Re: Unraveling the DNA Myth - Barry Commoner

[Eve Cruse]

Title: Re: Unraveling the DNA Myth - Barry Commoner

> "Unraveling the DNA Myth:
> The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering"
> by Barry Commoner
>
> SYNOPSIS
>
> Genetic science was founded on the discovery of the DNA double helix by
> Francis Crick and James Watson. In 1953, they pronounced DNA -
> deoxyribonucleic acid, a very long, linear molecule that is tightly coiled
> within each cell's nucleus - as the molecular agent of inheritance. DNA is
> made up of four different kinds of subunits (bases, or nucleotides), which
> in each gene are strung together in a particular linear order or sequence.
> Segments of DNA comprise the genes that, through a series of molecular
> processes, give rise to each of our inherited traits. Crick's hypothesis is
> that a clear-cut chain of molecular processes leads from a single DNA gene
> to the appearance of a particular inherited trait. According to Crick's
> sequence hypothesis, the gene's genetic information is transmitted, altered
> in form but not in content, through RNA intermediaries, to the distinctive
> amino acid sequence of a particular protein.
>
> Tested between 1990 and 2001 in one of the largest and most highly
> publicized scientific undertakings of our time - the $3 billion Human Genome
> Project - the central dogma collapsed under the weight of fact. Results
> published last February show that there are far too few human genes to
> account for the complexity of our inherited traits or for the vast inherited
> differences between plants, say, and people. The finding signaled the
> downfall of the central dogma; it also destroyed the scientific foundation
> of genetic engineering and the validity of the biotechnology industry's
> widely advertised claim that its methods of genetically modifying food crops
> are precise, predictable, and safe.
>
> This should not have come as a surprise. Experimental data have been
> accumulating for decades. By the mid-1980s, long before the Human Genome
> Project was funded, and long before genetically modified crops began to
> appear in our fields, a series of protein-based processes had already
> intruded on the DNA gene's exclusive genetic franchise. An array of protein
> enzymes must repair the all-too-frequent mistakes in gene replication and in
> the transmission of the genetic code to proteins as well. Certain proteins,
> assembled in spliceosomes, can reshuffle the RNA transcripts, creating
> hundreds and even thousands of different proteins from a single gene. A
> family of chaperones, proteins that facilitate the proper folding - and
> therefore the biochemical activity - of newly made proteins, form an
> essential part of the gene-to-protein process.
>
> By any reasonable measure, these results contradict the central dogma's
> cardinal maxim: that a DNA gene exclusively governs the molecular processes
> that give rise to a particular inherited trait. The DNA gene clearly exerts
> an important influence on inheritance, but it is not unique in that respect
> and acts only in collaboration with a multitude of protein-based processes
> that prevent and repair incorrect sequences, transform the nascent protein
> into its folded, active form, and provide crucial added genetic information
> well beyond that originating in the gene itself. The net outcome is that no
> single DNA gene is the sole source of a given protein's genetic information
> and therefore of the inherited trait.
>
> The credibility of the Human Genome Project is not the only casualty of the
> scientific community's resistance to experimental results that contradict
> the central dogma. Nor is it the most significant casualty. The fact that
> one gene can give rise to multiple proteins also destroys the theoretical
> foundation of a multibillion-dollar industry, the genetic engineering of
> food crops. In genetic engineering it is assumed, without adequate
> experimental proof, that a bacterial gene for an insecticidal protein, for
> example, transferred to a corn plant, will produce precisely that protein
> and nothing else. Yet in that alien genetic environment, alternative
> splicing of the bacterial gene might give rise to multiple variants of the
> intended protein - or even to proteins bearing little structural
> relationship to the original one, with unpredictable effects on ecosystems
> and human health.
>
> Because of their commitment to an obsolete theory, most molecular biologists
> operate under the assumption that DNA is the secret of life, whereas the
> careful observation of the hierarchy of living processes strongly suggest
> that it is the other way around: DNA did not create life; life created DNA.
> When life was first formed on the earth, proteins must have appeared before
> DNA because, unlike DNA, proteins have the catalytic ability to generate the
> chemical energy needed to assemble small ambient molecules into larger ones
> such as DNA. DNA is a mechanism created by the cell to store information
> produced by the cell. Early life survived because it grew, building up its
> characteristic array of complex molecules. It must have been a sloppy kind
> of growth; what was newly made did not exactly replicate what was already
> there. But once produced by the primitive cell, DNA could become a stable
> place to store structural information about the cell's chaotic chemistry,
> something like the minutes taken by a secretary at a noisy committee
> meeting.
>
> There can be no doubt that the emergence of DNA was a crucial stage in the
> development of life, but we must avoid the mistake of reducing life to a
> master molecule in order to satisfy our emotional need for unambiguous
> simplicity. The experimental data, shorn of dogmatic theories, points to the
> irreducibility of the living cell, the inherent complexity of which suggests
> that any artificially altered genetic system, given the magnitude of our
> ignorance, must sooner or later give rise to unintended, potentially
> disastrous, consequences. We must be willing to recognize how little we
> truly understand about the secrets of the cell, the fundamental unit of
> life.
>
> January 15, 2002
>
>
> The article "Unraveling the DNA Myth: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic
> Engineering" is published in Harper's Magazine, February 2002
>
> Harper's Magazine welcomes reader response to the article. Short letters are
> more likely to be published, and all letters are subject to editing. Volume
> precludes individual acknowledgement. Please direct your letter to:
>
> Letters Editor
> Harper's Magazine
> 666 Broadway, 11th Floor
> New York, NY 10012
> or e-mail your letter to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> The study reported in Harper's Magazine is the initial publication of a new
> initiative called The Critical Genetics Project directed by Dr. Commoner in
> collaboration with molecular geneticist Dr. Andreas Athanasiou.
>
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
> CBNS
> Queens College,
> City University of New York
> 718 670-4180
> http://cbns.qc.edu/
>
> This page last updated July 2, 2002
>
>
Barry Commoner's excellent article can have very far reaching consequences.

The reason that his ideas meet with so much resistance, is that he is coming dangerously close to what is still a tabu subject in scientific thought, namely: that a creative consciousness may well be at work in nature, not only in the distant past (God before the 'big bang’) but in the immediate present; a consciousness that both creates and reads the DNA 'code'. And indeed the disturbing fact that without such a consciousness the very use of the word ‘code’ is irrational, because it unconsciously (and illegitimately) inserts the workings of the human mind into nature, a subject I have dealt with at some length in my book ‘Evolution and the New Gnosis’.  

The tabu I refer to is the one that the English philologist Owen Barfield describes in his book ‘Speaker’s Meaning’ (Wesleyan University Press, Middleton, Conn. 1967), which consists in the text of four lectures that he gave at Brandies University in 1965.  In the fourth lecture the theme of a “great tabu” is introduced and the following two presuppositions are shown to underlie it:  first, that “‘inwardness’ subjectivity of any sort... is always the product of a stimulated organism” and second, that “in the history of the universe... ‘matter’ preceded ‘mind’”. Barfield argues that the requirement that these two presuppositions be strictly observed by scientists, or risk the extreme displeasure of their colleagues, places an irrational limitation on much of modern thought. The tabu, however, applies only to science, because just about all of religion is pre-critical, and can exist today only in a dualism.

I suggest, therefore, that the problems raised by Barry Commomer will not go away until science has learned to overcome this ‘great tabu,’ and then we shall find that the ‘life’ that creates DNA is the same Consciousness that creates and directs the entire natural world.

Don Cruse