Features

‘Designer babies’ is headline shorthand for a weird new world of genetic enhancement. Thanks to several generations of science-fiction imagery, it evokes an unnatural and evil world of blond, staring, probably homicidal children, which scares ordinary people. Headlines create a cartoon world that subverts understanding and wisdom, but there is some truth in them. Human ‘enhancement’ is now being pursued in many ways, through life extension, psychoactive drugs like Ritalin and Prozac, information technology and, most obviously, through control of reproduction. The decoding of the human genome in 2000 signalled the start of an era in which we could hope to cure hitherto intractable diseases.

Kathmandu, dawn on Sunday Under the early sun, a silver disc in a grey sky, candles flicker on the walls of the pagoda temples. People offer morning prayers at shrines. Women from the countryside sit by the roadsides, smoking and selling armfuls of white radishes. Spring is already here; the Himalayas, visible on crisp winter days, have disappeared in a smoggy haze, and the stench of human waste and litter is once more wafting up from the sacred Bagmati river. Later there’s a big military pageant on the central parade ground, for this is Democracy Day, the anniversary of the ruling Shah dynasty regaining power in 1951 from a rival family, the Ranas.

I have no idea whether Sion Jenkins — the former Hastings deputy headmaster who was this week acquitted of murdering his foster daughter after juries in two successive trials failed to reach a verdict — committed the foul deed or not. I wasn’t there. Maybe Jenkins suffered one of the fits of rage which his former wife, Lois, now claims are part of his character and slugged poor Billie-Jo over the head because she had spilled paint on the carpet, then stuffed a piece of black bin-liner up her nose in a deliberate attempt to implicate the mysterious ‘Mr B.’, a lowlifer with a plastic fetish who used to frequent the park outside the Jenkinses’ home.

In the Montblanc/Spectator Art of Writing Award last year, readers were invited to submit a short essay on the subject of immortality. Here is the winning entry. My father is old. He does not believe in God. He was 90 in December, an event celebrated with a family lunch at a hotel of his choosing. It was a very happy day, for both he and my mother are physically and mentally fit, but I was aware that he resists death. He will not go gentle into that good night, not because he is frightened of dying, but because he is afraid of the loss of his ideas. For half a century my father has pursued ideas about the evolution of modern man. He believes that our species is the result of isolation on an island in the Indian Ocean. The sea, he maintains, has been left out of evolutionary theory.

Sir Richard Sykes of Imperial College tells Martin Vander Weyer that Britain’s world-class scientists hold the key to future economic success Approaching Imperial College through the long tunnel from South Kensington station, I recalled that the last time I met the College’s rector, Sir Richard Sykes, he was chief executive of Glaxo, the drugs group, and we were lunch guests of the industrialist Lord Hanson. Our fellow guest (forgive the name-dropping) was the broadcaster Selina Scott, and it would be fair to say that glamorous Selina was served a rather larger portion of Hanson’s charm and attention than Sir Richard or me.

Here are a few reasons why the Football Association should have sacked the manager of England, Sven-Goran Eriksson. 1. Allowing England to lose to one of the worst teams in the world, Northern Ireland, in a crucial World Cup qualifying game. 2. Spending what seems to have been most of his free time attempting to find even more lucrative employment elsewhere. 3. Failing to get past the quarter finals of both the European championship and the World Cup despite possessing the most talented and competent English team for more than 40 years. 4. Preparing the ground to take over as manager of an English Premiership team, Aston Villa, and implicating the England captain, David Beckham, in his machinations. 5.