Scientists function as part of society

The mapping of the human genome is complete, and I am already worried. It's not the advancement of science that concerns me, it's the nearly complete and total faith people seem to show in this mysterious group known as "they" -- the scientists.\nHow many times have you heard phrases such as this: "They have mapped the genome," and "They are working on cloning?" It is important to remember that "they" are just human beings and that "they" are subject to the same mistakes and misinterpretations we are. \nFor example, scientists refer to the millions of DNA cells they can't figure out as "junk" DNA. I'm sure this will one day upset their creators. I can't wait until it is possible to interview a gene cell. I'm sure it will go something like this:\n"Mr. Gene, why do you build humans?"\n"It benefits us to have an intelligent life form that can adapt easily to its environment. You know, find shelter, food and procreate. Humans are a lot like a self-cleaning oven. All you have to do is turn them on and they'll do the rest."\n"That's all?"\n"Yeah, why?"\n"What about literature, music and movies?"\n"Oh, that junk?"\nWe are our perceptions. Here's another example: according to Matt Ridley's "Genome," humans share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Chimps and gorillas share 97 percent of their genes. We are more like chimps than gorillas are, and yet we believe that we came from apes, although there is no evidence for this. \nIt very well could be that apes descended from humans. All other primates have 24 chromosomes. Humans have 23. To quote Ridley's excellent book, "Under the microscope, the most striking and obvious difference between ourselves and all the other great apes is that we have one pair (of chromosomes) less. The reason, it immediately became apparent, is not that a pair of ape chromosomes has gone missing in us, but that two ape chromosomes have fused together in us." \nDo you see how this is deduced? Some scientists and most other people like to think of humans as being the latest and greatest evolutionary craze. We like to believe that evolution was put into place so humans could be the end result. \nEvolution has no ends to its means. Neither theory has more weight than the other. Apes could have descended from humans and vice versa. It is possibly the greatest scientific assumption in history. It is our ethnocentrism that deduces this. We, as a race of humans, are on a bit of an ecological ego trip.\nAs another example, scientists have often influenced social policy with little "real" data. "They" came up with IQ tests for immigrants in the 1920s and found that southern and eastern Europeans were too "unintelligent" to be let into the United States. \nThese tests were in English, a language few immigrants had learned, and included test questions based on things, such as basketball and tennis courts, that were only found in the West. But based on the data from these tests, Congress passed The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which severely limited the coming of southern and eastern Europeans into the New World. \nTry taking an intelligence test in Latin someday and see how you do. \nIt wasn't long ago that scientists were experimentally "proving" that women couldn't handle a high school or university education. And as recently as 1970, Dr. Edgar Berman, a respected physician, claimed women could not fill leadership roles in government because of the effect that menstruation has on their bodies. If your mothers and grandmothers don't like math, then it is probably because "they," that is scientists and doctors, told educators that women don't have the same analytical skills as boys, and to not really worry about teaching girls math because they probably won't get it anyway. \nLess than 60 years ago, scientists were still reading the bumps on people's heads in attempt to understand their personalities. We laugh at these misconceptions now, just as they laughed at those before them and the next generation will laugh at us. \nDon't put all of your faith in a group called "they." Don't let yourself be intellectually shackled to a group that plays with the very stuff of which you are made. Too many people are treating scientists and medical doctors like they're plumbers. You don't know what they're doing in there and you don't care. "They" are just people and "they" will make a lot of very serious mistakes if we don't educate ourselves and watch them. \nDon't underestimate your own intelligence, and don't overestimate theirs.