Biblical Genetics

I will pull no punches here. This is atrocious: PLANDEMIC Part 1 (Dr. Judy Mikovits). It appears on YouTube under at least two titles. But, they are being taken down as I type. Search for “Plandemic”.

Location: Dr C’s front porch, Hiram, GA

Links:

On Wednesday night, I recorded a video and posted it to YouTube. It was far from perfect, but it exploded in popularity. I did not anticipate the number of views (71,000 and climbing after 36 hours), nor the vitriol that it would generate. I also prepared a shorter, cleaned-up video and loaded it natively onto FB.

I was commenting on an unusually long (>20 min) preview for an upcoming movie called Plandemic. Many other pundits and multiple media outlets have reported on the video (here’s an example from Buzzfeed). You may have a hard time finding a working link. FB, YT, and Vimeo are suppressing the video even though it has tens of millions of views. The director and on-screen interviewer is Mikki Willis, a New-Age Buddhist who had a video go viral a couple of years ago.

The main part of the preview focuses on the life of a woman named Judy Mikovits. There is an entire page dedicated to her at RetractionWatch.org. Snopes has a lot to say about her as well. Many people think she is the golden child of scientific and Christian integrity. But the reality is much more messy. Be careful when interacting with people where Judy is concerned. They will attempt to pillory you (I am speaking from experience).

She has a BS in Chemistry and a PhD in biology. Her thesis had to do with HIV. She is not an important scientist in any sense, but a hagiography is building around her. The video claims her work revolutionized HIV treatment. But the PNAS paper coming from this research has been cited only a few times. I do not know why she was second author on a paper that is supposedly at the center of her doctoral work.

She worked for labs in Maryland, Michigan, and Nevada. Her main claim to fame is a retracted 2009 paper that claimed a virus, XMRV, caused chronic fatigue syndrome. The cancer cells were cultivated in mice before she searched for the virus, providing all sorts of opportunity for contamination. The retraction notice in Science cited “poor quality control issues in a number of specific experiments” and a failure of her lab and others to validate the findings. She has also been accused of fabricating results (duplicate figures).

What a mess: She was fired from her job in Reno, NV, then was arrested in California on an out-of-state warrant (directly contradicting statements she made in the video) and spent five days in jail for theft. She was accused of having laboratory notebooks, a computer, and other things in her possession that belonged to the company, but the lab books may have been locked in her desk the whole time. Charges were eventually dropped. I do not know why. But the director of the lab was in trouble for making illegal campaign contributions and the judge had to recuse himself from the case because he had received some donations from this guy. She then turned around and sued both the company and multiple employees, but this lawsuit was dismissed on technical grounds (she failed to provide documentation in time).

She claims to have discovered evidence that millions of people were being killed, getting cancer, and/or developing autism due to XMRV contamination of vaccines. But note that her 2009 paper had nothing to do with this and there is no other publication record for her to support the claim. A 2006 paper (that she was not part of) incorrectly concluded XMRV was present in prostate cancer cells and has also been retracted.

She wrote a book in 2014 Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases. This week it exploded onto the best-seller list.

She worked under Frank Rusetti at NIH for several years but claims none other than Anthony Fauci told her in an email that she would be arrested if she returned to Rusetti’s lab. Fauci uncategorically denies this allegation.

I anticipate that many people are going to ask us about this. Many others will be influenced by the ideas promulgated in the video and in the upcoming documentary. We are going to have our hands full. I also suspect that the US government has lost the information battle about vaccines. But, for the sake of my fellow Christians I intend on keeping up the fight. If they can get suckered by such malevolent people, they can easily fall into heterodox or even heretical positions. Yet I am afraid I am not up to the task. I am but a loudmouth on a bully pulpit. Soil Deo gloria.

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Dr C discusses the famous “Table of Nations” in Genesis chapter 10 and compares it to what we are learning about ancient human history. But most early humans left no trace of their existence and the Bible only explains the origin of people groups within a few hundred miles of Israel.

Location: Tucson, AZ

Links:

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Dr C talks about what it is like to be a geneticist in today’s world. This is the first time in history where we have more ‘data’ than ‘theory’. There is too much data! So be prepared for some of your cherished theories to be contradicted. This is a fun time to be a scientist.

