Some words written about the Human Genome Project in 2000
when the race was on to Map the DNA
might be of interest today:
"And so the Race is on to map the human genome
A race moved rapidly onward through computer generation
By it the Book of Life gets known
The concern is for Sequence Accuracy
Developing Gene based therapy
Whereby a faulty or tired or broken gene gets replaced by its fabricated new one
This is to be the future of medical science
This therapy, its said, can save lives
It can rebuild the body from the inside out
It can replace parts worn out and tired
The map allows these New Age cartographers to work out what each of the genes do
How the life giving, life shaping molecule works
One of the companies in the race to map the Human Genome is HGP.
It is filing patents on the discoveries being made
So that the drugs coming from them can be owned by a company
So that the company can profit from the discoveries
So that investors will put their money into the company
So that those whose bodies need the remedies deriving from the information being mapped out
Whether by the fast moving Dr Ventnor and his Privateers from Celera Genomics
Or the slower and perhaps more thorough work being done by a University Medical school
Can pay for the information which can save your life, and others.
In the meantime
Back on the Ranch in the Land called Oz
There’s a dude who has been publicising the human gene
The DNA
As a model for attitude formation
A model that is true
And has fashioned words for it seeking to show how it can help us through the mess we have created in human living.
He has called this model Spiral Works in Concert´, SWiC´ for short
In the company of others he has done what he can to fashion a popular culture out of it,
Using video, writing and song,
Even T Shirts
And designs for bumper stickers
So that the information now being secretly mapped
Can be accessed, tapped, by ordinary people
In the only way which can arrest the ecologically disastrous trends
Moving at a pace equivalent to the sprint going on in laboratory work.
And this only way is
Attitude.
The Human Genome Project is providing Knowledge about the Mighty Molecule. Achieving Understandings of it is a different and more important matter and , as I’ve indicated, attempts to describe these understandings have been given under the name of ‘Spiral Works in Concert’ (SWiC)
One such understanding to come from DNA, perhaps the most obvious, is that it proves racism to be a false idea. “No matter what part of the world we come from, whatever our culture or the color of our skin.
The genes declare “that all people are one”
As observed correctly by Vanessa Williams writing for the Herald Sun´,
Wednesday June 28, 2000, p.7
A “cellular family in molecular motion”, as I put it in a piece of writing for the newsletter of the Goldfields Local Exchange and Trading System (LETS) (1995).
Furthermore, the operation of DNA features co-operation as the basic principle of nature and so gives lie to the principle of competition underpinning most economic policy, and being spread far and wide and deeply into the bodies of young people through many of our educational philosophies and practices.
One of the metaphors privileged by the proponents of the paradigm dominating economics these days is “the level playing field”. The idea implicit in “the level playing field” to which all, large and small, are invited to enter in what gets called “open competition”, is not only crude but of more significance, utterly at odds with the physics of nature. As shown by DNA, the action of genes is co-operative and occurs in complex interactions with other genes and the environment, whether this be to create health or disease.”The level playing field” is a linguistic construct serving the interests of the powerful and greedy, aiding the bully in the school yard, and eroding the co-operative principle at work in DNA. This is another of the obvious lessons to come from sequencing human DNA.
Set beside its three dimensional, spiralling and open-ended elegance, our linguistic practices are two dimensional at most, flat and enclosing, re-enforcing attitudes which are wasteful of our individual uniqueness, leading to behaviours which do immense damage to our environment and actively threaten our continued connection with what makes for the life of all living things, this being Energy in the form of DNA.
“The mapping of all mankind’s DNA “, Vanessa Williams writes again, ”ushers in a new era in medicine and biology, proving we are all one big genetic family no matter what the color of our skin”.
When consideration is given to the other aspects with which humans habitually identify themselves, then the mapping of DNA could usher in a new era in politics, social organisation, economic policy and education, as well as medicine and biology...and will do so when our attention moves from merely knowing about DNA and turns in a concerted way to the infinitely more interesting and difficult task of achieving understandings of it.
After all, as we all know, the map is not the territory., and so in this respect, the Mapping of the Human Genome must be seen as the beginning of a very long, indeed infinite, journey toward achieving understandings of what makes us and all other living things, including the Universe itself, and of our place in it.
We also know, or could, that it is not only with the idea of race that humans have formed primary allegiances but also with religions, politics, class, gender, social status, educational backgrounds, and a myriad of other cultural preferences to which we have attributed sufficient importance as to give them as reasons for denying what the Human Genome Project has so irrefutably shown, this being that we are all products or outcomes or expressions of the process which made us what we are. And first and foremost, what we are is expressions, manifestations, products of Energy in the form of DNA.
It is to the explication or unfolding of the meanings in this invincible fact of nature that I have devoted my life and would invite others wiser than myself to do the same. This is an invitation we humans can refuse only at our peril. It is a plea that we "spirals, work in concert.”
Your ideas about how we can do this spiral working are most welcome.
Have a Happy DNA Day.
Spiral on!
