Saturday, April 13, 2024

This Frankenstein Folly Would Be a Trail of Tears for Elephants

A recent interview with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro is an interview that may deserve some careful scrutiny given its controversial subject.  The interview is entitled "What ‘de-extinction’ of woolly mammoths can teach us: a Q&A with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro."  Shapiro is the chief science officer of a company that claims that it will attempt to revive from extinction some extinct species such as the wooly mammoth and the dodo. 

Early on Shapiro makes this strange statement: "I’ve really begun to appreciate how the technologies one would need in order to bring back something similar to a mammoth are exactly the types of technologies we need to be able to protect and preserve species that are still alive today but in danger of becoming extinct like the mammoth did."  No, preventing an endangered species from going extinct requires mainly low-tech methods such as stopping hunting of the species and carefully preserving existing members of the species, not high tech methods such as gene-splicing.  Shapiro here is trying to give a benevolent sound to an ethically troubling program of gene-fiddling that will probably be a trail of tears for elephants, for reasons I will explain later in this post. 

In the interview Shapiro eventually gives us a quote that lets us know that when scientists talk about performing a "de-extinction" of the wholly mammoth, they're not really talking about any such thing. She says this:

"What we actually mean when we talk about de-extinction now is using the tools of genome engineering to resurrect the core traits of these species that used to be there. We’re not creating a mammoth. We’re taking an Asian elephant and helping it to become something that is more similar to a mammoth by resurrecting the capacity to live in colder climates."

So evolutionary biologists such as Shapiro are using the word "de-extinction" in a misleading way. When they refer to "de-extinction" they are talking about something that isn't actually de-extinction, but instead the hubris of massive experimental gene fiddling. Getting an elephant to look more like a wooly mammoth sure isn't causing the de-extinction of the wooly mammoth. I guess such language abuse is just what we should expect from evolutionary biologists, who have a long history of using language in misleading ways. One of their main abuses of languages has been to use the phrase "natural selection" to refer to something that is not actually selection. Selection means a choice by a conscious agent. So-called "natural selection" is no such thing, but merely a kind of survival-of-the-fittest effect.  The people who have long been referring to selection that isn't really selection are now referring to a de-extinction that isn't really de-extinction.  I guess that's why the title of the interview uses "de-extinction" in quotation marks, as if trying to say, "Don't take me literally."

A bit later in the interview Shapiro seems to change her story, telling us, "Eriona [Hysolli]’s team — the mammoth team — they understand that we have all of the core technologies that we would need to create a mammoth, but what we need to do is, tune them, tweak them, and make them all apply to elephant cells." Huh? Previously Shapiro said, "we're not creating a mammoth" but now she says "we have all of the core technologies that we would need to create a mammoth." It sounds like she is having trouble getting her story straight. Similarly, Shapiro wrote a book entitled "How to Clone a Mammoth," but in the preface of the book she says "here's the truth, it is not possible to clone a mammoth." Wow, that sure sounds like a very glaring case of failing to get your story straight. 

In the recent interview Shapiro then mentions some work her company is doing on stem cells.  We should not be very impressed here, and we should remember that for twenty-five years we have been promised that some great bonanza of treatments would arise from work with stem cells, a bonanza that never appeared. story last year in the MIT Technology Review describes 25 years of hype about stem cells, and tells us, "Yet today, more than two decades later, there are no treatments on the market based on these cells. Not one."  

Shapiro sounds as is she has not pondered the paltry results of stem-cell research on humans, because she tries to sell us on the idea  that stem cells are going to be some health bonanza for elephants. She states this:

" Elephant iPSCs [induced pluripotent stem cells] are not only good for mammoth de-extinction, they’re also good for work that people want to do with elephants. We want to be able to help elephants thrive in habitats of today and tomorrow, including habitats that include diseases that have been introduced by people. This provides the capacity to do that."

