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tney expraineol eviiuJs"dseo A species' Todavitre aoutt truman hJ"lj il oi" ulgi,titwi -be.mankird's o;*!,ioi"'t-"'r"jillxx i:ts,9"t:ls;,:l[ii]r1.""ffi.:ii! 1ffi,1",il3j?JlJi:j,:#"T',,*""",'"::]'#:#

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CHILDCONTINUED FROM PAGE 88

where the dinosaurs left off. lntelhgencekept increasing at an ever-acceleratingpace. The original actors, the dinosaurs.were replaced by a second string of ac-tors, the mammals, who continued the olddrama and haven't f inished yet."

Whether you're talking about dinosaursor mammals, Russell notes, a single bio-logicalspecies has never lasted more thanseveral mil l ion years. Yet, brain size hasincreased steadily, despite the replace-ment of old species by the new. Humansas we know them aren't l ikely to last anylonger than other species, he adds. "Butfrom what we know about the evolution ofcomplexity, I see no obvious impedimentsto humans' giving rise to anolher species,one that is sti l l more highly evolved. lf hu-mans follow the pattern seen in the evo-lution of other organisms, that new speciescould be a humanoid creature.with a larger,more complex brain.' '

The possible facial features of Russell 'slarge-brained creature have recenily beensuggested by Robert Shaw, of the Univer-sity of Connecticut at Storrs. Shaw's workwith gomputer graphics shows that if thehuman brain grows larger, the corre-sponding facewillhave the neotenic traits-round cheeks, small l ips, receding jaw-that were predicted by Boaz.

Shaw, a cognitive psychologist, beganstudying the human face to learn what fea-tures our eyes latch onto when we recog-nize a f r iend. "To do that," Shaw relates, " l

had to determine the crucial componentsof the face. That meant learning just whata face is and exactly how it develops. Ithought the best way to study all the ele-ments would be to watch faces generatedon a computer screen."

Shaw went on to create a computer pro-gram describing how the human face de-velops from birth to adulthood (about theage of twenty). Proceeding on the theorythat growing facial bones were influencedprimarily by the force of gravity, he foundthat if he started with the face of a normalbaby , then app l ied h is spec ia l g rav i tymodel, the computer face always retracedhuman development in a matter of sec-onds. As the white-l ined profi le on hisscreen went from infancy to adolescence,the cranium shrank, the forehead nar-rowed, and the jaw expanded. The pro-gram, it turned out, described facial growthbetter than any other.

One day, cn a lark, Shaw and co-worx-ers (including John Pittenger, Jim Todd, andLeonard Mark) instructed the face on thecomputer to keep developing beyond theage of twenty, when human-bone growthusually comes to a halt. Says Shaw: "We

thought that by telling the computer to pushbone growth beyond the point of completematurity, we'd generate some kind of mon-

ster. But to our surpr ise, the face becameincreasingly pr imit ive. l t took a few minutesfor me to realize we were generating im-ages of our ancestors. lnstead of mimick-ing aging, the program was now going backthrough what seemed like the stages ofevolution. In essence, it was portraying whatmight be called devolution The twenty-year-old Homo sapiens turned into an in-dividual resembling our ancestor Homoerectus and then into a humanlike creaturemore pr imit ive than that."

The program's abil ity to retrace evolu-tion, Shaw thought, was explained if onedefined evolution as growth that occursover eons. lf devolution could be simu-lated by excess maturity, he reckoned, itmight be possible to simulate future evo-lution by making the image increasinglyimmature. To do that, he started with theimage of an ordinary Homo sapiens infantand told the computer to make it youngerand younger. He entered the appropriateequations, and to his amazement the in-fant's forehead bulged and the jaw re-ceded unti l i t was tucked behind the nose."lt resembled your typical extraterrestrial:b ig brain, b ig eyes, and al l , " he recal ls."The suggestion was that evolution mightcreate large-brained, baby-faced adults."

