Sex and the Origins of Death

Rating:
Summary: Dr Flawed Biology
Review: Anyone buying this publication and expecting a trip into the seamier sides of sexuality is purchasing the wrong book. In Sex & The Origins Of Death, William Clark expounds his theory of two types of cell death (the accidental and the programmed), and traces back the second to the discarding of life once the body has ceased to be a functionning sexual machine. Using carefully selected evolutionary material Clark's argument appears to hold much weight, and may appeal to certain religious sectors, but I believe that his in depth look at cell life omits many factors in the diversity of human sexuality

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Summary: Why we die and how to beat it
Review: From the outset what UCLA's Wm Clark reports is staggering; Death is "not an obligatory attribute of life" and did not appear with the advent of it. Cellular aging resulting in death may not have occurred for more than a billion years after life's first entry on earth. Programmed cell death (PCD) which we suffer (displayed through wrinkles and forgetfulness) seems to have arisen about the time cells were experimenting with sex.

Sex is an energy costly activity, engaged in because it rolls the genetic dice, inviting variations with each new offspring. An advantage because with environmental change what was well suited in the old world is often not suited for the new. Gene variations may result - through natural selection - in a few offspring amongst the dying progenitors that survive to save the species. For example, bacteria reproduce though cloning themselves, and can do so at a rate of 16 million per hour from one parent (take your antibiotics). But when the environment becomes harsh the parents spontaneously engage in sex, swapping genes with others as a gamble on survival.

In a description of catastrophic cell death Clark displays a talent to meet or exceed even Sagan's best - clear, rich, compelling. Here heart attack and the wonder of cell machinery resist the inevitable as systems and their back ups struggle to counter power failures and starvation in a chain reaction of failing miracles. Like a community, some components are wholly unaware of disaster while others sacrifice themselves transferring energy to last lines of defense - pumps stationed in cell walls countering a siege of water pressing in about to wash them away.

Such stunning, intentioned actions of this tiny, helpless, complex organism, the cell (of which we possess about 100 trillion - about as many cells as there are stars in the nearest 400 spiral galaxies including the Milky Way!) is starkly contrasted against our cell's decision to commit suicide. This happens when life is late, or as early as the womb when ancient relics of evolution are flushed out of us - like reminders of an ocean origin when interdigital webbing of our onetime fins are removed through PCD, leaving what's left between our fingers. Once the nucleus decides to pull the trigger, one last set of instructions emerge as its DNA begins disassembling. All the while a stack of unread instructions are being executed by unwary elements of the cell. The cell detaches from its neighbors, undulates, breaking into globules while still ignorant workers in these blobs work away, floating into a void where they are devoured by immune systems. Awful.

But there are rays of hope for immortality. "Growth factors" are given to cells like lymphocytes to put a safety on their trigger. And there are executioners in this tragedy, T-Cells. Having spotted an invader they do not murder the foreigner, they command the interloper to kill itself, orders dutifully followed. T-Cells know the security code. Paramecium dodge death by letting their macro-nuclei run the show while a micro-version lays dormant. After enough cell splitting, it has sex with another paramecium. Its macro-nuclei suffers PCD and the micro takes over as a newly minted micro-nucleus goes to sleep. Once eukaryotic cells (what we're made of) became multicellular, reproductive DNA would be not only kept in separate nuclei (as the paramecium) but in separate cells - our germ cells (sperm, egg). The rest of us, our bodies, are their guardians, not only redundant and irrelevant but we turn dangerous with too many divisions. When our germ cells meet others, clocks are reset just as they are for paramecium. Sex can save our germ cells but it cannot save us.

These growth factors, security codes, telemeres or some other mechanism may finally be commandeered to salvage us from oblivion. For now, as Clark writes, we must die and there are many mechanisms built into us to make sure we do. Death does not just happen, it is worked toward, with safeguards to assure cells don't backslide into immortality - as cancer cells do, a recipe for disaster. The winner is our species because germ cells are immortal through sex as we contribute molecular chains of ourselves to the future and whoever is made of us. Clark reveals this and so much more. A pure joy to read.

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Summary: Death at the cellular level
Review: From the title and the synopsis, the book seems to be a serious science book. However, Clarke has adopted a style, which I thought was unusual for a popular science book, which linked up all the topics that he wanted to address very well. He started off the book with a hypothetical character who just sufferred a heart attack. He analysed this situation at the cellular level. He then carried on with the 2 types of cell death (accidental and programmed), some simplified description of cell workings and his thesis on the relationship between sexual reproduction and cell death. There was even a chapter on the definition of death for a human being. I found this chapter very interesting as various social, legal and scientific aspects of death are being considered. Clarke's writing style is easy to read and I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in death at the cellular level.

