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Science & Technology
Dr. Frankenstein I presume?
2008-12-04
The Mad Scientist Bringing Back the Dead.... Really.

Mark Roth got the idea that deanimation really might be the better scene, and found himself in Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Now, Mark Roth is a scientist. He's not a philosopher or a crank. He proves things, experimentally, according to the scientific method. In 2007, he got a MacArthur, so he's a genius, certified.

Mark Roth is a scientist. But he's a scientist in the way that you used to want to be a scientist when you were a kid, with weird substances -- dangerous substances, toxic substances, indeed the most toxic substances known to man! -- bubbling away in his lab, rather than a scientist in the way that most scientists are scientists, with NIH funding, a stack of grant applications to catch up on, and a commitment to pursue the one or two ideas that got them that precious federal funding to the death.
Hey! I resemble that remark!
First, that some scientists weren't necessarily happy that he'd had success with RNA splicing; and, second, that the same scientists who weren't necessarily happy that he'd had success with RNA splicing wanted him to do RNA splicing for the rest of his natural life. Talk about weird...but that's not what convinced him to leave the campfire. No, what convinced him that he had to start going out into the woods and fetch his ideas from the darkness was...the darkness itself.

In 1995, Roth's wife, Laurie, gave birth to his second daughter, Hannah. She was born with Down syndrome and a heart with one ventricle. Mark Roth was thirty-eight years old. He was, by this time, a researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and if his daughter survived, he was looking at having a dependent for as long as he was alive. He met with Laurie and told her, Hey, whatever happens, life as we know it is over.

And then Hannah died. She died after heart surgery. She was just over a year old.

And then Mark Roth began to fail. Like, unequivocally. He was still doing experiments, he was still doing science, but it was as if he were experimenting with failure itself. He was committed to it. He didn't think there was enough of it. He was going to see where failure took him.

The first failure? Immortality. He'd gotten interested in the possibility of immortality.
Just read it! It goes for a few pages but is worth it..
Posted by:3dc

#4  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Frank G   2008-12-04 19:46  

#3  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: ed   2008-12-04 08:34  

#2  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Besoeker   2008-12-04 08:15  

#1  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: 3dc   2008-12-04 01:03  

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