Austin Hall Library

Out of Africa: Chromosomal Adam Meet Mitochondrial Eve

Quite out of reading character for me, I have been following the footnote trail for a couple of weeks and it has taken me into the sphere of biology. I suspect the fascination will soon end, but it is positively absorbing for now.

In addition to other reading, I have tried to gain a shallow understanding of the Human Genome Project. Some may recall that on June 26, 2000, a special press conference was held at the White House, during which the publication of the human genome was announced. In short, the human genome is made up of deoxyribonucleic acid, more popularly known as DNA, and DNA encodes a sequence of chemical molecules that can be represented by four letters: G,A,C, and T. A genome, then, is the sequence of molecules that specifies the information necessary to build a specific organism, and the human genome (published in 2000) is made up of three billion letters--a sequence of G,A,T,C.

I read today that there was a study done several years ago that compared the Y chromosomes (possessed only by men and responsible for determining sex in our species) of men scattered throughout the planet. The study revealed that all of the men on the planet are descended from a single man (M.F. Hammer. "A Recent Common Ancestry for Human Y Chromosomes." Nature. November 23, 1995). This original "Y chromosomal Adam" is thought to have lived in East Africa about 60,000 to 90,000 years ago.

In a parallel study on the piece of DNA in every human being called the mitochondrial genome (inherited from our mothers), scientists discovered that every single human being is descended from one woman, who has been called "Mitochondrial Eve" (R.L. Cann, et al. "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution." Nature. January 1, 1987). She is thought to have lived in the Eastern part of Africa some 100,000 years ago.

The difficulty of dating aside, genomic science has made some captivating discoveries, with more certain to come in the future.

Science and Religion

I have picked up several books lately that reference the scientific method and its relation to religion. My interest in science, and my library, generally move in the direction of the philosophy of science and the history of science. So, I am quite limited in the hard scientific disciplines. But, I do know enough to know that real science is no threat to religion. What passes for real science these days--popularized science--and scientism are indeed a threat to people who are easily taken in, but people of sound faith have nothing to fear from real science.

I agree with C.S. Lewis, that it is scientific materialism--the arbitrary rejection of all but natural causes and laws, and the belief that anything immaterial cannot be known--that is the real threat to religion, and all of humanity. In reality, scientific materialism is not real science at all. It is an approach to the scientific process that operates on the working assumption of philosophical naturalism. Naturalism is a philosophical view that all phenomena are explained only in terms of natural causes and laws. It arises from the metaphysical view that nature is all there is. 

The foundation for scientific materialism is philosophy, and real science has no business engaging in philosophical inquiry, or assuming a philosophical position to support its approach to observable phenomena. Science can offer nothing to the inquiry of what may lie behind the things that science observes in the universe. Nor can it offer any help in answering questions about the meaning of the universe, or its purpose. Richard Dawkins, in his River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, purports to draw hard conclusions about questions well outside his expertise and the domain of science when he states: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference." Such questions of design in the context of purpose and meaning are not the domain of science; they are the domain of philosophy and theology.

Perhaps some people of faith have displayed ignorance when challenging the legitimate discoveries of science, but today the real problem is to get the scientists to stick with science and leave the philosophizing and theologizing to the people who are suited for it and can handle it with some measure of objectivity.

Who Speaks for the Embryo?

Modern biotechnology (the application of the principles of engineering and technology to the life sciences), with its scientific tunnel vision and its concern for improving human health and increasing life spans, now appears to be at the mercy of the "technological imperative." The principle of the technological imperative means that because a particular technology allows us to do something (i.e., it is technically possible), then we ought, must, or inevitably will do it.

Thus, for the first time in the history of the world, modern biotechnology bereft of moral constraints has progressed from sex without babies to babies without sex, the destruction of human embryos to advance research, human cloning, fetal farming to obtain whole organs or other complex tissues, egg farming in young women for embryo cloning, and even the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos. Because it can be done, it is being done.

Even Nietzsche, in whom, Camus said, "nihilism became conscious for the first time," seemed to realize the effect in the modern mind when it became conscious of its abandonment of the moral, metaphysical world:

"What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?

Heidegger was likely right when, at the end of his life, he declared, "only a god can save us."

But, fortunately for now, we still have clear-thinking men whom God can use to challenge the technological imperative and, particularly, to speak for the often forgotten embryo. Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen are two such men and their excellent new book, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, makes a compelling scientific and philosophical case that every tiny embryo is an individual human being deserving of respect and protection at its earliest stage of development.

George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, and Tollefsen, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, have produced an outstanding work that deserves careful attention from anyone serious about bioethics and concerned about science's capitulation to the technological imperative.

By the way, the photo in the upper left-hand corner of this post was published in Time magazine in 2007. The embryo is approximately one week old--about the same age as that of countless embryos from whom stem cells are intentionally harvested virtually every day, thus killing the tiny embryo.