Despite 25 years of hype about stem cells, scientists have delivered almost nothing in the way of FDA-approved stem cell treatments for humans. The idea that stem cell treatments might play some substantial role in helping to preserve elephants from extinction is laughable. Doing stem-cell treatments on elephants is as impractical an idea as the idea of doing surgery on a great white shark. A visual depiction of the idea may cause you to giggle.  

Later on Shapiro states this:

"There are millions of evolutionary differences between an Asian elephant and a mammoth, and it’s unlikely that making one or two small changes is going to create the mammoth phenotype in an Asian elephant’s genetic background. We need tools for multiplex genome editing, for introducing large fragments of DNA, all of which will have application to using CRISPR gene editing technologies in humans and other species."

The use of "unlikely" here rather than "impossible" is strange, rather like saying, "My novel has a million text differences from yours, so it is unlikely that changing one sentence in my novel will make it into your novel." The quotation above seems to suggest that evolutionary biologists want to "play Frankenstein" doing massive gene-splicing with elephants so that they can get skills that may allow them to "play Frankenstein" doing massive gene-splicing with humans.  We get an ominous "eugenics" kind of vibe here, which has the sound of reckless hubris.  Until the origin of COVID has been proven to be natural, we should be very afraid of such gene-fiddling hubris.  

Shapiro then proceeds to teach one of the most outrageous myths of evolutionary biologists, what I call the Great DNA Myth. This is the false teaching that DNA is a specification for making a human body. For many decades following about 1950 evolutionary biologists have taught this false teaching, which is taught in various different ways:

There are various ways in which this false idea is stated, all equally false:

  • Many described DNA or the genome as a blueprint for an organism.
  • Many said DNA or the genome is a recipe for making an organism.
  • Many said DNA or the genome is a program for building an organism, making an analogy to a computer program.
  • Many claimed that DNA or genomes specify the anatomy of an organism. 
  • Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) specify phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism).
  • Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) "map"  phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) or "map to" phenotypes.
  • Many claimed that DNA contains "all the instructions needed to make an organism."
  • Many claimed that there is a "genetic architecture" for an organism's body or some fraction of that body. 
  • Using a little equation,  many claimed that a "genotype plus the environment equals the phenotype," a formulation as false  as the preceding statements, since we know of nothing in the environment that would cause phenotypes to arise from genotypes that do not specify such phenotypes. 

There was never any justification for making any such claims. The only coding system that has ever been discovered in DNA is a system allowing only low-level chemical information to be specified.  That coding system is known as the genetic code, and it is merely a system whereby certain combinations of nucleotide base pairs in DNA stand for amino acids.  So a section of DNA can specify the amino acids that make up a protein molecule. But no one has ever discovered any coding system by which DNA could specify anything larger than a protein molecule. 

The Genetic Code

No one ever discovered any coding system in DNA by which parts of DNA can specify high-level anatomy such as the arrangement of parts in an organ, or a skeletal structure, or an overall body appearance.  No one has even discovered any coding system in DNA by which the structure of cells can be specified.  The human body has at least 200 types of cells, and the structure of none of these cell types is specified by DNA. DNA does not even specify the structure of organelles that are the building blocks of cells.

If you ponder the simple fact that blueprints don't build things, you can start to get an idea of how nonsensical is the claim that a human arises because a DNA blueprint is read.  Blueprints have no power of construction.  When buildings are built with the help of blueprints, it is because intelligent agents read the blueprints to get an idea of what type of construction work to do, and because intelligent agents then follow such instructions. But there is nothing in the human body below the neck with the power to understand and carry out instructions for building a body if they happened to exist in DNA. 

Shapiro uses this language to teach the Great DNA Myth:

"One of the hardest problems in biology right now is understanding how the long stretches of A’s and C’s and G’s and T’s that make up the genome translate into the way a person or an organism looks and acts, and that includes disease manifestations. We have hundreds of thousands of human genomes, and we still can’t pinpoint with precision what gene means what phenotype. One of the ways that we’re going to get there is through comparative genomics, and that includes species outside of our own. So if we are building these resources where we have genomes from across the tree of life, and more complete understanding of how DNA translates into the way something looks or acts, we will be able to apply this to making more informed decisions or hypotheses that will drive future experiments to understand the link between genotype and disease."

