Respected Cornell geneticist rejects Darwinism in his recent book
| June 1, 2006 | Posted by scordova under Intelligent Design |
Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome
by John Sanford (October 2005)
In retrospect, I realize that I have wasted so much of my life arguing about things that don’t really matter. It is my sincere hope that this book can actually address something that really does matter. The issue of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going seem to me to be of enormous importance. This is the real subject of this book.
Modern Darwinism is built on what I will be calling “The Primary Axiom”. The Primary Axiom is that man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection. Within our society’s academia, the Primary Axiom is universally taught, and almost universally accepted. It is the constantly mouthed mantra, repeated endlessly on every college campus. It is very difficult to find any professor on any college campus who would even consider (or should I say dare) to question the Primary Axiom.
Late in my career, I did something which for a Cornell professor would seem unthinkable. I began to question the Primary Axiom. I did this with great fear and trepidation. By doing this, I knew I would be at odds with the most “sacred cow” of modern academia. Among other things, it might even result in my expulsion from the academic world.
Although I had achieved considerable success and notoriety within my own particular specialty (applied genetics), it would mean I would have to be stepping out of the safety of my own little niche. I would have to begin to explore some very big things, including aspects of theoretical genetics which I had always accepted by faith alone. I felt compelled to do all this, but I must confess I fully expected to simply hit a brick wall. To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly “great and unassailable fortress” which has been built up around the primary axiom is really a house of cards. The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory, in fact it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives mostly from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. A large part of what keeps the Axiom standing is an almost mystical faith, which the true-believers have in the omnipotence of natural selection. Furthermore, I began to see that this deep-seated faith in natural selection was typically coupled with a degree of ideological commitment which can only be described as religious. I started to realize (again with trepidation) that I might be offending a lot of people’s religion!To question the Primary Axiom required me to re-examine virtually everything I thought I knew about genetics. This was probably the most difficult intellectual endeavor of my life. Deeply entrenched thought pattern only change very slowly (and I must add — painfully). What I eventually experienced was a complete overthrow of my previous understandings. Several years of personal struggle resulted in a new understanding, and a very strong conviction that the Primary Axiom was most definitely wrong. More importantly, I became convinced that the Axiom could be shown to be wrong to any reasonable and open-minded individual. This realization was exhilarating, but again frightening. I realized that I had a moral obligation to openly challenge this most sacred of cows. In doing this, I realized I would earn for myself the most intense disdain of most of my colleagues in academia not to mention very intense opposition and anger from other high places.
What should I do? It has become my conviction that the Primary Axiom is insidious on the highest level, having catastrophic impact on countless human lives. Furthermore, every form of objective analysis I have performed has convinced me that the Axiom is clearly false. So now, regardless of the consequences, I have to say it out loud: the Emperor has no clothes!
To the extent that the Primary Axiom can be shown to be false, it should have a major impact on your own life and on the world at large. For this reason, I have dared to write this humble little book which some will receive as blasphemous treason, and others revelation.
If the Primary Axiom is wrong, then there is a surprising and very practical consequence. When subjected only to natural forces, the human genome must irrevocably degenerate over time. Such a sober realization should have more than just intellectual or historical significance. It should rightfully cause us to personally reconsider where we should rationally be placing our hope for the future.
John Sanford
Sanford drew heavily from the work of Motoo Kimura, James Crow, and Walter ReMine. He featured a lot of data I had never seen, and he applied the concept of signal-to-noise ratios (from information theory) to show that the selection pressures are too weak for natural selection to transmit useful information into the genome. He made devastating critiques of naturalistic evolution using standard population genetics. It was a superb book, something one would expect from such a capable scientist. I’m surprised this book is relatively obscure, it ought to be required reading for serious IDers!
Sanford’s Bio: Cornell Professor of 25 years (being semi-retired since 1998). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in the area of plant breeding and genetics. He founded 2 successful biotech firms, Biolistics and Sanford Scientific. Most of the transgenic crops grown in the world today were genetically engineered using the gene gun technology developed by Sanford. He still holds a position of Courtesy Associate Professor at Cornell.
Here are some endorsements for the book:
In the Mystery of the Genome Cornell University researcher John Sanford lifts the rug to see what evolutionary theory has swept under it. He shows that, not only does Darwinism not have answers for how information got into the genome, it doesn’t even have answers for how it could remain there.
Michael Behe
I strongly recommend John Sanford’s Mystery of the Genome, which provides a lucid and bold account of how the human genome is deteriorating, due the accumulation of mutations. This situation has disturbing implications for mankind’s future, as well as surprising implications concerning mankind’s past.
Phillip Johnson
(thanks to johnnyb for alterting me to this book!)
103 Responses to Respected Cornell geneticist rejects Darwinism in his recent book
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Raevmo,
Although we disagree, I find your post substantive, and I appreciate your efforts to make thoughtful contributions along with data citations.
By chance do you have Sanford’s book?
Thank you for participating.
Salvador
My pleasure Salvador, it was a nice thread. And no, I don’t have Sanford’s book. Isn’t there a free pdf floating around somewhere?
Raemo,
I’m not aware of any free pdf’s of his book. I welcome criticism of specific sections of his work as I’m recommending it to the IDEA chapters in Virgnia and New York.
I value finding of any error in otherwise fine works of scholarship as well of affirmation of sections that are spot on.
After reading graduate level population genetics books and then Sanford’s book, I think he makes a very solid case from a very basic, matter-of-fact, standpoint. It is evidenent his versant in population genetics (he’s an applied geneticist after all) and highlighted important nuances.
