Page 138 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism

he last support for faulty or vestigial structures

discussed in the last chapter is the new—but re-
cently discredited—concept of "junk" DNA.
In the second half of the 20th century, as we saw
in the last chapter, the myth of vestigial organs began to col-
lapse. Organs formerly thought to be useless turned out to have
important functions, and the myth became untenable. But evo-
lutionists, not wanting to do without the propaganda this myth

afforded, embraced a new version of it, which claimed that
some of the genes containing the organs' genetic code but not
the organs themselves—were vestigial. The new concept that
replaced "vestigial" organs was "junk" DNA.
This term "junk" referred to some sections of the huge
DNA molecule in which is encoded all of a living creature's ge-

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