We have here a statement that teaches the false doctrine that phenotypes (the appearance and behavior of an organism) are specified by DNA (the long stretches of A’s and C’s and G’s and T’s that make up the genome).  This myth that "DNA translates into the way something looks or actsis the untruth that many evolutionary biologists have been teaching for seventy years. We also have a little bit of excuse-making for why no one has been able to find any specification of the human body or any of its cells in DNA.

The excuse does not hold water. If DNA contained a specification for how to build a body or if "DNA translates into the way something looks or acts," how that worked would have been discovered by about the year 2003, when the Human Genome Project was completed, and very probably long before that year.  The reason why no such thing was discovered is because genotypes do not map to phenotypes,  DNA does not specify how to make an organism or any of its cells, and DNA does not determine how something looks or acts, but merely influences such things. Containing only low-level chemical information and no high-level anatomy information, DNA merely influences how an organism looks or acts. Consequently all talk of "de-extinction" by fiddling with the genomes of existing species is nonsense. 

The promise in Shapiro's statement that we are going to get to some point where we understand "what gene means what phenotype" suggests a nonsensical assumption that there is a one-to-one relation between a gene and an observable characteristic of an organism.  Humans have something like 20,000 genes, and the observable characteristics of an organism are influenced by thousands of genes. But such genes don't specify how you get protein complexes made from combinations of different proteins, nor do they specify how you get the organelles of cells, nor do they specify how you get cells, nor do they specify how you get tissues, nor do they specify how you get organs, nor do they specify how you get organ systems, nor do they specify how you get the overall organization of an organism. 

A fact will help you realize how implausible is the idea expressed in the Shapiro quote above, the idea that we will somehow discover "how the long stretches of A’s and C’s and G’s and T’s that make up the genome translate into the way a person or an organism looks and acts" and "how DNA translates into the way something looks or actsonce we have cataloged more genomes "across the tree of life."  The fact is that the genomes of more than 3000 species have already been sequenced. This includes species of every major type, including humans, African elephants, Asian elephants and a vast variety of different species across many different phyla. You can see the full list here. If there was such a mapping between DNA and  "the way something looks or acts," it would have been discovered long ago, and we would know how it worked. 

Below are some quotes from biology authorities and scientists who told us the truth on this matter, contrary to what Shapiro stated:

  • On page 26 of the recent book The Developing Genome, Professor David S. Moore states, "The common belief that there are things inside of us that constitute a set of instructions for building bodies and minds -- things that are analogous to 'blueprints' or 'recipes' -- is undoubtedly false."
  • Biologist Rupert Sheldrake says this "DNA only codes for the materials from which the body is constructed: the enzymes, the structural proteins, and so forth," and "There is no evidence that it also codes for the plan, the form, the morphology of the body."
  • Describing conclusions of biologist Brian Goodwin, the New York Times says, "While genes may help produce the proteins that make the skeleton or the glue, they do not determine the shape and form of an embryo or an organism." 
  • Professor Massimo Pigliucci (mainstream author of numerous scientific papers on evolution) has stated  that "old-fashioned metaphors like genetic blueprint and genetic programme are not only woefully inadequate but positively misleading."
  • Neuroscientist Romain Brette states, "The genome does not encode much except for amino acids."
  • In a 2016 scientific paper, three scientists state the following: "It is now clear that the genome does not directly program the organism; the computer program metaphor has misled us...The genome does not function as a master plan or computer program for controlling the organism; the genome is the organism's servant, not its master.
  • In the book Mind in Life by Evan Thompson (published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) we read the following on page 180: "The plain truth is that DNA is not a program for building organisms, as several authors have shown in detail (Keller 2000, Lewontin 1993, Moss 2003)."
  • Developmental biologist C/H. Waddington stated, "The DNA is not a program or sequentially accessed control over the behavior of the cell."
  •  Scientists Walker and Davies state this in a scientific paper"DNA is not a blueprint for an organism; no information is actively processed by DNA alone...DNA is a passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins."
  • Geneticist Adam Rutherford states that "DNA is not a blueprint," a statement also made by biochemistry professor Keith Fox.
  • "The genome is not a blueprint," says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, noting "it doesn't encode some specific outcome."
  • "DNA cannot be seen as the 'blueprint' for life," says Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, who says, "It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times."  
  • Sergio Pistoi (a science writer with a PhD in molecular biology) tells us, "DNA is not a blueprint," and tells us, "We do not inherit specific instructions on how to build a cell or an organ." 
  • Michael Levin (director of a large biology research lab) states that "genomes are not a blueprint for anatomy," and after referring to a "deep puzzle" of how biological forms arise, he gives this example: "Scientists really don’t know what determines the intricate shape and structure of the flatworm’s head."
  • Ian Stevenson M.D. stated "Genes alone - which provide instructions for the production of amino acids and proteins -- cannot explain how the proteins produced by their instructions come to have the shape they develop and, ultimately, determine the form of the organisms where they are," and noted that "biologists who have drawn attention to this important gap in our knowledge of form have not been a grouping of mediocrities (Denton, 1986; Goldschmidt, 1952; B. C. Goodwin, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1994; Gottlieb, 1992; Grasse, 1973; E. S. Russell...Sheldrake, 1981; Tauber and Sarkar, 1992; Thompson, 1917/1942)."
  • Biologist B.C. Goodwin stated this in 1989: "Since genes make molecules, genetics...does not tell us how the molecules are organized into the dynamic, organized process that is the living organism."
  • An article in the journal Nature states this: "The manner in which bodies and tissues take form remains 'one of the most important, and still poorly understood, questions of our time', says developmental biologist Amy Shyer, who studies morphogenesis at the Rockefeller University in New York City."
  • Timothy Saunders, a developmental biologist at the National University of Singapore, says"Fundamentally, we have a poor understanding of how any internal organ forms.” 
  • In an essay pointing out the vast complexities and interlocking dependencies of even simpler aspects of biology such as angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels),  Jonathan Bard of Oxford University states, "It is pushing the boundaries of belief too far to believe that it is helpful to see the genome as holding a program." 
  • paper by Stuart A. Newman (a professor of cell biology and anatomy) discussing at length the work of scientists trying to evoke "self-organization" as an explanation for morphogenesis states that "public lectures by principals of the field contain confidently asserted, but similarly oversimplified or misleading treatments," and says that "these analogies...give the false impression that there has been more progress in understanding embryonic development than there truly has been." Referring to scientists moving from one bunk explanation of morphogenesis to another bunk explanation for it, the paper concludes by stating, "It would be unfortunate if we find ourselves having emerged from a period of misconceived genetic program metaphors only to land in a brave new world captivated by equally misguided ones about self-organization."
  • Referring to claims there is a program for building organisms in DNA, biochemist F. M. Harold stated "reflection on the findings with morphologically aberrant mutants suggests that the metaphor of a genetic program is misleading." Referring to  self-organization (a vague phrase sometimes used to try to explain morphogenesis), he says, "self-organization remains nearly as mysterious as it was a century ago, a subject in search of a paradigm." 
  • Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin stated, "DNA is not self-reproducing; second, it makes nothing; and third, organisms are not determined by it." Noting that "the more accurate description of the role of DNA is that it bears information that is read by the cell machinery," Lewontin lamented the "evangelical enthusiasm" of those who "fetishized DNA" and misspoke so that "DNA as information bearer is transmogrified into DNA as blueprint, as plan, as master plan, as master molecule." In another work he stated "the information in DNA sequences is insufficient to specify even a folded protein, not to speak of an entire organism." This was correct: DNA does not even specify the 3D shapes of proteins.
  • Physician James Le Fanu states the following:

