“Part of the enduring mythology about Asklepios, the god of healing, is that he may have acquired his prodigious healing powers when a snake whispered its secrets into his ear. Modern science is recapitulating this ancient transfer of biological wisdom, with snakes now whispering molecular secrets. But our contemporary demigods of molecular biology might revisit Pindar’s account of Asklepios’s ultimate fate as a healer: smote by that thunderbolt hurled by Zeus to erase the possibility of immortalization in the world of mortals. Even nature’s stop signs are there for a reason.”