Suggestive Frogs

Every Wednesday night, a chubby French biologist named Jean Rostand* sips a glass of cognac in a railroad cafe at Ville-d'Avray and plunges bravely but vainly into a village chess tournament. The rest of his week is spent in lonelier fun: a lifelong love affair with a house full of frogs and toads.

"In my frogs," says the 57-year-old scientist, defiantly twirling his walrus mustache, "I see the entire universe." The more he learns about his frog-shaped universe, the more he worries about the human-shaped conscience. Biologists, says he in the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, ask themselves whether they can improve on nature. "Who can fail to see the seriousness of this program . . .? What will happen on the day science will have given us the possibility of determining the sex of our offspring? . . . Was it not much easier to rely on unpredictable chance?" What about "therapy of the spirit"? If tomorrow's biology "should provide us with a remedy against worry, if it should find itself capable of curing metaphysical anxiety as it cures seasickness, would we accept the benefit of such sedatives? Will we not be afraid this way of pacifying the human being may take away from him a powerful source of activity and inventiveness--perhaps even some of his nobility?"

Another frightening possibility that occurs to Dr. Rostand: human parthenogenesis (virgin birth). It has already happened in the laboratory--even with rabbits. "Why not tomorrow from women?"

As a scientist, Dr. Rostand naturally holds aloof from moral implications--but as a Frenchman, he is sure that, once parthenogenesis is possible, some women will want to try it. And that really scares him: "It is thus inevitable that a new kind of human being (according to our present knowledge they will all be girls) --will appear in society, and will be aware of their extraordinary origin . . . Realization of the fact that the male has ceased to be necessary for propagation will not fail to exercise a profound effect on the relations between man and woman . . ."

These frog-based problems ought to cause anxiety only in "traditionalist minds . . . All increase in human capabilities complicates the moral life . . . Let us beware, however, of ever reproaching science for the difficulties it has created for us. It is not recent news that living is more arduous for an adult than for a child." Dr. Rostand is no child, and his frogs are no tadpoles.

*Second son of Dramatist Edmond Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac).

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