Peter Singer Defends His Views on Killing Disabled Babies Via Infanticide

[Sandtigress]

My daughter is disabled - she has cerebral palsy. I’m quite certain that she is happy being alive, despite the pain and suffering she has experienced. But in her young life, she has touched many people who have watched her tackle each obstacle with an enthusiasm that is unmatched. Not a week goes by that someone does not say to me that they are encouraged by just being around her. It is easy to see that her life has meaning - a meaning that many won’t find in 100 years of life on this earth.

The truth is that the person who has experienced the MOST pain and suffering in our family is NOT my daughter. It is me. It pains me to see her struggle, and I have cried many a tear of frustration, but she knows only what she is, and not what she could have been without the disability, and that is a blessing.

If the purpose for killing a disabled infant is to prevent pain and suffering, then it would be best to kill the parents, but let the children live. Yet, I don’t expect to hear that argument from any ethicist in my lifetime.

Peace and joy,
Andi

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us! This is something I have heard time and time again from those who have been privileged to interact with those who have disabilities like your daughter, and I was hoping someone would share from personal experience. If this little girl, who is so “handicapped” can accomplish so much, what could we do if we were to approach life with such enthusiasm and hope as she does? Who are we to say that this beautiful girl doesn’t deserve life because life is “difficult” for her? It seems like a cop-out to me. “Life is hard, no one should have to struggle for a good life, so it would be better to not make them suffer at all?”

So next, should we abort the poor because their life would be a struggle, and they would have no way to turn their lives around? Both of my parents came from third-world countries, and have managed to make an incredible life for themselves through hard work and the simple desire for more. Its happened in history time and time again - we deny the “humanity” of other people based on how we want to define humanity. It happened to the Jews, and the early African American slaves, and it is happening again now with infants. They say that history repeats itself…

 

[JimG]

Harriet McBryde Johnson again: (the disabled lawyer who is incidentally also an atheist, and yet does not wish to be terminated.)

“You don’t let the pain hold you back, do you? “

“If I had to live like you, I think I’d kill myself.”

I used to try to explain that in fact I enjoy my life, that it’s a great sensual pleasure to zoom my power chair on these delicious muggy streets, that I have no more reason to kill myself than most people. But it gets tedious. God didn’t put me on this street to provide disability awareness training to the likes of them. In fact, no god put anyone anywhere for any reason, if you want to know.

But they don’t want to know. They think they know everything there is to know, just by looking at me. That’s how stereotypes work. They don’t know that they’re confused, that they’re really expressing the discombobulation that comes in my wake.
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401EFDC113BF935A25751C0A9659C8B63&sec=health&pagewanted=1

 

[Bruised_Reed]

A few disjointed thoughts:

think it’s rather presumptuous to decide for another if their life is worth living or if they would prefer to die because of challenges. Everyone experiences pain and suffering; no one is exempt although we do try to avoid it. The thing is pain and suffering can lead to a more abundant life and joy. Catholicism teaches that suffering can bring us closer to Jesus and his pain and suffering and ultimately redemption through him.

What of those who would suffer when they are quite young (infants) but either recover or adapt? Why should life be taken from them because we have a problem with suffering. We don’t really know how life will turn out.

While this is not always true, it would seem that those who suffer seem to have so much more wisdom and peace than those that don’t. Many wouldn’t not have life any other way.

I once read about an archeologist or anthropologist remarking about a grave that was found. The body found was of a person that had beenobviously handicapped but it was also obvious that she was cared for. The professional made the observation that the care for this deformed individual indicated that this was a civilized group.

And finally, I think that caring for those who are not “perfect” those who have physical, mental or emotional difficulties (permanent or temporary) is the best opportunity to demonstrate our love. It’s easy to “love” when things are picture perfect and there are few or easily overcome challenges or ones that are self-imposed like education or competition).

 

[Bruised_Reed]

Wheelie Catholic, a blog about Catholics with disabilites may offers some insight.

And isn’t wanting to get rid of those with pain or suffering out of our own discomfort and weakness?

 

[djrakowski]

Just look at how Catholics respond to Singer! I do not know why they have to vehemently disagree with him.

Well, as the parent of two children with lifelong disabilities, both of whom are dearly beloved by my wife, myself, and most importantly, God, it should be obvious why this Catholic more than vehemently disagrees with Singer. His arguments could be used to kill my children. That’s reason enough to disagree with him, and any reasonable person - Catholic or not - ought to disagree with him as well.

