From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Jun 21 2001 - 08:44:41 MDT
This article from The New Republic Online:
"Heredity and Humanity"
by Francis S. Collins, Lowell Weiss, and Kathy Hudson
at:
http://www.tnr.com/062501/collins062501_print.html
Is useful from a couple of perspectives. First, everyone
should read it simply as an education on the complexity
of the genome and the Genes vs. Environment debate.
Second, is how Collins downplays the sequencing of
the genome and seems to suggest man is more than the
sum of his genes and may be so due to acts of "God"
(denigrating evolutionary biology and ignoring things like
properties of the mind that may simply emerge from its complexity).
Either he is a individual who has embraced a set of beliefs
for which there is little evidence and feels compelled to
use his position to state those, *or* he is an astute
person, who as Greg would say, "reads the monkey very well",
and who feels that it necessary to make statements along
these lines to comfort the large majority of individuals
who have such beliefs so that the research may continue
to have public support. Is Francis Collins taking a
bullet (to his scientific reputation) for the sake
of scientific progress? Quite interesting...
Robert
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