Mangesh & Jason
Magazine Sneak Peek: Darwin Debunked?
by Mangesh & Jason - February 18, 2009 - 9:20 AM
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Sam Kean is a favorite of ours on staff. We geeked out on his pieces explaining Carbon Trading and covering a Natural Nuclear Reactor in Oklo, Nigeria. This month, he’s profiling the new field of epigenetics and how maybe Darwinists shouldn’t have derided LaMarcke’s theories so much. This story of how mice could eat something, and it could affect their grandchildren really struck me.

5days.gifAccording to Darwin, creatures with disadvantages have to die out, or at least not reproduce much, for evolution to occur. But genomes are proving to be more plastic. In one recent study, researchers looked at the genetic consequences of feeding pregnant mice an extra-fatty diet. Not surprisingly, the diet had a bad effect on the children, who had problems metabolizing insulin and became obese. Strangely though, when the obese mice had children of their own, the next generation had already adapted. The grandchildren of the original test group emerged longer and leaner, probably to help them carry extra weight.

The effects on the grandchildren suggests that the fatty diet had affected offspring in an epigenetic way. But the clinching detail was that fathers could eat a high-fat diet and pass on the longer, leaner body type to their children, even when the mothers had eaten a normal diet.

The story’s pretty fascinating, and delves into a little Swedish hamlet that faced famine, and how future generations lived far longer as a result of it. Insane!

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Comments (8)

  1. I don’t see how it necessarily debunks Darwin, just shows that inheritance through DNA is not as static as had been assumed.

    posted by anomdeus on 2-18-2009 at 11:29 am

  2. The only reason I am commenting is because my recaptcha is “23 Underskirt”.

    posted by chocfullanuts on 2-18-2009 at 2:10 pm

  3. Failing to see how this debunks Darwin.

    posted by devlin on 2-18-2009 at 2:25 pm

  4. This is just Epigenetics. PBS’s NOVA has done a show on this… it’s very interesting, and cool, and we need to understand it better… but it “debunks” nothing about Darwin. Also, it’s not the DNA itself that’s being changed, it’s the methylization of the DNA by the molecules surrounding the genome that’s changing. So, neither Darwin nor Mendel are being debunked here: it’s just a new layer of complexity added to the way genes are expressed.

    posted by Xian Pryde on 2-18-2009 at 3:31 pm

  5. Epigenetics doesn’t “debunk” Darwin, but it DOES make one feel bad for ridiculing Lamarck!

    posted by Leah on 2-18-2009 at 5:42 pm

  6. It does help debunk Darwin, it shows how evolution is so idiotic. Who wants to believe that we came from monkeys!

    posted by Tanner on 3-25-2009 at 11:17 am

  7. I see how this helps debunks Darwin. His theory stated that people that face things like famine need to die off in order for evolution to be true. Besides who wants to believe that we came from monkeys anyway.

    posted by Tanner on 3-25-2009 at 11:24 am

  8. Darwinism is a lie, no fossil evidence for the mutation of life on this planet exists, we have fossils from thousands of years ago that are unchanged … it’s a flawed, speculative theory that doesn’t have any evidence to back it up so it doesn’t need to be debunked in the first instance. Where is the evidence for Darwinism? There is none … It’s a convenient back-story for the modern, atheistic, morally-fluid, religion-hating creed that feeds on captialism and political correctness. There is no Darwin myth to debunk. It’s just a heap of junk foisted on us and the more one reads about it the more laughable and pathetic it is. Rock on! DJ

    posted by David Joseph on 7-18-2009 at 11:05 am

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