 

[djrakowski]

But wouldn’t aborting a disabled fetus prevent suffering when the fetus matures and becomes subjectively aware? Yes, the fetus is a human (as in *Homo sapiens *), but it is not a person.

Whoa, whoa, WHOA! STOP IT RIGHT THERE! So, I’m raising at least one disabled non-person in your view? Good heavens! What’s to stop people who think like you from advocating the murder of my 6-year old?

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

 

[MonicaC]

No…over-crowding is a serious issue leading to starvation and poverty that can be cured with education about options for families, primarily in third-world countries populated by people who cannot afford proper schooling. A responsibility to life includes making sure there’s enough space and resources to go around, and that families aren’t having multiple children they cannot take care of.

If I am insane for thinking it prudent to plan to have a number of children that a family and the resources they have to work with can reasonably support…then I better check myself into the funny farm now.

But of course, that’s not what you got from my post. Please, re-read, and tell me in exactly what point I advocated abortion as a means of population control.

I thought you might be interested in this posted by poster here on CAF. I know of other stats. I will be posting them when I have more time.

But I would be very careful with this of overpopulation thing. When in fact the US population has been on a huge decline. We are killing our children, who will be flipping your Social Security check when you are too old work, when we look and wonder where the children went.

****Did you know the entire world’s population can fit within the boundries of the State of Texas?

LEGEND

1 Acre = 43,560 Square Feet

1 Square Mile = 640 Acres or 27,878,400 Square Feet (640 x 43,560)

——————–

World Population = 6,276,000,000 people

State of Texas = 268,601 Square Miles or 171,904,640 Acres (268,601 x 640) or 7,488,166,118,400 Square Feet (268,601 x 640 x 43,560)

———————-

Average Size 2-Story Home with 3-4 Bedrooms = 1,500 to 2,400 Square Feet (Thus 750 - 1,200 Square Feet is Needed on the Ground Floor).

This home would fit 5-6 people per house comfortably!

Therefore 150-240 (750 to 1,200/ 5 people per household) Square Feet of Ground Space Per Person is needed to fit 5-6 people comfortably in a 2-story home in the state of Texas.

——————–

State of Texas = 7,488,166,118,400 Square Feet/ 6,276,000,000 people in the world = 1,193 Square Feet Per Person is available for the entire world’s population to live in the state of Texas.

As noted above only 150-240 Square Feet of Ground Space is needed per person to fit 5-6 people comfortably in a 2-story home in the state of Texas!!!

——————

You can double check my math!

Here’s a handbook which has Pro-Life Answers to all the Pro-Abortion arguments the Culture of Death could dream up! I would urge everyone to get a copy…

“On Message” by Mark Crutcher

lifedynamics.com/Abortio…Product/?id=144

 

[ribozyme]

First of all, I am happy to be answering this question from a non-catholic.

Second, it is God who creates us, including our human mind. We have God to thank for for everything including our own. God created our minds, and it is not we who discover, it is God who works through us. Also, God does not have act in ways outside the laws of nature. When we pray, God often responds through very natural means. He is the author of nature and can choose to place within nature the chemicals necessary to create medicines.

The rising sun is as much a miracle as the suddenly disappearing brain tumor.

Kendy

Hmm… I think it is Darwinian evolution that has endowed us with our brains, not God. Darwinian evolution is the counterforce against randomness and destruction in nature.

From one of my favorite scientists who has personally inspired me:
Gerald Joyce:

In his novel V., Thomas Pynchon
paints a picture of the twentieth
century dominated by physics, and of
human behavior swept along by the
inescapable tide of physical laws [1].
What chance does an individual have
in seeking order in his or her own
world when the universe as a
whole is streaming inevitably
towards a state of maximum
entropy? It is a distressing
picture, made more chilling
by Pynchon’s observation that
rather than resist the universal
tendency toward disorder,
humans have become highly
adept at promoting it.

Pynchon again takes up the
theme of the inexorable tendency
toward maximum entropy in his later
novel Gravity’s Rainbow [2], this
time drawing on the metaphor of
the German V2 rockets raining
down upon London towards the
end of World War II. Despite the
best efforts of British military
intelligence to predict where the
rockets will land, it seems that
they are following a perfect
Poissonal distribution. Once
the rocket’s engine cuts out
over the North Sea, it is only
gravity’s rainbow that determines
where it will fall. Destruction is not
only inevitable, it is random and
dispassionate.