In his next experiments, Shaw went onto demonstrate just why these baby-facedadults would be l ikely to evolve. First, Shawand his student, Thomas Alley, used thecomputer program to create pictures ofchildren with a wide range of head andface proportions. The result: Human sub-jects viewing the pictures reported a pro-tective response toward children with largerfo reheads, rounder faces , and smal le rjaws-children who looked younger for theirage. Then Shaw's associate, Viki McCabe.who examined pictures from the Los An-geles County sheriff 's department, foundthat battered children were usuallv moreadult looking than their well-protected sib-l ings. The disturbing impl icat ion: Neo-tenic-looking children inspire more ten-derness and thus have an evolutionaryadvantage, even today. lf natural selectionis in fact a force to be reckoned with. thenneoteny's child wil l probably be the onemost l ikely to survive.

Before the juvenile inherit the earth they'l lneed at least a mill ion years to completetheir evolutionary odyssey, unless scien-tists learn enough about the process tocreate the new species ahead of t ime.

One man wlro can't see waiting for evo-lut ion to unwind is anthropologist Wi l l iamC h m e r n y , o f l d a h o S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y .Chmerny became fascinated by neotenyas a graduate student in anthropology,when he "had more trouble masteringSpanish than a mere chi ld would have."Chmerny real ized that chi ldren absorbednot just a second language, but even athird or a fourth with ease. lt dawned onhim that geniuses l ike Mozart and Einsteinhad produced their major work before theage of th i r ty, wlren the brain is st i l l devel-

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oprng What's more, he recalls, ,,1 knew thatchildren had six or seven times more dreamsleep than adults, giving them extra hoursto make sense of all the data they ab_sorbed during the day."

Chmerny's observations convinced himthat if he could render the brain perma_nently "childlike"-creative,

intuit ive, andrich in dreams-human intell igence wouldknow no bounds. After yearJof studyingevolution, he felt he might best achieve this9nd by artif icially accelerating neoteny.Before he could attempt suc"h a thinj,though, he had to know a lot more abouthow neoteny worked.

His biggest clue to the mechanism cameln 1974, when California paleontologistDonald Johanson found the three_ to four_mill ion-year-old skeleton of the protohu_man Lucy. The amazing thing about Lucywas that she'd walked erect,revolving fromher four-legged predecessors in less thana mill ion years. A mill ion years, Chmernyknew, was a blink of geologic time, nor_mally long enough foronly about 250 genesto mutate. Yet the ess'ential changesin Lu_cy's brain, muscles, and bones should haverequired mill ions of genetic mutations. andthrt,c many mill ions of years.

Chmerny faced a paradox, but his avidinterest in neoteny quickly presented a so_lution. He knew, first of ati, inat the juveniteform of Lucy's four-legged ancesior hadprobably walked erect, just as baby apesdo today. Suppose, he theorized, that only

those specific genes capable of arrestingdevelopment-the genes of neoteny_hadchanged, causing the adul t Lucy and herkin to retain the juveni le capabi l i ty for b i_pedal walking. lf that were the case, tnec h a n g e f r o m q u a d r u p e d a l t o b i p e d a lwalking could be accomplished with acouple of hundred gene changes insteadof a couple of mi l l ion.

To pin down the point of change fromfour- to two-legged walking_the first ma_1or neoteny event in the evolution of man_C.hmerny is now examining human andch impanzee fe tuses . Unt i j about th reemonths after conception, Chmerny ex_plains, both species seem to be develop_ing the anatomical architecture for bipedalwalking. But sometime after the three_monthmark the chimp fetus starts developing theanatomy for quadrupedal walking while thehuman maintains its immature, bif ledalform.

These different developmental paths,Chmerny believes, can be traced to theproduction of sti l l-unidentif ied body pro_teins. ln both chimps and humans, his the_ory goes, the genes producing proteins forthe juvenile, or bipedal, anatomy turn onand off at much the same pace. But inchimps, the next set of genes_those pro_ducing proteins for the quadrupedal fornr_take over within about three months; in hu_mans these genes are repressed.

