X-Message-Number: 2119
Date: 17 Apr 93 04:27:02 EDT
From: "Steven B. Harris" <>
Subject: CRYONICS April Fools-- Really

Thomas Donaldson writes:

  >>About the comment that I should have noted the date of the
NATURE article: if the person who made that comment had read the
article, they would have noticed that I DID note the date. My
problem was perhaps one that he does not have, but I did not
expect that NATURE would publish an April Fools article, at least
deliberately. It's just not that kind of scientific journal.<<

   Comment:  Thomas, if you'd been reading Nature with attention,
you would know of course that it IS that kind of a journal.  When
April 1 comes on a Thursday (as this month), which is the day
Nature goes to press, it is quite common for them to publish
spoofs of one sort or another-- I remember several of them. 
That's one of the endearing things about Nature-- they don't take
themselves seriously.

   Now, if you'd read the article in question, there were all
sorts of internal alusive clues that it was a spoof, aside from
the fake science references.  For one thing, when you got to the
paragraph about the name of the carp protein which produced
longevity in mice being named "tithonin," bells should have
started going off in your mind.  Aldous Huxley wrote a classic SF
novel called _After Many a Summer Dies the Swan_, which takes its
title from the poem "Tithonos" (by Tennyson).  Huxley's novel and
is about a physician who keeps mice from aging with a carp
extract (which later is shown to make humans immortal but regress
them unfortunately to baboons).  When pretty soon in the Nature
article you are informed that some scientist speculates that the
protein's effect goes back to "neotony" which "Huxley" (not
Julian!) has proposed as explaining maintenance of embryonic or
fetal features in adults, then you know you've been had.  The
scientist named in the Nature article as having written the
review in question is named "Obisbo," and of course Dr. Obisbo is
also the cheerfully amoral gerontologist in Huxley's novel.  What
a joy to find that he's still writing in Adv. Gerontol.  50 years
later in 1990.  <grin>.  Perhaps he got the extracts working
after all....

   In short, I didn't think the humor was "puerile" at all,
Thomas, just, well, "literary."  <g>.


                                       Steve



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