Darwin Day and Human Origins

Yesterday was Charles Darwin's 198th birthday. It is certainly fitting that we honor this man who advanced our understanding of our world with a giant step forward. Check out the new exhibit at the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History.

A Simple Fact about the Process of Evolution

From Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, page 120, by Daniel Dennett (Viking Penquin 2006):

Evolution is all about processes that almost never happen. Every birth in every lineage is a potential speciation event, but speciation almost never happens, not once in a million births. Mutation in DNA almost never happens-not once in a trillion copyings-but evolution depends on it. Take the set of infrequent accidents-things that almost never happen-and sort them into the happy accidents, the neutral accidents, and the fatal accidents; amplify the effects of the happy accidents-which happens automatically when you have replication and competition-and you get evolution.

More on the "murder" of embryos

Quoted from A Companion to Genetics, Eds. John Harris and Justine Burley (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), by Richard Dawkins in his article Collateral Damage Part I in the Dec 2006/Jan 2007 Free Inquiry magazine:

We now know that for every successful pregnancy which results in a live birth, many, perhaps as many as five, early embryos will be lost or miscarry (although these are not perhaps "miscarriages" as the term is normally used, because this sort of very early embryo loss is almost always entirely unnoticed). Many of these embryos will be lost because of genetic abnormalities, but some would have been viable. How are we to think of the decision to have a child in the light of these facts? One obvious and inescapable conclusion is that God and/or nature has ordained that "spare" embryos be produced for almost every pregnancy and that most of these will have to die in order that a sibling embryo can come to birth. Thus the sacrifice of embryos seems to be an inescapable and inevitable part of the process of procreation. It may not be intentional sacrifice, and it may not attend every pregnancy, but the loss of many embryos is the inevitable consequence of the vast majority of (and perhaps all) pregnancies. For everyone who knows the facts, it is conscious, knowing, and therefore deliberate sacrifice; and for everyone, regardless of "guilty" knowledge, it is part of the true description of what they do in having or attempting to have children.

For the Children

From Family Research Council's Washington Update, December 8, 2006, by Tony Perkins:

"Study after study demonstrates that no amount of care or financial privilege can compensate for the missing physical and emotional benefits experienced by children who enjoy the lifelong love and presence of a married mother and father.

"Comprehensive studies published in the peer-reviewed journals Archives of General Psychiatry, Interpersonal Violence, Social Service Research, Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Nursing Research, Developmental Psychology, Adolescence, and others too numerous to list here, all cite the devastating effects of domestic violence, increased substance abuse, mental health problems, sexual identity confusion, depression, and suicide associated with the homosexual lifestyle. A child fortunate enough to escape those realities still faces a distinct disadvantage throughout childhood--the irreplaceable influence of the missing biological parent. In rearing children, the complementary contributions of a mother and father are rooted in the innate differences of the two sexes, and can no more be arbitrarily replaced than can the very nature of male and female."


As a neurologist I don't keep up with any of the journals cited, so I'm not aware of any of those studies. But what the FRC and its ilk don't seem to understand or refuse to acknowledge is that the benefits to a child of having "lifelong love" don't necessarily have to come from a married mother and father. Some married parents are abusive and cruel, whereas some homosexual parents can easily provide the love and nurturing that children need. There may be a lot of psychopathology among a subset of homosexuals, but I suspect that much of that is due to their marginalization by society and their fear of persecution, not their homosexuality itself.

Comment by a friend (RO):
"The tremendous conceit among these people is that they present the mother/father/children nuclear family scenario as some sort of universal, ancient and timeless form that has served humanity since we got thrown out of Eden. What needs to be done to counter their argument is to point out constantly that not only is the American/Western/Christian nuclear family a recent phenomenon, its present form bears no resemblance to only a few decades ago. Furthermore, the fact of abuse, mental despair and dysfunction in the very family structure these outfits claim to be the one and only road to stability makes their very claims transparent and false. Sometimes a scholarly article or two appears on this subject, but the argument needs to go mainstream and constant -- if only to counter the immersion tactics these groups use to make their message seem to be the only one."

Slaughter of Innocents?

There are many anti-choice articles on the internet that equate the discarding of the unused embryos resulting from in vitro fertilization procedures as "murder." Although a little stupid, it's at least logical--in a perverse sort of way--given the degree of irrationality of that group of people.

As I noted in my previous post, there are those who equate the discarding of to-be-discarded embryos with killing "little human beings," hence the "murder" designation. As if believing the discarding of unused embryos weren't bizarre enough, along comes a news article that has to take the cake. Now someone is actually bringing murder charges against those who do discard these microscopic cell clusters. They ought instead to be charged with destroying the hopes of millions of humans who suffer from debilitating diseases who could potentially benefit from stem-cell research.

Little Human Beings?

A local physician, who shall remain unnamed for obvious reasons, wrote a letter to the editor of our local newpaper in which he said Michael J. Fox was wrong to call for embryonic stem-cell research. His reason was that these embryos, the ones left over from in vitro fertilizations, were "little human beings"! I fired off a response today, so I don't know if it will be published. Here is the text of my response with the doctor's name expunged:

"It is always distressing to read nonsense coming from anyone, especially from someone presumably educated in medicine. To call embryos "little human beings," as ________ did ("Fox wrong on stem-cell stance") is absurd. Really now, are eggs little chickens? Are human beings so inconsequential that a collection of a few undiffentiated cells [see picture above] gets to be elevated to the exalted status of human? The embryos (actually microscopic cell collections with no human characteristics whatever) in question are left over from in vitro fertilizations and if not used are destroyed. Tossed out, dumped in trash. Now doesn't using these instead to help cure devastating human diseases and unnecessary suffering a more compassionate option?"

In the upper right corner is a picture of three embryos as they appear prior to implantation in the uterus. Do you see anything resembling a human? I know, some see these little cell clusters as "potential humans," (although that potential at this point in their development is pretty shaky), but it is quite a stretch to call them "little human beings." Strange that those who protest against the use of these cells in research are rarely heard protesting at all about destroying them if they aren't used in fertilizations.

Empathy Center?

Neuroscientists have recently discovered an unusual set of neurons in primate brains and mostly likely in the human primate. Called mirror neurons (see Wikipedia for detailed description), these cells respond to an observed behavior in other primates. They create in the observer the sensation that they too are performing the same behavior, thus they mirror the observed behavior. I personally experience this daily and I suspect most of us do. If I see someone fall, for example, I instantly experience a similar sensation as if I had also fallen. Something like a sympathy pain. After hearing of this phenomenon and recognizing it in myself, I began to wonder if this part of the brain was what might be called the empathy center. I figured that if a person can feel what another person is experiencing, a sense of empathy will arise in the observer. And I'm guessing this feeling is due to those mirror neurons.

And this brings to mind another thought and a question: What if the reason some people have no empathy for those less fortunate than they is that they have a mirror neuron deficit?

Makes you wonder -- do conservatives have a mirror neuron deficit?

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith