"BAD SEED SYNDROME"

Thinking about genetics, esp. the family determinism that is sold to the gullible as bogus tribal memberships, I naturally turned to my own family.  I have three sets of "grandparents", my mother's parents, my father's parents, and the parents of my uncles who are all Hatfields, brothers married to my mother's sisters.  Remarkably, my cousins on that side have a blip in their genetic code that interferes with the proper development of their phalanges: fingers and toes.  Among them are too many toes (easy to remove one), missing thumbs (docs moved her big toe up to be a thumb), and a club foot (the hardest one to fix).  This glitch goes back to Anne Boleyn, an ill-fated wife of Henry VIII.  In paintings her sixth finger was sometimes hidden in her skirt.

So I went to genetic websites looking for fingers  and found a far different and more serious Hatfield mutation that carries susceptibility to rage.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17967965/ns/health-health_care/t/hatfield-mccoy-feud-blamed-rage-disease/#.XfFUxS2ZOHs

I know of no victims related to me and don't carry those genes myself -- just know about the TV program deriving from the history of Hatfields.  One of the uncles-in-law never married and was institutionalized for what was understood to be "paranoid schizophrenia." He is erased from family history.  My mother's opinion was that it came from his mother's side, Ruth, who was a sweetly cherished woman unlike the career Pinkerton women and not a Hatfield either.

This is more immediate version of the idea of "bad seed" that curses some people.  Bob Scriver was accused of that, through the MacFie side.  His art obsessions, hot temper, narcissism were the markers.  Late in life he met a cousin his age who was almost exactly like him, even played the cornet just like him, but was not a sculptor or even a Westerner.  The idea of being marked by genes haunted him and got confused with racism, but he had it backwards.  His mother thought marrying an "Indian" would make "low" children more probable, but it would have been more protective to marry an indigenous person with an entirely different genetic code.  On the other hand, maybe Blackfeet were formidable warriors because they carried this mythical warrior gene.  The ironic reality was that his first wife carried susceptibility to cancer that killed her, her daughter, and her mother.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/code-rage-the-warrior-gene-makes-me-mad-whether-i-have-it-or-not/http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17967965/ns/health-health_care/t/hatfield-mccoy-feud-blamed-rage-disease/#.XfFUxS2ZOHs

We think of genes in terms of one-gene/one-trait but the truth is that it takes a whole sequence of interacting of genes coded for certain proteins, cultures rewarding certain traits, and individual histories that accumulate trauma, deprivation, frustration, and failure.  When these small things interact to create a syndrome in a lot of people, there are riots in the streets.  Emotional characteristics seem more susceptible than physical bodies.

From the very beginning of the premise that "genes" give rise to humans of various kinds, and much bolstered by the thoughta of livestock raisers who specialize in certain types achieved by breeding and management, some people have wanted a simple guide to who is naughty and who is nice.  Evidently they can't figure standards and judgements of their own.  Below is one formulation referring to psychology that is quite popular, though sometimes it's a "Tetrad" when people want to add sadism, the enjoyment of giving pain and suffering.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.18.879916v1

The following formulations are from Wikipedia which depends on the thought of crowds who may or may not have expert training, but definitely have opinions.

"In psychology, the dark triad refers to the personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They are called "dark" because of their malevolent qualities.Research on the dark triad is used in applied psychology, especially within the fields of law enforcement, clinical psychology, and business management. People scoring high on these traits are more likely to commit crimes, cause social distress and create severe problems for an organization, especially if they are in leadership positions."  In short, they are stigmatized in cultures who don't like these traits and even justify incarceration or force.  Some feel that our culture in the US is very much self-centered, "gamey," and preoccupied with crime.

• Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.
• Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, an absence of morality, unemotional callousness, and a higher level of self interest.
• Psychopathy is characterized by continuous antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits and remorselessness.

