A Life Without End

by Frédéric Beigbeder

  When Robert Pattinson came to Cannes to promote his movie Map of the Stars, though unable to arrange for my daughter Romy to take a selfie with him, I was at least able to get her a signed photograph. In the green room of my television show, he wrote the following message in red marker on a photo ripped out of a copy of Vogue: To Romy with love xoxoxo Bob. In lieu of thanks, she simply asked me a question: “You swear to me you didn’t sign this yourself?”

  We have given birth to a mistrustful generation. But what I found most hurtful was that my daughter never, ever asked for a selfie with her father.

  -

  THAT YEAR, MY mother had a heart attack and my father had a fall in a hotel lobby. I began to become a habitué of hospitals in Paris. This was how I came to understand the working of vascular stents and discovered the existence of titanium knee replacements. I began to loathe old age: the antechamber of death. I had an overpaid job, a pretty ten-year-old daughter, a triplex apartment in the centre of Paris, and a BMW hybrid. I was in no hurry to lose all these benefits. When I got back from the hospital, Romy came into the kitchen with one eyebrow raised.

  “Papa, the way I understand it, everyone dies. First Grandpa and Grandma, and after that Maman, you, me, the animals, the trees, the flowers …”

  Romy stared at me fixedly as though I were God, when in fact I was simply the father of a mononuclear family experiencing an accelerated acquaintanceship with cardiovascular surgery and orthopaedic wards. I had to stop dissolving Lexomil tablets in my morning can of Coke if I was to propose a solution to her anxiety. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I never imagined that my mother and father would one day be octogenarians, and that afterwards it would be my turn, and then Romy’s. I was hopeless at maths and at old age. Beneath the flaxen hair of a living doll, two blue spheres began to fill with tears as she stood between the purring fridge and the microwave. I remember Romy’s tantrum the day her mother told her that Santa Claus didn’t exist: Romy hates lies. Then she said something kind: “I don’t want you to die, Papa.”

  How delectable it is to shuck off one’s armour … Now it was my turn to tear up as I buried my nose in the sweet smell of her mandarin and lime shampoo. I still could not understand how a man as ugly as I am could produce such a beautiful little girl.

  “Don’t you worry, darling,” I said, “From now on, no one is going to die.”

  We were a beautiful sight, as unhappy people so often are. Sadness makes the face more beautiful. Happy families are all alike, Tolstoy writes at the beginning of Anna Karenina, but he adds that every misfortune is unique. I don’t agree: death is a banal misfortune. I cleared my throat the way my army-issue grandfather used to when he sensed he needed to restore order in his house.

  “Listen, darling, it’s true that for millennia people and animals and trees have died, but starting with us, that’s all over.”

  All I had to do now was make good on my promise.

  -

  ROMY WAS VERY excited at the prospect of going to Switzerland to visit the Institute of Genetics and Genomics.

  “Can we eat fondue?”

  This is her favourite food. This whole adventure began in Geneva with our meeting with Stylianos Antonarakis. On the pretext of making a documentary about immortality, I had arranged an interview with the Greek geneticist so that he could explain how modifications to deoxyribonucleic acid could prolong our lives. I was looking after my daughter that week, so I took her with me. The recent publication of a number of essays on transhumanism had given me the idea of organizing a televised discussion on “The Death of Death,” with Laurent Alexandre, Stylianos Antonarakis, Luc Ferry, Dmitry Itskov, Mathieu Terence, and Sergey Brin from Google.

  Romy was asleep, sprawled in the back of the taxi that was driving along the banks of Lake Geneva. The sun glistened on the snowy peaks of the Jura, clouds tumbling down the slopes like an avalanche of translucent mist. This was the bone-white landscape that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. Is it a coincidence that Geneva is the city where Professor Antonarakis is working on the genetic manipulation of human DNA? In Switzerland, home to the most fastidious clockmakers, nothing comes down to chance. In 1816, while staying in the Villa Diodati, Mary Shelley sensed the gothic soul of the city. Here, tranquillity is based on a facade of rationalism. I have always been unconvinced by the cliché of Switzerland as a peaceable country, especially after a few champagne-fuelled brawls at the Baroque Club.

