Removing Gene Expression Barriers In Multi Cellular Organisms

[James Lyons-Weiler]

On Fri, 27 Dec 1996, Rodolfo V. Moreno wrote:

>  Hello. As dark haired and brown eyed ones seem to have the genetics in
> their DNA to have blue or green eyes or so, would anyone be willing to
> work on a process where these gene expression barriers would be removed so
> that, like how sunlight turns black hair brown and makes melanin tan
> the skin or darken it, sunlight would make dark eyed ones eyes turn
> grren or blue dependent on the level of sunlight, plus speed up the
> process of lightening of hair colour? A process that could allow non
> caucasian parents to have caucasian featured children if they so prefered?
> (Rocky Newman was born from "black" parents, yet looks very much
> caucasian.
>  With a bit of effort, we could easily find funding for such research.
> ones that are able to do this and it would open up an entire new industry,
> could reduce racism, etc.
>  rmoreno at obelix.helix.net

I'm rarely this blunt in an open forum, but

_What kind of drugs are you on?_

I needn't go any further, I'm sure, but  why choose the caucasian
phenotype (whatever that is) as the one that we all should be modified to?
Why not choose the (insert any arbitrary racial classification label here)
phenotype; if I follow your illogic correctly, wouldn't homogenizing
humans to _any_ phenotype "reduce racism, etc."?  Taking your illogic and
misapplication of a strange interpretation of genotype-phenotype
relationships further, why not try to find the genes that encode for
racism and simply excise them, instead?

Your proposition supposes that the genetic diversity behind the phenotypic
diversity in humans has no biological consequences for the individual and
the long-term evolutionary trends of homonids besides those imposed by the
emergent phenomenon we call society.

I can't believe this post.  Jeesh.

James Lyons-Weiler