And yet, as Pynchon continues in
the last section of Gravity’s Rainbow,
there is a “counterforce”, an
organizing principle that runs
counter to the tendency towards
maximum entropy, at least in some
instances. His metaphor for the
organizing force is the period
immediately after the fall of Nazi
Germany, when competing interests
— national, commercial, and
individual — scurried about to carve
order out of the rubble. Pynchon
ascribes almost mythical character to
the counterforce, which he also refers
to as the “green uprising” or the
“Titans of the Earth.” He suggests
that there is a general principle, as
fundamental as the second law of
thermodynamics, but running in the
opposite direction, that allows daisies
to grow out of the ashes.

As a student of molecular
genetics at the University of Chicago
in the mid-1970s, I read Pynchon
and ruminated on the doomsday
message of V. Walking past Henry
Moore’s sculpture Atomic Energy,
which
marks the
spot of
the
first self-sustained nuclear
chain reaction, it was impossible not
to appreciate how physics reveals the
pathway toward randomness and
destruction. But what about the
counterforce? Can we achieve a
scientific understanding of the
organizing principle that, at least
temporarily, stands in the face of
physical law?

…

For biologists, the counterforce is
Darwinian evolution based on
natural selection. Driven by the
metabolic flux of foodstuffs to
waste products, living systems
accumulate order in the form of
genetic information. In the
early 1950s, three scientific
advances set the stage for
harnessing the biological
counterforce, just as advances in
physics at the beginning of the
century set the stage for harnessing
the power of the atom.
First was the discovery by Watson
and Crick of the structure of the DNA
double helix, revealing the chemical
basis for molecular information
storage. Second was the experiment
of Miller and Urey demonstrating
that the chemical building blocks of
life, such as amino acids, can be
synthesized from simple starting
materials in a simulated prebiotic
environment. Third was the work
of John von Neuman describing a
universal self-reproducing
automaton, a machine analogue
of a living system.

Source: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10421584&dopt=Abstract

So how is God the counterforce against destruction? I believe it is human ingenuity and Darwinian evolution that acts as the counterforce with no divine intervention needed. How is God acting as a counterforce. To me, the idea of a benevolent God watching over humanity seems superfluous and easily trimmed by Occam’s razor.

 

[ribozyme]

Also look at my signature, I picked that graphic for a reason. I believe it shows that how God is unnecessary to explain what we don’t know about nature and explantory power of Darwinian evolution itself.

The picture is an RNA polymerase ribozyme that has literally evolved from random sequences. The exact procedures to isolate are too complex to be described here, but they simply involve mutation, selection and amplification, much like Darwinian evolution in nature. This is NOT Darwinian evolution from natural selection as it involves intervention from the investigators to amplify, select, and mutate their ribozymes, but it does resemble natural selection.

The amazing thing is that through Darwinian processes, a random strings (at least 10^15 RNA molecules) of an RNA polymer could organize to perform an extremely difficult reaction (RNA polymerization is not easy to perform as an RNA polymerase has to use small substrates (NTPs), have a reasonably good fidelity, catalyze the reaction at a fast rate, and bind the primer-template. So far, the polymerase falls too short of even matching biological polymerases (it could add a maximum of 14 nucleotides (24 hour incubation) to a specific primer template, and less on others primer-templates), but it is amazing how Darwinian evolution could isolate such a molecule from literally no “information.”

Since a picture says a thousand words, here are interesting pictures regarding this molecules’ catalytic prowess. Beautiful, tears up, just beautiful!

web.wi.mit.edu/bartel/pub/publication_reprints/Johnston_Science01.pdf
(Figure 4B under Round 18 ribozyme)

web.wi.mit.edu/bartel/pub/publication_reprints/Lawrence&Bartel%20RNA_05.pdf

(Figure 4 under EvPol1)

 

[ribozyme]

Whoa, whoa, WHOA! STOP IT RIGHT THERE! So, I’m raising at least one disabled non-person in your view? Good heavens! What’s to stop people who think like you from advocating the murder of my 6-year old?

