Masterminds: Genius, DNA, and the Quest to Rewrite Life. David Duncan Ewing

higher. It doesn’t have to be much higher. It just has to be a little higher, so that it counterbalances the force of destruction. And don’t forget, the germ lineage is immortal. So it’s possible at least in principle.”

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      At fifty, Kenyon looks thirty-five. And if she is right about a treatment to slow aging, and it comes in time for her, she could be among the first generation of women to be perpetually young since Eve, the first woman, who told the hapless Adam what to do with the apple. As the story goes, Eve was seduced by a serpent, though I suspect this story was written by men trying to explain why Adam, one of them, could have been so daft as to take a bite of the only fruit in the Garden of Eden that God said to avoid. Must be a woman who was weak enough to be tempted by the wily serpent. As God says in Genesis: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

      Then along comes the serpent, “more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God hath made.” He sidles up to the naked Eve and offers an explanation for God’s prohibition of eating from the great tree at the center of Eden. “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Eve, being curious—more so, it seems, than Adam—“saw that the tree was good food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise.” So she ate it, and she gave some to Adam, who apparently did not protest as he chewed the forbidden fruit.

      God found out, of course, and the man blamed it on his wife, and she on the serpent. God didn’t kill them right away but condemned Eve to have to suffer through childbirth and to be under the command of her husband—an odd punishment since Adam was as willing to be seduced by Eve as she was by the serpent. He damned Adam to having to work to grow his food and to struggle through life. But the greatest punishment of all was the end of immortality. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” God then drove Adam and Eve away from Eden and paradise for a very specific reason—because apparently Adam and Eve had not yet eaten from another magical tree in the garden, the tree of life. “And the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden … and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” So we can’t go back to Eden because of original sin, but also because part of Adam and Eve’s punishment was to be denied immortality. Apparently, God considered our acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil to be quite enough; he would draw the line at everlasting life.