DNA: it's not destiny

Joanna Evans — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:00:00 GMT

When we become ill, most of us lay the blame at the feet of our ancestors: my heart problem is like dad’s, who had a dicky ticker; I’m likely to get breast cancer because it’s what my grandmother died of. We look upon ourselves in a sense as victims—victims of our genetic history.

Nowadays, virtually all of medicine is built upon the notion that the blueprint of our life and health lies in our DNA, the genetic coding that supposedly holds a fixed menu of our potential for health or illness.

Medicine has accepted the neo-Darwinist interpretation of health—that each of our cells, equipped with a full pack of genes, mostly lives out a preprogrammed future. In the simplest terms, this means that genetics is destiny or, as Sylvia Plath put it, “Fixed stars govern a life”.

Nevertheless, as our cover story this month shows, growing evidence, popularized by the remarkable work of biologist Dr Bruce Lipton, convincingly demonstrates that our genes, far from being a pre-determined destiny, exist much as subatomic particles do—only as a potential.

We’re now beginning to understand that the environment that surrounds us—our diet, the quality of our air and water, the emotional climate of our family, the state of our relationships, our sense of fulfilment in life—has the most to do with what is ultimately expressed by our genes.

Although standard science still adheres to the notion that a cell is controlled by its nucleus, scientists are learning that it is, in fact, the outside influences filtering through the cellular membrane that actually control the cell and, consequently, the behaviour and health of the whole organism.

The membrane contains hundreds of thousands of protein receptor switches that regulate a cell’s function by turning a certain gene on or off. But what prompts the turn of the switch is an environmental signal, so the final control of a gene—and whether it is activated or not—is determined by one of a myriad influences outside of our body.

A cell has no individuality without its interaction with the environment. All the influences from the outside will determine a cell’s expression and how it will react within its world, and whether it will conform or be an outlaw to its fellows.

Evidence is now mounting that environmental influences affect the expression of much of our ill health, including mental illness. Indeed, far from being a genetically inspired event, even women with a family history of breast cancer are more likely to get it from an environmental insult such as hormone replacement therapy.

This, of course, has extraordinary implications for modern medicine. It makes a nonsense of genetic manipulation or, indeed, of family history as a life—and death—sentence. What the new research under-scores is that health or disease is the sum total of how we live our lives. That places the responsibility for our health squarely back on our own shoulders, not those of our parents or grandparents.

Beyond the blueprint

Bryan Hubbard — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:47:00 GMT

More than 50 years before Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck wrote Les Recherches sur L’Organisation des Corps Vivants, the first book to set out a coherent and well-developed theory of evolution.

Where Lamarck differed from Darwin was in his belief that the environment, rather than genetic coding, was responsible for changes in animals, and that these changes could be inherited.

Lamarck—who has been ridiculed for generations—has now been vindicated by recent studies showing that environmental influences cause changes in organisms that may even persist through generations. Scientists are only now beginning to understand that it is outside influences filtering through the cellular membrane that control the expression of most genes and, in turn, affects the chemical coating (methylation) of the DNA double helix, which is exquisitely sensitive to the environment, particularly during the early stages of life. In our cover story this month (May 2009), WDDTY Deputy Editor Joanna Evans has uncovered a wealth of evidence showing that environmental exposure to pollutants—pesticides, plastics, even tobacco smoke—may be responsible for widespread obesity. The most extraordinary revelation is that the damage mostly occurs through prenatal exposure.

This is especially worrying as many ‘epigenetic’ changes persist through many generations. In times of famine, for example, populations exposed to famine prenatally have lower birth weights and higher-than-normal rates of degenerative diseases such as diabetes, coronary heart disease and cancer. Yet, even when they received adequate nutrition, those whose mothers had been starved produced smaller-than-normal children and grandchildren.

The environmental conditions affected at least two generations down the line (Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol, 1992; 6: 240–5 3). This suggests that those who are overweight due to chemical overload as babies will produce several generations of fat offspring.

The only note of optimism is the evidence that a good environment can also correct illness.
A mouse study by La r ry Feig and his colleagues at Tufts University looked at whether or not a stimulating environment could override knocked-out genes (Ras-GRF), without which the animals can neither learn nor remember. Put these mice in an unpleasant situation they’ve already experienced, provide the stimulus that should trigger the unhappy memory— and they won’t have the foggiest recollection of it.

But, when the researchers exposed such 15-day-old mice to the equivalent of a indoor theme park—a large cage with play tubes, cardboard boxes, a running wheel, and toys and nesting material—that was changed or rearranged every other day. After two weeks, the mice developed a compensatory new protein pathway that helped their long-term memory and learning. Even though they were still missing the gene, a stimulating environment, in effect, turned it back on. The mice showed normal memory and fear conditioning.

Feig then took this one stage further and examined what happened to their offspring, which were given the usual environment rather than the theme park. Astonishingly, these offspring showed every evidence of normal memory and learning ability even though they had inherited the knocked-out gene and had experienced no additional stimulation.

In fact, the environmental effect of their ancestors again overrode their genetic destiny—this time to positive effect.

This means that perhaps it’s not too late for us to begin cleaning up our environment.
Certainly, we owe it to our great-grandchildren.

Lynne McTaggart

This latest blog introduces the main story in the May 2009 issue of 'What Doctors Don't Tell You'. It is available only to subscribers. To subscribe, please follow this link:

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Lynne McTaggart - What Doctors Don't Tell You : DNA

DNA: it's not destiny

Beyond the blueprint