In June 1978, I drove Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, where he was to address an international conference on human life issues. I knew Dr. Lejeune only by reputation: pediatrician specializing in the treatment of children with chromosomal anomalies and renowned geneticist who had discovered the cause of Down’s syndrome some 20 years earlier. When I met him, he was professor of Genetics at the University of René Descartes in Paris. Until his death in 1994, he would focus his work and research on preventing and treating Trisomy 21, the cause of Down’s syndrome.
Prior to heading northwest to St. John’s, we stopped at the University of Minnesota where Dr. Lejeune gave a lecture to medical students on the biochemical elegance of DNA and RNA. He was obviously in his element—a quiet confidence and wonderful sense of humor underlay his love and gift for sharing an enormously complex, microcosmic world. At the close, the students clapped with verve.
Back on the road, he asked about my life and work at St. John’s University. His interest and altruism took me by surprise. I responded with a half-minute sound bite on my job, then countered with questions about his life and research. What ensued was a fascinating tour of the beginnings of human life: helical structures, DNA replication, the unbelievably intricate and dynamic world of genetics.
After many years of chromosomal research, Dr. Lejeune believed that our human building blocks could not have come to be by chance. For him, the pattern was too wonderfully complex, yet singularly structured, to have randomly “happened.” And he expressed the hope that someday he would be able to elucidate more the intricate chemical and physiological “formulae” behind the design itself.
For the next hour plus, I soaked up as much as I could. What impressed me more than Dr. Lejeune’s knowledge, was his person. He was passionate without being pedantic. He obviously loved life. Whatever the topic, he was thoroughly engaged and therefore engaging. Every now and then he would let his French sense of humor bubble to the surface. At one point, with a wry smile and eyes twinkling, he quipped that his house in Paris was older than the
Dr. Lejeune was a man of faith. Indeed, he exuded faith… in life, in science, in God. He saw no barriers, no compartments, no built-in contradictions amidst “levels” of reality, from the biological to the spiritual. As a Renaissance man and Catholic scientist, he was not behind the lines, but in the front trenches.
Suddenly we were at St. John's; a hour and a half had passed in what seemed like a minute and a half. An unforgettable ride at warp speed.
Post Script In April of 1981, a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings on the question, “When does human life begin?” Among the experts who testified were Drs. Hymie Gordon, McCarthy de Mere, and Jérôme Lejeune. Excerpts from their testimony:
Dr. Hymie Gordon, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
Dr. McCarthy de Mere, M.D., J.D., medical doctor and law professor at the University of Tennessee: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."
Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, M.D., Ph.D.:
“When I had the honor of testifying previously before the Senate, I took the liberty of referring to the universal fairy-tale of the man smaller than the thumb. At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb's length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there: hands, feet, head, organs, brain, all are in place. His heart has been beating for a month already. Looking closely, you would see the palm creases and a fortune teller would read the good adventure of that tiny person. With a good magnifier the fingerprints could be detected. Every documentable human factor is available for a national identity card.
“With the extreme sophistication of our technology, we have invaded his privacy. Special hydrophones reveal the most primitive music: a deep, profound, reassuring hammering at some 60-70 per minute (the maternal heart) and a rapid, high-pitched cadence at some 150-170 (the heart of the fetus). These, mixed, mimic those of the counter-bass and of the maracas, which are the basic rhythms of any pop music.
“We now know what he feels, we have listened to what he hears, smelled what he tastes and we have really seen him dancing full of grace and youth. Science has turned the fairytale of Tom Thumb into a true story, the one each of us has lived in the womb of his mother.
“And to let you measure how precise the detection can be: if at the beginning, just after conception, days before implantation, a single cell was removed from the little berry-looking individual, we could cultivate that cell and examine its chromosomes. If a student, looking at it under the microscope, could not recognize the number, the shape and the banding pattern of these chromosomes, if he was not able to tell safely whether it comes from a chimpanzee being or from a human being, he would fail in his examination.
“To accept the fact that, after fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or of opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention. It is plain experimental evidence.”
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