Geoff Brumfiel“Among the Beasts that representKingdoms I reccon the Dragon one.A Dragon signifies the person of ahostile King & serpents accordingto their bigness the persons of othergreater or lesser enemies.” Thesewords were penned not by anobscure mystic, but by a man manyconsider to be the father of modernscience — Isaac Newton. They arepart of the introduction to the300,000-word interpretation of thebook of Revelation that Newtonwrote in the late seventeenth cent-ury. The work was published for thefirst time last month.

The writings reveal a religious fer-vour that until now has been seenonly by scholars of science withaccess to archival manuscripts,according to Robert Iliffe, a sciencehistorian at Imperial College Lon-don. Iliffe directs the Newton Pro-ject, which posted the documentsonline on 15 July. “This is the firsttime that people can see what he reallybelieved,”he says.

Historians of science have long known ofNewton’s interest in religion and alchemy, butfew realize the radical nature of his work, saysIliffe. “What he believed would have beenhideous to virtually everybody in Oxford andCambridge for decades to come,”he says.

Among the unorthodox ideas in the text is abelief that Catholics, led by the Pope, are thefalse idolaters spoken of in the book of Revela-tion. Antagonism towards Catholics was notuncommon in Newton’s period: during hislifetime England had experienced a bloodycivil war that pitted Charles I, widely regardedas a Catholic sympathizer, against the mainly

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NATURE | VOL 430 | 19 AUGUST 2004 | www.nature.com/nature 819

Newton’s religious screeds get online airingProtestant parliament,before CharlesII was restored to the throne.

But the vehemence of Newton’sarguments pushed him well beyondthe Anglican faith, to which he osten-sibly belonged. “He believed that thePope was the personification of theAntichrist here on Earth,”Iliffe says.

Newton knew such beliefs lay out-side the social mores of his peers, andthere is no evidence that he ever pub-lished any of the writings now avail-able online. Still, Iliffe says, Newton’sreligious writings constitute morethan half of his entire written work.

In the past, many thought thatNewton pursued religion only in hisspare time, or that the majority ofhis religious work had been copiedfrom others. But Iliffe claims thatthese writings show his theologicalwork was carefully planned and oftenrelated to his work in mathematicsand physics. For example, he sets uphis text on the Apocalypse with math-ematical formalism, outlining rules,

definitions and a proof of his beliefs.Ultimately, Newton’s religion and science

may have been tied together by belief inabsolute truth. Newton used testablehypotheses to find truth in nature, andbelieved that his religious writings revealedthe truth about God,says Iliffe. ■

➧ www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk

Revelation: the majority of Newton’s writings were theological tracts.

Erika Check,WashingtonA much-hyped technology known as RNAinterference (RNAi) has moved a step closer to the clinic.

Biotechnology firm AcuityPharmaceuticals of Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, asked for permission on 10 August to use the technique to treat acommon cause of blindness. The clinical trial, if approved by the US Food and DrugAdministration, would be the first of its kind.

RNAi, which uses short lengths ofgenetic material to selectively shut off genes,was demonstrated in human cells in 2001and has yet to be tested in people. Somestudies have raised concerns about just howselective the technique is, so observers saythe filing is a landmark for the field butremain cautious.

“This is a significant milestone,” saysGreg Jensen, a biotechnology analyst at Ernst& Young in Palo Alto, California. “Whether itwill work out, or give us the first bad newsabout RNA interference, we don’t know yet.”

Acuity hopes to use a small interferingRNA to treat patients with wet age-relatedmacular degeneration. The condition iscaused by extended growth of blood vesselsin the retina — a problem that Acuity thinkscan be tackled by silencing the gene thattriggers the growth. The company says that the condition affects more than

1.65 million people in the United States.Dale Pfost, Acuity’s chief executive, says

his firm has applied for a patent on the RNAmolecule involved, but the intellectual-properties issues are not straightforward.Rival firm Alnylam, based in Cambridge,Massachusetts, has already requested apatent on the method of RNA delivery thatAcuity will use. Alnylam says it plans tobegin its own clinical trials in maculardegeneration next year.

Pfost is confident that Acuity’s disease-specific patent will be granted, but Alnylambegs to differ. “We’re very pleased to seesilencing RNAs entering the clinical stage,”says John Maraganore, chief executive ofAlnylam. “But at the end of the day, webelieve that anybody developing RNAitherapies needs to talk to us.” ■

For more news and analysis go to

www.nature.com/news

Firm sets sights on gene silencing to protect vision

Light relief: RNAi may stop the degenerationseen here (right) in an ageing retina.

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