By Theodore Dana Hall Ph.D.

Charles Darwin courtesy Wickipedia

Editor’s Note: This is the prequel to an article on stem cell research.

Author’s note: A necessary background understanding to the following article is this: Civilizations are built upon “life vision” paradigms, and a “ruling” life vision paradigm is a belief system approved by the ruling powers of the time. Arguably, the current ruling life vision paradigm in the West is Darwinism. The Darwin paradigm is comprised of the philosophies of classical Darwinism, social Darwinism (the application of Darwinism to social theory), and neo-Darwinism.

A life vision paradigm must answer three big questions: What is the origin of life, especially human life? What is the condition of man? (That condition is usually described in negative terms.) How should man live in order to transcend the negative condition in which he finds himself? This article is the first of three articles that consider Darwinism’s answer to the third question.

Also please note, that mention of “Lamarck” is made here. In 1809, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck founded evolutionary science with his theory of “transformism.” He maintained that new species derive from precursor species (the basic premise of evolutionary science). He theorized that individuals acquire certain characteristics in their lives (such as strong legs from jogging) and that these characteristics may be passed along to progeny.

--Theodore Dana Hall, Ph.D.

Neo-Darwinism is built on the premise that DNA is impervious to influence from the environment. As Ernst Mayr puts it, "A direct influence of the environment on the genetic material is impossible, an influence postulated by the majority of Lamarckians. The way from the DNA (via the RNA) to the proteins is a one-way street. The environment can influence the developmental process but it cannot affect the blueprint that controls it...." (Mayr, 11)

This hypothesis is known, in the jargon of neo-Darwinism, as the Primacy of DNA doctrine. A hypothesis becomes a doctrine, it should be noted, not because it is correct, but because academic opinion leaders enter into an agreement that it is, to use the typical justification, "both necessary and sufficient." Whether the hypothesis in question is scientifically valid is a secondary consideration, though none of the doctrine-makers will ever admit, publicly, that this is, indeed, the case.

Let’s go back a few years, to the mid-1990s….

Back then, the prominent English neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins was at the height of his career, preaching the gospel of the inviolability of the DNA from his seat in Cambridge. "Like successful Chicago gangsters," wrote Dawkins, "our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to expect in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness...." (Dawkins, 2)

Inviolability is not the same as immutability. Inviolability means the genes are impervious to environmental influences, excepting, of course, extreme influences, such as bursts of radiation. Genetic mutations happen, the neo-Darwinists say, but the idea they are the result of environmental influences (the "Lamarckian heresy") is scoffed at. "No, no," the neo-Darwinists proclaim, "genetic mutations are an strictly an internal, genomic matter."

In the process of bio-construction of a new part, the RNA makes a template based upon a DNA design pattern; proteins then construct the part based on the template. Mutations, Dawkins, tells us, are "copying errors." The RNA fails to duplicate the DNA exactly.

Back then, Ernst Mayr, most influential American neo-Darwinist of the last century, retired from Harvard after a very long career indoctrinating generations of America's "best and brightest" in the neo-Darwinist faith that DNA is impervious to environmental influences.

Back then, Californian Franklin Slavensky, a self-taught bio-engineer who had recently retired from the heating and air conditioning business, was astonishing the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) by proving he could train microbial organisms to gobble up oil and gasoline spills.

"Mystic microbes" he called the little fellows. Why "mystic"? According to orthodox biology (neo-Darwinism), the microbes couldn't be doing what they were doing, and anything unorthodox is “mysticism.” Right?

If a mulch-eating species of microbes can be trained to prefer a diet of oil and gasoline, we're talking about a directed (and not accidental) change in genetics. We're saying environmental changes induce changes in the DNA. We are (Darwin forbid!) espousing the Lamarckian heresy—most serious of science crimes in biology.

Life has a way of trumping theories, and so, despite the fact he was doing what could not be done, Slavensky established "bioremediation" as a very workable, low-cost means of dealing with contaminants in the environment. "'This is eighth-grade stuff,’” Slavensky boasted as he tended ten barrels of cultivated bacteria in his Sacramento back yard. “‘We should all know about it. It's not far-out stuff. It exists.’" (Martineau, 21)

"The technology's premise is simple: bacteria that have been cultivated in the presence of oil or gasoline will acclimate themselves to the foreign substance and eventually learn to eat it. Once acclimated, the bacteria can be introduced to waste sites, where they ingest unwanted pools of spilled petroleum-based products." (Martineau, 21)

Couple of questions: Can microbes acquire characteristics such as learning to digest oil? Supposing that they can, can these microbes pass along their new characteristics to their off-spring?

