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Ozzy Osbourne's Genome Reveals Some Neanderthal Lineage

Posted by samzenpus on from the born-to-rock dept.

ByOhTek writes "CNN reports that in July, rocker Ozzy Osbourne became one of few to submit his blood to have his full genome sequenced and analyzed. The results are in, and it turns out his genome reveals some Neanderthal lineage. What does Ozzie have to say about it? 'I was curious, given the swimming pools of booze I've guzzled over the years - not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol... there's really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why,' he wrote."

22 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Bah by grub · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Ozzy's DNA: GACCTAACGATGCTAGC...

    Lemmy's DNA: GODGODGODGOD...

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Bah by vandelais · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ozzy's DNA is more like:

      actgactacgactg

      i-i-i

      acggactatacccagg

      i-i-i

      caccttgaggca

      --
      Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
  2. Rich by bonch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ozzy, this isn't hard to figure out. You're alive because you're rich. You can afford a comfortable lifestyle as well as medical treatment when you need it.

    Now, please stop fighting with Iommi and make another Black Sabbath album already.

    1. Re:Rich by Altus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Do we really need to list all of the super rich musicians who have died from putting really dangerous stuff in their blood streams?

      Being rich does not save you from an overdose. It might improve your odds of not ODing but it still happens to plenty of wealthy people. The ones that it doesn't happen to are lucky... or perhaps they actually have some pre-disposition to surviving heavy drug use.

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

    2. Re:Rich by bonch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's completely logical and obvious that a druggie who is rich is more likely to survive than a druggie who is not. Ozzy's big vice, especially in the 80s, was alcohol, but unlike most alcoholics, he could afford to be one and afford the treatment to become sober.

      People are apparently attaching themselves to the cute idea that Ozzy is genetically special because he survived his drug abuse. I don't know if you've seen him, but he has clearly suffered long-term effects that would hamper the lives of non-celebrities.

      Sharon Osbourne, his wife and manager, is a very, very shrewd business person. She's the kind of person who actually re-recorded drum and bass tracks on Ozzy's early solo albums in order to avoid paying those musicians. This, like everything else about Ozzy, is a publicity stunt to get people talking about Ozzy and buy his recent album and his autobiography. He's not some mutant superhuman.

    3. Re:Rich by bsDaemon · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's possibly one of the most blatant troll attempts in history, right up there with the people who think that Roger Moore is the real James Bond.

    4. Re:Rich by rhyder128k · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "I was curious, given the swimming pools of booze I've guzzled over the years - not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol... there's really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive."

      Is it because I'm in my 30s or because I'm a nerd or both that makes me think, "loser" when I read that?

      --
      Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
    5. Re:Rich by koona · · Score: 3, Informative

      "No one buys a bottle of wine and dies because it's extra potent." Na, yer rong. Up here in Canada we got a pseudo sherry thing called (x' ) 74. Dilution 1::2 required. All us beside the tracks winos know that 2 solid weeks of this shit will kill you. yours, as a survivor douglas the x'r copyright considerations prohibit me publishing the identity of (x')

  3. Wait.... by Labcoat+Samurai · · Score: 5, Funny

    So in Ozzy-logic, you're better at surviving because you have Neanderthal DNA? The Neanderthals would likely disagree.... if they could ;)

    1. Re:Wait.... by Flea+of+Pain · · Score: 4, Funny

      Clearly we do. The Neanderthals were clearly all Dark Prince rock gods. Oh to live in times such as those...

      --
      Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
    2. Re:Wait.... by Reziac · · Score: 3, Funny

      The conclusion is clear. The Neanderthals went extinct due to an insufficiency of booze, cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol...

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    3. Re:Wait.... by JWSmythe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      or were absorbed into human social groups. Presence of Neanderthal DNA in modern Europeans and Asians seems to lend credence to the absorption theory.

          Exactly. Which way that absorption went will remain a mystery, unless we develop time travel.

          If the stronger neanderthal men (men said as a general term, not a gender) captured significant numbers of cro-magnon men as slaves, farmers, or even just capturing the more attractive women to use for their own purposes, they could have thinned out their blood lines inadvertently.