"Several researchers have suggested expanding the dark triad to contain a fourth dark trait. Everyday sadism, defined as the enjoyment of cruelty, is the most common addition.  While sadism is highly correlated with the dark triad, researchers have shown that sadism predicts anti-social behavior beyond the dark triad.  Borderline personality disorder and status-driven risk-taking have also been proposed as additions."  Except for cruelty, these are, well, "borderline" -- usually meaning uncontrollable by authorities.  Status-driven risk-taking can be admired, made into celebrity.

"The vulnerable dark triad (VDT) comprises three related and similar constructs: vulnerable narcissism, factor 2 psychopathy, and borderline personality disorder. A study found that these three constructs are significantly related to one another and manifest similar nomological networks. Although the VDT members are related to negative emotionality and antagonistic interpersonal styles, they are also related to introversion and disinhibition. The study does note however that its findings are based largely on the self-reports of parents of white undergrad students rather than information gleaned from clinical evaluation."  There's the giveaway: these terms were developed as behavior the parents of white college students would consider bad.  There is very little relevance to other types of humans who never go near psychologists anyway.

"Comorbidity, the coexistence of two or more psychopathological conditions, represents a persistent challenge to the representation of mental disorders as discrete categories, historically implied by diagnostic systems."  In plain English, this is not tinkertoys, but rather undefined qualities that were classified a long time ago when we knew a lot less and the culture was different anyway.

^{https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436748/}

Among the artifacts we rarely see anymore are "pot lifters", various levers and tongs or hooks for getting a hot pot off an open fire, not just a stove.  These psych categories are "pot lifting" explanations and  categories that should be considered temporary until we have something better.  In the meantime, they are only helpful for keeping track of what we're talking about.  Troublesome people are hot pots.

WHAT IS AN INDIVIDUAL?

I’ve never forgotten the trepidation — but also driving curiosity — of learning to read.  With no idea of what happens in a brain to allow such a thing, I simply did what I thought was trying:  staring hard while running my eyes along the lines of print.  Something like trying to ride a bicycle.  You push off and pedal.   At some point something happens and you’re doing it.  So that’s how I’m trying to understand discussions of genetics and the influence of certain molecules.  I just run my eyes over the sentences, which are full of mysterious stuff, in hopes that I’ll suddenly understand.  It’s not the same as taking a class.  Far more disorderly.

So far, I’ve got this:  “Humans normally have 46 chromosomes in each cell, divided into 23 pairs. Two copies of chromosome 8, one copy inherited from each parent, form one of the pairs. Chromosome 8 spans about 146 million DNA building blocks (base pairs) and represents between 4.5 percent and 5 percent of the total DNA in cells.

Google could not tell me the difference between paired chromosomes and the double helix (paired) genes.  I think many people confuse the two.  But chromosomes are much bigger than genes which are molecular.  Genes are on the helixes, not on the chromosomes.  This is where one needs a teacher.  But my conception is that the helixes on which the genes spell out formulas must be curled tightly as yarn strands to amount to chromosomes.  Uncurled, they stretch tremendous distances.

“Identifying genes on each chromosome is an active area of genetic research. Because researchers use different approaches to predict the number of genes on each chromosome, the estimated number of genes varies. Genes on chromosome 8 are among the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 total genes in the human genome.  Some of these genes appear to be the difference between human and chimp.

“Chromosome 8 likely contains between 700 and 1,100 genes.

“Chromosome 9 likely contains between 800 and 1,300 genes. 

“Chromosome 14 likely contains between 800 and 1,300 genes. “

As nearly as I can tell from Google, the pair of sex determining chromosomes is the 23rd pair.  The two chromosomes of the pair are mismatched: one is X and the other may be Y, which is much smaller.  Some suggest it is an X with an "arm" or "leg" torn off. If there are two XX chromosomes in the pair, the result is female.  If it is XY, then the result is male.  The number of genes would be unequal between the two chromosomes.  Presumably, what is missing is the instructions for the egg, which is much bigger than the little halves of code with a tail called sperm.  The egg needs directions for all the machinery of the cell.

