Biblical Archeology > Fascinating discoveries in the field of Genetics - including Adam's rib

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We carry DNA from extinct cousins like Neanderthals.

Science is now revealing their genetic legacy

John Gurche helps people understand what ancient humans looked like by creating lifelike models based on archaeological finds. The work requires a mix of artistic skill and scientific knowledge.

(Sept. 24) (AP Video: Michael Hill)

BY LAURA UNGAR AND MADDIE BURAKOFF

Updated 8:38 AM PDT, September 27, 2023

Neanderthals live on within us.

These ancient human cousins, and others called Denisovans, once lived alongside our early Homo sapiens ancestors. They mingled and had children. So some of who they were never went away — it’s in our genes. And science is starting to reveal just how much that shapes us.

Using the new and rapidly improving ability to piece together fragments of ancient DNA, scientists are finding that traits inherited from our ancient cousins are still with us now, affecting our fertility, our immune systems, even how our bodies handled the COVID-19 virus.

“We’re now carrying the genetic legacies and learning about what that means for our bodies and our health,” said Mary Prendergast, a Rice University archeologist.

In the past few months alone, researchers have linked Neanderthal DNA to a serious hand disease, the shape of people’s noses and various other human traits. They even inserted a gene carried by Neanderthals and Denisovans into mice to investigate its effects on biology, and found it gave them larger heads and an extra rib.

In the Biblical story of Creation, God took a rib from Adam to make Eve. Man has been missing this rib ever since. Isn't that curious?

Much of the human journey remains a mystery. But Dr. Hugo Zeberg of the Karolinska Insitute in Sweden said new technologies, research and collaborations are helping scientists begin to answer the basic but cosmic questions: “Who are we? Where did we come from?”

And the answers point to a profound reality: We have far more in common with our extinct cousins than we ever thought.

NEANDERTHALS WITHIN US

Until recently, the genetic legacy from ancient humans was invisible because scientists were limited to what they could glean from the shape and size of bones. But there has been a steady stream of discoveries from ancient DNA, an area of study pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Svante Paabo who first pieced together a Neanderthal genome.

Advances in finding and interpreting ancient DNA have allowed them to see things like genetic changes over time to better adapt to environments or through random chance.

It’s even possible to figure out how much genetic material people from different regions carry from the ancient relatives our predecessors encountered.

Research shows some African populations have almost no Neanderthal DNA, while those from European or Asian backgrounds have 1% to 2%. Denisovan DNA is barely detectable in most parts of the world but makes up 4% to 6% of the DNA of people in Melanesia, which extends from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands.

That may not sound like much, but it adds up. “Half of the Neanderthal genome is still around, in small pieces scattered around modern humans,” said Zeberg, who collaborates closely with Paabo.

It’s also enough to affect us in very real ways. Scientists don’t yet know the full extent, but they’re learning it can be both helpful and harmful.

For example, Neanderthal DNA has been linked to auto-immune diseases like Graves’ disease and rheumatoid arthritis. When Homo sapiens came out of Africa, they had no immunity to diseases in Europe and Asia, but Neanderthals and Denisovans already living there did.

“By interbreeding with them, we got a quick fix to our immune systems, which was good news 50,000 years ago,” said Chris Stringer, a human evolution researcher at the Natural History Museum in London. “The result today is, for some people, that our immune systems are oversensitive, and sometimes they turn on themselves.”

Similarly, a gene associated with blood clotting believed to be passed down from Neanderthals in Eurasia may have been helpful in the “rough and tumble world of the Pleistocene,” said Rick Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution. But today it can raise the risk of stroke for older adults. “For every benefit,” he said, “there are costs in evolution.”

In 2020, research by Zeberg and Paabo found that a major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals. “We compared it to the Neanderthal genome and it was a perfect match,” Zeberg said. “I kind of fell off my chair.”

The next year, they found a set of DNA variants along a single chromosome inherited from Neanderthals had the opposite effect: protecting people from severe COVID.

The list goes on: Research has linked Neanderthal genetic variants to skin and hair color, behavioral traits, skull shape and Type 2 diabetes. One study found that people who report feeling more pain than others are likely to carry a Neanderthal pain receptor. Another found that a third of women in Europe inherited a Neanderthal receptor for the hormone progesterone, which is associated with increased fertility and fewer miscarriages.