By studying development in the fetusesof humans and chimps, Chmerny hopes toidentify the various proteins involved. Then

he' l l use recombinant-DNA technology tofind the genes that produce those pro_teins. Since both bipedal ism and intel l i_gence seem to have emerged throughneoteny, he adds, s imi lar techniques mayhelp us f ind both sets of genes."When we f ind those genes,, ' he con_cludes, "we won't have to wait for neotenyto increase the juvenile proteins. We'l l alterlhe genes ourselves through recombinant_DNA technology, letting sexual maturityprogress to completion but keeping partof the brain, especially the cerebral cortex.immature. Thus," he concludes, ,,we'l l

havethe best of both worlds: an adult bodycombined with an essentially adult brainthat has retained the curiosity, creativity,and insight of the chi ld."

Does Chmerny see any ethical prob_lems with redesigning twentieth_centuryhumans? "Yes,"

he says. , ,The pr incipaldanger has to do with what you;re rede_signing them for. I certainly wouldn't wantto make better soldiers or better polit icalsubjects. But if we could expand humanpotential instead of l imiting it, then the con_cept of genetically engineering humans isone I would support ."

Though Chmerny sti l l hasn't located thegenes that control neoteny, another ex_pert, gerontologist Richard Cuiler, has anidea where they are. Cuiler was propelledto the study of neoteny through his l i ielongdesire to understand and expand humanlongevity. Brought up in a religious home,he was taught from birth that he,d be re-warded with immortality if he were good.But once he started studying science andevolution, he began to suspect that nomatter how good he was, death.was some_thing he couldn't avoid. ,,The reality of af in i te human l i fe span," he says, , ,has

beenwith me ever since.'Af ter

a whi le," he adds, , ,1 real ized thatI 'd sti l l be in schoot at the age of thirty, andthat I wouldn't even begin my scientif ic ca_reer unt i laf ter I reached my biologicalandintellectual prime. I 'd always bein inter_ested in space travel, but it seemed foolishto spend all that money getting to otherplanets if we had a l imited l ife span. I rea_soned that increasing life span was the firstorder of business. In the long term, sci_entif ic discovery would be fal more ad_vanced if scientists had just a five or tenpercent increase in health and vigor."

Determined to break the l ife-slan bot_tleneck, Cutler began his graduate trainingat Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Uplton, New York. Burying himself in books,he soon learned a simple rule of thumb: Aspecies' l i fe span always increased as itsbrain size increased. Since the human brainhad clearly gotten larger in the course ofevolution, Cutler concluded, ,, it didn't seeml i k e l y t h a t w e ' d c o m e f r o m l o n g _ l i v e dancestors like Methuselah. Human liie spanhad not decreased through the mi l lennia,but rather, must have increased at an ever_quickening pace. '

Because the increase in brain s ize andl i fe span had been so rapid, Cui ler . l ike

"Take no notice; he's hooked on tranquitizer darts.,,

Chmerny, believed that no more than acouple of hundred genes were involved inneoteny and hominid evolution as a whole.As generations passed, he theorized. theserelatively few genes had begun to workovertime, stretching out every stage of de_velopment, from childhood to puberty tothe years of decline. Because deveiop-ment slowed, brains had more time to growlarger, and adults came to resemble thechildren of their ancestors. To Cuiler thismade exquisite sense. lf a large-brainedcreature had a longer childhood, he'd havemore prime years to explore and learn. Witha longer period of adulthood, he'd havemore time to refine and apply that knowl-edge. Hence, neotenic individuals withlarger brains and longer l ife spans wouldhave a better chance for survival; theirprogeny would always prevail.

Cutler began a serious quest for theneoteny genes at BaltimorO's GerontologyResearch Center in 1976. There, with hiswife serving as lab technician, he devel-oped his plan of attack.

