ANCESTRY-DOT-WHO

There are people who spend inordinate amounts of time tracing their ancestry.  I feel that anything past 100 years (five generations) is a waste of time as the DNA inherited from any one ancestor is so minute as to be inconsequential.  

There is no such thing as a direct line of ancestry.   Ancestry is most always followed through a particular male line, and each preceding generation (20 yrs.) is counted exponentially:

Generation #1:   2 parents – 2 grandfathers

Gen. #2:   4 grandfathers

Gen. #3:   8 grandfathers

Gen. #4:   16 grandfathers

Gen. #5:   32 grandfathers…

The DAR members attempt to show a direct blood line back to the American Revolution (about 240 years or 12 generations.)   At that point you have 4000 twelfth-generation-great-grandfathers.  And since only half of your DNA comes from your male line and half comes from your female line, any great… grandfather from that era represents only one-eight-thousandth (1/8000^th.) of your DNA.

Another interesting fact is that we share 89% of our DNA with our closest ape relative chimpanzees, and if you are of European ancestry you probably have between 2-to-4 percent of your DNA Neanderthal.  

Posted by your cousin

the Ol’Buzzard

YOU CAN'T GO BACK TO MAYBERRY.

Stephen King’s book The Stand and even more recently Justin Cronin’s book Passage portray an apocalyptic world resulting from scientific research gone wrong. 

Just as cloning and genetic manipulation brought about the concept of Jurassic Park, a new genetic innovation has up the ante: it is called CRISPR-Cas9.

I looked online for a video that might explain CRISPR in simple, nontechnical language, but even those that claim to be a basic delved too much into DNA/RNA, genetic paring…

So instead I will make an effort to put this into a nontechnical-language explanation.

1.    We can picture DNA strands as a rope ladder.

2.    Two scientist have come up with a molecular robot that can cut the  ladder.   This robot is named CRISPR.  

3.    Diseases like Alzheimer, AIDS, Parkinson, Cancer and even certain heart diseases have an identifiable corrupted DNA signature.

4.    CRISPR can be programed to search and identify these corrupted strings of DNA and basically cut them out of the ladder.  

5.    Cas9 is an attachment to CRISPR and can reconnect the severed ladder ends by replacing the corrupted string with a non-corrupted string.

This is not Science fiction or something that may evolve in the future: it exists at present time and is now being tweaked in genetic experimental laboratories. 

This procedure is relative inexpensive, costing less than $300 before pharmaceuticals and hospitals would add their profit margin.  This procedure could make humans immune to all the diseases that now kill us off – basically extending our lifespan and keeping us health into old age.  Even possibly reversing the aging process

But, the procedure will need testing – human trials to be approved.

Also, like yin and yang, black and white, positive and negative – this procedure has some ethical issues.  

Using this simple procedure, you could easily genetically modify Hume beings.   It would be easy to insure an unborn baby was a male with black hair and green eye; but you could also adjust his adult height, bone density, muscle density, aggression, intelligence quota etc.   In other word you could manufacture a race with individuals designed for certain task. 

You can immediately picture Christians opposing this: humans playing God.   Christians have opposed every scientific achievement since its conception.   

Just as with stem cell research I expect this research will be delayed possibly into the next decade.  But, scientist have a history of continuing their research despite opposition – for the sake of science.  If they feel they can accomplish a scientific breakthrough they tend to forge ahead. 

At the very least, the future could be interesting.

the Ol’Buzzard