The criteria for a species is whether the creature can reproduce within that group.  It's not about size or shape of genitals -- it's about molecules.  Even though human beings, chimps, and bonobos (our closest relatives) share 98.8 of their genes, we can only overlap, not be fertile inter-breeders, because we have been evolving separately for a very very long time.  In fact, the genes are arranged into a different number of chromosomes.  BUT humans carry neanderthal genes and we did overlap in time.  So are neanderthals the same species as we are?

“If human and chimp DNA is 98.8 percent the same, why are we so different? Numbers tell part of the story. Each human cell contains roughly three billion base pairs, or bits of information. Just 1.2 percent of that equals about 35 million differences. Some of these have a big impact, others don't. And even two identical stretches of DNA can work differently -- they can be "turned on" in different amounts, in different places or at different times.”  DNA instructs the construction of molecules — it is the MOLECULES that matter.

Human v. chimp

Brains, just like the rest of the body, evolve.  By slightly different timing, sequencing, and combining of molecule production, all human organs and cells work a little differently from those of each other and more differently from other species.  All humans of every "race" can produce children together.  African, Chinese, Swedish, whatever.  So far.  More and more humans are struggling to make babies. Our molecule management systems are having to adapt to molecules that never existed before.  We made them in a lab.  The body doesn't know what to do with them. Infertility is becoming a problem.  Fishes are getting scrambled about who is the female.

https://vtdigger.org/2016/01/31/scientists-say-60-percent-of-male-fish-bearing-eggs/

Scientists can compensate in many ways, which offers very expensive experiments. For instance, in a recent lab experiment, the short section of genes containing the molecular instructions for fertilizing an ovum were separated from their Y chromosome (male) and were used to make “sperm” which did indeed fertilize ovum and start them growing.  This is not parthenogenesis, which is an ovum that just starts growing without a sperm, maybe because of some kind of shock or special condition, like PH.  In some lower orders of creature, this is not problematic. Just another way of doing business. 

I don’t know whether the lab-made “sperm,” which would normally be half of a set of double helix human instructions,  were conveyed right into the ovum with a pipette or were actually cells with tails and the proper “sonar” for seeking and penetrating an ovum.  A condition of being allowed to do the experiment was that the scientists destroy the resulting “morula” before it could develop further, maybe to the next stage: “blastocyst.”

“A morula is distinct from a blastocyst in that a morula (3-4 days post fertilization) is an 16 cell mass in a spherical shape whereas a blastocyst (4-5 days post fertilization) has a cavity inside the zona pellucida along with an inner cell mass. A morula, if untouched and allowed to remain implanted, will eventually develop into a blastocyst.” 

In these experiments, the scientists are required to destroy the blastocyst to keep it from developing into a monster, but something in the body must check what’s going on at this stage, because even naturally many of these little beginnings are lost. Part of the experimentation is to find out why.  Clearly for many there was a glitch in the code that prevented further development.  

But what drives the funding of such experiments is cultural -- long-standing convictions that to many people are real. They become obsessed with the idea that they MUST have a baby with their own genetics, which was only situational and emotional — nothing to do with science or human tissues.  We are hypnotized by these convictions, which are driven by the inheritance of wealth and power down through centuries.

One MUST have children to inherit one’s wealth and status.

One OWNS those children, because they are an extension of oneself through time.

Sons are JUST LIKE FATHERS and will manage wealth and reputation just as their fathers did, which is good for everyone.

If those children get out of control or are a source of disgrace, they should be killed. Like a lab morula. 

An honor killing victim.

In the Middle East, men legally kill daughters, wives, and sisters, in a set of laws called “honor killing.”  Women are captive, sequestered, and cloaked because resources are scarce and the guarantee of biological origin is of extreme importance.  Motherhood can be witnessed, but until we figured out the genome, fatherhood was never provable.  Women could claim to have been impregnated by God to avoid being punished or killed for unfaithfulness.  It worked for Jesus' mother, didn't it?

