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GETTING TO THE HEART OF LIVE
Jean
Claude Ameisen
Published
by: Feltrinelli
Jean
Claude Ameisen, eminent immunologist and biologist, is among the greatest
experts on the fascinating and still mysterious mechanism called apoptosis
or “controlled cell death”. He has now written a book that is bound
to become a guide in this sector. Even though the book deals with a
complex subject, which is not easy to put in plain words, J.C. Ameisen
has succeeded in producing a popular work, full of appropriate interdisciplinary
cross references and with a schematic and accurate development of arguments.
As you proceed along the track he opens, you develop the feeling that
you are about to contemplate “La sculture de vivant”, as the original
title says, that is man as death sculptures him every day. Death here
is no longer viewed as adverse fate but as a necessary access key to
new forms of life. The researcher explores the nature of a phenomenon
which goes under the name of “cell suicide”, or “controlled death” or
“cell altruism” with an attitude which is clear and pragmatic, but not
cold or cynical; he does not attempt to reach hasty anthropologic, ethic
and least of all philosophical conclusions, but he is fully aware of
the fact that there still is a long way to go to get to the heart of
life. Apoptosis is a term that became part of the biomedical lexicon
in 1972 to describe a mechanism of internal fragmentation of the cell,
which leads it to collapse and die. Indeed, in Greek it means collapse,
detachment, and Hippocrates already used it in medical terms to describe
the decay of gangrening bones. In actual fact the concept which is emerging
with ever growing clarity is that “we are cellular societies whose individual
components live ‘in suspense’, none of them having the ability to survive
on its own. The destiny of our cells permanently depends on the quality
of the temporary links it is able to establish with its own environment.”
Each cell exists in that its suicide is prevented. And all the relations
based on interdependence and on permanent repression of “death before
time” mould the communities of living beings, regulating them according
to complex but not incomprehensible schemes, and above all provide society
with a sole destiny where the death of the individual has a functional
role in the life of the whole, so much so that death is self-activated
when necessary for the realisation of the whole. This is a fascinating
change in perspective on the subject of birth and development, not only
of the cellular universe we are composed of, but also of the history
of mankind and of civilization, where in fact (as the author provocatively
suggests) death penalty is actually one of the extreme expressions of
the relation which certain human communities establish between the enforcement
of public order and the idea of death as an impending threat to maintain
this order. The ultimate power is always held by him who has the authority
to stop the execution, to decide life or death; Ameisen states that
therefore human communities also have their executors who are “the guardians
and symbols of the underlying interdependence on which our societies
are based.” However, we enter here a field where controllability is
no longer based on scientific parameters: questions become the subject
of reflection, investigation for mankind who has always felt about for
an answer to the problem of life and death. What we can positively state
is that Ameisen’s theory badly upsets our traditional representation
of our body, it modifies the concept of disease and aging, it opens
new doorways to the treatment of terrible diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s
disease and Alzheimer’s disease. At the end of this journey the reader
is left with a sense of astonishment and an inner awareness that nothing
will ever be again as it used to appear.
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