Where are the SuperMutants???

buried in the LA Times back pages, from what I understand, on Dec. 15:

Waiting for the Supermutants
How We Know Darwin Got It Wrong
LA Times Sunday, December 14,2003


By Paul Gordon, Paul Gordon last wrote for the magazine about the crash of his 1990 Mazda Miata.

hen the then-nascent Human Genome Project's Traveling Magic Show came trundling through my hometown in the early 1990s, my father, the eminent economist and contrarian H. Scott Gordon, joined the throng at the university auditorium to witness the birth of humanity's brave new world of mapped and conquered genes. He waited for the lecture and the breathless questions to subside, then he stepped to the microphone.

"It's great that you're hunting down the order of somebody's genes," he said. "What I want to know is: Whose are they?"

The question hung in the air like a time bomb. With a single thrust, the professor had struck at the best-kept secret of the Human Genome Project: Whose genes were they actually mapping? And his simple query utterly non-plused the council of elevated swamis onstage. He did not get an answer to his question (there were rumors that the "human" the project was mapping was actually a mélange of genes lifted from several workers in the lab), but on that day I recall my father walked out into the sunshine with a rascally grin that stretched from ear to ear.

Carrying on a rogue's legacy, I have a little interrogatory of my own. As I understand it, Charles Darwin's theory holds that life is pushed forward by a series of advances, or mutations, so powerful that they blow the competition into the weeds. My question is: "Where are they?"

I've heard that half of the humans who ever lived are alive today. More than 6 billion copies staggering around in an environment seething with toxic waste, car exhaust and cosmic radiation. We're riddled with cancers, tumors, albino bluesmen and twins joined at the hip. But where are the beneficial mutations, the world-beating supermutants potent enough to put the lot of us common, garden-variety humans out to pasture? Six billion rolls of the dice and no one has been born with a brain the size of a basketball? No eyeballs that see in the dark? Nothing?

I know the lab drawers are brimming with bones and fossils, frozen icemen and piles of petrified droppings from cavemen. There is more physical evidence supporting Darwin's evolution than perhaps any other single scientific theory. Yet a Gallup poll taken at the turn of the millennium revealed that close to half the American public rejects evolution as a theory. I think I know why.

More than a century after its publication, Darwin's "Origin of Species" is suffering from what I call the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Problem." It's a simple matter of credibility: Show me one fuzzy photo of a bunker lined with missiles, just one underground sarin lab, or mobile anthrax trailer, or glowing chunk of enriched African uranium, and I'll start to reconsider. But until you can find one, I'll stay suspicious about the whole WMD thing.

Same with evolution. Yes, I know the process of natural selection is long and gradual and mostly invisible, and its complexities are as arcane as a PhD thesis. It has been suggested that human evolution ceased when the social graces of monogamy meant even geeks got to pass along their genes. It may be extremely rare—the fish that grew feet and walked out of the ocean, the monkey that came down from the tree, the ape that picked up the jawbone in "2001: A Space Odyssey"—but natural selection still relies on mutations so wild that they rearrange the order of everything, right? And so I say again: Where are they?

How do I know those mutations haven't happened yet? Because I watch too much television. The modern entertainment industry is highly efficient at scanning the planet for bizarre creations to flicker across the nightly television screen. So, if there's going to be a paradigm shift involving newer, faster, smarter humans, it's a sure bet that you're going to see it first on television. We've got diet gurus and 12-year-old spelling bee champions and accountants from Montana who can eat car bumpers, but where is the local weatherman with a nose so fine he can nail the forecast just by sniffing the breeze?

Consider the range of sports on television. Today's athletes define the limits of speed, endurance, agility, strength—every aspect of human physical performance. And talk about a hardball natural selection process: If you can swing a stick, throw a ball, heft a weight or outrun your neighbors, you can be sure there's a talent agent thrashing through the snows of darkest Siberia, checkbook in hand, desperate to deliver your special gift to the gnashing maw of TV sports.

