An Exemplary Biologist

The BBC reports that a paper published in the American Journal of Human Genetics concludes that the human population nearly speciated (my term) due to prolonged separation lasting 100,000 years, and occurring 150,000 years ago. Dr Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project, said that the African groups were isolated for a very long time as shown by differences in their mitochodrial DNA, which is genetic material inherited only from females. This gives a maternal history of a group. From this basis, scenarios have been hatched concerning the migratory patterns of each group. And from this, speculations as to why they split as well as how and where.

However, a rational voice is included in the mix: that of Dr. Sarah Tishkoff, of the University of Pennsylvania, who said,

"Although there is very deep divergence in the mitochondrial lineages, that can be different from inferring when the populations diverged from one another."

The sentiment that wild extrapolations might not be true is unusual in the biological race to publish. Inferences drawn on the flimsiest of premises can be and are published at the drop of a hat. It is not de riguer to call them what they are, as Dr. Tishkoff did: inferences.

So my hat is off to Dr Tishkoff. May her example be followed and multiplied.

Stem Cells to Body Parts

According to the Daily Telegraph, The U.S. Surgeon General has announced a program for growing new body parts for injured troops. The program is funded with $250M to assist hospitals and universities find a way to use the individual troop's own adult stem cells to regenerate body parts from skin to limbs.

The Surgeon General notes that the use of stem cells from the adult makes for a "very low risk" of converting into cancers.

Interestingly, the article does not call them adult stem cells although they obviously are, and refers to embryonic stem cells as "more primitive stem cells". The "more primitive" stem cells produce cancer at high rates, while the adult stem cells march on down the development road into real solutions.

Advocates of embryonic stem cell research led a blitz on the voters of my state last year, redefining terms such as "death" in the small print of the lengthy amendment to the constitution. Advocacy was highly funded and opposition was smashed by the weight of celebrities from out of state, such as Michael J. Fox, who were bleating constantly for "stem cell research", for "the victims". Of course adult stem cell research has always been legal and productive. What these people advocated, dishonestly, was embryonic stem cell killing and research.

What motivated these people to advocate a loser technology while ignoring a winning technology that was already starting to do that which they claimed they wanted? I have written frequently about the inversion of atheist logic, and rebellion against all things previously thought to be logical. There it is. By standard logic there was no rational reason to do what they did. I suspect that there is a high correlation between advocates of embryonic death and abortion. The value of life is adjusted to fit the current "cause celebre".

But one more thing about adult stem cells. How does the biology of adult stem cells rely on the theory of evolution? It does not. It relies on actual science. In fact, it falsifies the concept that "evolution is a required fact underlying all biology". The natural selection on mutations of DNA is not involved in this technology.

Adult stem cell technology might be the most interesting thing to come out of biology... ever.

A View Into an Atheist

Atheist PZ Myers is ringmaster of the blog pharyngula. PZ has a distinct manner of presenting his anti-ecclesiastic thoughts: he doesn't edit them. Now PZ is fantasizing about killing priests. A news release from South America relates that a person went airborne using a large number of helium-filled party balloons (on purpose), but got lost from view and is now vanished. The person is a priest.

PZ could not restrain his glee that a priest is gone, and now he wishes that all priests were tied to balloons, and that he could take up an ultralight and a BB gun so he could shoot them all down.

PZ is iconic, sort of, in the Atheist world. He is recognizable as a cohort of Dawkins, and is one of the "new" atheists. When PZ squawks, his blog-band of emotional adolescents shriek with glee.

When it comes to Atheist ethics, PZ frequently lets the cat out of the bag. Tolerance is just not tolerable to PZ. He lets this darkness creep out of concealment frequently. Atheists claim the high ground, just because. Their ethic is more ethical than anyone else's, because after all they know how to invent one better than anyone else. But neither PZ's comments nor his ethics are new or different. They reach back to the French Revolutionary statement involving "strangling the last king with the entrails of the last priest".

Well, these are just comments, right? Just jokes. Well, not to the thousands butchered in the French days of terror. Or to the intellectual heirs of such hatred, or their victims. PZ seems to be one of those heirs. He projects hatred with nearly every post. And his followers wallow in it.

Bound to happen...

The concept of genetic predispositions is not new. It was highly favored in the early 20th century as eugenists sought to eliminate poverty, crime, and feeblemindedness, by sterilizing those thought to carry the genes that caused those problems. So the problems of man were "in his genes". The race could be improved or at least preserved by not allowing those who carried defective genes to breed. Originally a prophylactic type of birth control, eugenics became a bloody killing field of abortions on demand, and now has advocates of post-natal killing of defectives.

Now the genetic sciences are invading the field of law. According to Rick Weiss in the Washington Post, April 20, '08, genetic predispositions are being used as a defense for aberrent behaviors, with proof of defective genes being the evidence. The defective genes are found using DNA analysis. In a smattering of cases this defense has worked... and in others failed. But it will likely be a feature in court battles to come.

In some lawsuits, large corporations are demanding the DNA testing of individuals who sue claiming health damage. The corporations hope to show that long term health damage incurred due DNA, not due to actions of the company. If DNA shows certain defects, the corporation skates.

In criminal cases, some actions such as agression have been labeled as genetically predisposed, and there are DNA readable genes, such as MAO-A to prove it. The genes become the culprit, and the criminal becomes the victim. Opponents claim that "free will" and justice, as concepts, have both been sacrificed to the concept of genetic determinism.

It had to come. And it has to be addressed. The irresponsibility of "scientific" claims that we humans are here merely to service the evolutionary demands of our genes needs to be brought to rational conclusion.

For example, if it is true that we are slaves to our genes, then the individuals who say such things are merely mindlessly parroting the words of their own genes, words placed in their mouths for the sole advantage of the genes - which would not be a dispassionate source of such information. Such concepts are flawed. For example, the gene for ruthlessness, AVPR1a, would definitely not wish to be locked up for a free will crime committed by the human-slave. AVPR1a would wish to have the human-slave available for future missions. Thus AVPR1a would strongly advocate that the human-slave be exonorated of responsibility for his criminal actions. Ridiculous you say? Well, that's the result of the genetic determinism thought process, not a comic scenario.

Free will will continue to be attacked by the proponents of materialist philosophy, who wish to deflate any and all entities that might threaten their philosophical position. This is done by diminishing the value of the threatening entities in order to make them appear material. So free will becomes genetic determinism: reduced from a metaphysical existence to a purely physical existence.

This will only work within an irrational mental frame, and will ultimately fail to produce empirical results.

But these Philosophical Materialist assaults on rationality should be expected to continue. They should be discounted when they are seen, and fought as necessary.