– I watched a PBS NOVA special tonight entitled, “Ghost in your Genes“. The NOVA series is always a favorite with us and this was no exception.
– It was about the ‘Epigenome’. The word means, ‘above the genome’. As they explained, the way to think about this is that the genome is like the computer’s hardware and the Epigenome is like the software, above, that tells the hardware/genome what to do. This wasn’t particularly new to me as I’ve been following the developments these last few years as biologists have been discovering the RNA control systems that coexists and perhaps even preceded the DNA systems within our genetics.
– What was new and scary was the idea that what happens in one generation can effect the health outcomes in another generation. They had one study where they connected whether the human grandparents had experienced famine during critical times in their development and how those events in the lives of the grandparents had affected the health of their grandchildren.
– They showed how exposure to pesticides on one generation of rats could produce effects in the next four generations of their offspring.
– I couldn’t help but think about the many thousands of untested chemicals that we humans have unleashed on ourselves and the biosphere.
– They said that if someone chooses to smoke of drink, they used to be able to say, “It’s my body, I can take the risk if I want.” But now, it may be revealed that one’s actions can reverberate down through generations of your progeny.
– I also remembered a science fiction story I’d read within the last few years wherein human fertility in the future has dropped so far that only one couple in a thousand can create a viable child. In that world, humanity is literally wasting away off the planet as old age captures the vast majority of the population.
– It’s happening to the frogs and other amphibians. Something is happening to the bees. Why do we think we’re going to be immune to the chemical havoc we’re unleashing into the biosphere.
– All of this makes me think New Zealand may not be far enough to run. Maybe the Falkland Islands would be a better choice for those who want to avoid death by chemistry.
Tags: Ghost in the Genome, Nova, PBS
Dennis, your post reminds me of Theo Colborn’s 1996 book Our Stolen Future, which specifically discusses endocrine disruptors. Here’s an excerpt from her wikipedia entry:
“[Colborn’s] 1988 research on the state of the environment of the Great Lakes revealed that persistent, man-made chemicals were being transferred from top predator females to their offspring and undermining the construction and programming of their youngsters’ organs before they were born. In light of this evidence, in 1991 she convened 21 international scientists from 17 different disciplines to share their research relevant to trans-generational health impacts.”
With all the substances we’ve created since WWII and thrown into the ambient environment, we’ve turned ourselves (and other organisms, and all our offspring) into a huge experiment.
Traditional foods groups like the Weston A. Price Foundation take this recognition as the core of their message, that nutritionally deficient diets are amplified in succeeding generations. They often cite an experiment referred to as “Pottinger’s Cats”, by physician Francis Pottinger, where he was able to “breed down” a line of cats simply by substituting pasteurized milk in place of unpasteurized milk in an otherwise health diet.
To quote Wiki:
* By the end of the first generation the cats started to develop degenerative diseases and became quite lazy.
* By the end of the second generation, the cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and started losing their coordination.
* By the end of the third generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases very early in life and some were born blind and weak and had a much shorter life span. Many of the third generation cats couldn’t even produce offspring. There was an abundance of parasites and vermin while skin diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of five percent in normal cats to over 90 percent in the third generation of deficient cats. Kittens of the third generation did not survive six months. Bones became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from adverse personality changes. Males became docile while females became more aggressive.
* The cats suffered from most of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.
He also found he was able breed 2nd generation cats back up to a healthy vitality by introducing a more nutrient dense diet, but was unable to do so with 3rd generation animals as they rarely lived long enough to breed.
It makes sense that it would have to start in the egg and the sperm if we are to keep evoling or mutating. Life what a machine