Hello Keith,
We say that there are no accidents, that everything has meaning and should be treated with the respect of not messing around until we know what that meaning is. The appendix is another example. It is a reset button for the gut. They took my student's appendix out when she didn't need to. It was a medical mistake. They also didn't attach a connection to colitis that she had afterwards. Now she's on drugs for the rest of her life. When people make money on you being sick, it serves their purpose to stimulate their profit. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, September 07, 2012 2:21 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Mario Draghi badly needs a tutorial 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 <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>
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