An article in the Mail on my DNA book and my response to it:
Last week the Daily Mail published an article (click on the picture below) about the findings in my book DNA: The Elephant in the Lab. In general it was quite positive, but it also used a recent publication by Gerald Joyce in PNAS to suggest that progress in elucidating the pathway for the Origin Of Life (OoL) from inorganic starting materials to the first eukaryote cell undermined my argument, and that much of my position was based on a God of the Gaps style argument. These inaccuracies were then amplified by a US website.
They are wrong on both counts. Firstly Joyce himself does not even claim that their findings fill a gap in the OoL pathway, but may support how such a gap might be filled with further research. However, I show why any such future research will be fruitless (as it has been for the past 30 years) due to the conceptual impossibility of creating what they need to…a self replicating RNA molecule.
I have written a full response on my writing website – click on the link below:
Interestingly, I’ve been just re-reading some info of M. Makukov and V. Shcherbak work on genetic code, and now i see your post here! )
Hello there… As for me, they found something very, very intriguing. But everything that even seems to pour grist to ID mill is such an anathema for modern scientists as if they were a kind of quasi-clergy cosplay community… You’re gonna be anathematized even being an outspoken atheist))
I’m sympathetic to your position.
Because I consider Experience (Nature) to be a ‘Result’, and we can’t get outside of Experience. The suggestion we can find an origin of life (origin of the organism), within the Result/Experience (tied to the organism) doesn’t make any sense to me.
I do think we will find some structure within the organism which will have a mathematical 1:1 correspondence to our ultimate predictive theory of everything, that will integrate common anomalous human Experiences into our theories. i.e. The idea that matching patterns with the right isolation from decoherance, can add-up/glue-together Acausally to construct shared Experience.
But I think the suggestion we can find some origin of life within the Result, is analogous to trying to explain why the mathematical 1:1 correspondence hiding behind Experience/Nature, even exists in the first place.
Hey Orson!
Even though this has little to do with the blog’s topic, I’d like to know your opinion on this, since it’s more or less your area of expertise.
Is it true that the mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 was carcinogenic? This opinion was widespread here in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people were divided over it. I didn’t get vaccinated because of this, but many people around me did. Greetings to New Zealand!
There is an off-topic comment you can delete straight away.
Hey Heinrich,
Greetings to Deutschland. While I was an expert on designing anti RNA-virus drugs, and have spent many years in virology, I would not call myself an expert on mRNA vaccines. I am not familiar with the data around mRNA vaccines causing cancer so cannot comment either way. mRNA when introduced into a cell becomes a template for producing a specific protein or enzyme that then performs a function within that cell.
In general I was initially supportive of vaccination of the elderly and vulnerable during COVID, but once they started insisted on vaccinating people who were at little to no risk of serious consequences from the virus, I became very hostile. Vaccinating children with a substance that had less than 1 year of safety data, was one of the most unethical things I have seen in my entire career. There is no doubt whatsoever that some of the vaccines caused cardiac and vascular issues, but like I said…no idea about cancer. Cancer is often a slow burner and takes years for these effects to become apparent.
In general, I think mRNA is a good area of research. I am quite invested in a company called Arrowhead pharmaceuticals who are producing medicines base on this technology. I nearly took a job with them but they wanted me to spend quite a lot of time in Asia, and I hate long haul flying (in economy anyway!). But I got to look under the bonnet at what they are doing, and it was very exciting. Not a recommendation, but if I have some spare cash I would add to my current position as I think they are cheap at the moment after a recent market devaluation. Not a recommendation, just my position.
While the Pharmaceutical industry has made some mistakes, and has some bad actors in it, like any walk of life, overall I believe it has had more positive impact on health outcomes than almost any other human activity…COVID was a dark period. If it wasn’t for Pharma our life expectancy would be about 45-50 at most.
Thanks for your perspective, Orson.
https://youtu.be/JW9gcjpt89o?si=O8S6leCxLMX6Ywsb
I found a good video; somewhere in the middle, the three of them talk about DNA and confirm your view that DNA is a code.
Congratulations on getting the findings in your books published in a paper read so widely. This will undoubtedly lead to so many people learning about your writing, research and ideas. What an amazing accomplishment! Congrats!!!
Thanks. Certainly seen book sales increase a bit.
That’s great and about time!
While only a specialist as yourself can possible poke a hole in your argument about chemistry never by itself being able to assemble a biological cell, I’m less comforted with the second half of your response. If DNA code implies a coder, fine – but nothing in that inference tells us the coder is good, or that it’s coding for our sake rather than its own. Strip away the comforting theology being added for free, and I can imagine an image instead of a Father in heaven, it’s a Bene Gesserit – an intelligence running a multi-millennial breeding program on a species that doesn’t know it’s inside one, using our biology and possibly our religions as instruments toward an end that isn’t ours.
I can neither prove nor disprove anything about the nature of the coder. It is indeed possible that the coder is not good and creates an illusion of a good God being in charge. I make that point in my book “Did Jesus Die For Nothing.” I say that everything I have experienced could have been designed to convince me of a lie about this being. All I have to go on that is that experience, and of others who share my faith, and that last word is key. While I cannot say I know for fact that the coder, or God is good, all the evidence I have available to me says he is. The greatest piece of evidence is Jesus, who claimed to be the coder himself.
You are free to choose to believe what you want. That, I believe is the purpose of life…to make a choice.
https://metaphorsociety.com/2026/09/17/sam-parnia-near-death-experiences/ New article from Sam Parnia
Hi Paul, good summary of Parnia’s work and the state of research. I do think that was probably written, or heavily assisted by AI. I’m getting a nose for things having used AI myself at work and finding it lacking. Could be wrong, but just has that whiff about it 🙂
I could be AI. That’s true.