  Geneva is Rousseau’s noble savage as domesticated by Calvin: every Helvetian knows that he is at risk of falling into a ravine, of winding up frozen in a crevasse or drowned in a tarn. In my childhood memories, Switzerland was a country of wild New Year celebrations on the grande place in Verbier, of curious cuckoos, of fairy-tale chalets glittering in the night, of deserted palaces and valleys haunted by eerie mists, where protection against the cold was a glass of Williamine. Geneva, the Protestant Rome, a city of banks in mourning for their banking secrets, seems to me the perfect illustration of the maxim of the Prince of Ligne: “Reason is often a thwarted passion.” What I like about Switzerland is the fire that smoulders beneath the snow, the secret folly, the focused hysteria. In a world as heavily policed as this, life can change dramatically in an instant. After all, the name Geneva contains the word “gene”: welcome to the country that has always longed to control humanity. All along the shores of the lake, posters advertised an exhibition on “Frankenstein, Creation of Darkness” at the Martin Bodmer Foundation in Cologny. I was convinced that the Bentleys silently gliding past Geneva’s famous fountain, the Jet d’Eau, were filled with artful monsters.

  “Can we go and see the exhibition, Papa?”

  “We have other priorities.”

  The fondue at the Café du Soleil—half Gruyère, half vacherin—was almost light. Nothing like the thick yellow gloop wolfed down in Paris. My daughter dipped her bread in the molten cheese and whimpered with pleasure.

  “Oh là là! Ish b’n sooooo long! Nom nom!”

  “You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “I’m not talking, I’m onomatopaying”

  Romy has excellent genes: on my side, she is descended from a long line of doctors; from her mother, she has inherited a richly inventive vocabulary. Before she left me, Caroline would regularly transform nouns into verbs. She coined new words every day: I’m off “yoga-ing,” or I’m “cinema-ing” tonight. Someday, her neologisms will be included in dictionaries: “snacktivate,” maybe, or “instagrammatize.” When she dumped me, Caroline didn’t say, “I’m leaving you,” she said, “It’s time to slow-fade.” Although Swiss fondue is not a dish recommended by the World Health Organisation (20 Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva)—especially for breakfast—Romy’s happiness was more important than our immortality. We dropped our suitcases off at La Réserve, a palace on the shores of Lake Geneva, and while I was leafing through the brochure for the hotel’s Spa & Wellness Centre, which offered an “anti-aging programme” including a genetic appraisal of my “bio-individuality™,” my little girl dozed off on the velvet sofa personally chosen by on-trend design mogul Jacques Garcia.

  The lobby of the Geneva University Hospital was filled with antique radiotherapy machines, strange outmoded contraptions, early precursors of scanners. The nuclear medicine of the 1960s has given way to infinitesimal manipulations that are much less cumbersome. Outside the hospital, groups of medical students were sitting on the grass, while, inside, young interns wearing white coats were bustling around bubbling beakers, test tubes, and petri dishes of cells. Here, people were accustomed to domesticating the human animal, trying to correct the flaws of Homo sapiens, perhaps even enhance the aging vertebrate. Switzerland was not afraid of post-humanism, since it recognized man as imperfect from birth. Here, happiness looked like a cool campus, the future was a teen movie set in a medical facility. Romy was spellbound: in the middle of the gardens was a gantry hung with swings, a
trapeze, competition rings, there was even a merry-go-round.