Given a gene pool of 6 billion-plus, and a television marketplace that supports at least two 24-hour sports networks, why haven't we seen the genetic leaps that are supposed to drive us forward as a species? I'm not talking about pituitary cases such as Shaq and Mike Tyson. I'm talking genuine, hang-it-out mutations—wings, gills, whatever. Where is the athlete with webbed hands who shatters all records for swimming? Where is the six-fingered pitcher who can deliver a knuckleball that loops around third base? Why is there not one, not one, quarterback in the NFL with eyes in the back of his head?

Conspiracy theorists will say the Olympic Committee is keeping these monsters under wraps: The boxer with an extra joint in his fist; the gymnast who can swing by his tail. But I don't believe it for a moment. The demand for spectacle is too great.

So, Mr. Darwin: Let's be reasonable. If a fish can grow feet and crawl out of the sea, it doesn't seem that great a stretch to find a two-headed lineman with a lobster claw at each elbow blocking for the Oakland Raiders on Monday Night Football. My advice is forget the cloned farm animals. Maybe it's time to give evolution a little kick in the pants. If you want to rekindle some righteous faith in the power of chromosomes, just snap in a few souped-up genes and pump out a 12-foot Bill Romanowski with cactus spikes and a rack of antlers. Trust me: Just one genuine homegrown supermutant linebacker is all it would take to raise a whole new generation of true believers—even in my family.

And, baby, think of the endorsements!

 

Instead, we consistently seem to be going the other way...

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MACHIAS, New York (AP) -- Four-year-old Dalton Eisenhardt and his 2-year-old brother, Wyatt, don't protest or complain about the machines that hold onto them with tubes and cords during every moment of their lives. Despite the tracheotomies, the feeding tubes and ever-present nurses, the boys smile.

It his harder for those who love them.

The young brothers are fighting a rare and puzzling chromosome disorder, and doctors in nearby Buffalo have been unable to find anyone anywhere with the same condition. They cannot tell the Eisenhardts what might come next, what toll the disorder ultimately will take.

So far, dozens of hospital stays, surgeries, doctors' appointments and consultations have produced only more questions. The family hopes that by telling its story, a doctor or other parent will recognize the disorder and tell them what to do.

"We don't know what to expect," said their mother, Vicki Eisenhardt, in the living room where she spends most of her time caring for her two youngest sons while her husband works as a carpenter. A 10-year-old brother, Tyler, is healthy.

"What we know we've learned from Dalton," she said.

The boys have a disorder called unbalanced translocation chromosome 15. Their mother explains the chromosome has an extra piece, a slight defect that affects every organ in the boys' bodies.

A year ago, doctors gave Dalton six months to live, saying the damage to his lungs was too great.

"Here we are a year later," his mother said. "Doctors can speculate, but only God knows."

"We're not giving up," added her sister, Kim Claus, one of several nurses who cares for the boys full-time.

Mom: Answers needed
Dalton has been hospitalized 34 times and undergone 19 surgeries. Worrisome episodes where his skin grows gray and clammy have been increasing. Wyatt spent 100 days in intensive care after his birth. His problems have mirrored his brother's.

Snuggled into his mother's lap one afternoon this week, Wyatt grinned at visitors as his brother slept, blue breathing tubes spilling from both their necks. On this day, Dalton was tired and would spend most of the day in bed. Wyatt was just up from a nap that had been interrupted to have a buildup of saliva suctioned from his tube.

Dalton has an appointment next week with a specialist in New York City. This week the family was scrambling to secure a flight after learning the small airline that initially offered tickets could not fly the oxygen tanks the boys need to breathe because of federal aviation rules.

"This is not a trip of luxury. This is a trip of necessity," Eisenhardt said, frustrated at the obstacle.

The boys' beds and shelves full of supplies and equipment have taken over the living room. Nurses, therapists and medical supply deliveries create a revolving door in the family home, and although insurance pays most costs, unseen expenses like the electricity needed to power the machines add up.

But the family does not tell its story for pity -- even their neighbors in this Cattaraugus County town of 2,400, have been unaware of their plight.

The family keeps to itself, Eisenhardt said, but is at the point where answers are needed.

"When you see your 4-year-old say he hurts, grabbing his chest and so tired he can't walk across the floor, you want to help," Eisenhardt said. "You're going to do anything and everything you can to help him."


from CNN news this morning