In the year of 2000, President Bill Clinton stood before the nation and made an announcement that was 47 years in the making; the preliminary draft of the Human Genome Project was complete. Indeed, we have come a long way since the influential discovery made by James Watson and Sir Francis Crick, but even their wildest imaginations could not comprehend the effects of the insight that they shared with the scientific world that day.
Curiosity of how "like begets like" can be traced back as far as the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates, among many other philosophers, pondered heredity and came up with the theory of pangenesis, which states that sex involves the transfer of miniaturized, invisible body parts (Human Genetics, Notes p. 407). Preformation was another popular idea early in the history of humans. Preformationism contended that either the egg or the sperm contained a miniature person called a homunculus; development was a matter of growing once outside the womb (DNA Watson). Genetic disease under the premise of preformationism was interpreted in various ways: the wrath of God, the mischief of demons, deficits in the "seed", or wicked thoughts by the mother (DNA Watson). Napoleon so feared the last of these interpretations that he passed a law that permitted poor, expecting mothers to shoplift (DNA Watson)! .
This biggest advance in genetics at the time came when Charles Darwin, in support of his theory of evolution by natural selection, put forth a modified version of pangenesis (DNA Watson). According to Darwin, the organs of an animal had "gemmules" that accumulated in the sex organs and were consequently exchanged during sexual reproduction (Darwin Species). His theory differed from the original pangenesis line of thought in that gemmules were in constant production during the organism's lifetime, thus if an advantageous change were to affect the organism, it could be passed on to its offspring (Darwin Species).
DNA! ... DNA! Some call it the miracle molecule, or the magic molecule. ... What, indeed, is Christianity's interest in such things as DNA and the Human Genome Initiative? ... The latter piercing a bit the mystery of God's will for his creation is the task of all of us. ...
Human Genome Project (HGP) Introduction: To discover the mystery of the universe is the dream of every scientist. Since human is a part of the universe, therefore to solve the question of explaining the miracle of life is the aim of most scientists. ... Or else if we know too much about human's DNA, the theory of Eugenics may lead to others big problems that out of expectation. ... Every cell has the same DNA. ... French scientist Weissenbach and D.Cohen invented another method to cut DNA into fragments. ...
It s like a puzzle with lost pieces or a mystery with missing clues. It beckons not just the researcher but all of us to press on until all the pieces are found and its mystery is revealed. Yet it was the mystery that makes it a captivating topic for study. ...
The diversity of views concerning the relation of science and religion today can be grouped under four basic headings. The first heading is Conflict and includes proponents of a philosophy of materialism, on the one hand, and advocates of biblical literalism or creationism, on the other. The secon...