    "The genome projects were predicated on the reasonable assumption that spelling out the full sequence of genes would reveal the distinctive genetic instructions that determine the diverse forms of life. Biologists were thus understandably disconcerted to discover that precisely the reverse is the case. Contrary to all expectations, there is a near equivalence of 20,000 genes across the vast spectrum of organismic complexity, from a millimetre-long worm to ourselves. It was no less disconcerting to learn that the human genome is virtually interchangeable with that of both the mouse and our primate cousins...There is in short nothing in the genomes of fly and man to explain why the fly has six legs, a pair of wings and a dot-sized brain and that we should have two arms, two legs and a mind capable of comprehending the history of our universe."

The lie that evolutionary biologists have repeatedly told us about DNA (that it is some specification for making a human) is one of the most appalling lies humans have ever been told.  Once we recognize the truth about how limited is the information in DNA, and that DNA contains only low-level chemical information and not high-level anatomical information, we can start to realize the incredibly important truth that biologists do not understand and cannot credibly explain how any adult human body originates. The progression from a speck-sized zygote to the vast hierarchical organization of the human body is a miracle of organization a thousand miles over the heads of biologists.

In the light of the reality that biologists do not understand the origin of any human adult body, and also the reality that biologists have no credible explanation for the origin of any adult human mind  (because brains are not a credible explanation for human minds and human memory), we can see what a groundless boast it is when evolutionary biologists claim to understand the origin of the human species. The lack of a DNA or genomic specification for how to make an organism or any of its cells or organs is something that short-circuits the main boasts of evolutionary biologists, showing that they do not have any credible story to tell of how macroevolution could occur.  If DNA does not even give you 20% of the information needed to make a human (and it certainly does not), then all claims that humans evolved from ape-like or chimp-like ancestors mainly by a gradual change in DNA are claims that must be untrue. "DNA as body blueprint" is the lie that evolutionary biologists keep telling because it is very much the lie they needed to tell. 

The diagram below tells us the truth about the level of organization in the human body, and what DNA specifies. Even protein molecules are not fully specified by DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up particular proteins, not the complex three-dimensional shapes of such protein molecules. You can't gene-splice your way to de-extinction, because DNA and its genes don't even take you halfway through this organization pyramid. 

pyramid of biological complexity

By claiming "the long stretches of A’s and C’s and G’s and T’s that make up the genome translate into the way a person or an organism looks and acts,Shapiro seems to have taught the Great DNA Myth in its most extreme and erroneous form, a belief that DNA gives rise not to just the physical body of an organism but also its behavior.  Nothing has come from attempts to explain human behavior by analyzing DNA, nor has anyone explained animal instincts by analyzing DNA. The A’s and C’s and G’s and T’s that make up the genome merely translate into low-level chemicals such as amino acids, not cells or the organelles that make up them, and not organs and not body structures and not behavior. The 20,000 genes in human DNA are each complex inventions mostly consisting of thousands of well-arranged atoms,  but evolutionary biologists have no credible explanation for most of them, because such genes consist of too many well-arranged parts and are only functional when most of those parts are in place and well-arranged.  Evolution does not explain DNA; DNA does not explain bodies; and bodies do not explain minds

The Great DNA Myth has also been repeatedly taught by George M.  Church, a founder of Shapiro's company (Colossus Biosciences). In a book he wrote (Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves), Church taught that myth when he incorrectly stated that DNA contains "recipes for making human beings."  On page 4 of the same book, Church taught the erroneous idea that living organisms are "governed by a program" in the genome, the untrue claim that "biological organisms are programmable manufacturing systems," and that "with appropriate changes in their genetic programming, they could be made to produce practically any imaginable artifact." Elsewhere Church referred erroneously to  "the entire instruction book for making and maintaining a human being contained within our DNA." No such instruction book exists in DNA, which contains no anatomy information and does not even have instructions on how to build cells. 

