Quotations related to genetics

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Quotations
related to genetics

The brain, the body and the genome are locked, all three, in a dance. The genome is as much under the control of the other two as they are controlled by it. This is partly why genetic determinism is such a myth. The switching on and off of human genes can be influenced by conscious or unconscious external action. [...] external events - or free-willed behaviour - can switch on genes. [...] The psychological preceded the physical. The mind drives the body, which drives the genome.
GENOME, The autobiography of species in 23 chapters
Matt Ridley
GEENOR's comment: we have 23 pairs of chromosomes - hence the title of the book. It is a mind-boggling idea to understand, that we actually consciously can switch on and off our various genes!!! Shortly speaking: positive feelings and thoughts can switch on appriopriate genes and thus positively influence our biochemistry.
Ninenty-nine per cent of people don't have an inkling about how fast this revolution is coming.
Steve Fodor, president of Affymetrix
GEENOR's comment: genetic diagnosis will revolutionize how we will handle our genetic drawbacks and will prevent many diseases from activation. Shortly speaking: revolution in medicine is coming.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English dramatist and poet
GEENOR's comment: we should dare to practice genetic engineering on humans, because otherwise we lose possibility to solve many of our problems, like finding cures for cancer, AIDS, aging, etc., etc.
Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery.
James Mark Baldwin, 1896
GEENOR's comment: now we have genetic engineering, which can do the same.
We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth that still fills me with astonishment.
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins 1941- English biologist
Xq28 - Thanks for the genes mom.
T shirt sold in gay and lesbian bookstores in the mid-1990s
Anonymous
GEENOR's comment: Xq28 is a gene responsible for switching on and off of homesexuality.
Despite what Ian Malcom says in Jurassic Park, nature does not "always find a way". In fact evolution is very limited. [...] Evolution is a shortsighted process that involves a lot of chance events and random factors, it is not some unstoppable juggernaut headed towards biological perfection. In fact, evolution as process is not "headed" anywhere. Evolution is just a byproduct of differential rates of survival and reproduction among various organisms that possess different qualities that are inherited. [...] Basically, mutations that create a new trait are possible, but genetic side effects cause the organisms with the trait to die before passing it on to their offspring, which is what evolution is all about.
Limits to Evolution, Analog, October 2000
Ashley Carter 1973 - American biologist
GEENOR's comment: "evolution is very limited" therefore genetic engineering is needed.
We've discovered the secret of life.
28 February 1953
Francis Crick 1916- British molecular biologist
GEENOR's comment: Crick refers here to discovery of DNA - a holder of genetic code. It was first major milestone, second was completion of sequencing of the human genome which took place in year 2001. Now mankind is working on understanding how that all genetic code actually works.
The tabula of human nature was never rasa.
W. D. Hamilton
GEENOR's comment: i.e. genes shape also human nature.
They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence ... they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.
The Selfish Gene (1976) ch. 2
Richard Dawkins 1941- English biologist
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
On the Origin of Species (1859) ch. 3
Charles Darwin 1809-82 English natural historian
Man with all his noble qualities ... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
The Descent of Man (1871) closing words
Charles Darwin 1809-82 English natural historian
The human race has today the means for annihilating itself - either in a fit of complete lunacy, i.e., in a big war, by a brief fit of destruction, or by careless handling of atomic technology, through a slow process of poisoning and of deterioration in its genetic structure.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (1957) vol. 13, p. 186
Max Born 1882-1970
Almost all aspects of life are engineered at the molecular level, and without understanding molecules we can only have a very sketchy understanding of life itself.
What Mad Pursuit (1988) ch. 5
Francis Crick 1916- British molecular biologist
Some call it evolution,
And others call it God.
'Each In His Own Tongue' (1908)
William Herbert Carruth 1859-1924
Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, dass der nicht würfelt.
At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.

Letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926; in Einstein und Born Briefwechsel (1969) p. 1 (often quoted: 'Gott würfelt nicht [God does not play dice]')
Albert Einstein 1879-1955 German-born theoretical physicist; originator of the theory of relativity
GEENOR's comment: Einstein was meaning here laws of physics, not biology. In biology in fact "God does play dice", because human genome is a result of random operations constrained by evolution. Only genetic engineering can change this.
Evolution ... .is - a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite coherent heterogeneity.
First Principles (1862) ch. 16
Herbert Spencer 1820-1903 English philosopher
I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something in-conceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.
The Mikado (1885) act 1
W. S. Gilbert (Sir William Schwenck Gilbert) 1836-1911 English writer of comic and satirical verse
[Natural selection] has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.
The Blind Watchmaker (1986) ch. 1. Cf. Paley 1
Richard Dawkins 1941- English biologist
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
Religio Medici (1643) pt. 1, sect. 16
Sir Thomas Browne 1605-82 English writer and physician
There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens.
The Naked Ape (1967) introduction
Desmond Morris 1928- English anthropologist
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us... Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of higher animals, directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life.
1859
Charles Darwin 1809-82 English natural historian
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