Death of the Old God

Eugene O'Neill's warning was never more prescient or foreboding than the recent scientific news revealing there isn't much pressing hope in ever finding an AIDS vaccine:

Most scientists involved in Aids research believe that a vaccine against HIV is further away than ever and some have admitted that effective immunisation against the virus may never be possible, according to an unprecedented poll conducted by The Independent.

A mood of deep pessimism has spread among the international community of Aids scientists after the failure of a trial of a promising vaccine at the end of last year. It just was the latest in a series of setbacks in the 25-year struggle to develop an HIV vaccine.

The Independent's survey of more than 35 leading Aids scientists in Britain and the United States found that just two were now more optimistic about the prospects for an HIV vaccine than they were a year ago; only four said they were more optimistic now than they were five years ago.

Nearly two thirds believed that an HIV vaccine will not be developed within the next 10 years and some of them said that it may take at least 20 more years of research before a vaccine can be used to protect people either from infection or the onset of Aids.

When the power to create a life is also the weapon used to end a life, we know the old God is laughing at our feeble, and non-humble, attempt to thwart the mysteries and the power of the body.

We may be able to pinch the God particle, but we are, in the end, left alone to fend off death and infection and the viruses that infect and kill us.

Instead of looking up to the heavens for inspiration from The Gods -- we, as the Human Race -- rolled our eyes downward and into ourselves and inside our computers and we asked science and technology to save us from the inevitable.

Instead of leading righteous, external, lives that would serve us well in the end, we chose learning over belief to find escape clauses and emergency exits that science and technology teased -- but never really delivered -- and so we are now left humbled, yearning, and hoping for salvation from ourselves, and from each other, because we realize now, but only when it's too late, that killing our old God is empty and forever.