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Apr-Jun2002-10(2)
BOOK
REVIEW
Fatal promise of
immortality
Mohan Rao
Amin Malouf, The First Century
After Beatrice, Abacus, London, 1998, pp.198, $6.99
Pre-natal sex diagnostic tests are increasingly available, and a section of the medical profession, which supplies these services, argues that they reflect society's values and are merely meeting women's demands. In this context, Amin Malouf's novel should be made essential reading for all medical professionals.
A French entomologist attending an academic
conference in Egypt hears of the widespread sale of the scarab beetle which is
worshipped there with the incantation: "May your name live for ever and a son be
born to you." He dismisses this as quaint, but his journalist companion,
Clarence, on a visit to India is told by a guard at one of Mumbai's fancy new
hospitals that it is "blessed by heaven, since nearly all babies born here are
boys". The doctors refuse to talk to her. But as the skewing of sex ratios
starts showing in other countries as well, Clarence discovers that it is not the
scarab beetle but an efficacious new 'substance' that is being used.
The West is sanguine. A prominent editor,
reflecting the views of policy makers, doctors and demographers, argues: "There
are over-populated countries which can no longer manage to feed themselves,
their governments have tried all sorts of ways of controlling the demographic
explosion, with limited results, and sometimes none at all. If a method could be
found to reduce the birth rate without violence, without force, with the free
consent of parents….in what way would it be criminal or scandalous… Mankind
would finally be ripe to enter the new millenium without violence, famine,
barbarism."(p80).
The inventor of the 'substance' argues that "it is
in the nature of every drug to be beneficial if utilized judiciously and
dangerous in the contrary case". He takes over small pharmaceutical companies in
Third World countries to manufacture and market the new product. Governments in
these countries turn a complicitous blind eye.
A scientist friend of the entomologist points out
that with the unbridled growth of the reproductive medical industry, research on
sex-selective vaccines may soon be under way. The cult of the male, he warns,
that today is simply a defect of society, would soon lead to collective suicide.
Sex selection, a moral dilemma for doctors and parents, is justified on the
grounds of a woman's right to choose. Science, it is argued, is thus an
instrument of freedom; amoral, value-free. How then is science to be imbued with
morality? They decide to set up a Network of Sages to warn of the appalling
consequences of the irresponsible manipulation of the human
species.
Soon, however, riots erupt in several countries;
villagers ransack health centres accusing the authorities of attempting to
diminish the population of their community, their ethnic group. No one wants to
admit that the quest for sons, for immortality, is leading people in their
community to utilise the substance. Governments respond by banning the
publication of demographic statistics.
The West remains reassured by opinion polls
concluding that sex preference is not an issue for their populations. Surveys
show that 68 per cent of the population has no explicit sex preference; 16 per
cent prefer boys and 16 per cent prefer girls. The problem arises when the 16
per cent preferring boys all have boys, while the rest have a normal
distribution.
An American woman, who had used the 'substance' to
bear a son and now wants a daughter, discovers that the effects are
irreversible. She files a suit against the drug company and is soon joined by
others. Feminists, pro-lifers and the Church come together in an uneasy alliance
to demand a ban.
The governments bans the 'substance', and research
is undertaken to reverse the effects of its use. Tax benefits are announced on
the birth of a daughter. Legislation is introduced to give daughters their
matronymic names to fight 'male heirism' The entomologist and his partner are
themselves blessed by a daughter, Beatrice.
It might have been supposed that because of their
increasing rarity, women would have been honoured. Instead they are the precious
property of their tribes, prizes fought over in bloody quarrels. They cannot
walk in the streets for fear of rape and kidnap, old and familiar ethnic
responses. Police have to guard hospitals to prevent the kidnap and sale of baby
girls.
In country after country as populations see their
survival threatened, ethnic wars erupt. Northern countries close their
embassies, their businesses, take their money and flee. Suddenly "the planet had
clearly shrunk, shriveled, like a diseased or over-ripe apple; century-old lines
of exchange were brutally snapped" (p.183).
Hatred is contagious, and so too can retrogression
be. There can be salvation for the whole planet, or none at all. Malouf's novel
is a plea for a return to rationality, pointing to a community's infinite
capacity to regress, as well as the universal values of human life that
concocted tradition and ethnicity can trample over.
Malouf's Samarkhand, on the death of science
shrouded in the politics of religion, is eerily macabre to Indians today. The
Century After Beatrice presents us with equally apocalyptic
implications.
(A slightly different version of this review was published in the Journal of the Indian Medical Association, Volume 100, No. 1, January 2002.)
Dr Mohan Rao,Centre of
Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
110067.mohanrao@bol.net.in