These rules are good for the group, and in a situation where one is dependent on group support in order to survive, individualists are identified and driven out or just killed.  This is biological, sub-human, almost insectoid.  It persists because in places where there is not enough, it works. Evolution is about what works, even when the context is behavior rather than what cells and inheritance do.  If we have the technology to intervene, what should we do with it? What do we do about imitation inserted non-complete "code dads" when we still haven't figured out what to do about donor dads who sold their sperm?

Behavior that tends to break up the group consensus and identity will put the individual at risk.  Some groups will simply pull away, some will incarcerate, some will kill, and some will ignore to the point of death, as with troublesome children.   Social evolution happens when there are enough ignored, starved, troublesome individuals that they band together to support each other.  Those who have been resourceful and clever enough to survive into adulthood may remember and reach back to help younger versions of themselves.

If they only duplicate the behaviour of the original group, the tragedy will repeat itself.  If they can find new values and strategies that make both groups “richer” by adding new ecological niches, then they can co-exist and both groups thrive.  Killing is no longer helpful to the group.  Protecting everyone’s children creates wealth.

A petrel flying in a storm

Even in my nuclear family I’ve been an oddball, obstinate, defiant — what one ministerial supervisor called “a stormy petrel.”  This gives me a special sympathy for the rest of my outcast flock of friends even if I insist on flying into the teeth of a storm alone.

THE SHADOW OF THE CHIMP

The idea of humans evolving from “apes” is horrifying in particular to the Abrahamic religions. One of the insults meant to control unwanted behavior is to call it “bestial”  Religion says that God chose only humans (and only the ones who are members of the sponsoring institution, namely theirs) to have souls and go to heaven.  It is heresy to deny that; it is worrying if some people don’t care.  But we like the shiver of considering it in movies.

It’s more arousing if the male half of a couple is the ape.  As a gift for my husband, I once bought a tiny ivory Japanese figure of an ape clasping a nude woman.  He loved it, esp. since it was so easily hidden.  Bears, which can be seen as humanoid, fill the same role, but a bear might be the female, maternal.  Japanese are quite frank about such matters.

If Jane Goodall had been less of a nun-like figure, she might have been in trouble, living with chimps as though they were human, even though they were in family groups. Indeed Dian Fossey, a more passionate sort of woman, got into trouble that caused her death by machete in her bedroom, imposed by emotionally threatened human males acting bestial.

Jane Goodall and friend

______________

From Wikipedia:

The humanzee (Homo sapiens sapiens × Pan troglodytes) (also known as the Chuman or Manpanzee) is a hypothetical chimpanzee/human hybrid. Chimpanzees and humans are closely related (sharing 95% of their DNA sequence and 99% of coding DNA sequences^[1]), leading to contested speculation that a hybrid is possible. However, such a human-animal hybrid has not actually existed outside of fictional works that have explored the concept.

Humans have one pair fewer chromosomes than other apes, with ape chromosomes 2 and 4 fusing into a large chromosome. 

_________________

A mix of human and primate would almost certainly require artificial insemination such as using a pipette to insert a sperm into an ovum in a petri dish.  No hot sex.  (Anyway, primates and bears have small penises.)  However, when the chimps and humans diverged from a common ancestor sometime between 8 million and 25 million years ago, they could produce fertile hybrids for another million years or so.  This is not linear descent, evolution is a bush rather than a tree, and we’re working on fossil bone morphology more than DNA, with almost unimaginable time spans.  It’s barely short of fantasy.

But chimps themselves are such compelling personalities and interact with us in such humanoid ways, that they are always suspected of knowing more than they let on.  The point is that if HIV had been a disease of ungulates or big cats, the dynamics would have been entirely different.  Of course the blood machinery of those animals is entirely different.  You can’t catch HIV from a sheep, nor would it catch HIV from you.  There are plenty of other diseases a human could catch from a sheep, most of them bacterial zoonoses.  Leprosy can be caught from an armadillo and is stigmatized not from its source but from its ability to reduce a human to looking like a strange animal with eerie human qualities.  Un-treated AIDS is along those lines, with emaciation and Kaposi’s sarcoma acting as disfiguring markers, though they are not directly caused by HIV -- they are opportunists, like pneumocystis pneumonia fungus.