Location: Niagara Falls State Park (NY)

Links:

The four dimensional human genome defies naturalistic explanations (article by Dr C on Creation.com)

The Human Genome Project

The International HapMap Project

The 1000 Genomes Project

The Simon’s Genome Diversity Project

The All of Us Program (1 million genomes)

5000 Genomes from Singapore

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Dr C is at a Christian university and takes the opportunity to speak on issues many theologians have with the book of Genesis. He ends with an encouraging call to remain faithful while studying hard.

Links:

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Dr C discusses recent claims that the mother of every person alive on earth today lived in southern Africa, in what is now a vast desert. He points out several critical assumptions behind the conclusions and a couple of errors made by the researchers as they attempted to pinpoint the geographic location of the earliest humans.

Location: Kaw Point Park, Kansas City, Missouri

Main reference:

Popular-level articles:

Other links:

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The fact that ancient DNA exists at all is a minor miracle. And now that we have figured out how to extract it efficiently and sequence it accurately (more or less), we are suddenly able to answer many long-standing historical riddles. Dr C explains how ancient DNA is revolutionizing our understanding of human history.

Location: Mt Lemmon, Arizona

Subjects: Looking back in time with ancient DNA, the petrous (inner ear) bone is packed with DNA, ancient DNA is degraded., Neanderthal genome told us they were extremely inbred, up to one million mutations per cell per day, ancient DNA tells us the story of European history, but modern Europeans came from Central Asia and did not come to Europe until much later, ancient DNA in Africa and the replacement of the original population during the Bantu expansion, human history is bloody.

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Dr. C attempts to explain how only 23,000 genes can manufacture hundreds of thousands of unique proteins in the human body. The answer is amazing!

Location: Boat Rock climbing area

Subjects: The one-gene one-enzyme hypothesis, bacterial genes vs genes in higher organisms, introns and exons, the splicing code, multiple codes in the same set of letters, the cell is an RNA computer, evolution might work if life were simple – it isn’t, challenging biblical and scientific understanding

Links:

What is a gene, post-ENCODE? History and updated definition

Splicing and dicing the human genome

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Intro Graphics by MattWalkerVideo

In this episode, Dr. C tries to explain the complexity of the human genome. Problem is, nobody understands it because it is too complex! He compares the genome to a computer operating system, but this quickly gets eclipsed by what he calls the four-dimensional genome.

Show notes

Location: Mid-America Windmill Museum

Links and sources:

The Four-Dimensional Genome

The High-Tech Cell

Bolzer A, et al., Three-dimensional maps of all chromosomes in human male fibroblast nuclei and prometaphase rosettes, PLoS Biol 3(5):e157, 2005.

Duncan AW, et al., The ploidy conveyor of mature hepatocytes as a source of genetic variation, Nature 467:707-710, 2010.

Baillie JK, et al., Somatic retrotransposition alters the genetic landscape of the human brain, Nature 479:534-537, 2011.

Xue S, Barna M, Specialized ribosomes: a new frontier in gene regulation and organismal biology, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 13:355–369, 2012.

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Location: White Oak Park, Dallas, GA

Topics:

It’s a beautiful day…for a pandemic, Dr C’s TV interviews, addressing false claims: (a) saltwater gargle, (b) hair dryers, (c) virus already here, (d) genetic engineering, science is incremental, Russel’s teapot, chemical origin of life is untenable, this is not a conspiracy, How bad will it get?, the Christian response, this is not the flu!, disease theory pioneered by Christians, the example of Jesus, the risk is real, being merciful to others

Links:

Creation talk videos: Coronavirus, Pandemic

Coronavirus article by Dr C

No evidence of genetic engineering (note: I said ”Nature Genetics”, but this was in Nature Medicine)

Why CMI rejects conspiracy theory

Joseph Lister

Louis Pasteur

The gospel

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Location: Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater, Morrison, Colorado

Thomas Jefferson has children by his slave Sally Hemmings, historical uncertainty, Genghis Khan leaves an enduring genetic legacy, African Y chromosomes in old England, Levi and the Cohanim, the Jewish Lemba of southern Africa.

Links:

Thomas Jefferson’s Y chromosome belongs to a rare European lineage

The genetic legacy of the Mongols

Africans in Yorkshire? The deepest-rooting clade of the Y phylogeny within an English genealogy

Extended Y chromosome haplotypes resolve multiple and unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood

Y Chromosomes Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba—the “Black Jews of Southern Africa”

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