Some of the odd statements Shapiro has made can be understood as PR spin trying to make experimental gene fiddling seem noble. Shapiro has tried to give some benevolent sound to the senseless project of fiddling with the genes of elephants to try to make them more like the wooly mammoth.  Such a project will probably be a nightmare for most elephants involved in it.  This is because the process of experimental gene fiddling will probably produce far more birth defects and monstrosities than anything that might be an improvement. 

As I document in the "Fragility of Fine-Tuned Protein Molecules" section of my "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" post here, genes and proteins are incredibly sensitive to small changes, a reality that evolutionary biologists like to ignore because it tends to discredit their boasts of understanding biological origins.  The more sensitive genes and proteins are to small changes, the less credible are claims of the accidental origins of genes and proteins. The biochemistry in organisms is fantastically complex and fine-tuned, a reality that evolutionary biologists avoid discussing because the more you learn about such precise fine-tuning, the less likely you will be to believe the claims of evolutionary biologists. Because biochemistry is fantastically fine-tuned everywhere and biological systems are super-abundant in subtle interdependencies and because biological systems everywhere display the most stratospheric levels of fine-tuned organization and precise functional complexity (which makes gene-splicing enormously risky and hard to get right), the hubris vanity project of trying to fiddle with elephant genes so you can then lie about having reversed the extinction of wooly mammoths is a project that would almost certainly be a "trail of tears" for most of the elephants involved in it. There will probably be very many needless cases of sick elephants or elephants with birth defects.

But we won't hear about such horrors and misery from the spokespeople of the Frankenstein projects, who will always use their PR skills to make the work of their company sound benevolent, no matter how sinister its work may be.  Previously we got from one corporation or one of its chief investors the inaccurate claim that no monkey had died from one of its brain chip implants. The claim was not correct.  Those in charge of the Frankenstein follies will have various ways to keep their very dirty linen hidden from the public, like the imaginary way depicted below:

gene splicing

Shapiro's company Colossal has a plan for making these not-really-mammoths, one that is science fiction nonsense. In a previous interview, Shapiro says, "Colossal’s idea is that they will build an artificial womb that will be capable of growing a mammoth for the two years of gestation."  This is "beam me up, Scotty" fantasy. In the next 50 years  it will be impossible to build a machine that will recreate the miracle of mammalian body construction. There are nations or corporations that know how to make an aircraft carrier, but there is not a nation or corporation that could create a human or mammoth body from a cell or raw materials, without a mother -- because the bodies of mammals are so vastly organized and dynamically complex that the organizational complexity of creating a living body of a large mammal far surpasses the organizational complexity of creating an aircraft carrier and all its jets. 

We do not need evolutionary biologists to be fiddling with the genes of elephants, trying to make them look more like wooly mammoths. We do need evolutionary biologists to start being rigorously honest and candid and consistent in their speech, speaking with only the most stringent accuracy about things such as what is in DNA, and the vast levels of hierarchical organizational and fine-tuned functional complexity and component interdependence in large organisms.  

contradictory statements of biologists
Oops, he didn't get his story straight

Rationalization is when someone gives some noble reasons for his actions that are not the real reasons. At the Colossal Biosciences website, we get what sounds like some very glaring examples of rationalization.  We are told some ludicrous story that the company wants to de-extinct wooly mammoths because it will be good for global warming. As part of their explanation of this, we are told that mammoths are good at knocking down trees and shrubs.  The story told is groundless speculation, but I guess it sounds better than saying, "We want to do this gene-splicing because it's fun to play God." 

The project of trying to bring back to life extinct wooly mammoths by gene-fiddling with elephants is as goofy as a plan to try to bring back to life George Washington by digging up his buried corpse and jolting it with electricity, Frankenstein-style.

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