The scientists who create life
Chemistry has created life for 100 years – but where can it lead us?
‘It’s alive!’ That famous cry of Colin Clive playing Henry Frankenstein – never voiced in Mary Shelley’s novel from 200 years ago, but emblematic of James Whale’s movie version in 1931 – might just as well have issued from the lips of German marine biologist Jacques Loeb at the end of the 19th century, who was attributed with the creation of life. Here’s Loeb in classic mad-scientist mode speaking to McClure’s magazine in 1902: ‘I wanted to take life in my hands and play with it, I wanted to handle it in my laboratory as I would any other chemical reaction – to start it, stop it, vary it, study it under every condition, to direct it at my will!’