As I was surfing the net the other day, taking brief glances at the stories on various news sites, one of those which caught my attention was a notice "on this day in history" of the 25th anniversary of the implantation of a baboon heart in a human infant, whom the world came to know as “Baby Fae.” This in turn brought back to me the Paul Simon song, “The Boy in the Bubble” from Simon’s hit album “Graceland” (1986), in which Baby Fae is alluded to:
Its a turn-around jump shot
Its everybody jump start
Its every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart
As the lyrics of that song played silently in my head, it next occurred to me how little our world, as it inspired Simon’s lyrics, has changed during the intervening years. As the French say, Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose, the Americanized, colloquial translation of which is usually rendered, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Just as the Baby Fae case gave rise to questions in the area of medical ethics twenty-five years ago, today medical science is embroiled in controversy over such things as stem cell research and human cloning.
Another headline announced the deaths of several UN workers and ever more American military personnel in the Middle East, where IEDs are nothing new. How little our current world differs from the one that inspired this stanza of Paul Simon’s song, back in the mid-Eighties:
It was a slow day,
Just as the Baby Fae case gave rise to questions in the area of medical ethics twenty-five years ago, today medical science is embroiled in controversy over such things as stem cell research and human cloning.
Another headline announced the deaths of several UN workers and ever more American military personnel in the Middle East, where IEDs are nothing new. How little our current world differs from the one that inspired this stanza of Paul Simon’s song, back in the mid-Eighties:
It was a slow day,
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road,
There was a bright light,
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio...
And the rest of the lyrics of “The Boy in the Bubble”* seem equally relevant, even prophetic, when considered against the backdrop of current events in the 21st century:
And I believe
And the rest of the lyrics of “The Boy in the Bubble”* seem equally relevant, even prophetic, when considered against the backdrop of current events in the 21st century:
And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
That is dying in a corner of the sky
Indeed,
Indeed,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And dont cry baby, dont cry
Dont cry
Check it out:...plus c’est le même chose.
Check it out:...plus c’est le même chose.
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*See the excellent video.
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