Much less is known about our genetic legacy from Denisovans – although some research has linked genes from them to fat metabolism and better adaptation to high altitudes. Maanasa Raghavan, a human genetics expert at the University of Chicago, said a stretch of Denisovan DNA has been found in Tibetans, who continue to live and thrive in low-oxygen environments today.

Scientists have even found evidence of “ghost populations” — groups whose fossils have yet to be discovered — within modern humans’ genetic code.

SO WHY DID WE SURVIVE?

In the past, the tale of modern humans’ survival “was always told as some success story, almost like a hero’s story,” in which Homo sapiens rose above the rest of the natural world and overcame the “insufficiencies” of their cousins, Potts said.

“Well, that simply is just not the correct story.”

Neanderthals and Denisovans had already existed for thousands of years by the time Homo sapiens left Africa. Scientists used to think we won out because we had more complex behavior and superior technology. But recent research shows that Neanderthals talked, cooked with fire, made art objects, had sophisticated tools and hunting behavior, and even wore makeup and jewelry.

Several theories now tie our survival to our ability to travel far and wide.

“We spread all over the world, much more than these other forms did,” Zeberg said.

While Neanderthals were specially adapted to cold climates, Potts said, Homo sapiens were able to disperse to all different kinds of climates after emerging in tropical Africa. “We are so adaptable, culturally adaptable, to so many places in the world,” he said.

Meanwhile, Neanderthals and Denisovans faced harsh conditions in the north, like repeated ice ages and ice sheets that likely trapped them in small areas, said Eleanor Scerri, an archeologist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology. They lived in smaller populations with a greater risk of genetic collapse.

Plus, we had nimble, efficient bodies, Prendergast said. It takes a lot more calories to feed stocky Neanderthals than comparatively skinny Homo sapiens, so Neanderthals had more trouble getting by, and moving around, especially when food got scarce.

Janet Young, curator of physical anthropology at the Canadian Museum of History, pointed to another intriguing hypothesis – which anthropologist Pat Shipman shared in one of her books –- that dogs played a big part in our survival. Researchers found the skulls of domesticated dogs in Homo sapiens sites much further back in time than anyone had found before. Scientists believe dogs made hunting easier.

By around 30,000 years ago, all the other kinds of hominins on Earth had died off, leaving Homo sapiens as the last humans standing.

‘INTERACTION AND MIXTURE’

Still, every new scientific revelation points to how much we owe our ancient cousins.

Human evolution was not about “survival of the fittest and extinction,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It’s about “interaction and mixture.”

Researchers expect to learn more as science continues to advance, allowing them to extract information from ever-tinier traces of ancient lives. Even when fossils aren’t available, scientists today can capture DNA from soil and sediment where archaic humans once lived.

And there are less-explored places in the world where they hope to learn more. Zeberg said “biobanks” that collect biological samples will likely be established in more countries.

As they delve deeper into humanity’s genetic legacy, scientists expect to find even more evidence of how much we mixed with our ancient cousins and all they left us.

“Perhaps,” Zeberg said, “we should not see them as so different.”

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Islam - Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow > Surprising Origins of Turks and Other Disturbing Questions

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Now Even Science Demonstrates Islamic Aggression

08/12/2021 

by Raymond Ibrahim

Along with Islamic doctrine and history, one can now add science to the list of things that demonstrate Islamic aggression.

Ancestry.com, a company that operates a network of genealogical and historical records, and provides DNA ancestry kits, recently asserted what history already knows: most of the denizens of Turkey are not Turks but rather the descendants of Christian peoples, mostly Greeks, who lived in Anatolia well over a millennium before the Turks invaded, but converted, due to Islam’s three choices (conversion, jizya/submission, or death).

As might be expected, many Turks, who tend to be zealous over their heritage, are outraged at finding that their ancestors were not conquering Turks but conquered infidels.  This finding also underscores a vicious cycle I’ve discussed before: most of those Muslims who today persecute the indigenous Christians in their midst—and Turks rank among them—are themselves the descendants of Christians who converted to Islam to cease their own persecution.

One wonders how long before DNA studies reveal another, even more unflattering fact: the bloodline of conquering Muslims—Turks chief among them—is further adulterated with the blood of European concubines, sex-slaves, many millions of which were imported over the centuries by Turks, Tatars, Barbary corsairs, and various other Muslim peoples. The historical record is clear on this.