Whether one agrees with him or not, I don’t think his ideas should be ignored.
Salvador
“eliminting blocks that contain (slightly) deleterious (point) mutations. In sufficiently large populations there appears to be little risk of extinction through genetic erosion. ”
sure, but how does it select against it? If there are 20,000 nucleotides with some slightly deleterious ones, how is it able to pick up which ones to remove? It seems to me (and again, I’m no expert in this) that this is just a smaller version of the selection at the whole organism level. But, it still would appear to be too large of a block to identify a few slightly deliterious mutations mixed in with 20,000. Since they are nearly neutral, there really wouldn’t be anything to identify to select out, right? Also, there is no way to separate out the good and bad mutations within the block, at least I think.
Sanford says “mutational hot spots will give us the mutant we want sooner in that location, but while we then wait for the complementary mutations within teh “cold spots”, the hotspots will proceed to back-mutate again. We are forced to keep re-selecting our good mutations within the hot spots, while we wait for even the first good mutation to occur within the cold spots”
As to your statement of “sufficiently large populations”, Sanford says:
“If a population is essentially infinite in size and is perfectly homogeneous, and if “noise” is both constant and uniform, and there is unlimited time – than all noise effects will eventually be averaged out, and thus even near-neutrals might be subjected to selection.” However, he goes on further to point out:
- population size is never infinite
- noise is never uniform
So, I have always wondered about the whale to horse scenario. Whales do not reproduce like rabbits – or even gnats, so you have very long gestation periods, and very few offspring in the life of a single whale. It would appear to overcome the effect of noise and mutation, you need to approach infinite offspring, something higher mammals would never do.
I know thats alot I’ve written, sorry about that. But I do have one question that I hope you will answer: we keep talking about beneficial mutations that can add information. However, Sanders indicates that he is just giving the benefit of the doubt on this, and that there really aren’t any beneficial mutations that add information out there that we have found. Is this true? (keep in mind, Sanders indicates that a hairless dog does have a “beneficial mutation”, but at the cost of actually losing information in the genome to accomplish it. That is, they are loss of function mutations that reduce net information within the genome. So, in terms of information content, they are still deleterious mutations. Thanks for all your great responses. I hope this thread is still of interest to you.
Ajl, of course there is now way to remove individual nucleotides, but by removing a block containing the “bad†nucleotides (because the block as a whole is a bad gene) the “bad†nucleotides are removed anyway. The “badness†of a block depends on the number of bad nucleotides within it, and this determines the probability the block will be removed by selection. A population doesn’t have to be really infinitely large to be “effectively†infinitely large. What it takes is roughly that effective population size N>>1/s, where s is the selective disadvantage of the deleterious mutation. For smaller population sizes N, noise is important and bad mutations can more easily become established. That’s one of the reasons why conservationists are worried about natural populations becoming too small. Genetic erosion might drive the population to extinction.
I have no idea what you mean by the “whale to horse†scenario. Did horses evolve from whales? Not to my knowledge.
Beneficial mutations (that add information if you like) have been identified many times. Take bacterial resistance genes against antibiotics for example.
Someone questioned how “epigenetics” might affect Dr. Sanford’s conclusions regarding genomic degradation. That is something I have been wondering also, since finishing Dr. Sanford’s book today, and just yesterday reading an article about epigenetics in the November, 2006 issue of “Discover”, with the cover heading: “The New Genetics – DNA Is Not Your Identity”.
Raevmo,
I am resisting the temptation to respond to your post with searing sarcasm. I want to maintain the decorum of UD but you are making it very very hard … arrrgh …. must resist … temptation to be sarcastic …. too late … can’t resist … already sarcastic … doh!
[...] Cornell geneticist John Sanford pointed out many problems confronting the theory of Darwinian evolution, particularly human evolution. (See: Genetic Entropy ) Many of his arguments were subtle. Among them was his discussion of a somewhat obscure paper: Estimate of the Mutation Rate per Nucleotide in Humans by Nachman. Nachman writes: [...]
[...] The human genome project took 3 billion dollars and 13 years to complete. By comparison, Solexa might be able to do a comparable job for a few thousand dollars per person (ideally even less) and in a much shorter time frame. (See the UD sidebar on Solexa Genomics.) Solexa might be viewed as an unwitting research partner of the ID movement. The fine work of two important ID proponents, Cornell geneticist John Sanford and independent researcher Walter ReMine, might finally get slam dunk empirical confirmation if Solexa succeeds in its grand quest. For example, a fundamental consequence of Sanford’s Genetic Entropy thesis is that there will be an unabated rise in Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) per generation per individual. If confirmed, this data will be more nails in Darwin’s coffin, and then Darwin Day might have to be renamed Darwin Bashing Day (or something else, how about Abe Lincoln Day? Solexa, Inc. is developing and commercializing the Solexa Genome Analysis System, which is being used to perform a range of analyses including whole genome resequencing, gene expression analysis and small RNA analysis. Solexa expects its first-generation instrument, the 1G Genome Analyzer, to generate over a billion bases of DNA sequence per run and to enable human genome resequencing below $100,000 per sample, making it the first platform to reach this important milestone. Solexa’s longer-term goal is to reduce the cost of human re-sequencing to a few thousand dollars for use in a wide range of applications from basic research through clinical diagnostics. For further information, please visit http://www.solexa.com. [...]
[...] by John C. Sanford is available at Amazon. I wrote a little bit about Sanford 2 years ago here: Respected Cornell geneticist rejects Darwinism. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web [...]
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[...] I have mentioned Dr. Sanford previously at UD. See: Respected Cornell Geneticist Rejects Darwinism. [...]
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