Heredity and Humanity

anexilus sent in this essay by the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He discusses genes, nature and nurture, and tries to allay fears that Gattaca will come to pass. Good reading.

Comments

I was with them till the end.

[Tim]

"The notion that science alone holds the secrets of our existence has become a religion of its own. The faith of Dawkins and others in biology seems even greater than the faith of the simple believer in God. Science is the proper way to understand the natural, of course; but science gives us no reason to deny that there are aspects of human identity that fall outside the sphere of nature, and hence outside the sphere of science."

While the rest of the article was first-rate, I have to wonder what the authors were thinking when writing the above. Whether they realize it or not, the authors are falling back on that classic logical fallacy that religious groups everywhere have used to argue the creation side of the creation/evolution debate: "there is no evidence for your argument, so mine must be correct."

Science is about what is observable, and to their credit, the authors admit this in the very next paragraph. But to state that a decision to believe only in the observable is tantamount to an act of "faith" is silly. Science is about observation. When you decide that something may never be observable (i.e. because it may be "supernatural"), you bias yourself beyond repair.

It isn't "faith" to believe that our behaviors are a result of complex natural phenomena--it is a refusal to place credence in that which is unobservable, and therefore undefendable. And *that* is the exact opposite of faith.

Re:I was with them till the end.

[Jonathan]

I'm a scientist and not at all religious, but I can recognize that quite a lot of faith goes on in science, just like any other field. Even if science was nothing more than observation (and science is certainly far more than that), it is simple faith to assume that your senses give you an accurate picture of reality. The philosopher Hume (regarded as the father of modern atheism, btw) made that point in the 18th century.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves

[Dr_Cheeks]

OK, so the human genome has been mapped, big deal. We're overlooking the fact that we actually don't have a clue what most of it does. It's good that the issues of nature/nurture and gene discrimination now, but I think I'll reserve final judgement until we actually understand things. Sure, we don't like to believe we're just baby factories who're faking consciousness, but we can't (currently) prove that it's not true. We used to think the Earth was flat, remember.

Having said that, I strongly believe that I'm who I am because of my experiences, but perhaps that's just my genes making me think that way...

Re:Let's not get ahead of ourselves

[Kierthos]

I believe in the Spider Robinson viewpoint. We are not our genes. Our genes may define how tall or short we are, the colour of our hair (sans bleaching or dying it), the colour of our eyes, etc. But a person is more then the physical characteristics of their body. Our memories and experiences make us people.

Sure, gene therapy and other genetic manipulations may produce healthier and prettier people. But they won't necessarily be better people. (Perhaps I should say more ethical people, but my ethics are guarenteed to match anyone else's so I hereby refuse to use my ethics as a standard to judge other people. And I'm not moderating any more either. :P )

Kierthos

Bad Christian Science

[dankjones]

I'm glad to see that there are some people with real scientific minds arguing on the side of spirituality/religon/god because all of the christian preachers I have ever heard trying to disprove evolution just came accross as ignorant buffoons. I'm sure the congregation bought it but, truth is, it was realy bad science.

For example, it was announced that there was a 98% similarity between chimpanzee DNA and human DNA. So one preacherman made the point that a watermellon is 98% water and a cloud was 100% water and that proved the scientists wrong.

Then he went on to point out that cars have evolved and changed over the years, but it was because there were people behind the change...cars don't evolve by themselves, so, therefore, neither do animals.

My point being: real scientists need to jump in and help these poor folks because they really could use the help.I mean who's never heard the argument that goes something like "I know God exists 'cuz flowers are purty"?

Somewhat comforting....

[GreyPoopon]

It's kind of nice to know that there are at least some rational arguments to using genes to "classify" people early on. In the last four months, I've had all kinds of thoughts about how insurance companies would charge higher rates for people with certain genes, etc.

To add to this article, remember that even though human genome mapping has been considered complete, reports have since been released indicating that there just isn't enough genetic matter there to effectively map all human characteristics, and that there most be something else that contributes. It might be some of the latent DNA sequences that are considered to be trash, or something else within the proteins themselves. All of this adds up to some pretty big arguments should any of us enounter "gene prejudice."

GreyPoopon
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