As one example, in 1438, Bartolomeo de Giano, an Italian Franciscan, witnessed the Turks’ slave raids throughout the Balkans.  From Hungary, 300,000 were enslaved and “carried off in just a few days,” he wrote; from Serbia and Transylvania 100,000 were “led away in iron fetters tied to the backs of horses. . . . [and] women and children were herded by dogs without any mercy or piety. If one of them slowed down, unable to walk further because of thirst or pain, O Good Jesus! she immediately ended her life there in torment, cut in half.”

As one historian observes, “The massive enslavement of slavic populations during this period gave rise, in fact, to our word ‘slave’: in Bartolomeo’s time, to be a slave was to be a Slav.”

Similarly, the Greek historian, Doukas (1400-1462), writes the following about the palace of Ottoman sultan Bayezid:

[T]here one could find carefully selected boys and girls, with beautiful faces, sweet young boys and girls who shone more brightly than the sun.  To what nations did they belong?  They were Byzantines [Greeks], Serbs, Wallachians, Albanians, Hungarians, Saxons, Bulgarians, and Latins….  He himself [Sultan Bayezid] unceasingly gave himself over to pleasure, to the point of exhaustion, by indulging in debauchery with these boys and girls.

Nor, as some of these passages suggest, were European slaves used only for pleasure; Muslims regularly procreated with them as well.  Even that one Turk most celebrated by Erdogan’s Turkey—Bayezid’s great-grandson, Muhammad II, the conqueror of Constantinople—was born of a Christian slave mother.  This did not change the fact that he became an avowed enemy of Christendom—the “forerunner of antichrist” as he was described.

Is he called the “forerunner of antichrist” because he was the first Muslim to stand in the Hagia Sophia after a thousand years of it being the center of Christianity in the world? (Search this blog for 'Hagia Sophia' for several stories.)

Matt 24:14-16

"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

"Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.

Has Erdogan's appearance, leading prayer in the same Hagia Sophia in 2020, the actual abomination of which Jesus spoke?

Moreover, as Darío Fernández-Morera, author of The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, explains:

Such was the impact of Christian slaves on Islamic lands, that many of the Umayyad rulers of Islamic Spain, as the sons of sexual slaves, were blue-eyed and blond or red-haired; and the founder of the “Arabic” Nasrid dynasty of Granada was called al-Hamar, “the Red One,” because of his reddish hair and beard. … Arabist Celia del Moral observes that in Umayyad al-Andalus the most coveted and therefore expensive sexual slaves were blond and red-haired females from the Northern Christian regions.

In fact, according to the calculations of Spanish Arabist Julian Ribera, due to the constant sexual intercourse with European slave women, the genetic Arab component of each generation of Umayyad rulers was reduced by half, so that the last Umayyad, Hisham II (976-1013), was approximately only 0.09 percent Arab.

Nor was this phenomenon limited to Muslim elites—caliphs, sultans, emirs, and the like—because they could afford “well-staffed” harems.  Naturally, it is they whose doings are recorded, because it is they—the rulers, not the lay Muslim—that chroniclers recorded.  Even so, history makes clear that European sex-slaves were, depending on time and place, abundantly available to the average Muslim.

Thus we learn that the slave markets of Adrianople (Edirne), formerly the Ottoman capital, were so inundated with European flesh that children sold for pennies, “a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse.”

Similarly, considering that sixteenth century “Algiers teemed with Christian captives, and it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a fair barter for an onion,” little wonder by the late eighteenth century, European observers noted how “the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion.”

Will Ancestry.com or similar organizations ever demonstrate this other unflattering fact concerning Muslim bloodlines through DNA?  Unlikely.

Quoted material in the above article was excerpted from and is documented in the author’s book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.

No Single 'Gay Gene' Contributes to Same-Sex Behaviour, Study Finds

There is a significant pro-gay slant to this article which
I attempt to temper with truth

'Effectively impossible' to predict sexual behaviour from one's genome, researcher says

The Associated Press 

Research published in the journal Science has identified five genetic variants not previously linked with gay or lesbian sexuality. (Ann Wang/Reuters)

The largest study of its kind found new evidence that genes contribute to same-sex sexual behaviour, but it echoes research that says there are no specific genes that make people gay.