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

I did not say he wasn’t a person. My words indicate that the fetus is a non-person, not the six year old with a disability. Disability alone does not render you a non-person. I was using the Singer definition which requires one to be able to be aware of their surroundings, have some ability to plan and anticipate the future, and feel pain. According to Singer, this makes your six-year old child a person. I am sorry if I did not convey this. I do not think that we are “persons” when we are infants and fetuses according to the Singer definition, but I do think it is wrong to kill a potential person (e.g. infants and fetuses), except under special circumstances (e.g. embryonic stem cell research), hopefully these circumstances would not come up. As a utilitarian, regarding the latter topc of stem cell research, terminating an embryo would allow less suffering than allowing a person with an ailment that can be cured by embryonic stem cell research to die. But that discussion is another topic. To me, ethics is not a black and white topic. I do not think there are any absolutes.

I did not say non-persons (especially potential non-person humans) must be killed.

I do not expect you to agree with that definition of person as it seems that Catholics think all members of the species Homo sapiens are a person, but Singer’s definition is quite different from that, and I only pointed that out as clarification.

If you want a clarification of Singer’s views, look at his wikipedia article. You do not have to argee with him, but at least know his philosophy.

 

[KathleenElsie]

Ribozyme:

When in your opinion does “personhood” begin?

 

[ribozyme]

Ribozyme:

When in your opinion does “personhood” begin?

Good question!

No, I will not answer that myself as I do not wish to offend anyone with my opinion but let me quote the wikipedia article for Peter Singer"

Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to physical integrity is grounded in a being’s ability to suffer, and the right to life is grounded in, among other things, the ability to plan and anticipate one’s future. Since the unborn, infants and severely disabled people lack the latter (but not the former) ability, he states that abortion, painless infanticide and euthanasia can be justified in certain special circumstances, for instance in the case of severely disabled infants whose life would cause suffering both to themselves and to their parents.

…

There is no sanctity of human life that confers moral protection on human beings in the zoological sense. Until the capacity for pain develops after “18 weeks of gestation”, abortion terminates an existence that has no intrinsic value (as opposed to the value it might have in virtue of being valued by the parents or others). As it develops the features of a person, it has moral protections that are comparable to those that should be extended to nonhuman life as well.

Well, even if you disagree with Singer, at least know about his beliefs.

 

[KathleenElsie]

Good question!

No, I will not answer that myself as I do not wish to offend anyone with my opinion but let me quote the wikipedia article for Peter Singer"
Well, even if you disagree with Singer, at least know about his beliefs.

I am sorry that you can not or will not state what you beliefs are. Believe it or not I have come across Peter Singer prior to your OP. Also the fact of ribozymes and the possibility of stopping viruses and maybe changing the courses of diseases is not alien to me.

So I ask again when does personhood start in your opinion? What is the difference between human life and personhood? Can someone that has lived for years be unable to reach your definition of personhood? Is there a definition that does not come from Singer of personhood?

I personally believe that human life and personhood start at the moment of conception. Each life is a miracle and a gift. Science and knowledge with God is empty and un-fulfilling.

 

[Andrew_11]

Well, even if you disagree with Singer, at least know about his beliefs.

Sounds like he would get along with Mengle.

 

[KathleenElsie]

I am sorry that you can not or will not state what you beliefs are. Believe it or not I have come across Peter Singer prior to your OP. Also the fact of ribozymes and the possibility of stopping viruses and maybe changing the courses of diseases is not alien to me.

So I ask again when does personhood start in your opinion? What is the difference between human life and personhood? Can someone that has lived for years be unable to reach your definition of personhood? Is there a definition that does not come from Singer of personhood?

I personally believe that human life and personhood start at the moment of conception. Each life is a miracle and a gift. Science and knowledge without God is empty and un-fulfilling.

Sorry I was typing toooooo fast and my aol wnt down. This is the correction.

 

[mommyof4]

Um, did you mean “without God?”

 

[ribozyme]

So I ask again when does personhood start in your opinion? What is the difference between human life and personhood? Can someone that has lived for years be unable to reach your definition of personhood? Is there a definition that does not come from Singer of personhood?

I personally believe that human life and personhood start at the moment of conception. Each life is a miracle and a gift. Science and knowledge with God is empty and un-fulfilling.