Rating:
Summary: Catchy title, serious book.
Review: I can't say enough about UCLA immunologist Dr. William Clark. Despite the brain stem grabbing title of this book (come on, sex and death?) set on a background of struggling sperms, this is a concise, informative primer on cellular biology; a broad subject. Fortunately Clark focuses on some of the more interesting aspects allowing the reader some specific retention from a virtual sea of information. There are probably about a dozen absolutely astounding facts in the anals of science and physics that bring perspective to the wacky world of reality. Clark zeroes in on the biological milieu and sheds some light on what sex and death signify at the biochemical level. For example, dividing bacteria are potentially immortal. They don't necessarily die (although outright death can occur) but simply divide, thereby making more copies of theirselves. Sex, Clark's thesis implores, was natures alternative to bacteria but carried the price of mortality with it. If this isn't an original sin analogy I don't know what is. All the bacteria today are in a sense immortal descendents of the bacteriodal creatures that existed billions of years ago. We, as humans didn't just pop up out of the aether either, but it is our germ cells that are the the catalysts for allowing us to be here in a potentially immortal lineage from the very same ancestors of bacteria. Not our bodies mind you, they're just disposable vehicles for the immortal sperms and eggs ( the ones that get regenerated and fuse with their counterpart in any event). We die, but our sperms and eggs (a few at least), like bacteria, persist in an immortal-like, time spanning existence. Gametes, however, aren't the only eukaryotic cells that are potentially immortal (yes Martha, immortality isn't just a transcendental idea) so are cancer cells. Cancer cells are those disposable body cells that go haywire and lose the genetic program to commit suicide. They become potentially immortal and in some cases revert back to a bacteria like haploid state. You see, body cells, like germ cells, need not die; they do so because they are programmed to. Our genes contain suicide programs in them and that is why we die; of course, if they didn't we'd be just a big wads of cancer: we'd be more like bacteria than people-ergo, death really isn't such a bad thing after all, it does in fact serve a very important purpose. You'll learn about cellular suicide mechanisms like telomere degradation and the Hayflick limit. This little book truly is fun reading. Clark always throws in a sidebar to illustrate his thesis. In this book he takes an old guy who has an attack of acute cardiac failure due to ventricular fibrillation and eventually ends up plugged into life support. Clark's hypothetical victim becomes essentially brain dead but can still breath and exhibit facial expressions doe to continuing brain stem function. What is life and death? Clark uses this imaginary heart attack victim is an effective backdrop to show a person alive by many technical definitions but dead as a door nail for all practical purposes. All in all this book is short and you'll learn a ton and be stimulated to contemplate the concepts of life, death, and immortality at the level of the hard sciences, no gurus need apply.

Rating:
Summary: The Book Delivers it's Promise
Review: Maybe I'm the only one who actually "reads" the blurps on books before I buy them, but I understood upfront that this was a book about how the evolution of death was connected with the evolution of sex. The two events, sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual division, and the arrival of "programmed" death arose at the same time. Before that (in the garden of eden primordial soup?) cells divided asexually and survived until accident destroyed them.

But when cells began to reproduce sexually, the daughter cell was now genetically different from the parents. Something like the two nuclei of DNA in some one cell animals today developed. We do, after all, have two geneticly different types of cells inside us; "germ" cells that make up sperm and ova, and soma cells that make up our bodies.

Clark's thesis is that the soma (Body) cells are programmed to die because they, like the parent cells around spores, are protecting the immortal "germ" cells that will give rise to the offspring. His evidence is fascinating.

The book is not written "sensationally" or emotionally. It's well written science and an enjoyable read. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Learning as enjoyment
Review: Not what it sounds like ~ some bizarre fetish manual ~ but an investigation by an apparently eminent immunologist and cytologist into the reasons that cells ~ and thus the animals and plants constructed of those cells ~ die. The sex comes in because at some point in the past, it would appear, in the choice (funny how one frequently speaks of evolutionary processes as animate) to mix the genetic material with the swapping of DNA (sex) implied the necessity of the death of the old DNA in order to pass on the new with a fair chance of survival. This is a really fascinating exploration, written for the layman, of some modern biology, cytology, molecular biology, thanatology, and even philosophy. Clark may be a professor, a department Chair in fact, but he can still write engagingly, simply, and pleasingly. I truly enjoyed learning here.