The genome-wide research on DNA from nearly half a million U.S. and U.K. adults identified five genetic variants not previously linked with gay or lesbian sexuality. The variants were more common in people who reported ever having had a same-sex sexual partner. That includes people whose partners were exclusively of the same sex and those who mostly reported heterosexual behaviour.

None cause the behaviour; it cannot be predicted

The researchers said thousands more genetic variants likely are involved and interact with factors that aren't inherited, but that none of them cause the behaviour nor can predict whether someone will be gay.

The research "provides the clearest glimpse yet into the genetic underpinnings of same-sex sexual behaviour," said co-author Benjamin Neale, a psychiatric geneticist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass.

Genetics - less than half the story

"We also found that it's effectively impossible to predict an individual's sexual behaviour from their genome. Genetics is less than half of this story for sexual behaviour but it's still a very important contributing factor," Neale said.

The study was released Thursday by the journal Science. Results are based on genetic testing and survey responses.

Some of the genetic variants found were present in both men and women. Two in men were located near genes involved in male-pattern baldness and sense of smell, raising intriguing questions about how regulation of sex hormones and smell may influence same-sex behaviour.

Importantly, most participants were asked about frequency of same-sex sexual behaviour but not if they self-identified as gay or lesbian. Fewer than five per cent of U.K. participants and about 19 per cent of U.S. participants reported ever having a same-sex sexual experience.

The researchers acknowledged that limitation and emphasized that the study's focus was on behaviour, not sexual identity or orientation. They also note that the study only involved people of European ancestry and can't answer whether similar results would be found in other groups.

Origins unknown

Origins of same-sex behaviour are uncertain. Some of the strongest evidence of a genetic link comes from studies in identical twins. Many scientists believe that social, cultural, family and other biological factors are also involved, while some religious groups and skeptics consider it a choice or behaviour that can be changed.

The father of sexual research in America, Alfred Kinsey, determined that 89% of gays could associate their behaviour, or preference, to specific events or environmental situations from their childhood. That was in the 1940s. The study was repeated in 1970 by the Kinsey Institute and found the same results.

Variants very weak

A Science commentary notes that the five identified variants had such a weak effect on behaviour that using the results "for prediction, intervention or a supposed 'cure' is wholly and unreservedly impossible."

"Future work should investigate how genetic predispositions are altered by environmental factors," University of Oxford sociologist Melinda Mills said in the commentary.

And, perhaps, how genes themselves are altered by environmental factors.

Other experts not involved in the study had varied reactions.

Dr. Kenneth Kendler a specialist in psychiatric genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, called it "a very important paper that advances the study of the genetics of human sexual preference substantially. The results are broadly consistent with those obtained from the earlier technologies of twin and family studies suggesting that sexual orientation runs in families and is moderately heritable."

If that were so, then you would think that it would be moderately predictable, yet the study says, quite emphatically, that it is not.

Gay gene?

Former National Institutes of Health geneticist Dean Hamer said the study confirms "that sexuality is complex and there are a lot of genes involved," but it isn't really about gay people. "Having just a single same sex experience is completely different than actually being gay or lesbian," Hamer said. His research in the 1990s linked a marker on the X chromosome with male homosexuality. Some subsequent studies had similar results but the new one found no such link.

He didn't actually link them except in his mind. He stated he was on the verge of linking them and that was good enough for Science journal and mainstream media. He still hasn't found that link he was on the verge of finding in 1990.

This is the reason why homosexuality suddenly became quite acceptable in the early 1990s. Hamer's study, published as a cover story in the same Science journal, spread like lightening across the news media of the world and has never been brought into question by most in the 28 years since. 

The journal Science edition that published Hamer's study put the two words, "Gay Gene?" on the cover. The media appears to have not noticed the question mark, for they simply decided then that gays were born that way and there's nothing they can do about it. They never pursued Hamer to find out if the question mark had ever been removed. 

The very next year, Science published an article from an eminent geneticist, who, unlike Hamer, was not gay, in which he trashed Hamer's study as being completely false. Other geneticists agreed with him, but that made no difference to the news media who had heard what they wanted to hear.

Hamer, and other gay or pro-gay geneticists have been looking for a gay gene for more than 50 years. Hamer admits he has not found it, neither has anyone else.

