Authors: T. Colin Campbell
If you are not yet sufficiently awed, then consider this: There are about three billion total bases—that’s billion, not million—strung along the length of a single molecule of DNA. If those bases were placed only one millimeter apart along this chain, its total length would stretch 1,824 miles—more than 6,600 times the height of the Empire State Building! Their order may look random, but it is not. Imagine just a few dozen of those three billion bases as pearls strung along a normal length of necklace. Now, imagine picking up the necklace and letting the pearls fall off the end of the strand into a pile, mixing them up, then trying to put them back exactly in the same order. If it seems impossible at a few dozen, imagine doing so for three billion.
5.
We cheated a bit, actually; 95 percent of our genetic material, which scientists don’t yet understand, has been labeled “junk DNA” and swept under the carpet. Only very recently have geneticists begun to take seriously the possibility that this junk DNA is actually important information that humans just haven’t been able to decode.
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7.
Ibid.;
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Lazarou, Pomeranz, and Corey, “Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions.”
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Ibid.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid.;
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http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/medicine/pharma.shtml
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Ibid.
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