Bonobos are even more humanoid than chimps and have the added feature of using sexual intercourse as a social element: greeting, comforting, just fooling around.  Film of them acting like humans -- walking through the door on two feet, wearing clothes, getting a beer out of the fridge, sitting on the sofa with legs crossed . . .  eeks!  What might they do next?  Adult male apes are so much stronger than humans that they could tear a person limb-from-limb.  Maybe you’ve seen a photo of a woman whose face was snatched off by a friend’s “pet”.  Therefore, what you see interacting with humans is mostly immature apes, kids.

There are cultures and “sub-cultures” that consider women sub-human and feel free to confine, abuse, and infect them -- then not allow them medical care.  Children likewise. These are cultures of HIV death, often based in drugs as much as sex.  Isolated, alienated people might turn to needles for comfort.  “Chemsex” combines drugs with sex, trying to go “over the top”.  It’s a steep drop on the other side.  

The fantasy is that somehow there must be a way to escape the troublesome social and emotional consequences of sexual relationships, which are not just a matter of desire -- though they are that, too.  In fact, they are a strong drive and it’s lucky that most human arms are just long enough to reach the crotch.  I’m working on a followup about sexual emotions derived from the recent Mark Holms lecture about the unconscious.  This link will take you to the lecture I’m trying to digest.

https://npsa-association.org/videos/mark-solms-consciousness-and-the-unconscious-pt-1/

This post is meant to illustrate that a big part of our panic over HIV-AIDS is worry that it might mean we are not human, or that being human is NOT being chosen, being elevated among other animals, but having to suffer the same consequences as being just mammals, another kind of ape.  It was a big shock to find out that at some point Neanderthals, always considered barely superior to gorillas, interbred with modern humans.  We do have some neanderthal genes.

Richard Sapolsky

Going back to chimp genes, it is said that we are separated only by 2% of genes.  I’ve added a chart. The following quote is by Sapolsky, a male expert hairy enough to compete with orangutans but smarter by far.

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/chimp-genome

“Yet that tiny portion of unshared DNA makes a world of difference: it gives us, for instance, our bipedal stance and the ability to plan missions to Mars. Scientists do not yet know how most of the DNA that is uniquely ours affects gene function. But they can conduct whole-genome analyses—with intriguing results. For example, comparing the 33 percent of our genome that codes for proteins with our relatives' genomes reveals that although the sum total of our genetic differences is small, the individual differences pervade the genome, affecting each of our chromosomes in numerous ways.”

When we read that humans have only 2% more genes than chimps or bonobos, we think of a line (maybe a chromosome?) in which the last 2 units of measurement are a different color and we try to think which 2% makes us superior: bipedalism?  less hair?  reading?  But genes don’t code for such things.  Genes are about proteins that interact, making more proteins (the proteome) producing different results in different situations (epigenomes can record results), and different results if there is more than one copy of the gene, or if it’s in a different place on the chromosome, or if the epigenome has turned it off or if a gene that codes for timing turns the gene for, say, a prominent larynx on or off at the wrong time.  

The proteome (list of possible proteins) is so long and complex we may never complete it, computer or no computer.  Then beyond that, there is the impact of social systems and the plain old environment.  And now we add the biome of parasites on and in us.  There seems to be no end to it, but that’s not what we want anyway, is it?  HIV and the pressure of AIDS can take us on a journey.  Far along the human path, or maybe we are evolving as we go.

The point remains that we are animals, a specialized sort of primate, which we have not sorted out yet.  Therefore we get excessively worried over issues that mix our essential molecular plan with religious rules from ancient times and also sexual desire, no matter the object.  The larger culture is vitally interested and entitled to interfere in order to preserve their own existence.