May have little to do with homosexuality

Doug Vanderlaan, a University of Toronto psychologist who studies sexual orientation, said the absence of information on sexual orientation is a drawback and makes it unclear what the identified genetic links might signify. They "might be links to other traits, like openness to experience," Vanderlaan said.

In other words, the 5 weak variants may have almost nothing to do with sexual preference but rather reveal one's character traits which may make him more likely to act in a manner conducive to sexual experimentation.

The study was a collaboration among scientists including psychologists, sociologists and statisticians from the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. They did entire human genome scanning, using blood samples from the U.K. Biobank and saliva samples from customers of the U.S.-based ancestry and biotech company 23andMe who had agreed to participate in research.

Fake science

There is a lot of garbage floating around the internet and 'science journals' on both sides of this issue. However, gay, or pro-gay researchers have a motive for finding a gay gene whether it is there or not. The journal Science, in Dec 2014 reported that 'one brief conversation with a gay rights canvasser could change someone's mind about same-sex marriage'. 

As unlikely as that theory seems, the writer had data to back it up. However, the UCLA grad's dissertation adviser questioned him on his data and eventually confirmed that there were no data; none. He made it all up. Meanwhile NYT, WaPo, and other media outlets ran with the story. The retraction didn't get nearly as much coverage as the fake news. 

Media bias

That I have had to insert a half-dozen comments in order to bring some truth and reality to this article is an example of the far-left bias in the media today. Anything that is pro-LGBTQ2S is quickly, and without careful examination, shuffled to the top of the pile. Any news that is fervently anti-Christian is good news in most mainstream media newsrooms.

Mainstream media is into social engineering, and our children are the animals it's experimenting on. Their willful blindness to the truth is confirmation of that. A Christian man once said, "Morality dictates theology"! 

First Modern Brits were Black, Groundbreaking DNA Test on 10,000-year-old Fossil Reveals

Don't you just love irony?

© Justin Tallis / AFP

A pioneering genetic analysis of the UK’s oldest complete skeleton, which is around 10,000 years old, has revealed that the first modern Britons had a “dark to black” complexion.

The National History Museum carried out cutting-edge genetic sequencing and facial recognition technology on the ‘Cheddar Man,’ the skeleton found near Gough’s Cave in the Cheddar Gorge, and found that the first British settlers had dark skin, dark curly hair and possibly blue eyes.

The research on the Mesolithic fossil undermines the commonly held assumption that a people’s geographical origin is a determinant of skin color and physique.

“It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions, or very recent constructions, that really are not applicable to the past at all,” said Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked on the project.

Most white people currently living in Britain are believed to have 10 percent of the skeleton’s DNA.

“The combination of quite dark skin and blue eyes is something that we don’t imagine is typical, but that was the real appearance of these people, something that’s quite rare today,” said Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum.

Before the Cheddar Man’s lineage, there were around nine colonies of hunters, but it is understood that they were all wiped out by harsh temperatures. The Cheddar Man’s 12,000-man fort, however, thrived in the climate. They lived in tents and hunted boar and deer using hunting dogs, and bows and arrows.

Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London and another member of the project’s team, agreed with Booth and called into question the link between Britishness and whiteness.

“The historical perspective that you get just tells you that things change, things are in flux, and what may seem as a cemented truth that people who feel British should have white skin, through time is not at all something that is an immutable truth,” he said.

The Cheddar Man was already known to have been around five foot five inches tall, around 10 stone in weight, with good teeth. He died in his early 20s.

The research is in stark contrast to a previous reconstruction of the Cheddar Man by the University of Manchester in 1998, which thought the British ancestor to be white-skinned. Director of the study, Robert Stoddard, is remarkably reported to have said that the Cheddar Man probably “looked pretty much like any modern inhabitant of a Somerset pub.”

The original model- composed without any access to genetic testing- also pictured the Cheddar Man to have straighter and lighter hair compared to the latest one.

“It may be that we may have to rethink some of our notions of what it is to be British, what we expect a Briton to look like at this time,” Dr Rick Schulting, associate professor of archaeology at Oxford University, told the Daily Mail.

Genetically, the Cheddar Man belonged to the “Western Hunter-Gatherers”, Mesolithic individuals from Spain, Hungary and Luxemburg.

His ancestors, however, are thought to have originated in Africa before moving to the Middle East and then Europe.

