Craving the dark magic of science

HOW QUICKLY we forget. In the aftermath of 9/11, after the memorials, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and the transit bombings in London and Madrid, the anthrax scare slipped from public consciousness. Now, long articles detail the results of a troubled investigation into the anonymous anthrax-tainted letters of the fall of 2001.

With the cruel elegance of a Greek tragedy, Bruce Ivins, the scientific adviser on the matter, became the prime suspect in the case, and its final victim as well, when he killed himself on July 29. Suddenly anthrax is back in the news, and we remember those chilling block-printed messages: DEATH TO AMERICA. We recall the postal screenings, the warnings about unknown addresses, and the lockdown of mail rooms and government offices.

The anthrax letters had seemed part of the larger offensive launched by Al Qaeda. Now we understand them differently, as the project of a deranged scientist in a federal laboratory. We wonder how this disturbed man could continue working to refine such dangerous substances. We marvel that an investigator researching a vaccine for anthrax could also be the man who used the pathogen to such evil ends.

Conspiracy theorists will have a field day. Was Ivins looking for more funding for his vaccine research? Was the government trying to frame him, to cover up for larger, deeper plots? Surely the FBI investigation was as poisonous as the powdery substance in those envelopes. The inquiry was plagued by secrecy for years, and a $5.8 million payoff for Ivins' embattled colleague, Steven Hatfill. This material is perfect for gadfly filmmaker Oliver Stone, or even better, for the moody blue novelist John le Carré. The story has it all: a mad scientist in thrall with his deadly subject, investigators caught up in their inquiry, each player tainted by his own work. In Shakespeare's famous words, each "nature . . . subdued / To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."

Beyond these elements, the story plays into the public fear of scientists and their techniques. How important our truth-seekers have become, and how easily they can turn their tools to violent ends. These are the recurring nightmares illustrated in classic science fiction, fantasy, and comic books: our own machines' mutiny, our genetically engineered organisms attack us, and most frightening, our scientists mutate into forces for evil.

For now, it seems, a rogue investigator proves more dangerous than rogue nations. Even as we benefit from advances in communication and medicine and engineering, we distrust innovators. We predict they will fly too high, and look for confirmation that their intelligence corrupts them. The fear runs deep, old as Icarus and "Frankenstein" and witches' poisoned apples.

Why do we distrust scientists? Because, although we would rather shake our heads at politicians, and ogle celebrities and the super rich, we know in our hearts that knowledge is power. Scientists work with substances that can cure or kill. Their research will change, and even save our lives, and so we look at them with awe, and superstition. We don't fully understand the laboratory, and so we mythologize investigators as heroes or demons, often both at once. We are dazzled by scientists' success and saddened, yet also strangely satisfied, when they fall.

And yet we crave the fruits of scientific labor. We desire cheaper food, faster computers, better health, and alternative fuel, but we're shocked that research takes so long and costs so much. We want innovation without damage to the ecosystem, drugs without side effects, manufacturing without toxic waste. We want all the benefits of the future without giving up the comforts of the past. Improvement without cost, change without hard choices. Is this too much to ask? Well, yes, but we keep asking anyway.

Ultimately, we project our conflicting expectations onto the men and women in the field, and we look to them with love and hate, demanding oracles, requiring greatness, and burdening them with praise and blame. Only the technology is new. The role scientists play is old and tribal: they are our shamans, and we expect miracles, even as we dread black magic.

Allegra Goodman is a guest columnist and author of "Intuition." Her first book for younger readers, "The Other Side of the Island," will be published in September.