  The Genetics Department was located on the ninth floor. In his bottle-green polo shirt, Stylianos Antonarakis looked less like Doctor Faustus than a cross between Paulo Coelho and Anthony Hopkins, with all the benevolence of the former and all the magnetism of the latter. The president of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) stroked his white beard and polished his wire-framed glasses like an absent-minded Professor Calculus while, in a joyous and relaxed manner, he explained how humanity was going to mutate. Romy was immediately struck by his new-age approach: the benignant gaze, the friendly smile, the idyllic future. His office was an indescribable mess. A huge plastic model of a double helix lay on its side on a wooden trestle. I glanced at the spines of the books: History of Genetics Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5 … Even recent genomic discoveries were ancient history to this international specialist in the field. A disembowelled computer had been transformed into a jardinière in which some post-atomic designer had planted steel stems blossoming with Nespresso capsules to create a bouquet that would never wither.

  “Thank you for setting aside a little of your precious time to meet with us, Professor.”

  “We have all eternity ahead of us …”

  His glacier-blue eyes perfectly matched the sky outside.

  “Could you explain DNA to my daughter?”

  “We are each born with an individual genome: a vast text that runs to three billion characters multiplied by two (half from your mother and half from your father). We are all unique individuals because our genomes are unique—except in the case of monozygotic twins. Once we are born, we are subject to somatic mutations caused by the sun, by air pollution, by the food we eat, the medicines we take, and our general lifestyle. This is what we call epigenetics. Aging is also dependent on the individual phenotype. Some people age more quickly than others.”

  The professor spoke French with a pleasant Greek accent. One would feel at ease in a posthuman world if it was populated by clones of Doctor Antonarakis.

  “A cell is immortal. Human beings first appeared in Morocco 300,000 years ago. What existed before that was a different species, and before that a different species again. And the most common ancestor was a cell. That cell is present in me and in both of you. I pass on the cell to the next generation through my sperm, and you, young lady, will pass it on through your oocyte.”

  Romy was perhaps a little young for a lesson on human reproduction. I quickly changed the subject.

  “So there is something immortal in every one of us?”

  “Precisely. It is impossible to create a new cell. Cells can be reprogrammed, new genes can be introduced into cells, others can be erased to alter the fate of a cell, but it is not possible to create a new, living cell. Nor is it possible to create a new bacteria today, although it seems likely that we will be able to do so two or three years from now.”

  “Talk to me about genome sequencing.”

  “These days, it is an easy process. We take two millilitres of saliva and isolate the DNA. When I first started this work thirty years ago such things were done by hand, but these days we can work out the three billion letters in your genome in about a week. Using powerful software, we can compare the differences in your genome with the reference sequence completed in 2003. This was the result of an international project launched in 1990—one I was fortunate enough to work on—the Human Genome Project. The dataset is open to anyone.”

  “The reference sequence is of an American called Craig Venter, isn’t it?”

  “He did his own sequencing in parallel to ours. In the United States, the first sequencings were of him and a number of others, including Hamilton O. Smith, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978. It is simply a benchmark, it does not mean that Craig’s DNA is normal, it was simply the first to be decoded and, since then, we’ve studied differences in relation to that reference.”

  “Can I go and play outside, Papa?”

  I looked at the professor and he looked at me. It was obvious that our discussion on advances in genetics was less appealing to Romy than the prospect of playing on the swings.

  “Alright, but don’t go far from the playground, that way I can see you from the window. And keep your phone turned on. And don’t stand up on the swing. And don’t …”

  “Papa, I’m programmed to live for a thousand years, so I think I can go down a slide. Don’t sweat it.”

  Doctor Antonarakis burst out laughing. “Your genome hasn’t been sequenced yet, mademoiselle, that’s something we would need to verify.”

  He turned to me.

  “If you like, my assistant can keep her company while we’re talking.”

  He pressed a button and a young lab assistant appeared. Her brown hair stood out against her white coat, and she seemed delighted to be suddenly promoted to babysitter, which would allow her to get some fresh air. Giggling, the two beautiful children left the office.

  “Now, where were we?” Antonarakis asked.