Aging, he reasoned, was instigated byadvancing stages of physical develop-ment, but it also took place day-to-day be-cause of toxic particles released as thebody metabolized food and oxygen. Doz-ens of natural enzymes, Cutler knew, pro-tec'ted the body against these poisonousparticles, and humans, with their long l ifespans, had more of these enzymes thanother mammals. In fact, by comparing hu-

mans with twelve primate species, he cal-culated that the enzymes had increased indirect proportion to advancing neoteny. Theconnection was so striking, in fact, that theantitoxin genes and the genes of neotenyseemed to be in some way connected.Cutler even thought they might l i teraily bestrung together, forming one huge neo-teny supergene coding for upright pos-ture, longevity, and intell igence.

Cutler's dream is doubling or tripling l ifespan by altering the genes of neoteny. Theneoteny gene group, he feels, probablyencompasses the DNA coding for the an-titoxin enzymes. Thus, if he can locate theantitoxin genes (possible through years ofwork with recombinant-DNA technology)he feels he may find the neoteny genescoding for longevity and brain size as wellAltering those genes in a ferti l ized humanegg, Cutler adds, would be tantamount tocreating future man.

Though Cutler concedes that such a taskmight take centuries, he's already sketcheda version of our human descendanl, Homosapiens futurus, based on his work in thelab. When the crucial genes are altered,he explains, futurus wil l be born after anine-month gestation, his head-to-bodyratio somewhat greater than the infant's oftoday. He'll reach sexual maturity at twenty-eight and grow until age forty, when he'l lhave a head twice the size of ours. He'l lalso have a taller lrame to support hismammoth brain. He'l l reach middle age at

s ixty and die at perhaps two hundred.Discussing his drawing from the din of

his lab, a centr i fuge whirr ing in the corner,Cutler says he sees no specific physiolog-ical l imit to the increase in neoteny. .,Wedon't yet know," he explains, "to what ex_tent futurus might evolve before a biolog_ical restriction is reached. He might easilysurpass the two-hundred-year life span andtwenty- eight - hundred - cubic - centimeterbrain we're discussing today."

Our future as neonate, of course, is harcllvetched in stone. Anthropologist C. OwenLovejoy, of Kent State University, in Ohio,says that although neoteny is one possibleevolutionary path, he doesn't see mankindmoving in that direction. "Evolution

occursonly when those with a particular trait havemore o t fspr ing than those w i thout i t , "Lovejoy contends. "l don't see people withgreater intell igence having more children.So where's the natural force leading togreater intell igence? As for l i fe span, mostpeople have children before forty no mat-ter how long they l ive. So unless we inter-vene, we'l l have no particular selection forlongevity, either."

Another crit ic, Jonas Salk (of polio-vac-cine fame), believes that the urge to createfuturus on our own is misguided. , ' l don' treally see the need for that kind of ad-vancement," says Salk, who's been study-ing human evolution since the late Sixties."Even if these genes could be altered andthen transferred to a number of individuals,we would sti l l have to rely on the slow proc-ess of biological evolution to transform thespecies. For instance, here at the Salk ln-stitute we created a giant mouse by givingit genes for rat growth hormone. Right nowwe're waiting to see whether this irait wil lcarry over to succeeding generations. Butwhether or not it does, I daresay there aremice in the world that wil l pay absolutelyno attention to what goes on here. lf wewish to contribute to human evolution, wecan do it far more efficiently by improvingthe state of the world."

Cutler, however, disagrees. "Only a verystupid person would claim we were intel-l igent and long-lived enough," he says."People are always saying that if we livedmuch longer, Social Security would be de-stroyed, or we'd have more divorces. Theythink if you want to change our brains andour l ife span you've got to be a bit screwy.But longevity and intell igence evolved nat-urally in humans; they are the traits thatseparate us from the animals. increasedlife span and intell igence are part of ourheritage, and to me it makes sense thatusing technology to create more of the samewould be even better."

Cut ler concludes his speech and r ises,anticipating an afternoon in the lab. Thediscussion has made him flush, but the glowonly highl ights his th ick whi te hair . He isforty-seven, and as a Homo sapiens, hislife is more than half complete. But if hisideas are correct, they might buy a bit moretime for his descendants, Homo sapiensfuturus, the new race of man.OO

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