Theorist: Darwin Had it Wrong

Theorist: Darwin had it wrong S.C. professor says life forms arose without common origin

The way biochemist Christian Schwabe saw it, Darwinian evolution should have given closely related animals similar sets of proteins.

It was a simple idea, just a way to prove the cellular legacy of millions of years of common ancestry. Only it didn’t work.

The mismatched proteins were just a stray thread in the grand tapestry of life, yet the flaw gnawed at the back of the professor’s mind – until one day at Harvard University in 1970, when a new idea struck him in the middle of a lecture.

"That’s not going to work that way," Dr. Schwabe said aloud, and his students watched in bewilderment as their instructor spent the rest of the class working out the first bits of his idea on the blackboard.

What Dr. Schwabe began that day would become, by 1984, something he called the "genomic potential hypothesis:" the idea that life on Earth arose not from a single, random-chance event, but from multiple, predictable, chemical processes.

As bold as that idea seemed, it was tame compared with the second part of his theory: that evolution by natural selection – a cornerstone of Darwinian thought – was a 19th-century illusion.

Rather than a world of diversely adapted species with one common origin, Dr. Schwabe saw each modern species as the ultimate expression of its own independent origin.

Evolution wasn’t about adaptation, Dr. Schwabe said, but the perfection of each species’ original "genomic potential."

He and a colleague published the first paper on the idea in 1984, and the German-born professor settled in to await the inevitable critical response. It never came.

More articles in small academic journals followed in 1985 and 1990, but they, too, failed to provoke debate.

Today, Dr. Schwabe is a professor of biochemistry at the Medical University of South Carolina, a federally funded investigator who has accounted for more than $4 million in research funding, much of it related to drugs that regulate blood flow.

He has published more than 100 scholarly works and received five patents for his discoveries.

Yet when it comes to his most provocative idea, Dr. Schwabe is practically an invisible man. His articles on genomic potential hypothesis – GPH – typically are returned without meaningful comment by editors, most recently by the prestigious journal Science, and sometimes it seems as if the only people paying attention to his work are Internet fringe-dwellers.

"I think one of the most brilliant and bravest thinkers in America lives in Charleston, S.C.," said Ron Landes, a scientific publisher from Texas, "and nobody knows about him."

"If they don’t like it, they should tell me factually what is wrong," he said. "If they think it’s no good, they have the obligation to disprove it."

That’s the ideal of science we all learned in grade school. But as Dr. Schwabe continues to demonstrate, the practice of science is a bit more complex.

It takes an educated specialist to evaluate scientific claims; new discoveries are practically meaningless until they are published in major journals.

Publication signifies that the science behind an article is solid and that the idea, right or wrong, is worthy of study. This system of establishing credibility, called peer review, is essential to the scientific process, yet not every idea is worthy of serious, high-level peer review.

But the critical question in Dr. Schwabe’s case isn’t whether peer review works – rather, it’s, "Can unorthodox but potentially significant ideas get access to legitimate peer review?"

Though peer review remains essential to the scientific method, "It is not a requirement that anyone else pay attention to you," said Jerry Hilbish, professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina.

Yet the big journals also have a lot to lose by missing out on a big breakthrough, he said.

"It is normal in science for new ideas that contradict old ones to be resisted or ignored for a while," Dr. Bauer said. "Many people in that situation are stunned that they’re not being listened to, because science is supposed to be so open to new ideas. But the reality is that (science) is open to new things, but just not things that are too new."

I make NO comment on this article or evolution in general, but I am quite sure that recently it was determined that dogs and wolves are actually genetically identical.

You'd better check again. If they were "genetically identical", they'd be as similar as identical twins. Clearly they are not.

So if that's what your source actually said, even a small amount of critical thinking on your part should have raised alarm bells as to its reliability.

Even if it had been trying to say that there are no genetic sequences that are not found in *both* dogs and wolves, or any similar claim, your source appears to be making it up out of thin air (let me guess: creationist source?)

The reason I say this is because the wolf genome has *NOT* been sequenced yet. And the dog genome is only 80% sequenced as of this month (April 2004). So any claim at all that would require a full comparison between the two genomes is speaking from unsupported speculation instead of actual data.

Full-genome sequencing for any species is an expensive, long-term project. The dog genome project began in late 2002, and is still only 80% finished as of this month. Because they are such large projects, only a small number of species have been completed so far (human and mouse, mainly), and researchers have to be selective about which ones they choose in order to maximize the value of the early results. After humans, mostly the focus has been on domestic species, because this will aid in the study of and development of cures for genetic diseases (or genetic improvements) in animals of high economic value (e.g. cattle, sheep, etc.)

