X-Message-Number: 5939
Date: 15 Mar 96 14:55:29 EST
From: "Steven B. Harris" <>
Subject: CRYONICS: Recipies and Blueprints

 (Dwight Jones)

   In response to my statement that  "DNA is a recipe, not a
blueprint," Dwight Jones () writes:

   >>To say that DNA is not a blueprint- that's not quite
obvious.  One must ask where the blueprint is then- in God's
filing cabinet?<<

   Comment: Some things have no blueprints, or (if you will) are
their own blueprints.  Again, to use my previous example, no two
chocolate chip cookies in the same batch are alike-- so where is
the separate blueprint for each, specifying the placement of
every chip?  There isn't one.  Such differences certainly aren't
IN the recipe, and I see no reason to imagine that they're stored
away someplace in some divine master filing cabinet for cookies,
either.  Similarly, no two red delicious apples are exactly
alike, even though the trees that produce all of them are (by
definition) genetically identical.  In humans, "identical" or
monozygotic twins don't have the same fingerprints, retinal
patterns, may not be the same height, etc, etc.  Why this is,
should be obvious.  There isn't nearly enough information in your
DNA to specify how you're put together.  For example, you have
more cells in your brain alone than you do base-pairs in your
genetic code.  Start talking about the connections between cells
(which is where YOU as an individual are), and it's apparent that
you are not the result of any a priori design beyond the roughest
of rough plans.  

   Thus, if you're art, you're modern art-- the kind that comes
from tossing paint at a wall.

   If you want another metaphor, consider the ecological one. 
DNA does not rule at many scales for many things.  In a clone of
aspens, for instance, the genetically identical trees still
differ from each other.  And where is the blueprint for (say) an
entire aspen grove, specifying the location of every bird, every
worm, every aspen branch, and the proper balance between them
all?  Well, there isn't one here, either-- though the Victorians
did indeed seem to believe in God's filing cabinet for this.  But
in our post-Newtonian, Darwinistic world we (us rational people)
realize that you don't need God, indeed you don't even need the
government, to decide how many bears should be in Yellowstone. 
Balance in ecological systems happens as a result of self-
organizing chaos, with emergence of order spontaneously from
complexity, by means of competition and reproduction.  It's not
for nothing that Darwin read a lot about Adam Smith's "invisible
hand," which seems to direct and order market systems, before
coming up with his great theory of how things in *biology* got to
*look* designed by providence, when they really are not.  Today
we understand that ecologies ARE free-markets with no central
control-- it's all the same thing.

   Well, guess what?  On smaller scales, so it is as on larger
ones.  Bodies are ecologies also.  As your brain is forming,
those embryonic neurons are competing and killing each other off
just as in any ecological system.  The result, even before you
are born, is as uniquely "you" as any forest is uniquely 
different from any other.  The invisible hand of competition and
Darwinian survival in your brain formation might leave you gay
when your twin is straight.  Or give you an important difference
in temperament in other ways, right from the start.  And that's
BEFORE different life experiences re-wire your hardware over a
lifetime.  Whence YOU as an individual?  Your genetic code is
only a very rough starting point for that.  Cook you up with the
same recipe again, and your brain-souffle may fall the next time. 
Sometimes one monozygotic twin is schizophrenic, and the other
not.  Chaos is not for sissies.

   >>And to create a living being from DNA is hardly mindless.
It's the closest thing to a miracle any of us will ever see.<<

   It *is* mindless, which is why there are screw-ups, random
failures, atavisms, design flaws-- all as Darwin pointed out
(it's not the perfections that point us to the answers here, as
Darwin knew very well, but the imperfections).  And as far as
being a miracle or not, that's a semantic question.  I'll agree
that it's pretty beautiful and pretty neat-- but then so are a
lot of things in nature.
 
   >>If you would only believe your own analysis (that fixing an
old human body is questionable at best) then you might concur
that this quixotian question of cryonics might be better 
posed especially if directed to regeneration from DNA.  
(With all due respect to the members of this list).<<

    I'm not at all sure what you're trying to get at.  
Regeneration of your body from your DNA will not give you the
same body, but do you really care if you have the same 
fingerprints?  Total regeneration of your brain from only your
DNA is another matter, and clearly would not include quite a bit
of what makes you the individual you are.  And we are NOT just
talking about you lifetime memories here.  Again, even leaving
memories aside, your own personal and unique brain is one of
those things which is its own blueprint, and the only copy that
exists of that blueprint.  That's why cryonicists are so anxious
about saving it, don't you know.


                                 Steve Harris, M.D.


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