Evo Devo

I think it is simply amazing that Lewis and others have been as dedicated and passionate about their study and research; and undoubtedly their efforts have yielded detailed information for the scientific world, cracking open the DNA code about genetics and species development, which has benefited us all. Imagine working 3 decades with millions of fruit flies to find this out! Who could have imaged that outcome?

And yet, I am also ethically and morally unsettled by Lewis et al, Bosch and Goldberg's efforts as well. What specifically has me squirming are their methods of the purposeful "design of mutated flies", with "legs where the mouth or antennae should be, mouth parts where legs belong, and other structural calamities". OK, maybe they are just fruit flies and perhaps lesser forms of life than mice or rats; but, I can't help but imagine if the roles were reversed...what would we as humans think of another life-form doing the same to us? From the perspective of the fly, it must be a horrible experience to be created as a non-functional monster of your species for the sole purpose of experimentation and science of another species. Imagine what that life form must experience. Thank goodness their life expectancy is mercifully short!

Certainly, we as human beings have benefited from such experiments; yet I can't help wondering if we couldn't have learned such information by less invasive, unkind, barbaric means. I think of the various tribes of the Amazon, which Darby speaks to in his book "The Cosmic Serpent" who have worked with teacher plants for millenia and as such been taught about molecular biological information, on the DNA level, about the flora and fauna of their environment, without such experimentation on other species.

And if you think I'm going off the deep-end on this one, let me explain...as part of my spiritual path, I endeavor to practice 'ahimsa' -or- as Mahatma Gandhi proposed: non-violence towards others. Which means certainly the non-killing of other life-forms -but- I bet it also means the non-torture or creation of beings for the sole purpose of 'scientific investigation' and experimentation. As a species we condemn the Nazis for doing this very thing with people, yet we find nothing wrong with using these tactics with fruit flies, mice, rats, dogs, cats, monkeys, because they are supposedly lower on the evolutionary scale. Oh, really? And guess who created that scale...those who are at the 'top' no doubt. In other words: us humans.

When we consider that so many creatures have "similar-sized genomes, composed of virtually identical genes"...with not much difference between the genomes of humans, chimps and mice, it makes me wonder just who the mutant monsters really are. Perhaps we should call it: devolution. Food for thought.