However, preliminary plans are being made for genome projects of closely-related species in order to provide more detailed information on evolutionary processes and genotype/phenotype relationships (i.e., how small gene changes can affect animal physiology, biochemistry, or behavior). For example:

The future dog
A proposal for a 6 ´ sequence of the dog was approved by the NIHGS last year and the Whitehead Institute at MIT won support for the sequencing work with an expected completion date of June 2004. This will provide a remarkable resource for comparison with the 1.5 ´ dog sequence as well as the human and mouse. For example, comparison of the 1.5 ´ sequence with humans revealed nearly a million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and about 150 000 putative di, tri- and tetranucleotide repeat polymorphisms. With the June completion of the 6 ´ sequence from a boxer and the now completed 1.5 ´ sequence from a standard poodle, a wealth of polymorphic markers will be discovered for use in association mapping studies. The dog may soon be the only species with two essentially complete genomes for comparison. Further, the Whitehead Institute has proposed sequencing an additional 600 million bases pairs from nine dog breeds and a gray wolf. This extensive comparative database will provide novel genetic markers for population genetic and evolutionary studies of domestic and wild canids, and may lead to a new understanding of the genes associated with domestication. To understand gene function and evolution, a focus on individual variation is the necessary next step in genome sequencing. The extensive phenotypic variation among breeds and the widespread abundance of its progenitor, the gray wolf, uniquely positions the dog as pack dominant in the race to find genes of consequential affect on morphology and behavior.
-- Mammalian genomics: Out of the dog house: the emergence of the canine genome

So a study of exactly how similar (or different) the dog is genetically from wolves is still a project for the future.

Again, if your source claimed that this issue has already been answered, it was lying to you. You should also question anything else it may have told you about biology or evolution.

Or perhaps you misunderstood the statement which is often made (and is true) that there is as yet no genetic test for identifying dogs from wolves. This is true *not* because there *are* no genetic differences between the two species, but precisely *because* the wolf genome is so little known right now, and the few snippets of wolf DNA which have been sequenced have yet to luck upon any sections which are significantly different enough to be used as a reliable marker. But this is hardly surprising, since the DNA of any closely related species are often much more than 95% identical (as statistically determined by spot-checks). Finding a key difference in their genomes is a needle-in-a-haystack problem until a full genome sequencing has been achieved.

However, already mutations have been identified in dogs which are not present in wolves. For example this paper describes an identified mutation regulating coat color in dogs: Melanocortin 1 receptor variation in the domestic dog

Finally, even if all alleles present in wolves were present in dogs, and vice versa (i.e., no unique mutations between the two), that would *still* not rule out their being different species from each other. Significant differences in allele frequency alone can give rise to different species.

You've reinforced my notion that creationists look at science as a childish pursuit, best put away by adults who know the Truth.

How condescending.

This world will only throw another "disease" to confound the scientists, in the meantime there are people who need to be loved and shown that their lives have true meaning.

A soul in the womb, who has Down Syndrome, can be conveniently eliminated by science. However, the richness of that life, simple as it may be, can never be lived with the scientific justification for "soulless" life.

I would never attempt to presume condescension, for I know my true nature is desperately wicked. There are many non-believing scientists that live a more moral life than I live today. The difference is I do not claim to be moral in and of myself, for my morality is purely from an outside source, namely Jesus Christ. As He continues to transform me I may begin to become as moral as others who were more moral than me, but my faith is not in myself, it is in what Christ is doing in me.

The blessing is in the revelation of how Jesus Christ is replacing my nature with His nature as I abide in His Word daily. Renewing my corrupt mind with righteous "Truth" revealed to us by the Creator of the universe on the pages of the Book He has preserved for our admonition.

You are intelligent men and women, whom I respect dearly for your knowledge. My prayer is that you may also take another perspective on reality than what you can grasp completely with your own minds. Faith, by definition, requires a risk made by us to tread where we cannot fully comprehend. My experience leads me to share the blessings with you that the Gospel message has set me free from my "bondserv" centric world.

Imagine looking at those around you with a love that surpasses all understanding. To provide relief for one who is struggling, by serving them as a pressure relief valve, is very rewarding. The smile of someone who recognizes the sacrifice in your own life you have made in serving them, is priceless. To make this a way of life by the strength of a loving God. We cannot escape ourselves alone. This is the foundation our nation was built on. This is what the Iraqi's see in many of our troops. This is what Jesus Christ provides when we walk closely with Him!

I love all of you folks.

~bondserv

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