Announced a few days ago in a flurry of scientific excitement second
only to the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson, an international
team of over 400 research geneticists revealed that our "junk DNA" is
not junk at all. The 97% of our DNA which some scientists hitherto
considered to be useless turns out to consist mainly of up to two or
three million switches (or epigenes) which control the expression of
our 20,000 genes (3% of our DNA). The true situation in every cell in
our body is rather as if the Albert Hall in London were fitted out as
one giant Wurlitzer Organ instead of seating for an audience.
The implications for future health treatment of many complex diseases
such as multiple sclerosis, heart diseases and cancers are immense
and, already, hundreds of articles and blogs in the media speak of
these. But genes and their epigenetic control switches are not only
responsible for purely bodily functions but also (via our hormones)
for psychological predispositions. Furthermore, epigenes, like genes,
are inherited.
Except that, while genes are inherited for hundreds or thousands of
generations at a time -- for as long as a species remains a species
-- without a great deal of change, epigenes are inherited for much
shorter periods and, to boot, many of them are constantly changing
from one generation to the next. Each of us inherits the bulk of our
epigenes from our parents (50% from mothers, 50% from fathers) but
many epigenes fall away after one or more generations while new ones
are added in the lifetime of every individual. The additions depend
on the specific environment in which the individual grows up.
Thus, identical twins, both born with an identical set of genes and
epigenetic predispositions to this disease, or this or that
behaviour, can change markedly throughout their lifetimes as each
twin leaves his or her family and grows up into the wider adult
environment. One twin with a strong predisposition to diabetes or
schizophrenia may succomb sometime during his or her lifetime while
the other, with an identical and equally strong predisposition, may
avoid the same dire consequences.
All this explains why the disease profile of one long-standing
culture differs substantially from that of another. For example,
people who live in the Mediterranean region are twenty times more
likely to inherit a predisposition to cystic fibrosis than those who
live in Northern Germany. This is due to centuries of different
climates and environments in which they work, and the differential
selection and de-selection of the cystic fibrosis epigene (as well as
hundreds more epigenes). This also explains why the psychological
orientation of Germans is distinctly different from Grecians, and
will remain so. The descendants of a Greek family which moves to
north Germany won't become "authentically" German in disease or
psychological predisposition for several generations until their
inherited epigenes have largely blended with the majority of Germans
around them.
The only way that the 17 countries of the Eurozone can become a
United States of Europe -- which is what senior officials and
politicians want to happen -- is if a common political and economic
environment is imposed on them all by legalistic force and maintained
for at least several generations until a large common set of
psychological epigenes is acquired by all 17 countries by personal
inheritance at birth.
At the very least, this could only be initiated by either civil war
or fighting a war against a third party. These, in fact, are the only
ways that most nation-states have come into existence already -- and
then the new unification subsequently maintained by legalistic
(sometime military) force for at least (history suggests) a dozen
generations or so. (Many nation-states, such as the UK, are still
insufficiently blended and are already falling apart into previous
separate cultures.)
Think on, O Eurocrats (Mario Draghi most of all), you won't succeed
in imposing a common taxation and budgetary authority over the
Eurozone unless you have a civil war or find a common enemy to unite
against. Otherwise, you would avoid a great deal of further dangerous
damage of monetary affairs if you were to consult with any of the
team of 400 research geneticists who have brought off the most
spectacular discovery yet in the human sciences (since Crick-Watson
or Darwin, anyway).
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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