Jerold M. Lowenstein's Blog, page 2

The U-curve of Happiness

            We used to call it the bluebird of happiness, but now that scientists and pollsters and even governments are taking on the subject, it's the U-curve of happiness. Each winter I organize a course at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning, University of San Francisco, called The Wonders of Science. I thought my students, all retired people over the age of 50, would be interested in the U-curve, which shows how happiness changes between the ages of 17 and 82, based on hundreds of studies done in many different countries and summarized in a recent issue of The Economist. Now almost anyone would suppose that 17-year-olds, with their youth and vigor, would be much happier than 82-year-olds, who are losing their hearing, eyesight, and memories. But almost anyone would be wrong! The average level of happiness, measured by questionnaires and testing, goes down after 17 and bottoms out at about 50, then rises steadily again and at 82 is higher than it was at 17!

            Faced with this counter-intuitive finding, many theories have been proposed for explaining it, mostly speculating that older people have gotten better at dealing with their problems. The writer of a follow-up letter to The Economist was reminded of the arguments among religious leaders about when life begins. The Catholic priest says it begins at conception. The Calvinist parson says it begins at birth. The rabbi says it begins when the children grow up and the dog dies.

            Sigmund Freud maintained that the main sources of happiness are love and work. This of course would not apply to my students, who are all retired from their prior occupations. Following my lecture, I read from my new novel, The Dark X: a Medical Mystery and African Adventure, and signed books for the purchasers. The main characters: Suzanne, a primatologist who contracts a strange disease, and Tony, her San Francisco doctor, are each passionate about their work and might be passionate about each other. But obstacles stand in the way: her illness, his ethics, and a jealous chimpanzee. Does this situation have a happy ending? You'll have to read the book.

Human-Chimp Relations in Science & Fiction

It has only been 40 years since molecular studies showed the true relationship between humans and apes, and it's much close than previously thought. Bones of apes 15 million years old had been called probably humn, but the molecules showed the common ancestor of chimps and humans lived only about 5 million years ago. This discovery caused a huge furor between scientists who study bones and those who study molecules, but now it's clear the molecules were right, and the oldest human bones, 4 millions years old, are very chimplike.

Jane Goodall's observations of wild chimps in Tanzania showed how much like us they behave. There are two species of chimps– the common ones that Goodall studies and a rarer and more elusive species called pygmy chimps or bonobos. They are the world's sexiest primates. My wife, anthropologist Adrienne Zihlman, put them on the scientific map, so to speak, when she wrote an article in Nature that showed they are anatomically and behaviorally more like humans than the common species. The novels, Mating, and Brazzaville Beach, a few years ago drew heavily on Goodall's work with the common species. Ape House recently treated laboratory bonobos.

My novel, The Dark X:a Medical Mystery and African Adventure, is the first to feature bonobos in the wild. Suzanne, who studies bonobos, develops a disease new to medical science, and when she and her doctor Tony go to Africa to find the cause and cure, a triangle develops between Suzanne, Tony, and Jinji, her favorite bonobo who adores her. The chimp-human relationship develops dranatically when Suzanne lies near death from the The Dark X.

My Fifth Career

Representing his research on fossil molecules and nuclear medicine practice

I've had four careers already and am launching a fifth with my debut novel, The Dark X: a Medical Mystery and African Adventure.  I started in physics, studying at MIT and Columbia and working on atomic bombs at Los Alamos. Next I went to Columbia Medical School and was trained in both internal and nuclear medicine at Stanford and became chief of nuclear medicine at California Pacific Medical Center and Clinical Professor Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). I married Adrienne Zihlman, a professor of anthropology, and we made many trips to Africa, where she studied fossils with Richard Leakey and we observed chimpanzees in the wild with Jane Goodall. Along the way, I became interested in the problem of determining our human evolutionary ancestry and developed the first test for fossil molecules using radioactive antibodies, thus founding a new field of research that led to the novel and movie Jurassic Park. All during these three careers, I was also a science writer doing columns about science starting in high school continuing writing for the MIT and Columbia newspapers and more recently doing science columns for Oceans, Pacific Discovery and California Wild Magazines as well as writing for Natural History, Discover and Wired.

After these four successful scientific careers, why add another novel to the bulging bookshelves? In the first place, I'm an omnivorous reader of fiction as well as science, and I've generally been disappointed in the science fiction I've read: mostly there's too much fiction and not enough science, and what science there is, is often unscientific and incompatible with the laws of physics (e.g., Star Trek) and biology. Instead of Sci-Fi, I wanted to write Fi-Sci, real science, the science I know from my first three careers, but also a gripping adventure and a love story. The Dark X is packed with medical science and anthropology against the textured backgrounds of San Francisco, with its sailing, art, and music, and in contrast, the Central African Republic with teeming dangers of political intrigue, wild animals and the fascinating bonobos, the world's sexiest primates. There's plenty of challenge for the beautiful "ape lady" Suzanne Albrecht, who has contracted a strange disease, and her handsome San Francisco doctor, Tony Miller, who's looking for the cause and cure of The Dark X that threatens her life.

For more information about The Dark X please visit www.jeroldlowenstein.com

The Dark X: Mystery, Adventure, Love

The Dark X is a captivating book filled with medical mystery, intrigue and romance.

The Dark X follows Suzanne Albrecht, who studies chimpanzees in Africa, has a strange disease, with a dark X seen in her chest on a scan. She and her handsome San Francisco doctor, Tony Miller, go to her study site in Africa to try to find the cause and cure.. They become involved in political intrigue and a contest with a hungry lion. Jinji, an intelligent young chimp, adores Suzanne and fights Tony. Suzanne becomes so ill that Tony and Jinji must work together to try to save her life.

For more information about the book visit : http://jeroldlowenstein.com/.

 

 

The Dark X

My wife Adrienne Zihlman is an anthropologist, and we've made more than ten trips to Africa, where we've observed chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, and many other animals in their native habitat. Adrienne first put pygmy chimpanzees (bonobos) on the scientific map when she suggested they have the closest resemblance to our earliest fossil relatives like "Lucy." Time magazine picked this up with a story called The Living Link. We've had many wild adventures in Africa and I've had many occasions to use my medical skills there. I've gotten to know several "ape ladies" who study theses primates, including Jane Goodall, and have served on the Board of the Jane Goodall Institute. These experiences led me to write this story, about an anthropologist who gets a strange disease and goes to Africa with her doctor to find the cause and cure.