AEV        A new heretical theory of evolution

I am writing this on Sunday 16 July 2006..  I have just finished reading an article in the 4 March 2006 edition of New Scientist (NS).  The article gives details of an blasphemous  lecture at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)..  It is a blasphemy because it challenges the whole of the establishment about  what causes heredity.  The heresy is propagated by a lady from the Tel Aviv University.  Eva Jablonka is a biologist, and presumably a Jewess.  Like Einstein before her, she is proposing ideas that may well shake the world.

This lady is proposing that non-genetic information is routinely passed from one generation to the next.  She has called the effect "Lamarckism", after a Frenchman of the 19th century, Jean Baptiste Lamark.  This Froggy Fellow believed that characteristics acquired during life to be heritable.  Of course, modern biology flatly refutes that suggestion, and anyone proposing it is a risk of being handed over to the Inquisition for suitable retraining.

Rowan Hooper (the author of the NS piece) went on to talk about how Jablonka believes that there are four dimensions to evolution: genetic, epi-genetic, behavioural, and symbolic.  It seems that there is a growing band of researchers who are beginning to come round to the idea that non-genetic information may affect development from one generation to the next.  I, personally, knew a chap in the army who reckoned that the crescent scar on his arm was the result of his mother having a deep cut on her arm in the same position as his scar.  This injury occurred before he was conceived  At that time I had not been very interested in the subject, so let it pass as one of those snippets of information that assail us throughout our life.  But, on reading Hooper's article, I recalled the incident.

Jablonka believes that things can attach themselves to genes and be passed on to the new life.  She referred to the process as "epigenetic inheritance" .  Hooper went on to contradict his initial stand on the subject by quoting a few example of the so-called 'heresy'.  Last year a US study showed that an initial exposure to two pesticides reduced sperm counts in at least subsequent four generations of male rats.  The result did not seem to be the result of changes in the DNA sequence, making it the first time any chemical has been shown to cause a heritable effect other than by random mutation.

Earlier this year  researchers in London and Sweden revealed that nutrition and smoking in early life can be passed down the male line to influence the health of sons and grandsons.  Hooper reports that some scientists  are unwilling to accept this notion

Myself, I am a very lowly soul in this subject, but it does seem to me that if radiation damage can cause defects in later generations, (an observation that is not disputed), then why should a chemical assault not cause a similar hereditable effect.