A study has found that urban air pollution - ozone and nitrogen dioxide - causes changes in general expression in sperm, with potential impacts on foetal development.
More evidence of the environment producing subtle heritable modifications to DNA.
The world we live in is still far more Mendel's than Lamarck's, but it's perhaps more like 95:5 rather than 100:0.
Not to speak well of air pollution, but the article seems far too eager to implicate it in reducing male fertility.
Alternate theory: The pollution-induced epigenetic changes are mostly to adapt any offspring to living in an environment with more-polluted air. Given how often our ancestors used indoor air pollution (from cooking fires and such) to discourage disease-spreading insects, that would be a very reasonable adaption.
The "DNA is a Turing computer and everyone is born a blank slate" model is a bit too intellectually convenient for a 20th century that gave us egalitarianism and Turing computers.
It's mostly true, but not entirely, and the few percent that doesn't fit that model is enough to matter, and perhaps explains some persistent social phenomena which don't fit the picture.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 22.2 ms ] threadMore evidence of the environment producing subtle heritable modifications to DNA.
The world we live in is still far more Mendel's than Lamarck's, but it's perhaps more like 95:5 rather than 100:0.
Alternate theory: The pollution-induced epigenetic changes are mostly to adapt any offspring to living in an environment with more-polluted air. Given how often our ancestors used indoor air pollution (from cooking fires and such) to discourage disease-spreading insects, that would be a very reasonable adaption.
The "DNA is a Turing computer and everyone is born a blank slate" model is a bit too intellectually convenient for a 20th century that gave us egalitarianism and Turing computers.
It's mostly true, but not entirely, and the few percent that doesn't fit that model is enough to matter, and perhaps explains some persistent social phenomena which don't fit the picture.