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CHAPTER 041

Dave’s firstfew days in the Kendall household went surprisingly well. When he went outside, he wore a baseball cap, which helped his appearance a lot. With his hair trimmed, wearing jeans and sneakers and a Quicksilver shirt, he looked much like any other kid. And he learned quickly. He had good coordination, and writing his name proved easy under Lynn’s instruction. Reading was harder for him.

Dave did well at weekend sports, though sometimes it was disconcerting. At a Little League game, a high pop fly flew off the field toward the two-story school building; Dave ran over, scaled the wall, and caught the ball at the second-story window. The kids viewed this accomplishment with a mixture of admiration and resentment. It wasn’t fair, and they had wanted to see the window shatter. On the other hand, everybody wanted Dave on their team.

So Lynn was surprised when, one Saturday afternoon, Dave came home early. He looked sad.

“What is it?” she said.

“I don’t fit.”

“Everybody feels that way, sometimes,” she said.

He shook his head. “They look at me.”

She paused. “You’re not the same as the other kids.”

“Yes.”

“Do they make fun of you?”

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

“What do they do?”

“Throw things. Call me names.”

“What names?”

He bit his broad lip. “Monkeyboy.” He was on the verge of tears.

“That feels bad,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She took his baseball cap off and began to stroke his head, the back of his neck. “Kids can be mean.”

“Sometimes my feelings hurt,” he said. Sad, he turned his back to her. He pulled his shirt off. She ran her fingers through his hair, looking for bruises and other signs of injury. As she did so, she felt him relax. His breathing slowed. His mood seemed to improve.

Only later did she realize she was grooming him, like monkeys in the wild. One turned its back to the other, while the other picked through the fur.

She decided she would do it every day. Just to make Dave more comfortable.

Since Dave’s arrival,everything in Lynn’s life had changed. Although Dave was clearly Henry’s responsibility, the chimp showed little interest in him. He was immediately drawn to her, and something about his manner, or his appearance-the soulful eyes? the childish demeanor?-tugged at her heart. She’d started reading about chimps, and learned that because chimpanzee females took multiple sexual partners, they did not know which male fathered their infant, and thus chimpanzees showed no notion of fatherhood or fathers. Chimps had only mothers. Dave seemed to have been an abused child, uncared for by his actual chimp mother. He looked to Lynn with open longing, and she responded. It was all deeply emotional, and entirely unexpected.

“Mom, he’s not your kid,” Tracy had snapped. Tracy was at the age when she craved her parents’ attention. She was jealous of any dis traction.

“I know, Trace,” Lynn said. “But he needs me.”

“Mom! He’s not your responsibility!” She threw up her hands in a theatrical gesture.

“I know.”

“Well, can you leave him alone?”

“Is he getting too much attention?”

“Well, duh! Yes.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” She put her arm around her daughter, gave her a hug.

“Don’t treat me like a monkey,” Tracy said, and pushed her away.

But they were, after all, primates. Human beings were apes. Her experience with Dave was giving Lynn an uncomfortable awareness of what humans shared with other apes: Grooming, touching, physical attention as a source of relaxation. Eyes lowered under threat, or displeasure, or as a sign of submission. (Tracy around her boy friends, flirting with downcast eyes.) Direct eye contact meant intimidation, a sign of anger. Goose bumps for fear and anger-those same skin muscles made a primate’s hair fluff up, to create a bigger appearance in the presence of threat. Sleeping communally, curling up in a kind of nest…

On and on.

Apes.

They were all apes.

More and more,the biggest difference seemed to be hair. Dave was hairy; those around him weren’t. According to her reading, the loss of hair had occurred after human beings separated from chimps. The usual explanation was that human beings had become for a time swamp creatures, or water creatures. Because most mammals were hairy-their coats of fur were necessary to help maintain their internal temperature. But water mammals, such as dolphins and whales, had lost their hair in order to be streamlined. And people, too, had lost their hair.

But for Lynn the strangest thing was the persistent sense that Dave was both human and not human. She didn’t quite know how to deal with that feeling. And as the days passed, it did not get any easier.

Canavan disease is an inherited genetic disorder that is fatal to children in the first years of life. In 1987 Dan Greenberg and his wife learned their nine-month-old son had the disease. Since no genetic test was available, the Greenbergs had another child, a daughter, who also was diagnosed with the disease.

The Greenbergs wanted to make sure other families were spared this heartbreak, and so they convinced Reuben Matalon, a geneticist, to work on a prenatal test for Canavan disease. The Greenbergs donated their own tissues, the tissues of their dead children, and they worked to obtain tissues from other families with Canavan disease around the world. Finally in 1993 the gene for Canavan disease was discovered. A free prenatal test was at last made available for families worldwide.

Unknown to the Greenbergs, Dr. Matalon patented the gene, and then demanded high fees for further tests. Many families that had contributed tissues and money to help discover the gene now could not afford the test. In 2003 the Greenbergs and other concerned parties sued Matalon and Miami Children’s Hospital, claiming breach of informed consent, unjust enrichment, fraudulent con cealment, and misappropriation of trade secrets. The suit was settled out of court. As a result, the test is more widely available, although fees must still be paid to Miami Children’s Hospital. The ethics of the behavior of physicians and institutions involved in this case are still hotly debated.

Psychology News

British Researcher Blames Formal Education Professors, Scientists “Strikingly Immature”

If you believe the adults around you are acting like children, you’re probably right. In technical terms, it is called “psychological neoteny,” the persistence of childhood behavior into adulthood. And it’s on the rise.

According to Dr. Bruce Charlton, evolutionary psychiatrist at Newcastle upon Tyne, human beings now take longer to reach mental maturity-and many never do so at all.

Charlton believes this is an accidental by-product of formal education that lasts well into the twenties. “Formal education requires a child-like stance of receptivity,” which “counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity” that would normally occur in the late teens or early twenties.

He notes that “academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature.” He calls them “unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”

Earlier human societies, such as hunter-gatherers, were more stable and thus adulthood was attained in the teen years. Now, however, with rapid social change and less reliance on physical strength, maturity is more often postponed. He notes that markers of maturity such as graduation from college, marriage, and first child formerly occurred at fixed ages, but now may happen over a span of decades.

Thus, he says, “in an important psychological sense, some modern people never actually become adults.”

Charlton thinks this may be adaptive. “A child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge” may be useful in navigating the increased instability of the modern world, he says, where people are more likely to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places. But this comes at the cost of “short attention span, frenetic novelty-seeking, ever shorter cycles of arbitrary fashion, and…a pervasive emotional and spiritual shallowness.” He added that modern people “lack a profundity of character which seemed commoner in the past.”