Thursday, 27 January 2011
Are my genes revolting?
Recently I have been reading an awful lot of literature on the interesting subject of Genetics. I have read into the wee small hours about the evolution of genes from the murky depths of the primordial soup, to the dizzy heights of the human brain, and yet the amount of information that is still waiting for me to digest it has got my neurons screaming for mercy and fainting under the stress of it all. I can imagine them mopping their brows with a handkerchief and smoking forty a day.
All I really know is that the genes that inhabit my body have worked together over many hundreds of thousands of years to eventually construct this conscious, self aware body. I am their gene machine. Well at the moment anyway. They have had various gene machines in their time and there will be many more after me. I have come to see them as my pets, even though technically I would be theirs. However, it's not very pleasing for me to consider myself as their equivalent of a golden retriever or gerbil.
Anyway, I am digressing. So I will get to the subject.
As I was waiting patiently for my bath to run I thought of my genes and the almost magical things they have done in their time. I stumbled into a thought about illness and the way my genes wage war on the unwanted intruders that I may pick up when I am out and about and I had a thought. I am a smoker as are many people in the world. I habitually light up about twenty cigarettes a day. I am aware that this does my body no good whatsoever. But I do love my poisonous little glowing sticks. My genes don't like this. (I know that they don't have feelings at all but bear with me on this) The genes purpose to my albeit limited knowledge is to live and to live on. That is their program if you like. Their itinerary. As the machine that carries them about, feeds and waters them and protects them from the elements, I am the being that they have built to protect them in order for them to achieve their goals of longevity. By smoking, I am not playing the game correctly. My genes can't be amused. I am making them work harder to keep me healthy, I am filling the beautiful machine they have built with a toxic substance approximately twenty times each day.
So what do they do? Obviously they can't think or feel. Otherwise they would be kicking me from within I presume, if they had legs of course. Effectively they carry on regardless. I may get cancer in the future, I may get heart disease or have stroke as a direct or indirect result of the cigarettes, but my genes? They will do nothing. Even though their itinerary says they should stay alive and reproduce. Or at least they will do nothing to me.
Genes are constantly evolving. That is a given. They keep trying to improve their chances of survival time after time. So to me there must come a time when the genes will realise that some things the machine does cause them the very thing they are trying so desperately to avoid. When this happens will they revolt against it? Will they develop through evolution a strategy for teaching the machine a lesson? Will they make the taste of cigarettes for example repulsive?, or maybe they will make the brain feel pain when a cigarette is smoked?, or make fried food taste like sewage?
The possibilities are endless when you think about it. Genes have succeeded in creating a vast expanse of weird and wonderful adaptations. Look at the Giraffe's neck for example, or the tongue of a frog darting out to catch it's prey. The cunning of a plant that smells like rotting flesh or even more bizarre the lizard who fires it's own blood out of it's eyes to keep predators at bay.
If you look around at these glorious things the thought of revolting genes doesn't sound so ludicrous after all.
All I really know is that the genes that inhabit my body have worked together over many hundreds of thousands of years to eventually construct this conscious, self aware body. I am their gene machine. Well at the moment anyway. They have had various gene machines in their time and there will be many more after me. I have come to see them as my pets, even though technically I would be theirs. However, it's not very pleasing for me to consider myself as their equivalent of a golden retriever or gerbil.
Anyway, I am digressing. So I will get to the subject.
As I was waiting patiently for my bath to run I thought of my genes and the almost magical things they have done in their time. I stumbled into a thought about illness and the way my genes wage war on the unwanted intruders that I may pick up when I am out and about and I had a thought. I am a smoker as are many people in the world. I habitually light up about twenty cigarettes a day. I am aware that this does my body no good whatsoever. But I do love my poisonous little glowing sticks. My genes don't like this. (I know that they don't have feelings at all but bear with me on this) The genes purpose to my albeit limited knowledge is to live and to live on. That is their program if you like. Their itinerary. As the machine that carries them about, feeds and waters them and protects them from the elements, I am the being that they have built to protect them in order for them to achieve their goals of longevity. By smoking, I am not playing the game correctly. My genes can't be amused. I am making them work harder to keep me healthy, I am filling the beautiful machine they have built with a toxic substance approximately twenty times each day.
So what do they do? Obviously they can't think or feel. Otherwise they would be kicking me from within I presume, if they had legs of course. Effectively they carry on regardless. I may get cancer in the future, I may get heart disease or have stroke as a direct or indirect result of the cigarettes, but my genes? They will do nothing. Even though their itinerary says they should stay alive and reproduce. Or at least they will do nothing to me.
Genes are constantly evolving. That is a given. They keep trying to improve their chances of survival time after time. So to me there must come a time when the genes will realise that some things the machine does cause them the very thing they are trying so desperately to avoid. When this happens will they revolt against it? Will they develop through evolution a strategy for teaching the machine a lesson? Will they make the taste of cigarettes for example repulsive?, or maybe they will make the brain feel pain when a cigarette is smoked?, or make fried food taste like sewage?
The possibilities are endless when you think about it. Genes have succeeded in creating a vast expanse of weird and wonderful adaptations. Look at the Giraffe's neck for example, or the tongue of a frog darting out to catch it's prey. The cunning of a plant that smells like rotting flesh or even more bizarre the lizard who fires it's own blood out of it's eyes to keep predators at bay.
If you look around at these glorious things the thought of revolting genes doesn't sound so ludicrous after all.
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