and an MIT graduate, opening doors to her in this Midwestern university town. She was well-connected to the MIT Media Laboratory, and these connections had been very helpful to the company in raising venture capital. Julie traveled frequently for her company, either relying on Carl to take over her parenting duties or having her own parents drive in from Chicago to run her household while spending time with their granddaughter.

Like all MIT engineers, Julie was an energetic, can-do person, and no objective was outside her reach. She had the same drive for great accomplishments as Carl but being five years younger and no longer concerned about her biological clock, she was in less of a rush to achieve these goals. In most ways, both her life in Iowa City and her job were ideal for Julie.

Julie and her company had developed a proprietary platform for using artificial intelligence (AI) and computer-based learning to treat and educate physically and mentally disabled children more efficiently. Their major achievement was to leverage computers and rapidly advancing AI software to decrease direct human involvement, greatly reducing costs. Her company had recently merged with another startup company exploring brain-implantable electrodes for rapid, seamless input-output in teaching the disabled.

As might be expected of two overachievers, Carl and Julie were always looking for ways that they could collaborate as a husband-and-wife team of scientist and engineer. Julie’s high-level position in the start-up afforded her the time, opportunity, and funding to initiate and participate in collaborative research projects of her own choosing. Even after six years of marriage Carl and Julie still enjoyed the time they spent together both at work and at home. It seemed to Carl that a project on the central nervous system (CNS) might serve as a research connection. They had many talks late into the night about how learning could be combined with CNS transplantation but making such a connection into a research project remained elusive.

One morning, while drinking his coffee before work, and reading the New York Times, Carl came across an article describing the first transplantation of a pig kidney to a human. He had been aware of xenotransplantation experiments—transplantation between different species—for quite some time, but he was taken aback at how rapidly the medical profession...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	18.1.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-4215-6 / 9798350942156

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