Engineering for Eternity

Scientists are building a new potato from deadly toxins that fights diarrhea. They are also developing fortified milk that fights malaria. Jesus suggests to Nicodemus a radical, gene-shifting idea to experience eternal life that blows him away: "You must be born again." 

Have you heard? There's a revolution going on: a vaccine revolution. "Researchers are racing to immunize us against food poisoning, earaches and cocaine addiction — with vaccines that don't require needles" ("Vaccine Revolution," Newsweek, July 27, 1998). These disease-fighting compounds will be gathered from genetically altered fruits, vegetables and farm animals, and then delivered to people painlessly — through pills, ointments and nose sprays. Together with existing vaccines, these innovations in medical engineering could prevent 12 million deaths per year.

One new flu vaccine can be placed in a nasal spray. Newsweek reports that it "employs a live virus that thrives in the cool climate of the nose and throat but perishes in warmer regions of the body. The bug provokes a vigorous response in the mucosal tissues that flu viruses invade, but its heat aversion keeps it from invading other tissues." When a body senses that it has been invaded by this virus, it rallies its ...