Scientific Mythology

In a previous post, I had considered the scientific validity of Nivea’s claims that their DNAge product(s) can help prevent UV induced damage to DNA. While I think that their claims are technically valid, I came across another interesting view the other day, Rick points out that Nivea are exploiting the hype surrounding genetics to sell their product to a public that does not completely understand the implications of their claims. As a result most people will assume that the product can do much more than it is actually capable of achieving.
Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic, and that is exactly what Nivea seem to banking on to sell their DNAge.
Most science and genetics in particular suffers from this conversion into a modern mythology. Everyone has heard of genetic engineering, cloning and stuff like that and there’s so much popular debate on it that a lot of the ideas being thrown around aren’t necessarily scientific or very accurate. For an average person, it may become difficult to separate fact from fiction.
I had never thought this possible but even movies seem to influence a lot of people. Flicks like X-men, The Nutty Professor, The Hulk (or is it the Incredible Hulk?) and even Spiderman use a lot of pseudo science to try explain seemingly impossible phenomena. Now I never imagined that someone would take this seriously till a friend asked me if it was possible for mutations to create an X-men like situation. This woke me up to the fact that a people could actually take this seriously. If X-men can seem plausible then DNAge probably sounds like some kind of a scientific breakthrough.
What worries me about this receptiveness to scientific manipulation is not the risk of commercial exploitation but what it means for actual scientific research. Today, where there is much public debate surrounding research into genetic engineering and so much controversy surrounding GMO’s (genetically modified organisms), I wonder exactly how many of those raising their voices against them actually understand what they are opposing. Obviously if you think genetic engineering can create X-men, then sure, even I would oppose genetic engineering.
Unfortunately, I don’t think scientists spend enough time actually explaining their science to the public and that leaves a lot of room for people to push their own ideas to forward their own agendas.
Take for instance, this page I found on the International Vegetarian Union’s site (a vegetarian union, wtf?). The author states;

“Genetic engineering is wrong simply because scientists are mixing different DNA from different species, from different genes, from different families or orders. They are simply doing what Mother Nature tries to prevent through certain mechanisms, thanks to which the breeding can occur only between similar individuals, that is belonging to the same species. Nowadays genetic engineering can take pieces of bacteria or virus and put them into an animal or plant. Furthermore, they can take genes from an animal or human and put them in a vegetable or other species. In nature we could never find a vegetable with human genes, with bacteria genes or even with fish genes in it. .”

The problem with this is that there are a number of genes such as those for histone proteins or for cytochromes that are conserved across species. It isn’t accurate to classify any gene as being a vegetable gene or a human gene since many genes aren’t confined to a single species. Additionally I’m not that sure that ‘Mother Nature’ actually tries very hard to prevent transfer of genetic information between species. The inability for different species to crossbreed is a consequence of speciation not the reason for it. The author here doesn’t really raise any argument against genetic engineering other than that it is ‘unnatural’.

"…part of the scientific community strongly believes that there is a real possibility that feeding animals or humans with grain containing genes giving resistance to antibiotics, the intestinal and stomach bacteria can cross over with the bacterium in the grain, thus making the whole body resistant to antibiotics. In such a situation we would no longer be able to use certain antibiotics for veterinary or human health purposes."

Now in this one, I’m not sure if the original text has been modified after translation but this is mostly nonsense. However despite that he does raise a valid fear that genes for antibiotic resistance in plants may promote the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. What they fail to mention is that these antibiotic resistance genes are naturally occurring in many different bacteria in any case, they haven’t been artificially synthesised. There are also many other proposed alternatives to using these antibiotic resistance genes so it’s not much of an issue anymore.

“…90% of gene life in India has been patented in the US…”

This I seriously doubt. It’s not possible to patent those many genes, no way.

If you have read the original article, you may have noticed that I’m ignoring a large portion of the text, that’s because it deals with topics I don’t understand well enough to discuss. However there are more errors in the text than I have pointed out and I am not too sure about a lot of the figures they have quoted, particularly those pertaining to the dangers of GM food.