It is often forgotten that in the Garden of Eden there were two special trees, and while Adam and Eve were exiled for eating from the tree of knowledge, they were ultimately expelled by God for fear they might partake of the tree of life and become immortal-like gods themselves. Adam and Eve failed in this quest several thousand years ago (according to the Bible), but today modern genetics may allow us to act as gods, and perhaps even become immortal. Elaine Dewar explores this new science in her book, The Second Tree: of Clones, Chimeras, and Quests for Immortality.

A prominent Toronto journalist, Dewar has worked for Macleans and Toronto Life. The Second Tree, her third book, was meant to assess the direction taken by biotechnology and genetics over the last century. But Dewar’s long road through what she refers to as “revelationary biology” leaves us as confused as she is.

Dewar was first introduced to modern biology while researching for her previous book, Bones: Discovering the First Americans. Bones chronicles the debate in the scientific community over archaeological evidence, and tells a story of scientists warring over possession of artifacts, grants, and fame. While her investigations inspired her to write about biology, they also made her suspicious of scientists. This seems to bias the interviews and analysis she undertakes in her new book.

Suspicion of scientists is an underlying current of The Second Tree. Dewar seems to have a lot of fun with the fact that those who study evolution are often the best examples of their own concept of “the survival of the fittest,” competing viciously for popularity and money. “Flat-out pursuit of fame…had been going on ever since Darwin put aside his virtue and allowed his friends to arrange publication of his hastily written paper on natural selection,” she writes.

Admittedly, the book is more than just an attack on geneticists. Dewar’s desire to see hypocrisy in everyone and everything often serves to lift the veil off our assumptions. Dewar also looked at the political side of things, investigating the Standing Committee on Health that was asked to comment on a draft of legislation called bill C-13. This bill was meant to deal with cloning and other new biological tools.

Dewar learned from the committee clerk that “the committee had displayed a ‘lack of receptivity’ to the evidence of the technical people. The committee members were ‘very wary of the vested interests.'” Upon questioning the committe chair, Liberal MP Bonnie Brown, about a clause permitting the creation of chimeras (the mixing of genes from different species) she is surprised to hear her response: “the things we understood the least were when someone talked about chimeras… nobody got [it].” The committee had no clue what a chimera even was.

“She would later admit to me that biology made her eyes glaze. She’d relied on the views of a few experts for the tricky science stuff,” Dewar explains. “These same people averted their eyes from the revolution they were asked to grapple with…the words were too hard, the scientist’s concepts too slippery to confront. Instead the committee had focused on the parts of the bill that dealt with things they already understood.”

This was an epiphany for the author. “Brown talked about scientists with a mixture of fear and suspicion that was the precise obverse of the contempt for politicians expressed by so many scientists,” she says. “How could any democratic society ever make good rules about this onslaught of biology if the public’s representatives didn’t inform themselves about it?”

There are contradictions in everyone: scientists, politicians and all those who strive to understand the great developments in modern biology. Out of the mess we are taken through, her final lesson seems right on track. With knowledge and through investigation, we must all come to terms with our own hypocrisies and misconceptions if there is any hope of making the right decisions in the tricky years ahead.