Word: dna
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...introduced at the end of a book that otherwise must have seemed entirely devoted to extolling the "selfish" gene as the be-all and end-all of evolution, the fundamental unit of selection. There was a risk that my readers would misunderstand the message as being necessarily about DNA molecules. On the contrary, DNA was incidental. The real unit of natural selection is any kind of replicator, any unit of which copies are made, with occasional errors, and with some influence or power over their own probability of replication. Perhaps we'd have to go to other planets to discover...
...plastic, snow and insulating foam before hauling them down the mountain, and the Argentine military whisked them off to the nearby town of Salta. There, experts will analyze their stomachs to find out what they ate for their last meal, their organs for clues about their diet and their DNA to try and establish their relationship to other ethnic groups. Reinhard will head back into the mountains. There is no telling how many more bodies remain to be found...
...business is not without controversy, however, most of it centered on tricky questions of privacy. Short tandem repeat technology is so sensitive that it can identify DNA from little more than the saliva residue on a soda can. "A moral principle in genetic testing is that it should always be done with the consent of the individual," says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "No one wants someone snooping into his DNA...
...such niceties carry little weight for people desperate to establish something as consequential as paternity, and Caskey plans to keep cashing in on that need. Identigene is preparing to offer an even cheaper, $150 test that will profile newborns' DNA to reassure anxious parents that they're leaving the hospital with their own child. "It's potentially a much bigger market than paternity testing," says Caskey. And a bigger payoff...
Last week Fasano announced she had agreed to surrender custody of her black son to the black couple, pending the final results of a DNA test. A mother was giving up a son whom she had borne and whom she loves; another woman was receiving the gift of life. Two couples who had separately made the decision to undergo the invasive procedures of modern reproductive medicine and place their faith in the hands of all-too-fallible infertility experts are now permanently joined together, their private lives public, their sons forever brothers...