Intelligence At Stake

Scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) just announced the discovery of molecular mechanism E2F, a DNA-binding protein that affects cell growth. Professor Nick La Thangue of Oxford University who supervised the project explains the unique properties of the potential cancer killer: "With the molecular flag on one shoulder, E2F goes into cell kill mode. With the flag on the other, it goes into cell growth mode."

Plenty of molecules come in two forms, identical except for the fact they are mirror images of each other. Scientists refer to them as left- and right-handed forms. One enduring quirk of nature is that the handedness of molecules matters, in some cases with profound consequences.

During the 1960s, Thalidomide was recommended to pregnant women to cope with morning sickness. As an unhappy result, more than 10,00 children are estimated to be born with major defects. The drug was administrated as a mixture of left- and right-handed molecules, but scientists now know that only one form addressed the morning sickness, the other caused the birth defects, probably by interfering with the activity of genes in the developing baby. The double helix of our DNA happens to be right-handed, as are the amino acids it is made of.

In 1988, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam said in a lecture commemorating Paul Dirac, the failed engineer turned scientist who married quantum mechanics with relativity, "There is a growing confidence today that the electroweak force (from Steven Weinberg's November 1967 paper on elementary particle physics) is the true "force of life" and the Lord created the Z particle to provide handedness for the molecules of life." ("Massive, The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science", pages 86,87).

The book by Ian Sample, science correspondent at the Guardian, has lots of fascination inputs that would buttress support for Intelligent Design (ID), a version of the theological argument that suggests "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." The ID inherent in the complexity in nature is used to demonstrate the existence of God. However, non-intelligent instances of religious leaders scrapping for a fight with politicians in power, or utilising church funds to finance whorish music videos, make one wonder whether the designer or the design is flawed.