Page 53 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Errors Regarding Mutations

If letters are added randomly
and unconsciously to any
one of the books in a library,
various words and sen-
tences in that book will lose
their meaning. The same
thing applies to DNA. A ran-
dom and unconscious inter-
vention in the complex
information in DNA—in other
words, a mutation—will dam-
age DNA, and consequently
the organism itself. At best, a
mutation may have no effect
at all on the organism.

found to be caused by genetic mutations. Genetics textbooks list
some 4,500 different genetic diseases. Such diseases caused by ge-

netic mutations include Down's syndrome, sickle-cell anemia,
dwarfism, mental impairment, cystic fibrosis, and certain forms of
cancer. The reason why generations of people were born deformed or
sick because of radiation at Hiroshima, and more recently Chernobyl,
is again mutations.
Pierre-Paul Grassé, former president of the French Academy of
Sciences and author of the 35-volume Traité de Zoologie, likened muta-

tions to spelling mistakes in one of his papers, and said that they
could never give rise to evolution:
Mutations, in time, occur incoherently. They are not complemen-
tary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive genera-
tions toward a given direction. They modify what preexists, but
they do so in disorder, no matter how… As soon as some disorder,
even slight, appears in an organized being, sickness, then death fol-
low. There is no possible compromise between the phenomenon of
life and anarchy. 1

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