“It’s not surprising,” Lena said, shaking a small bottle in the kitchen doorway, “since he was doing research at Auschwitz, in the forties.”
“Yes,” Nürnberger agreed (while Liebermann tried to get over the shock of hearing “research” and “Auschwitz” in one sentence; forgive her, she’s young and Swedish, what could she know?). “The others,” Nürnberger was saying, “English and Americans for the most part, didn’t begin until the fifties and still haven’t worked with human ova. Or so they say; you can bet they’ve done more than they admit. That’s why I say Mengele was only ten years ahead rather than fifteen or twenty.”
Liebermann looked at Klaus, sitting at his left, to see if he knew what Nürnberger was talking about. Klaus chewed, examining a stub of carrot-stick. His eyes met Liebermann’s and looked a you see? at him. Liebermann shook his head.
“And the Russians, of course,” Nürnberger said, rocking back comfortably on his campstool, cupping a knee with interlaced fingers, “are probably even farther along, with no church and public opinion to contend with. They probably have a whole school of perfect little Vanyas somewhere in Siberia; even older, perhaps, than these boys of Mengele’s.”
“Excuse me,” Liebermann said, “but I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Nürnberger looked surprised. Patiently he said, “Mononuclear reproduction. The breeding of genetically identical copies of an individual organism. Have you studied any biology at all?”
“A little,” Liebermann said. “About forty-five years ago.”
Nürnberger smiled a young man’s smile. “That’s just when the possibility of it was first recognized,” he said. “By Haldane, the English biologist. He called it cloning, from a Greek word meaning ‘a cutting,’ as from a plant. ‘Mononuclear reproduction’ is a far more explicit term. Why coin a new word when the old ones convey more?”
“Cloning is shorter,” Klaus said.
“Yes,” Nürnberger conceded, “but isn’t it better to use a few more syllables and say exactly what you mean?”
Liebermann said, “Tell me about ‘mononuclear reproduction.’ But bear in mind please that I studied biology only because I had to; my real interest was music.”
“Try singing it,” Klaus suggested to Nürnberger.
“It wouldn’t make much of a song if I could,” Nürnberger said. “Not a pretty love song like ordinary reproduction. There we have an ovum, or egg cell, and a sperm cell, each with a nucleus containing twenty-three chromosomes, the filaments on which the genes, hundreds of thousands of them, are strung like beads. The two nuclei merge, and we have a fertilized egg cell, forty-six chromosomes. I’m speaking now of human cells; the number is different in different species. The chromosomes duplicate themselves, duplicating each of their genes—it really is miraculous, isn’t it?—and the cell divides, one set of identical chromosomes going into each resulting cell. This duplication and division occurs again and again—”
“Mitosis,” Liebermann said.
“Yes.”
“The things that stay in the mind!”
“And in nine months,” Nürnberger said, “we have the billions of cells of the complete organism. They’ve evolved to perform different functions—to become bone or flesh or blood or hair; to respond to light or heat or sweetness, and so on—but each of those cells, each of the billions of cells that constitute the body, contains in its nucleus exact duplicates of an original set of forty-six chromosomes, half from the mother, half from the father: a mix that, except in the case of identical twins, is absolutely unique—the blueprint, as it were, of an absolutely unique individual. The only exceptions to the forty-six-chromosomes rule are the sex cells, sperm and ova, which have twenty-three, so that they can merge, fulfill each other, and begin a new organism.”
Liebermann said, “So far it’s clear.”
Nürnberger leaned forward. “That,” he said, “is ordinary reproduction as it occurs in nature. Now we go into the laboratory. In mononuclear reproduction, the nucleus of an egg cell is destroyed, leaving the body of the cell unharmed. This is done by radiation and is, of course, microsurgery of the most sophisticated order. Into the enucleated egg cell is put the nucleus of a body cell of the organism to be reproduced—the nucleus of a body cell, not a sex cell. We now have exactly what we had at this point in natural reproduction: an egg cell with forty-six chromosomes in its nucleus; a fertilized egg cell which, in a nutrient solution, proceeds to duplicate and divide. When it reaches the sixteen- or thirty-two-cell stage—this takes four or five days—it can be implanted in the uterus of its ‘mother’ who isn’t its mother at all, biologically speaking. She supplied an egg cell, and now she’s supplying a proper environment for the embryo’s growth, but she’s given it nothing of her own genetic endowment. The child, when it’s born, has neither father nor mother, only a donor—the giver of the nucleus—of whom it’s an exact genetic duplicate. Its chromosomes and genes are identical to the donor’s. Instead of a new and unique individual, we have an existing one repeated.”
Liebermann said, “This…can be done?”
Nürnberger nodded.
“It’s been done,” Klaus said.
“With frogs,” Nürnberger said. “A far simpler procedure. That’s the only acknowledged instance, and it caused such a flap—at Oxford in the sixties—that all later work has been done on the quiet. I’ve heard reports, every biologist has, of rabbits, dogs, and monkeys; in England, America, here in Germany, everywhere. And as I said before, I’m sure they’ve already done it with humans in Russia. Or at least tried. What planned society could resist the idea? Multiply your superior citizens and prohibit the inferior ones from reproducing. Think of the savings in medical care and education! And the improved quality of the population in two or three generations.”
Liebermann said, “Could Mengele have done it with humans in the early sixties?”
Nürnberger shrugged. “The theory was already known,” he said. “All he needed was the right equipment, some healthy and willing young women, and a high degree of microsurgical skill. Others have had it: Gurdon, Shettles, Steptoe, Chang…And of course, a place where he could work without interference or publicity.”
“He was in the jungle by then,” Liebermann said. “He went in in ’59. I drove him in…”
Klaus said, “Maybe you didn’t. Maybe he chose to go.”
Liebermann looked uneasily at him.
“But it’s pointless,” Nürnberger said, “to talk about whether or not he could have done it. If what Lena told me is true, he obviously did do it. The fact that the boys were placed with similar families proves it.” He smiled. “You see, genes aren’t the only factor in our ultimate development; I’m sure you know that. The child conceived by mononuclear reproduction will grow up looking like his donor and sharing certain characteristics and propensities with him, but if he’s raised in a different environment, subjected to different domestic and cultural influences—as he’s bound to be, if only by being born years later—well, he can turn out to be quite different psychologically from his donor, despite their genetic sameness. Mengele was obviously interested not in breeding a particular biological strain, as I think the Russians might be, but in reproducing himself, a particular individual. The similar families are an attempt to maximize the chances of the boys’ growing up in the right environment.”