  “Craig Venter. I’ve seen his work online. He’s a real Victor Frankenstein: he created a synthetic mycoplasma genome. I heard he shouted ‘It’s alive!’ like the mad scientist in Mary Shelley’s novel, remember? Doctor Frankenstein shouts ‘It’s alive!’ when the hand-stitched creature he created here in Switzerland starts to breathe, to stir, after a few jolts of electricity, before it gets off the table and starts strangling everyone.”

  “I’ve never read Frankenstein, but I can see where you’re heading. Craig Venter replaced a natural chromosome with a synthetic one created in his laboratory. And he succeeded in reimplanting it into a microscopic living organism. He even included his initials in the genome: ‘JCVI-syn3.0.’ It’s an artificial organism that lives and thrives.”

  “Personally, I see it as a playful experiment by researchers. It must be thrilling to design synthetic bacteria on a computer, but I can’t see how it helps humanity.”

  “One day, it will allow for the creation of new materials, hybrid fuels, new alloys …”

  Here I did something that TV professionals often do when they’re completely lost: I looked down and read the next question on my piece of paper. I’d thought I was coming here to research a talk show, but in that precise moment I realized I was here for something else.

  “Do you think that sequencing my DNA could prolong my life?”

  “If you were ill, it could help determine the cause of your illness. There are around 8,000 genetic diseases and, with access to your DNA, we can diagnose 3,432. We can also conduct a prenatal diagnosis to determine whether to terminate a high-risk pregnancy. Sequencing also makes it possible to treat certain genetic conditions, it provides information about cancers. It allows us to categorize different cancers and develop individual treatment regimes. Lastly, using statistical models, sequencing allows us to study the predisposition towards certain diseases. These are tests I recommend only for Alzheimer’s and breast cancer.”

  “Here at the ‘Genome Clinic,’ you make these kinds of predictions. Would it be fair to say that DNA has replaced the stethoscope?”

  “The Swiss government doesn’t like me calling it the Genome Clinic, they prefer us to talk about ‘genomic consultations.’ But you’re wrong: we detect illnesses, not predispositions.”

  “Which predictions are scientifically reliable?”

  “If a woman carries mutations of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, like Angelina Jolie, there is a 70% probability that she will develop breast cancer, whereas the probability in the population at large is 9%. In such cases, the patient needs to get herself screened every six months, or have a double mastectomy.”

  He talked about catastrophic operations casually. Incomprehensible chemical equations scrawled on the wall in felt tip might hold the secret to the Fountain of Youth. Good doctors have always questioned their patients about their parents and grandparents; p
redicting the future is part of their job, whether they like it or not. Cancer is like a terrorist: it needs to be neutralized before it can carry out an attack. This is what is so new: with genetics, doctors don’t have to wait for you to fall ill in order to treat you. The genome is the Minority Report within your body.

  “Do you carry out genetic manipulation here, yes or no?”

  “Of course. I’m particularly interested in Down syndrome. I try to identify the important genes in chromosome 21. Here, we create transgenic mice to study human diseases. I have a laboratory in which we create induced pluripotent stem cells— iPS cells. We test different medications for treating intellectual disability. There’s hope. We conduct clinical experiments. I dream of one day seeing an intelligent person with Down syndrome.”

  I don’t know whether he was aware of the shocking aspect of this sentence. Whether we like it or not, the rate of Down syndrome has been declining since the development of amniocentesis. We are all eugenicists, even if we avoid using the word.

  “What do you think about the Californian transhumanists who want to correct, or improve, or ‘enhance’ humanity?”

  “People dreamed of such things even before the Second World War: the experiments of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It was the same beautiful, utopian ideal of developing a humanity without disease.

  “A humanity without disease: this is the goal of the foundations established by Bill Gates (ex-Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and Sergey Brin (Google), three of the richest men on the planet. Zuckerberg has promised to invest three billion dollars to cure all diseases by the year 2100.

  “Back in the 1930s, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor wanted to eradicate diseases by way of eugenics. By sterilizing certain people and forcing others to breed. This charming little dream was adopted by the Nazis and has since been discredited. But every family dreams their children will be healthier than others.”