The European population has genes which are associated with reduced pigmentation, but the Cheddar Man was found to have “ancestral” versions of the genes, hence the new claim to “dark to black” skin tone.

Genetically Modified Human Embryos 'Essential' Says Report

Can Monsanto be far behind?

By James Gallagher
Health editor, BBC News website

Human blastocyst - very early pre-embryo stage in pregnancy

It is "essential" that the genetic modification of human embryos is allowed, says a group of scientists, ethicists and policy experts.

A Hinxton Group report says editing the genetic code of early stage embryos is of "tremendous value" to research.

It adds although GM babies should not be allowed to be born at the moment, it may be "morally acceptable" under some circumstances in the future.

The US refuses to fund research involving the gene editing of embryos.

The global Hinxton Group met in response to the phenomenal advances taking place in the field of genetics.

A range of novel techniques combine a "molecular sat-nav" that travels to a precise location in our DNA with a pair of "molecular scissors" that cut it.

It has transformed research in a wide range of fields, but the progress means genetically modified babies are ceasing to be a prospect and fast becoming a possibility.

Earlier this year, a team at Sun Yat-sen University, in China, showed that errors in the DNA that led to a blood disorder could be corrected in early stage embryos.

In the future, the technologies could be used to prevent children being born with cystic fibrosis or genes that increase the risk of cancer.

Analysis

Five month old foetus (SPL)

Embryo engineering dominates debate around these novel gene-editing tools.

But while disease-free children or "designer babies" may be on the horizon, the more immediate uses are far less controversial.

It could restore the reputation of the field of gene therapy in adults and children.

It was nearly a success in children with no immune system (known as bubble-boy syndrome). Symptoms improved, but the technique led to cancer in some cases.

These more accurate tools may be able to tweak our genetic code without the side-effects.

There have even been successful trials to give HIV patients immunity to the virus.

And because these changes would not be passed on to the next generation, they are far less controversial.

There have been calls for a moratorium on such research, which has left many asking where to draw the line - should any embryo research be banned, should it be allowed but only for research, or should GM babies be permitted?

A meeting of the influential Hinxton Group, in Manchester, acknowledged that the rate of progress meant there was a "pressure to make decisions" and argued embryo editing should be allowed.

In a statement, it said: "We believe that while this technology has tremendous value to basic research and enormous potential... it is not sufficiently developed to consider human genome editing for clinical reproductive purposes at this time."

This is in stark contrast to the US National Institutes of Health, which has already refused to fund any gene editing of embryos.

Its director, Dr Francis Collins, who was also a key player in the Human Genome Project, said: "The concept of altering the human germline [inherited DNA] in embryos for clinical purposes has been debated over many years from many different perspectives, and has been viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed."

However, the Hinxton Group's full report acknowledges that "there may be morally acceptable uses of this technology in human reproduction, though further substantial discussion and debate will be required".

But even one of the principal figures in the discovery and development of Crispr (one of the easiest methods of editing DNA) has doubts.

Prof Emmanuelle Charpentier told BBC News: "Personally, I don't think it is acceptable to manipulate the human germline for the purpose of changing some genetic traits that will be transmitted over generations."

"I just have a problem right now with regard to the manipulation of the human germlines."

Dr Peter Mills, from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, added: "We have seen these uses coming over the horizon, but we need to decide whether we're going to invite them in when they reach our doorstep."

There always seems to be a good reason for doing evil things. It is why political correctness has such extraordinary power, and why the world's priorities are so monumentally screwed up.

To make matters worse, if the technology is out there, someone is going to use it. We will be seeing all sorts of monstrosities born into this world within a few years. God help us.

What is the Hinxton Group?

The Hinxton Group describes itself as an international consortium on stem cells, ethics and law, and brings together researchers, bioethicists and policy experts from around the world.

Named after the Cambridgeshire village in the UK where the group first met, its members aim to "explore the ethical and policy challenges of transnational scientific collaboration raised by variations in national regulations governing embryo research and stem cell science".

Hinxton is also home to the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, where a third of the DNA sequencing work which led to the publication of the draft human genome was undertaken.

Researcher Retracts Landmark Same-Sex Marriage Study, Claims Co-author 'Fabricated' Data

Professor Donald P. Green (Courtesy of Donald Green; Reuters)

It was a study that made headlines — partly because it was so hard to believe. Last December, researchers revealed in the journal Science that one brief conversation with a gay rights canvasser could change someone's mind about same-sex marriage.

