January 8, 2007

Dear Colleague:

     Science magazine (December 22, 2006) featured a story about a remarkable young man, who goes by the name of Bruce Lahn. Bruce Lahn? Is he an American? No, not exactly. He is now an American citizen, but he was born Chinese. His parents, both physicists and politically liberal, occasionally got into hot water with the Chinese government. Their son, Lan Tian, shared his parents' liberal political views. While he was a student studying genetics at Beijing University, his involvement with the early stages of the "student democracy movement" made him think that he, too, might soon be targeted for persecution. So, in 1988, he left China for the USA, entered Harvard, where he was much admired for his intelligence and independence of mind, and liked for his good looks and high spirits. One day, a janitor at McDonald's said that he looked like the Chinese super-star Bruce Lee. So Lan Tian, as a sort of jeu d'esprit, changed his name legally to Bruce and Americanized "Lan" into "Lahn." After Harvard, Lahn went to MIT to do his doctorate. His dissertation, which led him to deciper the evolutionary history of the human Y chromosome, was a landmark achievement in genome research. He was snatched up by the University of Chicago where, within five years (a record), he was given tenure.

    Lahn's career ran into a road block when he sought to identify genes behind our species' superior cognition. "Two Science papers purportedly concluding that beneficial brain mutations are common in Eurasia but rare in Africa" made him, almost overnight, the outcast of liberal scientists and the darling of right-wingers. Lahn himself was caught by surprise that he could be suspected of being a right-winger and racist. He the student rebel in China! He who is deeply offended by class difference and treatment! He who regularly votes Democratic in American elections! He who is a member of NAACP! (I don't know of a single Chinese who is a member of NAACP. On the other hand, I do not doubt that many belong to the Rotary Club). As one more evidence of the Chinese scientist's basic decency, he is supposed to have said that, in this particular line of work, he almost prefers to be wrong than right.

    In any case, Lahn decided to turn to a less controversial subject—stem cells. Hell, the kid just doesn't get it! He seems unaware that stem-cell research, like research into differences in human cognitive ability, is also proscribed by morality in God-fearing America. A consequence of reading this story about Lahn is that I see, for the first time, a surprising commonality between Christian fundamentalists and liberal scientists. Christian fundamentalists refuse to countenance any evidence that devalue human beings. They fear—and surely there is ground for this fear—that if we humans are just clever animals, we shall be tempted to treat one another as just animals. Liberal scientists, for their part, have no problem at all with seeing us as just animals. They don't mind the down-grading if it is applied equally. What scientists cannot countenance—what they fear—is any evidence that suggests an unevenness in the devaluation. And so both groups—Christian fundamentalists and liberal scientists—permit a moral imperative to trump the ideal of unbridled search for truth. I am reminded of fairy tales in which the hero is allowed to open all doors, except one; and of the Bible's Genesis story in which our first parents are allowed to eat all fruits, except one. Taboo is at the basis of all morality.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu