Biology

"We’ve just welcomed the 8 billionth member of the human race on this planet. That’s a wonderful birth of a baby, of course. But we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure. As far as biodiversity is concerned, we are at war with nature. We need to make peace with nature. Because nature is what sustains everything on Earth … the science is unequivocal."

"Babies are the enemies of the human race... Let's consider it this way: by the time the world doubles its population, the amount of energy we will be using will be increased sevenfold which means probably the amount of pollution that we are producing will also be increased sevenfold. If we are now threatened by pollution at the present rate, how will we be threatened with sevenfold pollution… distributed among twice the population? We'll be having to grow twice the food out of soil that is being poisoned at seven times the rate."

"It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies."

"We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth, or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now."

"The success of modern medicine is today so great, that millions of people are kept alive - if not cured - who in earlier days, and with less scientific aptitude, would normally have died. In this developed skill and knowledge, and in this aptitude in the care of the physical mechanism, is today to be found a major world problem - the problem of overpopulation of the planet, leading to the herd life of humanity and the consequent economic problem - to mention only one of the incidental difficulties of this success. This "unnatural" preservation of life is the cause of much suffering, and is a fruitful source of war, being contrary to the karmic intent of the planetary Logos. With this vast problem, I cannot here deal. I can only indicate it. It will be solved when the fear of death disappears, and when humanity learns the significance of time and the meaning of the cycles."

"As we slide seamlessly from 7 billion to 8 billion humans, each generation more powerful, polluting, and destructive than the previous, I have to wonder whether one century is too much time to allow a “natural” progression into negative population growth, or whether the biodiversity damage a century like this one will inflict could be incalculable and irreversible, if not terminal for us. Think about the honey bees and hummingbirds. Think about the sudden absence of insects we are seeing all over the world, and how that soon may affect populations farther up or down the food chain. Now, Mr. Biotech Billionaire, are you serious about populating the world with thousands or millions of bicentiniarians [sic] and tricentinarians [sic]?"

"Whereas the unconscious operations and blind forces of the planet have provoked turbulent changes over the last 4.5 billion years of earth’s evolutionary history, now change is being directed by a conscious and volitional agent – "humanity." We cannot speak of humanity equally, to be sure, as the problem was caused by the industrialized capitalist West and the poorer nations who contributed least to climate crisis will be hit the hardest. But nations such as China, India, and Brazil are major contributors, and the cumulative impact of 7.5 billion people on the planet is causing extinction and collapse everywhere. The stability of the Holocene is now gone, changes are accelerating beyond our understanding and control, and chaos waits at our door."

"The geometric growth rate of humans is unprecedented and never in the history of the earth has a single species grown to such bloated proportions, completely out of balance with living systems. The problem is only worsening. On conservative estimates, the human population is expected to swell upwards to 8–10 billion by 2050, and perhaps expand significantly by 2100. Human population growth represents a crisis of the highest order, but of course, it is only one aspect of multiple crises -- including species extinction and climate change -- merging together in a perfect storm of catastrophe that forms the daunting challenges facing humanity in the Anthropocene."

"Currently, the operation of our present industrial civilization is almost wholly dependent on access to huge amounts of fossil fuels. It is important to understand that fossil fuels, especially oil, are not simply used to manufacture and propel passenger automobiles or trucks. They also facilitate the mass assembly of tractors, plows, irrigation pipes, and pumps and then turn around and power them also. They constitute the chemical base of many crucial fertilizers and pesticides. They are also the building blocks of agricultural plastics. They refrigerate perishables. In short, the modern industrial agriculture system could not function without copious amounts of fossil fuel. In the absence of fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture, world food production would plummet to a scale completely inadequate to sustain our current population size, let alone the net addition of over 80 million more people each year. The other side of the coin is that when humans co-opt the extraordinary power found in fossil fuels, we become “overpowered” – and that is how we are over-powering the Earth’s biosphere. We cannot destroy rainforests at the rate of several football fields per minute, trawl the deep oceans, attempt mass-scale aqua-culture, fragment habitat with asphalt roads, or construct miles and miles of urban sprawl without the power of fossil fuels. In summary, fossil fuels underwritten both our population size and growth and our discretionary (over)consumption."

"In my opinion, you have out-of-control population growth, and you have fewer and fewer [resources]—we are heading for the biggest train wreck our civilization has ever come across ever. Ever. And I think that within 40 or 50 years, we’ll be there. If your population curve is on an exponential growth, and the resources are on an exponential decline, what happens first is you get increases in wealth discrepancy, which means that you get rich pockets of gated communities with security guards outside them, and you get more and more poverty outside that area. And the resources go down, and people start having resource wars over water and food and agriculture and arable land, and then you have Joburg in 2050. And you can see signs of it everywhere. It’s just overpopulation and lack of resources. We just aren’t in control of our destiny."

"... Reverend THOMAS MALTHUS' prediction made in 1798—that man would reproduce himself into a condition of "misery and vice" because of the growing imbalance caused by the multiplication of his own numbers by geometric progression, while his food supply was increasing arithmetically—is as valid today as when it was made. He was a visionary and saw clearly the monster of overpopulation. The only error in his prediction was one of a "few seconds on the clock of human occupancy of the earth". We, agriculturists, can buy at most a few decades of time in which to bring population growth into successful balance with food production."

"It seems self-evident that our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot is a direct result of humanity’s growth with too many people consuming too many resources and producing too many waste products for a finite planet dependent upon healthy ecological systems. And while this doesn’t require much explanation for those who acknowledge that we live upon a world with finite resources and limited capacity to compensate for our waste production, there are still many who believe that Homo sapiens’ rather unique cognitive abilities and technological prowess can and will ‘solve’ the many challenges we appear to be encountering as we reach and surpass the planetary limits of our relatively recent explosive growth, global expansion, and industrialisation."

"All living species must take from nature to survive, and we are no different. But unlike other species, there seems to be no end to our quest for food, comfort, shelter, sex — the fundamental necessities of survival that are now pursued in overdrive, far beyond our existential needs. We are compelled to progress, and have extracted resources from the land since we first stood on two feet. The entire twentieth century has been a revving up of this large consumptive engine, and this insatiable human striving has assaulted the very planet that sustains us. In a very short period of time, humankind, with its population explosion, industry and technology, has become an agent of immense global change. What this civilization leaves in the wake of its progress may be an opened and emptied Earth. But in performing these incursions, we also participate in the unwitting creation of gigantic monuments to our way of life."

"Global biodiversity decline is best understood as too many people consuming and producing too much and displacing other species. Wild landscapes and seascapes are replaced with people, our domestics and commensals, our economic support systems, and our trash."

"During the past hundred years, Homo sapiens population increased from 2 billion to nearly 8 billion and the United Nations (2019) projects an increase of 3 billion more by 2100, unless steps are taken to reduce this population growth. Ignoring this projected increase means ignoring a major driver of the unfolding biodiversity crisis; accepting current bloated human numbers as an appropriate status quo means accepting a biologically impoverished planet."

"Thomas Malthus, an eighteenth-century economist, once predicted that because our population size increases exponentially while our food supply increases arithmetically, our population will one day exceed our ability to sustain it. While this has now been disproven with the creation of processed foods and genetically modified organisms, [Peter] Farb’s paradox may hold true. Because Earth’s population is growing, we increase our food production. Then, because we have a surplus of food, people are more well-nourished, leading to higher life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates, and people are able to have more children. This cyclical paradox is not healthy for our planet because while we may be able to sustain our growing population’s appetites, our other important resources, such as water and oil, are dwindling. To have a sustainable population size, we should be reproducing at a replacement rate, much like Denmark and Japan are."

"Today [hu]mankind is locked into stealing ravenously from the future. Famine in the modern world must be… one of several symptoms reflecting a deeper malady of in the human condition—namely, diachronic competition, a relationship whereby contemporary well-being is achieved at the expense of our descendants. By our sheer numbers, by the state of our technological development, and by being oblivious to differences between a method that achieved lasting increments of human carrying capacity [agriculture] and one that achieves only temporary supplements [reliance on fossil fuels and other mined substances], we have made satisfaction of today's human aspirations dependent upon massive deprivation for posterity."

"We are already living on an overloaded world. Our future will be a product of that fact; that fact is a product of our past. Our first order of business, then, is to make clear to ourselves how we got where we are and why our present situation entails a certain kind of future. […] It is the story of a world that has again and again approached the condition of being saturated with human inhabitants, only to have the limit raised by human ingenuity. The first several rounds of limit-raising were accomplished by a series of technological breakthroughs that took almost two million years. These breakthroughs enabled human populations repeatedly to take over for human use portions of the earth’s total life-supporting capacity that had previously supported other species. The most recent episode of limit-raising has had much more spectacular results, although it enlarged human carrying capacity by a fundamentally different method: the drawing down of finite reservoirs of materials that do not replace themselves within any human time frame. Thus its results cannot be permanent. This fact puts mankind out on a limb which the activities of modern life are busily sawing off."

"Scarcely more than two generations had tasted the fruits of industrialization when the growth of population was still further accelerated by truly effective death control. The role of microorganisms in producing diseases was discovered. In 1865 the practice of antiseptic surgery began. It serves... as a reasonable demarcation of the beginning of an era filled with related breakthroughs in medical technology: hygienic practices, vaccination, antibiotics, etc. The total effect of this recent series of achievements has been to emancipate mankind more... from the life-curtailing effects of the invisible creatures for which human tissues used to serve as sustenance. Like other prey species newly protected from their predators, we have been fruitful and have so multiplied that we have much more than "replenished" the earth with our kind."

"People displayed either persistent ignorance of the carrying capacity concept or naive faith that carrying capacity could always be expanded, [and] that limits could always be transcended. Such an assump­tion seemed to underlie the stubborn refusal of capitalists and Marx­ists alike to acknowledge that the myth of limitlessness had, at last, become obsolete. There was also the assumption that further ad­vances in technology would necessarily enlarge carrying capacity, not reduce it. Enlargement of carrying capacity had been the role of tech­nology in the past; however… there has been a reversal of this role in the industrial era. Technology has en­larged human appetites for natural resources, thus diminishing the number of us that a given environment can support."

"[Hu]man[s]... have imagined... [themselves] to be more unlike other mammals than [t]he[y] really... [are], so when human behavior has shown these same characteristics, various other explanations have been put forth which have obscured the significance of population pressure itself. In the twentieth century, with human numbers enlarged and resource draw­down becoming significant, [hu]man[kind] went to war. [T]he[y] rioted in the streets. [T]he[y] committed more... crimes of violence. [...] [Their] political atti­tudes polarized and [t]he[y] created totalitarian governments, some of which gave license to sadistic tendencies. A generation gap widened and deepened. In spite of earnest efforts by humane activists to inhibit racism and to rectify economic inequality, disparities between people remained and animosities became more virulent. Standards of de­cency in behavior toward others and expectations of considerate self-­restraint were eroded and degraded in many places."

"We need to realize the "load" with which we humans burden the planet's ecosystems consists of more than just a population number. People living by different cultures not only reproduce at different rates; they impose very different per capita ecological impacts. Culture includes a population's technology and people's ways of organizing themselves. Each of us living in a "developed" country (i.e., industrialized far beyond anything conceivable to Malthus) has an enormously greater resource appetite and environmental impact than does each resident of a so-called "developing" country. For our grossly unsustainable manner of living, 6 billion is far too many."

"Life has now entered a . This is probably the most serious environmental problem, because the loss of a species is permanent, each of them playing a greater or lesser role in the living systems on which we all depend. The species extinctions that define the current crisis are, in turn, based on the massive disappearance of their component populations, mostly since the 1800s. The massive losses that we are experiencing are being caused, directly or indirectly, by the activities of Homo sapiens. They have almost all occurred since our ancestors developed agriculture, some 11,000 y ago. At that time, we numbered about 1 million people worldwide; now there are 7.7 billion of us, and our numbers are still rapidly growing. As our numbers have grown, humanity has come to pose an unprecedented threat to the vast majority of its living companions."

"We are in the sixth mass extinction event. Unlike the previous five, this one is caused by the overgrowth of a single species, Homo sapiens."

"Over the last century the pace of many human activities has so accelerated, and human overpopulation grown so severe, to have created a dramatic global environmental transformation. Most natural ecosystem have been highly modified or have disappeared altogether, and the abundance of wildlife has been greatly reduced."

"Our use of energy has been increasing ever since we discovered and mastered fire and developed agriculture, but mostly since we gained access to a vastly increased energy supply by extracting millions of years of stored and concentrated solar energy from the Earth’s crust in the form of fossil fuels. Combined with the development of new energy conversion techniques, this energy bonanza made it possible to lift the secular barriers to human population and output growth. The new energy sources, forms and uses that came online since the turn of the 19th century gave us access to more materials and enabled the invention of new and increasingly sophisticated exosomatic instruments (i.e. machines), which in turn made it possible to access ever more energy and matter and to transform them ever more effectively and efficiently. This resulted in a rapid rise in our total energy and material “throughput” (i.e. the flow of raw materials and energy from the biosphere’s sources, through the human ecosystem, and back to the biosphere’s sinks), which is what we commonly measure through the proxy concept of “economic growth”. This rise never stopped since then, even if the global distribution of the flows of energy and material inputs, outputs and wastes evolved over time. Our efforts to increase the “energy efficiency” of our machines and processes (i.e. reducing the amount of energy needed to perform certain tasks) never resulted in a reduction of the total energy we used, but on the contrary only contributed to create more room for increasing the rate of our consumption."

"Environmental analysts regard a sustainable human population as one enjoying a modest, equitable middle-class standard of living on a planet retaining its biodiversity and with climate-related adversities minimized. Analysts' estimate[s] of that population size vary between 2 and 4 billion people, a figure obviously well below the present 7.9."

"The situation in which we find ourselves today is unique as regards the magnitude and rate of growth of the human enterprise. The turn now being taken by the vicious circle is tremendous. […] The mastery of fire, one of humans' first instances of technological development, continues to be of paramount importance today with the burning of fossil fuels. And so the vicious circle of the development of humankind churns on, and does so with ever greater momentum due to the constantly increasing consumption of fossil fuels and metals, with only the tiniest sign of resistance in the form of the efforts of environmental organisations and green political parties."

"The population boom of the last few centuries […] was made possible by massive advances in living standards, economic growth, surpluses of food, and vastly improved public health. All of this, however, was sustained by fossil fuels. Once fossil fuel reserves peak […] production, growth, and the amenities of modern life will gradually halt. Contemporary industrial society will downgrade into a “scarcity society” that manages on minimal energy, after which it will become a “salvage society” that scrapes survival from the refuse of the defunct urban buildings, information networks, and industrial centers."

"Part of human impact on the earth relates to our swiftly growing numbers. If we do not take deliberate, conscious action to maintain a reasonable balance between the numbers of people and the environmental wealth required to sustain us, nature will make appropriate adjustments, and famine, disease, and wars-the predictable outcomes of living beyond one's environmental means, of overspending environmental capital-will ultimately force a cruel discipline."

"The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated."

"The debate regarding which individual factor, among the three key factors producing the environmental crisis, causes more damage - the size of the human population on the planet, excessive consumption of resources, or unequal/ unjust distribution of resources among countries [the wealthier countries consume much more resources, per person on average than poorer countries] - is like a debate about which contributes more to a triangle, the base or the ribs of the triangle. You can not separate the three factors. If we analyze the numbers over a relatively longer time interval, we will conclude that the size of the population has a bigger impact than consumption. On the other hand, consumption and unequal distribution are also important aspects. If we do not change these three factors all at the same time, the quality of our life will change dramatically. Today humanity is delivering a serious blow to [the rest of] nature, but it is clear that nature will deliver the final blow."

"Earth is home to millions of species. Just one dominates it. Us. Our cleverness, our inventiveness, and our activities have modified almost every part of our planet. In fact, we are having a profound impact on it. Indeed, our cleverness, our inventiveness, and our activities are now the drivers of every global problem we face. And every one of these problems is accelerating as we continue to grow towards a global population of ten billion. In fact, I believe we can rightly call the situation we're in right now an emergency – an unprecedented planetary emergency."

"We humans emerged as a species about 200,000 years ago. In geological time, that is really incredibly recent. Just 10,000 years ago, there were one million of us. By 1800, just over 200 years ago, there were 1 billion of us. By 1960, 50 years ago, there were 3 billion of us. There are now over 7 billion of us. By 2050, your children, or your children's children, will be living on a planet with at least 9 billion other people. Some time towards the end of this century, there will be at least 10 billion of us. Possibly more. We got to where we are now through a number of civilization-and society-shaping “events”; most notably, the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution, and—in the West—the public-health revolution. These events have fundamentally shaped how we live, and have fundamentally shaped our planet. Their legacy will continue to shape our future. So we need to look at our growth and activities through the lens of these developments. One of the principal reasons for this growth was the invention of agriculture. The “agricultural revolution” enabled us to go from being hunter-gatherers to highly organized producers of food, and allowed our population to grow. A useful way to think of the development and importance of agriculture is in terms of at least three agricultural “revolutions.” The first took place over 10,000 years ago. This was the domestication of animals and the cultivation of plant types. The second agricultural revolution was between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was a revolution in agricultural productivity and the mechanization of food production. The third happened between the 1950s and 2000s; the so-called “green revolution.” But there’s another story here: the start of a fundamental transformation—of land use—by humans."

"As our numbers continue to grow, we continue to increase our need for far more water, far more food, far more land, far more transportation, and far more energy. As a result, we are now accelerating the rate at which we’re changing our climate. In fact, our activities are not only completely interconnected with, but are now also interacting with, the complex system we live on: Earth. It is important to understand how all this is connected. An increasing population accelerates the demand for more water and more food. Demand for more food increases the need for more land, which accelerates deforestation. Increasing demand for food also increases food processing and transportation. All of these accelerate the demand for more energy. This then accelerates greenhouse gas emissions, principally CO2 and methane, which further accelerate climate change. As climate change accelerates, it increases stress on water, food, and land. And at the same time, an increasing population also accelerates stress on water, food, and land. In short, as population increases, and as economies grow, stress on the entire system accelerates sharply."

"Saying “Don’t have children” is utterly ridiculous. It contradicts every genetically coded piece of information we contain, and (at least in their conception) one of the most important (and fun) impulses we have. That said, the worst thing we can continue to do—globally—is have children at the current rate. Even if a global nuclear power program were set up, even if geoengineering somehow took care of the climate-change problem, and even if we consumed less, we’d still at some point hit a brick wall if the human population continues to grow at anything like its current rate. We all know there’s a link between educating women in the developing world and reducing the birth rate. But despite this, and despite contraception being free in a number of countries where population is increasing, average birth rates are still three, five, or even seven children per woman. According to the United Nations, Zambia’s population is projected to increase by 941 percent by the end of the century. The population of Nigeria is projected to grow by 349 percent—to 730 million people. Afghanistan by 242 percent, The Democratic Republic of Congo by 213 percent, Gambia by 242 percent, Guatemala by 369 percent, Iraq by 344 percent, Kenya by 284 percent, Liberia by 300 percent, Malawi by 741 percent, Mali by 408 percent, Niger by 766 percent, Somalia by 663 percent, Uganda by 396 percent, Yemen by 299 percent. Even the United States is projected to grow by 53 percent by 2100, from 315 million in 2012 to 478 million. I do just want to point out that if the current global rate of reproduction continues, by the end of this century there will not be ten billion of us. There will be twenty-eight billion of us."

"If we discovered tomorrow that there was an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and—because physics is a fairly simple science—we were able to calculate that it was going to hit Earth on June 3, 2072, and we knew that its impact was going to wipe out 70 percent of all life on Earth, governments worldwide would marshal the entire planet into unprecedented action. Every scientist, engineer, university, and business would be enlisted: half to find a way of stopping it, the other half to find a way for our species to survive and rebuild if the first option were unsuccessful. We are in almost precisely that situation now, except that there isn’t a specific date and there isn’t an asteroid. The problem is us. Why we are not doing more about the situation we’re in—given the scale of the problem and the urgency—I simply cannot understand. We’re spending 8 billion euros (about 11 billion dollars [at the writing's current exchange]) at to discover evidence of a particle called the Higgs-Boson, which may or may not eventually explain the concept of mass and provide a partial thumbs-up for the “standard model” of particle physics. And CERN’s physicists are keen to tell us it is the biggest, most important experiment on Earth. It isn’t. The biggest and most important experiment on Earth is the one we're all conducting, right now, on Earth itself. Only an idiot would deny that there is a limit to how many people our Earth can support. The question is, is it seven billion (our current population), 10 billion or 28 billion? I think we've already gone past it. Well past it. We could change the situation we are now in. Probably not by technologizing our way out of it, but by radically changing our behavior. But there is no sign that this is happening, or about to happen. I think it’s going to be business as usual for us."

"Whether or not such a hypothesis fully accounts for the population increase that accompanies a sedentary life, there can be no doubt that human numbers soared. In the interval from 10,000 to 6000 years ago—a mere 160 human generations—the population of the Near East is estimated to have increased from less than 100,000 people to more than three million. With each increase, additional pressure was placed upon the food producers to domesticate new species and to invent new technologies, such as those based on the plow and on irrigation. Human beings now found themselves on a treadmill from which to this day they have not been able to get off. They are still plagued by the basic paradox of food production: Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population."

"During the brief time since James Watt's commercial production of the improved Newcomen steam engine in 1775, a revolution unparalleled in human history has occurred at all levels of society and has penetrated all aspects of culture. The technological innovations are, of course, dramatic, but equally important are the biological, political, social, and economic consequences of modernization. From a biological perspective, the most important consequence is the extension of the human life span and the growth in human numbers. In the past two centuries, life expectancy has nearly tripled and the population of our species has multiplied five times over."

"If left unchecked, populations (of any organism) tend to grow exponentially. But they never grow forever. Eventually resources are depleted and the population declines. When the population is again small enough that resources are plentiful, exponential growth resumes. The result is a boom-bust cycle — stability through fluctuation. Of course, if the fluctuations are huge, we can hardly call this ‘stability’. But in most healthy ecosystems, population fluctuations are small. The key to dampening boom-bust cycles appears to be diversity. When there are many species in an ecosystem, each keeps the population of others in check. Prolonged exponential growth never gets a foothold."

"Overpopulation is described as a societal problem, with the individual and collective behavior of people as a causal agent."

"What are [we] made of, fairy dust and happy thoughts? No, [we] are made of proteins — of food! Without a sufficient food supply, such a population cannot be achieved. We understand this as a basic biological fact for every other species on this planet, that population is a function of food supply. Yet we continue to believe that the magic of free will exempts us from such basic biological laws."

"When the First World rushes in with foreign aid, food, and humanitarian aid to a desert area in the midst of a famine, we serve to prop up an unsustainable population. That drives a population boom in an area that already cannot support its existing population. The result is a huge population dependent on outside intervention that itself cannot be indefinitely sustained. Eventually, that population will crash once outside help is no longer possible — and the years of aid will only make that crash even more severe. In the same way that the United States’ policy of putting out all forest fires in the 1980s led to an even worse situation in its forests, our benevolence and good intentions have paved the way to a Malthusian hell."

"The human race currently consumes some 40% of the earth’s photosynthetic capacity. This monopoly on the earth’s resources is having a devastating effect. We are seeing the extinction of some 140 species every day, some thousands of times higher than the normal background rate. Today, right now, we are seeing extinction rates unparalleled in the history of the earth. We are undeniably in the midst of the seventh mass extinction event in the history of the earth — the Holocene Extinction. Unlikely previous extinction events, however, this one is driven by a single species. This is the true danger of overpopulation, not our inability to feed a growing population. As much as we would deny it, we depend on the earth to live. Dwindling biodiversity threatens the very survival of our species. We are literally cutting the ground out from under our feet. Increasing food production only increases the population; our current attitudes about food security has locked us into what Daniel Quinn called a “Food Race,” by comparison to the Arms Race of the Cold War."

"Overpopulation is the root cause of all other environmental problems … [and] is the natural consequence of the Food Race — driven by the constant need to expand. That need is a systemic consequence of complex society. The alternative to overpopulation, then, is to reverse the trend of intensifying complexity and accept greater simplicity: in a word, collapse."

"The main driving force behind the Holocene Extinction is the twin forces of overpopulation and intensified agricultural production. As more land is converted into cultivated fields, we approach important tipping points in how much of the world’s photosynthetic capacity is tied up in a single species. Deforestation is driven primarily by the need to feed an ever-growing populaton, but also for that population’s other resource needs, such as lumbering and mining. That deforestation has been responsible for anthropogenic atmospheric change for thousands of years, but as the positive feedback loop of the Food Race reached new levels, we were forced to either adopt fossil fuels, or collapse. Those fuels have intensified our atmospheric impact to obscene levels, yielding a new crisis in global warming. We do not face a long laundry list of environmental problems: we face a single, multi-faceted crisis. That crisis is complex society itself. The problems we face are the direct consequence of the positive feedback loop of complex society, and the Food Race in particular."

"If nobody died the planet would soon run out of room for more people. How would this world be run (our political systems are far from perfect now); who would decide what type of house one lived in, what type of food one ate? What would we do for a living?"

"The study of population is not a very exact science. No one forecast the population collapse that is occurring in post-communist European Russia, or the scale of the fall in fertility that is under way [sic] in much of the world. The margin of error in calculations of fertility and life expectancy is large. Even so, a further large increase is inevitable. […] A human population of approaching 8 billion [sic] can be maintained only by desolating the Earth. If wild habitat is given over to human cultivation and habitation, if rainforests can be turned into green deserts, if genetic engineering enables ever-higher yields to be extorted from the thinning soils – then humans will have created for themselves a new geological era, the Eremozoic, the Era of Solitude, in which little remains on the Earth but themselves and the prosthetic environment that keeps them alive."

"The future is brutally simple to anticipate; all overshot species collapse, and we have – by [apparently] transcending time via the levering of fossil energy – levered our species’ overshoot more than any ever has (or, almost certainly, ever could)."

"Over the last century, billions have enjoyed better, fuller and more enriched lives than their ancestors could dream of—but when all the bills for that are paid who knows how the ledgers of the two enterprises will stand?"

"My growing environmental awareness only adds more fuel to the argument for having no children. And the logic of never-ending consumption does not just harm the environment, it kills people too."

"The skeleton of our primate ancestors developed for millions of years to support a creature that walked on all fours and had a relatively small head. Adjusting to an upright position was quite a challenge, especially when the scaffolding had to support an extra-large cranium. Humankind paid for its lofty vision and industrious hands with backaches and stiff necks. Women paid extra. An upright gait required narrower hips, constricting the birth canal - and this just when babies’ heads were getting bigger and bigger. Death in childbirth became a major hazard for human females. Women who gave birth earlier, when the infants brain and head were still relatively small and supple, fared better and lived to have more children. Natural selection consequently favoured earlier births. And, indeed, compared to other animals, humans are born prematurely, when many of their vital systems are still underdeveloped. A colt can trot shortly after birth; a kitten leaves its mother to forage on its own when it is just a few weeks old. Human babies are helpless, dependent for many years on their elders for sustenance, protection and education. This fact has contributed greatly both to humankind’s extraordinary social abilities and to its unique social problems. Lone mothers could hardly forage enough food for their offspring and themselves with needy children in tow. Raising children required constant help from other family members and neighbours. It takes a tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favoured those capable of forming strong social ties. In addition, since humans are born underdeveloped, they can be educated and socialised to a far greater extent than any other animal. Most mammals emerge from the womb like glazed earthenware emerging from a kiln - any attempt at remoulding will scratch or break them. Humans emerge from the womb like molten glass from a furnace. They can be spun, stretched and shaped with a surprising degree of freedom. This is why today we can educate our children to become Christian or Buddhist, capitalist or socialist, warlike or peace-loving."

"Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud."

"The last 500 years have witnessed a phenomenal and unprecedented growth in human power. In the year 1500, there were about 500 million Homo sapiens in the entire world. Today, there are 7 billion. The total value of goods and services produced by humankind in the year 1500 is estimated at $250 billion, in today’s dollars. Nowadays the value of a year of human production is close to $60 trillion. In 1500, humanity consumed about 13 trillion calories of energy per day. Today, we consume 1,500 trillion calories a day. (Take a second look at those figures — human population has increased fourteenfold, production 240-fold, and energy consumption 115-fold.)"

"Since the Industrial Revolution, the world's human population has burgeoned as never before. In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900, we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000, that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today [as of this writing] there are just shy of 7 billion Homo Sapiens."

"Today [as of this writing], the earth's continents are home to almost 7 billion Sapiens. If you took all these people and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals—cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens—and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals—from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales—is less than 100 million tons. Our children’s books, our iconography, and our TV screens are still full of giraffes, wolves, and chimpanzees, but the real world has very few of them left. There are about 80,000 giraffes in the world, compared to 1.5 billion cattle; only 200,000 wolves, compared to 400 million domesticated dogs; only 250,000 chimpanzees—in contrast to billions of humans. Humankind really has taken over the world."

"Around 1990, we became the most numerous mammalian species on the planet, outnumbering even rats."

"All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current [but declining] rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared."

"We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet’s life forms — an estimated 8,760 species die off per year — because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food, and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam's elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike, dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E. O. Wilson says, is "the monster on the land." Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels, and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic — the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."

"A world where 8 billion to 10 billion people are competing for diminishing resources will not be peaceful. The industrialized nations will, as we have done in Iraq, turn to their militaries to ensure a steady supply of fossil fuels, minerals and other nonrenewable resources in the vain effort to sustain a lifestyle that will, in the end, be unsustainable. The collapse of industrial farming, which is made possible only with cheap oil, will lead to an increase in famine, disease and starvation. And the reaction of those on the bottom will be the low-tech tactic of terrorism and war. Perhaps the chaos and bloodshed will be so massive that overpopulation will be solved through violence, but this is hardly a comfort."

"Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century-and-a-half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption; and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. The human system expanded dramatically, overshooting Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for humans while upsetting the ecological systems we depend on for our survival. Until we understand and address this systemic imbalance, symptomatic treatment (doing what we can to reverse pollution dilemmas like climate change, trying to save threatened species, and hoping to feed a burgeoning population with genetically modified crops) will constitute an endlessly frustrating round of stopgap measures that are ultimately destined to fail."

"During the last 200 years, per capita energy usage grew eight-fold, while human population expanded at about the same rate. As a result of energy growth, all the things we do with energy became more doable. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and mining exploded in scale. Energy became so abundant that it seemed we could solve any human problem, now or in the future, just by throwing more energy at it. We even reconfigured our economic system so that it assumes and requires perpetual growth. But growth in fossil-fuel energy can’t continue much longer: depletion and climate change will see to that. And even if we make a wholehearted effort to switch to low-carbon energy sources, we face limits to nature’s supplies of materials with which to make solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, and batteries. The ways we’re currently trying to share and manage power are insufficient also because we have failed to understand power itself. Rather than accepting that power limits exist, then surveying them and adapting ourselves to them, we try to finesse or deny them. We respond to climate change by hoping for a renewable energy transition—without questioning the amounts of energy we use or what we do with it. We deal with economic inequality by establishing minimal safeguards for the poor—without examining the structural means by which some people enrich themselves to absurd degrees."

"Prior to the widespread use of coal, oil, and natural gas, agrarian societies saw cyclical periods of rise and fall. But the scale of expansion since the dawn of the fossil-fueled industrial revolution, beginning roughly at the start of the 19th century, has been unprecedented. Energy usage per capita has grown 800 percent, as has population. Meanwhile, the contours of society have been transformed: for the first time in human history, most people now live in cities."

"Fossil fuels enabled a dramatic expansion of energy usable by humanity, in turn enabling unprecedented growth in human population, economic activity, and material consumption."

"Global human population has doubled three times in the past 200 years, surging from 1 billion in 1820 to 2 billion in 1927, to 4 billion in 1974, to 8 billion today. Its highest rate of growth was in the 1960s, at over 2 percent per year; that rate is now down to 1.1 percent. If growth continues at the current rate, we’ll have about 18 billion people on Earth by the end of this century. All of this would be fine if we lived on a planet that was itself expanding, doubling its available quantities of minerals, forests, fisheries, and soil every quarter-century, and doubling its ability to absorb industrial wastes. But we don’t. It is essentially the same beautiful but finite planet that was spinning through space long before the origin of humans."

"Agriculture enabled population growth and social complexity, but it gradually robbed soils of nutrients. Sailing ships guided with clocks and navigational charts could increase the scope of trade, but building wooden ships (and making charcoal for forging steel) was leading to the deforestation of whole continents. A reckoning with limits seemed to be in store. Then a miracle happened. People who lived in some key centers of global trade started using fossil fuels—energy sources capable of delivering power in previously unimaginable and seemingly endless quantities. Coal, oil, and natural gas enabled the development of transport technologies (steamships, railroads, cars, trucks, and airplanes) that overcame prior limits to the speed of travel and trade, so that products and resources that were abundant in one place could be transported to places where they were scarce. Fossil fuels could be used to increase the rates of resource extraction via powered mining machinery, and to process lower grades of ores as more concentrated ores were depleted. They could be fashioned into plastics and chemicals to substitute for some natural materials that were getting scarce, such as hardwoods and whale oil. And they could be made into artificial fertilizers, which could replace soil nutrients lost due to unsustainable agricultural practices. All these developments together enabled population growth at rates that far outstripped historic trends: human numbers expanded from one billion to eight billion in a mere two centuries. We were, in effect, stretching existing constraints on population and consumption to the point that it was difficult for many people to see that boundaries still existed at all."

"As we’ve grown our population and our per capita consumption rates, we’ve been taking habitat away from other organisms. As a result, nature is in full retreat. Vertebrate and invertebrate animal species have suffered average population declines of 70 percent in the past 50 years, and thousands of plant species are endangered as well."

"For a population of field mice in overshoot, the critical resource might consist of small plants whose unusually robust growth has been triggered by high levels of rainfall. For humanity currently, the critical resource is fossil energy. Temporary energy abundance has led to many good things (for some of us, anyway): more food, more people, more commercial products, more knowledge, more comfort, and more convenience. But we are about to become victims of our own success."

"It’s sad when loved ones die, and few of us look forward to our own demise; hence the perennial quest for an elixir of eternal life, or at least a cure for cancer. But if nobody died, the planet would quickly fill with humans and empty of all the things that feed and provision us. Death clears space for new life; it is the non-negotiable price of admission to the great banquet of existence."

"The past few thousand years of human history have already seen several critical accelerators. The creation of the first monetary systems roughly 5,000 years ago enabled a rapid expansion of trade that ultimately culminated in our globalized financial system. Metal weapons made warfare deadlier, leading to the takeover of less-well-armed human societies by kingdoms and empires with metallurgy. Communication tools (including writing, the alphabet, the printing press, radio, television, the internet, and social media) amplified the power of some people to influence the minds of others. And, in the past century or two, the adoption of fossil fuels facilitated resource extraction, manufacturing, food production, and transportation, enabling rapid economic expansion and population growth. Of those four past accelerators, our adoption of fossil fuels was the most potent and problematic. In just two centuries, energy usage per capita has increased eightfold, as has the size of the human population. The period since 1950, which has seen a dramatic increase in the global reliance on petroleum, has also seen the fastest economic and population growth in all of human history. Indeed, historians call it the “Great Acceleration.” Neoliberal economists hail the Great Acceleration as a success story, but its bills are just starting to come due. Industrial agriculture is destroying Earth’s topsoil at a rate of tens of billions of tons per year. Wild nature is in retreat, with animal species having lost, on average, 70 percent of their numbers in the past half-century. And we’re altering the planetary climate in ways that will have catastrophic repercussions for future generations. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the whole human enterprise has grown too big, and that it is turning nature (“resources”) into waste and pollution far too quickly to sustain itself. The evidence suggests we need to slow down, and, in some cases at least, reverse course by reducing population, consumption, and waste."

"Depleting and climate-changing coal, oil, and natural gas have brought about dramatic human population growth, along with immense profits and unprecedented wealth (for the few). But all of these presumed and probably transitory benefits have been based on depleting natural resources, and on processes that are perilously changing the climate and degrading ecosystems across the planet. Every time we pick up a gasoline-powered machine we are viscerally linked to that chain of ersatz benefits and spiraling impacts."

"Of course, we also have to think about the role of population going forward. The more the global population grows, the more difficult this challenge will be. As we approach this question, it's crucial—as always—that we focus on underlying structural drivers. Many women around the world do not have control over their bodies and the number of children they have. Even in liberal nations, women come under heavy social pressure to reproduce, often to the point where those who choose to have fewer or no children are interrogated and stigmatised. Poverty exacerbates these problems... And of course capitalism itself creates pressures for population growth: more people means more labour, cheaper labour, and more consumers. These pressures filter into our culture, and even into national policy: countries like France and Japan are offering incentives to get women to have more children, to keep their economies growing."