If your answer to these questions is "yes," you're patently a Lamarckian, which is nothing to be embarrassed about. Some very famous scientists were (or are) Lamarckian, such as Charles Darwin in his later years (a fact conveniently ignored by neo-Darwinists). Luther Burbank, the world's most eminent botanist, said in 1906, "Acquired characteristics are inherited or I know nothing of plant life." (Barzun, 120) Bruce H. Lipton, who has described, in great detail, the physiological means by which the environment regulates genetics, stated in a recent article that "The biological world is made in the image of the environment," and that "Each of the body's 200,000-plus proteins [is a] physical-energetic complement of [an] environmental signal...." (Zohs, 38)

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck courtesy Wickipedia

Back then, in 1994 to be exact, Dr. Lipton patiently explained to yours truly, a science writer initiate, why the Primacy of DNA doctrine was dead wrong. "If the nucleus, which contains the genome, was in fact the brain of the cell, as the neo-Darwinists claim, then removing the nucleus would result in cell death--right? (Right.) In fact, as has been shown thousands of times, when the nucleus is taken out of the cell, the cell continues to behave normally! However, if the receptors in the cell membrane are shaved off, the cell goes comatose and dies, unless the receptors are repaired by internal visceral processes.

“What does that tell us?” he asked. “The brain of the cell is in the membrane! The genes are nothing but patterns for new parts and new organisms. They regulate nothing. Rather, they are regulated--by environmental signals mediated by the network of receptor complexes in the membrane. Metaphorically, the genes are records in a juke box; the receptor complexes are the play buttons. So what determines which records are played? The environment."

"So why," I asked, "is a doctrine that's been proven invalid numerous times still taught in academe as the latest and last word of true science?" I forget Lipton's exact response. Something like, "Apparently, the neo-Darwinian mind-set is impervious to correct scientific information.” I had to research the matter myself.

The Malthus Doctrine

My initial inquiry focused on the most basic doctrine underlying Darwinism and neo-Darwinism, the so-called "Malthus doctrine." Both Darwin and Alfred Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of speciation (new species formation) by means of "natural selection," claimed to have been inspired by a 1798 essay on population. In this essay, Thomas Malthus set forth his famous doctrine that the rate of population increase is geometrical, and that if populations are not down-sized on a continuing basis by famine, disease and war, they soon exhaust the means of subsistence, which increases at a simple arithmetical rate.

Though the Malthus doctrine was censured by the eminent Samuel Coleridge, who called it "the abominable doctrine," and though the rationale for the doctrine is flawed in a dozen ways, the monarchs of Europe seized upon the Malthus argument as a brilliant scientific explanation for the reasons behind the recent revolutions in North America and France. Looking through the spectacles of Malthus, the monarchs and their ministers saw clearly that the revolutions had nothing whatsoever to do with inadequacies on their part and everything to do with unregulated population growth. Thus was born the modern "population problem."

Among Darwin's least scientific but most politically correct hypotheses was his application of the Malthus doctrine to the entire biological realm. "There is no exception to the rule," he writes in the Origin, "that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny." (Darwin, 63)

This hypothesis sent a clear message to Thomas Huxley, one of the founding fathers of Social Darwinism (application of Darwinian biology to social theory), and the message was: An ethical, responsible elite must be formed to deal with the threat of unchecked population growth. Who will mentor this responsible elite? To this question, Huxley replied with complete confidence, "scientists."

Thus it came to pass that science took on the mission of saving humankind from itself. In the literature of Social Darwinism, from Huxley to Hitler to B.F. Skinner and into our own time, one finds the constantly recurring point that populations must submit themselves to the regulation of a responsible elite.

References Barzun, J. (1958) Darwin, Marx, Wagner—Critique of a Heritage, 2 nd ed. New York : Anchor. Sub-title quotation: 63. Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species—A Facsimile of the First Edition, ed. Ernst Mayr. Cambridge, MA : Harvard. Dawkins, Richard. (1978) The Selfish Gene. New York : Oxford. Huxley, T. (1895) Darwiniana. New York : D. Appleton. Martineau, P. (March 2, 1992) “Home-grown microbes gobble up hazardous waste.” The Business Journal. Mayr, E. Evolution and the Diversity of Life. Cambridge, MA : Harvard. Zohs, C. (2003, May) “Biology and Consciousness—An Interview with Bruce Lipton. Golden Thread.