The highly publicized article stunned political scientists, but has now been retracted on the request of one of the study's co-authors, Columbia University professor Donald Green.

"I have strong reason to believe that the data, particularly the survey data, were fabricated," Green tells As It Happens host Carol Off. "The data were ostensibly from a very-large scale Internet panel survey… the total number of respondents was more than 10,000. But there's no evidence that any respondents were actually interviewed."

When the study "When contact changes minds: An experiment on transmission of support for gay equality" was published, the results made big news. Stories ran in The New York Times, The Washington Post and many other media outlets, including on the public radio program This American Life. Many researchers believed the methods used by the canvassers could be used to sway public opinion on other contentious issues.

The survey data was provided by Green's co-author, UCLA graduate student Michael J. LaCour. When another research team tried to replicate the study's findings, they couldn't. They published their own independent research paper, titled "Irregularities in LaCour (2014)."

Green continues: "When my colleague and UCLA professor Lynn Vavreck, who is Michael LaCour's dissertation advisor confronted him with the allegations… He was unable to produce any such raw data, nor was he able to render them from his hard drive, nor was the Qualtrics [database] representative able to verify that the data ever existed. So I can only conclude that they did not exist."

LaCour responded to the allegations on his personal website and on Twitter: "I'm gathering evidence and relevant information so I can provide a single comprehensive response. I will do so at my earliest opportunity."

"I asked [LaCour] yesterday whether he was prepared to admit that the data were fabricated and he said no," Green says, adding that the likelihood that LaCour could prove otherwise is "very, very" small.

In "Irregularities in LaCour (2014)," Green told the independent researchers that he confronted LaCour and that he "has confessed to falsely describing at least some of the details of the data collection."

Green says he doesn't know what might have motivated the alleged fabrication.

"I wonder whether if this is one of those instances where someone commits a little fraud and has to commit more fraud to cover up the first fraud and it grows and grows and grows."

He's not sure if it could have been connected to furthering same-sex equality. 

This reminds me of the study published, also in Science, in 1993 which claimed that genetic researcher Dean Hamer, had found markers for a gay gene. The story went as viral as a story could go in 1992, and almost immediately nearly all news agencies and departments began treating homosexuality as something you are born with.

The following year the study was mercilessly trashed by honest genetic researchers. The report was printed in Science, and some news agencies mentioned it, but with nothing near the excitement and energy of the bogus report. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, perhaps quite intentionally, and the media unequivocally became sympathetic with gays and lesbians.

Hamer, himself, will now tell you that there is no single gay gene, but that it probably has to do with a complex combination of genes. The Independent 1 Nov 1995, - "Dr Hamer does not himself believe in a gay gene despite trying more than any other scientist to prove the existence of a genetic - and therefore inherited - component to sexual orientation."

Hamer now says that environmental factors are not related to sexual orientation in spite of Alfred Kinsey's conclusions otherwise, and the Kinsey Institutes reproduction of those findings 30 years later. Environmental factors include relationships (distorted relationships) with one or more parent, or other influential people in the early years of a child.

Personally, I am convinced that there can be a spiritual element to homosexuality as well as environmental factors.

The episode also revealed the willingness (indeed, an enthusiasm) of the media to believe anything that runs counter to conservative Christianity, even respectable scientific journals.

"I've never been really clear if he had that kind of ideological or political agenda," he says. "It has not come through strongly in my conversations… it may be that he was just interested in demonstrating persuasive effect."

Green is expecting the study retraction to have a negative effect on his own reputation as an academic researcher.

"It's certainly going to be with me until I reach my grave," he says. "I think this will always be something that people will say about my research for good or ill. My hope is that something positive can come out of this, mainly that I can use this experience to think about, and perhaps help others think about, ways of preventing this sort of thing from happening again. What kinds of procedures can we put in place to prevent the huge waste of resources that occurred as a result of this fabrication?"

He also thinks that if LaCour is unable to produce data to support his research, that he will face severe career consequences.

"I expect that he will be subject to an academic investigation. He has not yet received his Ph.D; I think that it's unlikely that he will receive it. I think he will probably not, in the end, take the job that he was offered at Princeton. I'm guessing that as the process unfolds, he's likely to have that offer rescinded."