I already answered the personhood question:

My words indicate that the fetus is a non-person, not the six year old with a disability. Disability alone does not render you a non-person. I was using the Singer definition which requires one to be able to be aware of their surroundings, have some ability to plan and anticipate the future, and feel pain. According to Singer, this makes your six-year old child a person. I am sorry if I did not convey this.** I do not think that we are “persons” when we are infants and fetuses according to the Singer definition**, but I do think it is wrong to kill a potential person (e.g. infants and fetuses), except under special circumstances (e.g. embryonic stem cell research), hopefully these circumstances would not come up. As a utilitarian, regarding the latter topc of stem cell research, terminating an embryo would allow less suffering than allowing a person with an ailment that can be cured by embryonic stem cell research to die. But that discussion is another topic. To me, ethics is not a black and white topic. I do not think there are any absolutes.

Could you tell me how that is an unsatisfactory answer to the question because I thought I answered it.

Also the fact of ribozymes and the possibility of stopping viruses and maybe changing the courses of diseases is not alien to me.

So what’s a ribozyme if you a familar with that area of biochemistry?

Science and knowledge with God is empty and un-fulfilling

That remains an unsupported assertion, but I do think this has been mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or papal encyclicals. Are you a scientist? Well, I could assure you that this statement is not true from a pragmatic point of view. Gee…maybe you should talk to Professor Joyce (who I think does not believe in a personal God). I’ll be surprised if he says science is unfulfilling. So, science is fulfilling without God.

I don’t recommend that you talk to Joyce has he is a busy man…

 

[SeekerJen]

That remains an unsupported assertion, but I do think this has been mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or papal encyclicals. Are you a scientist? Well, I could assure you that this statement is not true from a pragmatic point of view. Gee…maybe you should talk to Professor Joyce (who I think does not believe in a personal God). I’ll be surprised if he says science is unfulfilling. So, science is fulfilling without God.

I don’t recommend that you talk to Joyce has he is a busy man…

Well, I AM a scientist (BS in Biochemistry, magna cum laude, currently PhD student in Immunology) and I have to say that I disagree with you. For me, science is not fulfilling without God. A lot of stuff doesn’t make sense with the atheistic viewpoint, at least not for me. Honestly, can you explain where the ribonucleotides came from? How were they generated? What gave them the ability to align in such a way to stably bond and form the ribozyme in your signature?

Have you ever studied the immune system? I stand in awe of it every day. We are constantly assaulted by pathogens and antigens; our body continually runs checks and balances to make sure that our adaptive immunity cells do not respond to self-antigen; there are so many layers, from the phagocytic and granulocytic cells and complement cascade in the initial, innate immune response, to the T cells, which respond to antigen presented by the phagocytes and either induce apoptosis in target cells or go on to activate other cells, to the B cells which are activated to produce specific antibodies that, when stuck to their target, initiate either a phagocytic response or the complement cascade. The T-cells themselves have layers of action: the regulatory Tcells keep things in check in a normal resting system, but in an infection, the TH1 T-cells take charge and signal for macrophages. Knock those out, and the TH2 T-cells jump in, pulling in mast cells and eosinophils. Knock those out, and you still have TH-17 T-cells to induce inflammation and draw in neutrophils.

Seriously, you think this happened by random chance?

 

[ribozyme]

Well, I AM a scientist (BS in Biochemistry, magna cum laude, currently PhD student in Immunology) and I have to say that I disagree with you. For me, science is not fulfilling without God. A lot of stuff doesn’t make sense with the atheistic viewpoint, at least not for me. Honestly, can you explain where the ribonucleotides came from? How were they generated? What gave them the ability to align in such a way to stably bond and form the ribozyme in your signature?

Very perceptive of you…

Nucleotides are inherently complex molecules, of course. I assume you understand what a is a nucleotide.

Several problems exists to my knowledge and I think they cannot be solved. I have read a lot of papers regarding this field of research, but if you want me to support my assertions in-depth for you (using peer-reviewed literature), I will. I don’t feel consulting my various PDF files that I have accumulated regarding this topic.

