Articles like that make me froth at the mouth a little (not a pleasant sight). It’s not so much that there are people who are ignorant of biology. It’s that newspapers seemingly can’t be bothered to fact check anything having to do with science and that physicians (and I assume Le Fanu is a MD) are given undue authority, when many haven’t had a biology course in decades. I hope someone writes a nice letter to the editor (hint, hint).

The comment about “here is nothing in the genes of a fly to explain why it should have six legs, a pair of wings and a brain the size of a full stop” is most telling, as we know an awful lot about the first two. Various mutations which convert one body part to another (such as antennae to legs) and which determine the number of body segments have been extensively studied in Drosophila, and the sages of Stockholm have recognized this with at least one Nobel Prize (for homeotic genes).

I suspect that Le Fanu is also befuddled by the difference between the similarities in gene counts between flies, worms, mice and humans and the differences in gene content. For example, we can clearly see that humans have many defective copies of olfactory receptors vs. the complements in species such as dogs and mice, which correlates with the far superior sense of smell in those organisms. Conversely, we can see (!) at a molecular level an explanation (in terms of different receptors) why we have trichromatic color vision while certain other mammals have essentially monochromatic vision. We can assign a lot of genes to the immune system, genes which are absent from invertebrates.

As long as the genome project has been gathering headlines & funding, there have been ‘genome reactionaries’ arguing against the importance of genes. Indeed, this camp feels that the money & time spent on genomic association studies is wasted. Le Fanu is voicing the reductio ad absurdum version of this, which says that genetics means nothing. He seems to be remembering many older studies which were poorly powered and apparently believes that the genetic association community has learned nothing from their past mistakes. In particular, the study sizes are getting enormous and candidate genes can immediately be identified. While some of these candidates are pure head-scratchers, more than a few have strong connections to relevant biology.

I don’t know about a letter to the editor, but I did send the chap an email inviting to comment in this forum.

My local paper has letters, but it’s mostly complaints about road construction and the City Council. They would probably be very confused if they received a letter about the content of an article (not that they publish much science news).

[...] 5. DNA is a mystery. And everyone loves a good mystery, including Liz Strauss and her gang. (As for you, Dr. Le Fanu, I don’t still don’t agree that it’s an “insoluble riddle.”) [...]

This is a very disturbing article. My goal after getting admitted to a genetic counseling school is to get on national tv for just one night on a Sunday night on ABC or CBS and explain to the people how our genes function, what we can learn from our genes, how our genes relate to health and disease, how genes relate to inheritance, how DNA testing is done what it can show (the flaws of the testing as well), family history, and human/legal affairs related to genetics.

All I want to do is touch on the very basics. If others would love to join me in this task, it would be greatly appreciated. We need to reach out to the community (being the global population) to help them be exposed to what genes are, and all of the other topics I mentioned in the above paragraph.