Darwin and Beyond

 

Introduction

Why is Darwin mentioned in a document about causality? He was a biologist or botanist, and causality is more about physics than biology. Biology is chemistry which is really quantum physics and Darwin’s evolution could not be a better example of causation at the end-result level.

The wonders of nature. Life is everywhere we look on this planet that we call Earth. It is there in tropical regions growing wild if we let it. It is there in the temperate areas doing its thing. The oceans are literally full of life everywhere. Even in the hottest and the coldest places on this planet we find life, and nothing seems to stop it, well except us.

Of each of life’s varied forms DNA holds not only the code to build itself but memories of the past selves. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, while rats have 21 and mice have 20. Analysis found chromosomes from all three organisms to be related to each other by about 280 large regions of sequence similarity. Yes, we are related to rats and mice. Our evolutionary branch brought us to live in the trees and then the savanna while our distant cousins the ground and brush underneath, but we came from the same species originally. Over hundreds of millions of years species came and went, filtering out and branching off. The filter is the ability to survive long enough to reproduce and the branching by environmental changes forcing differentiated genes to express themselves and continue survival of a very slightly varied species one nano-step at a time.

Why are we stuck on survival of the fittest?

It’s a cruel world that brought us to our current stage of development. Die if you’re not fast enough to escape the predators chasing you, die if you can’t catch your prey. The longer you live the more you reproduce. The more you kill the better your chances of living are. Oh yes hard work helps but it is those who are coy and devious that seem to have an advantage. There is more about probability than an individual’s ability to evolve. Let’s face it survival of the fittest, though it has worked, is not only cruel, it is very inefficient. Probability and natural selection with the best under the statistical bump in the curve really requires a lot of time and lives to do its job. We can do much better.

What have we done?

Our species is the first one to begin to bypass the method of evolution as described by Darwin. Yes, thousands of years ago, long before Darwin existed, our ancestors began to artificially and selectively breed plants and animals who have particular qualities that are beneficial to us. Cross breed, import from other ecosystems and decide what quality is favourable. Wheat, barley, corn, cattle, pigs, sheep and dogs are just some of the species that have been manipulated over time by the hand of homo sapiens.

Not only have we manipulated the species, but we also alter the environment to suite our needs by cutting trees, removing rocks, fertilizing land, modifying water flow, modifying the land topography and watering the soil to name a few.

We are now at the stage where we can directly manipulate genes producing what we want or preventing what we don’t want. Genetic manipulation, the process of inducing changes in gene expression and the expression of novel genes, is proving to be indispensable in more than one field and, so I feel, is our doorway to a new society. The implementation of increasingly powerful genetic tools to embryonic stem cells is leading us to be able to manipulate specific properties of an extremely large array of genes. Current available techniques allow for the specific elimination of target gene expression, tissue specific induction of reporter gene expression, the overexpression of cellular genes, and more. This means that we can pick and choose what we want without waiting for many generations of cross breeding and selection.

What could we do?

The possibilities are almost limitless. Eliminate inherited disorders, develop specific traits that benefit us as a species such a immunities to certain diseases, engineer interfaces to our electronics that work with us for cyborg implants and AI communications.

Conditions that are detrimental to human well-being, such as sickle-cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, Lesch-Nyhan disease and various immunodeficiencies, are genetically determined, we know this. Genetic manipulation prior to birth is a means of preventing the development of such. They could substitute the offending genetic material or clear it out completely.

Where do we go from here?

Our ethics of gene manipulation need to be clearly defined and on a global basis. Just as the medical community has its ‘to do no harm’ vow and all the other ethics that go along with-it, genetic engineering needs its ethics defined. This manipulation would have to change genetic structure which, of course, changes its informational content. It rewrites the book. This has some deep ramifications that we need to get a handle on before proceeding down this path, but once we can clearly come to an agreement then we can proceed to beat Darwin at his own game.

Would it be fine to make better humans, not just cutting out what we consider as genetic disorders but improving the biological machine that we call homo sapiens? Would it still be homo sapiens? Would humanity be in a dangerous position of producing (forgive me for this particular presentation) blond haired, blue eyed, white skinned, super intelligent socialist? I know that many science fiction writers have explored this avenue, but we are now at the science fact stage of this process.

To infinity and beyond!