          Neanderthal were considered stronger, stouter, and smarter (based on brain cavity size). In the animal kingdom, where both groups would have applied at the time (except for tool use by the neanderthal), the stronger tend to conquer the weak for things they want. If there was a tendency towards capturing the seemingly more attractive cro-magnon women as mates, the change would have happened fairly rapidly, over several generations. That's not to say that this is the way it played out, but it seems more reasonable than neanderthal man dying out due to food restrictions, where the cro-magnon man survived. The stronger, smart people would have simply taken anything they needed from the nearby weaker species, and wouldn't have even grunted "thank you." The women may have chosen to mate with the neanderthal male because he could provide better protection in the prehistoric harsh world.

          This may still be in play. We idolize thin attractive women, who are more likely to mate with the stronger male, with disregard to intelligence. We see this mating ritual starting in grade school, where the jocks get the cheerleaders, and will beat up anyone weaker to attain their goal. For many women, this show of strength is very attractive.

          Think, big strong man protecting his fragile beautiful mate.

          We like to think we've evolved, but in reality we haven't evolved much, other than adding new variables (fast cars, expensive houses, lavishing a prospective mate with gifts). The only real difference is that the gene pool has diminished, so the strong smart neanderthal man is now part of an almost identical gene pool to the weaker cro-magnon man.

          Don't try to explain this to that girl who you'd like to date. She's interested in the jock, for subconscious genetic reasons. No amount of logic will correct it.

       

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  4. More important... by NecroPuppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is the gene variant they've found in him that has never been found in any other vertebrate.

    Ok, maybe not more important, be definately more interesting.

    --
    I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
  5. Re:Wasn't there a study... by elsurexiste · · Score: 2, Funny

    In 2010 that suggested that somewhere around 1-4% of everyone's DNA is Neanderthal ish?

    My cousin must have a decent 20% or 30% percent. It's the only explanation I've got for some of the things he does.

    --
    I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
  6. Re:Oh the irony. by contra_mundi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the genes are still here, alive and competing, did they really fail?

  7. Re:Oh the irony. by Labcoat+Samurai · · Score: 4, Funny

    True, I have a feeling that if you threw Ozzie out into the wilderness to support himself via a hunting/gathering lifestyle, he would fail miserably, emphasizing his neanderthal heritage, but maybe if you took ancient neanderthals and threw them into the heavy metal lifestyle, they would have succeeded.

  8. Calls for some lyric revision by Bemopolis · · Score: 4, Funny

    I.
    Am.
    (Pre-) Iron (Age) Man
    (D)NAna-nana-nana, na na na.

    --
    "I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
  9. Re:Wasn't there a study... by Labcoat+Samurai · · Score: 5, Informative

    The way I've always understood the classification is that we're Homo Sapiens Sapiens, and they were Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, meaning they were a different subspecies, not genetically different enough to prohibit interbreeding.

  10. they studied keith richard's dna too by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Funny

    apparently it's backwards with him:

    the neanderthal genome reveals some lineage inherited from keith richards

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  11. Re:I thought we all came from neanderthals? by Labcoat+Samurai · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't think that's the politically correct term, but no, not unless they adopt.

  12. Re:Wasn't there a study... by Labcoat+Samurai · · Score: 2, Informative

    The species level is intended to be roughly the level of genetic similarity where animals breed true. So if we classify them as a subspecies, our *best guess* is that we'd breed true with them.

    Furthermore, this has evidently been an ongoing debate in the scientific community (I was operating from memory of college anthropology earlier, but I went and did a little poking around just now), and the school that classifies them as Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis is absolutely saying that interbreeding is possible.

    And the presence of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans seems to suggest they are right.

  13. Why he's alive... by dtjohnson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    'I was curious, given the swimming pools of booze I've guzzled over the years - not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol... there's really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive.

    Give me a f**king break! You're alive because you're a well-nourished 62 y/o man who has not (yet) contracted a fatal disease and has avoided fatal traumatic injury in spite of frequent intoxication. Most men in the UK and the US are still alive at 62 yrs.