The Tree of Knowledge

The Tree of Knowledge

By Elizabeth Koshy

The unveiling of the human genome must have stimulated different thoughts in different people. As for me, it reminded me of my grand mother in law, who died when she was almost a hundred.
She was wizened and frail, but even at eighty something, her mind was razor- sharp and clear. She had an innate curiosity that made her an avid listener to any story we had to say about life outside Kerala and the world in general. One day when I told her about the then novel micro -wave oven, she was silent for a while.
Then she quoted from Genesis, the first book of the Bible, which refers to the Tree of Life or the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God forbade Adam and Eve to taste of the fruit of this tree, but the serpent tempted Eve, saying,"…..that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Eve succumbed and the rest is history.
Granny wondered if this knowledge explosion was a natural fall out of that First Disobedience. Today she would be convinced of it with the astronomical rate of change in biotechnology and other fields.
What we were happy to relegate to the realms of science fiction is today's reality. The human mind with its insatiable curiosity and imagination has always sought to fathom the mysteries of Birth and Death. We have delved into the complexities of the human genome to come up with the blueprint of the human DNA code. Now the basic instructions for building and running a human body no longer perplex us.
We were confident that the basis of the superiority of the human species being at the apex of the evolutionary pyramid would be the large number of genes we had. However, at some 30,000, it is a humbling thought that we have only 10,000 more genes than the lowly worm or fly. Ofcourse the accuracy of the count and the function of the newly- found genes are still being debated. While the process of identifying the disease producing genes is a major break - through for medical science, we are still in the dark about personality and the intellect. We haven't quite identified that vital spark which makes us "tick". Death continues to be a mystery that baffles us and still gets the better of us. If we can penetrate the workings of that great Leveller, maybe our eyes will indeed be opened and we can play God.
It is heartening to know that "there is no molecular support for racial distinction among human groups" and that the African Eve is the mother of Human kind. Whatever have we been killing each other for all these years ?
After all we were created in His own image and we may achieve God- head some day, having tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.