1. A pool of D-ribose has to accumulate somewhere on the early earth. That means it has to seperate itself from a jumble of other sugars (for example, ribose has 3 chiral centers, so there are 8 possible isomers of aldopentose) that would be produced in a formose like reaction mixture. This involves the condensation of an aldehyde (usually formaldehyde) with another aldehyde.
   This also means that ribose must be stable enough and not decompose, which is another dubious postulate.
2. A high enough concentration of nitrogenous compounds must accumulate in order to condense into the nucleobases (for example 0.01 M HCN. The reagents for these synthesis react in undesirable ways with aldehydes, thus precluding ribose and nucleobases to be made in a one pot reaction system. Such circumstances could be circumvented under special conditions such as concentration by freezing, but I consider such scenarios to be ad hoc. In addition, some of the nucleobases are rather unstable (e.g. cytosine from deamination).
3. Phosphate has to accumulate in high concentrations and not precipitate from solution.
4. Ribose and nucleobase must now combine. This is the most difficult step prebiotic in nucleotide synthesis. It involves D-ribose to combine with a nucleobase with the correct nitrogen atom of the base, and correct hydroxyl atom of the sugar. For pyrimidines, it must to be 1-nitrogen, for purines, it must be the 9-nitrogen. They must combine with D-ribose at the 1-carbon, in the beta configuration in the furanose form (5 ring), which means
   This reaction does not occur in aqueous solution for any of the bases and has been accomplished by heating purines in the dry-state with D-ribose for a vast array of nucleoside isomers. Pyrimidines did not combine with ribose in this way.
5. Next the nucleosides must be phosphorylated at the 5’ position of ribose. In practice, the 3’ and 2’ positions are also available for phosphorylation forming some undesirable isomers.
6. In order for polymerization to occur, the nucleotides must now be activated. In practice triphoshpate activation (much like nucleic acid replication and energy metabolism in contemporary biology) is not practical. There are other ways to active a nucleotide, but they are not prebiotic, such as using imidazoles instead of pyrophospate as the leaving group for polymerization.
7. A suitable catalyst must now be available for RNA to polymerize preferably forming 3’-5’ phoshodiester bonds. Montmorillonite ( a clay) is common used in “prebiotic” experiments with imidazole activated nucleotides.
8. Next, RNA is easily hydrolyzed in basic solutions with metal ions.

Like I said, I only wrote this in an impromptu manner, but I only did this to show that I appreciate the difficulties of the origin of life, and I will not pretend that science has solved this problem, unlike some atheists who do not know anything about biochemistry. Like I said, I am willing to support my assertions with peer-reviewed literature. I hope that in the future, that I will be able to understand the origins of fundamental biochemical processes such as ribosome catalysis and the origin of the polymerases and nucleic acids.

You should read Robert Shapiro’s “Small molecule interactions were central to the origin of life.” It talks about an alternate approach to the origin of life that does not involve complex molecules such as the nucleic acids. I’ll provide it as an e-mail attachment (Professor Shapiro did not give me the final draft because he gave me the draft before it was published to answer some of my questions regarding the origin of life) if you PM me.

 

[ribozyme]

Have you ever studied the immune system? I stand in awe of it every day. We are constantly assaulted by pathogens and antigens; our body continually runs checks and balances to make sure that our adaptive immunity cells do not respond to self-antigen; there are so many layers, from the phagocytic and granulocytic cells and complement cascade in the initial, innate immune response, to the T cells, which respond to antigen presented by the phagocytes and either induce apoptosis in target cells or go on to activate other cells, to the B cells which are activated to produce specific antibodies that, when stuck to their target, initiate either a phagocytic response or the complement cascade. The T-cells themselves have layers of action: the regulatory Tcells keep things in check in a normal resting system, but in an infection, the TH1 T-cells take charge and signal for macrophages. Knock those out, and the TH2 T-cells jump in, pulling in mast cells and eosinophils. Knock those out, and you still have TH-17 T-cells to induce inflammation and draw in neutrophils.

Seriously, you think this happened by random chance?

Regarding the immune system, I have not read any peer-reviewed papers about it or its evolution. I only read about it from Biology Fifth Edition from Reece, Campbell, and Mitchell, so I do not know much about it. In my own free time, I prefer to read about papers protein synthesis or nucleic acid synthesis.

Regarding biochemistry, I read my fair share of work regarding the directed evolution of nucleic acid enzymes. This is my favorite review article by far: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15189159&dopt=Abstract . Believe me, I could understand almost concept that is mentioned in that paper which means I read the full text of that paper (not bad for a 16 year old )
As I stated before, Joyce is one of my favorite scientists, and I admire his work. I e-mailed him, and he has given me reprints of some of his papers, and he has encouraged me to pursue my goals in life.

I also read a majority of Stryer’s Biochemistry in my own free time. I do not own a biochemistry textbook, but the online version is extremely satisfactory.