"No one lives within a day’s walk of a coal mine, an iron ore source, and a smelter that can operate without a source of electricity, plus food. The old smelters didn’t use electricity to drive the huge motors moving heavy hot metal and slag around. The first smelters were close to coal and iron ore sources, but we used them up; they no longer exist close to each other. In the year 1500, we had a world population of around 450 million and grew massively over the next 250 years to the start of the industrial revolution by increasingly using the resources of the ‘new world’. We’ve been on an upward trajectory ever since, especially since around 1800 when fossil energy came into use. People just don’t understand our extreme (and still growing) overpopulation problem given the imminent decline of oil, and especially diesel. Assuming “we’ll downsize this” or “relocalize that” ignores the fact that once oil supply shifts to contraction, the declines will be permanent year after year, and with diesel shortages the ability to build anything new all but disappears. It will be a sad sight with suffering everywhere and increasing year after year. Survivors will have to be hard people, protecting and providing for their own, at the exclusion of others. Everyone should look around their home and imagine it without the oil used to produce and deliver everything in it, because that’s the world of the future, with old decaying cold buildings and no food in cities."

"Using all available resources to expand its population is what every species that’s ever existed has always done until some limit is reached. Consider a mouse plague, enabled by human agricultural practices, with its huge population until the next frost or the grain is eaten, then a massive die-off in a short time."

"We have over 8 billion humans on the planet, and 99.99% of them have no idea modernity is going to end abruptly, and when it does so will destroy the plans of the [few who] did see it coming and tried to prepare in some way."

"One might think Humanity’s success is guaranteed, except for a few things: First, the increasing scarcity of oil, coal, and natural gas suddenly threatens to remove the punch bowl from which Humanity has been feeding. Second, the carrying capacity of the Earth is far less than 8 billion humans unless we continue to supplement with increasingly scarce resources. And, last, our centuries-long party has now broken the Earth in ways Humanity cannot repair."

"Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis for food- and oil-deficit countries? U.S. Cold War strategy is not alone in thinking how to benefit from provoking a famine, oil and balance-of-payments crisis. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated—at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist... Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.” His lobbying foundation’s 2018 “Goalkeepers” report warned: “According to U.N. data, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050,” with “more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people... in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.” Gates advocates cutting this projected population increase by 30 percent by improving access to birth control and expanding education to “enable more girls and women to stay in school longer, have children later.” But how can that be afforded with this summer’s looming food and oil squeeze on government budgets?"

"Perhaps the most ambiguous of these [technological] achievements [of the industrial age] is the one that began in mid-nineteenth century with improvements in public health, vaccinations, and antibiotics. These methods of death control emerged too rapidly to be offset by methods of birth control and populations exploded. Again, who can speak against this from within the old paradigm? In fact, it is only from the newer ecological paradigm that we are able to recognize that all this marvelous technology has... likely led the human population to overshoot the carrying capacity of the earth. Even from this perspective many of us would... want to save lives now in hopes that somehow there will be enough resources for those who come after us. In less complex animal populations, an overshoot leads to a crash, or die-off. Can humans somehow circumvent this conclusion without relying on further damaging drawdown strategies? … a basic change in our technologies, and acceptance of a steady state in economics reinforced by a compatible spiritual orientation, may at least mitigate human suffering and loss."

"Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims."

"We have learned a lot in the 50 years since "" was published. We should not shy away from discussing what actions are ethically permissible to facilitate a stable level of population growth, nor should we leave this discussion in the hands of the affluent. The conversation about ethics, population, and reproduction needs to shift from the perspective of white donor countries to the places and people most affected by poverty, climate change and environmental degradation."

"All we can say now is, that, even now, 600 persons could easily live on a square mile; and that … 1,000 human beings—not idlers—living on 1,000 acres could easily, without … overwork, obtain … a luxurious vegetable and animal food, as well as the flax, wool, silk and hides necessary for their clothing. As to what may be obtained under still more perfect methods—also known but not yet tested on a large scale—is better to abstain from any forecast: so unexpected are the recent achievements of intensive culture. We thus see that the over-population fallacy does not stand the very first attempt at submitting it to a closer examination."

"It has been estimated that the world human population stood at about one billion around the early 1800s, which was roughly about when the industrial adventure began to gain traction. It has been inferred from this that a billion people is about the limit that the planet Earth can support when it is run on a nonindustrial basis. World population is now past six and a half billion, having more than doubled since my childhood in the 1950s. The mid-twentieth century was a time of rising anxiety over the “population explosion.” The marvelous technological victory over food shortages, including the “green revolution” in crop yields, accelerated that already robust leap in world population that had begun with modernity. Dramatic improvements in sanitation and medicine extended lives. Industry sopped up expanding populations and reassigned them from rural lands to work in the burgeoning cities. The perceived ability of the world to accommodate these newcomers and latecomers in a wholly new disposition of social and economic arrangements seemed [to] be the final nail in the coffin of Thomas Robert Malthus…"

"Malthus was certainly correct [that demand will outstrip supply], but... [hydrocarbons] ...skewed the [supply-demand] equation over the past [two] hundred years while the human race has enjoyed an unprecedented orgy of [a fraction of] nonrenewable condensed solar energy accumulated over eons of prehistory. The “green revolution” in boosting crop yields was minimally about scientific innovation in crop genetics and mostly about dumping massive amounts of fertilizers and pesticides made... of ...[petroleum] onto crops, as well as employing irrigation at a fantastic scale made possible by abundant oil and gas. The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plen[t]itude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime, a hundred years. Within that comfortable bubble, the idea took hold that only grouches, spoilsports, and godless maniacs considered population hypergrowth a problem [with a direct solution], and that to even raise the issue was indecent. ...As oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves arc toward depletion, we will indeed suddenly be left with an enormous surplus population... that the ecology of the earth will not support. No political program of birth control will avail. The people are already here. The journey back to non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty. We will discover the hard way that population hypergrowth was simply a side effect of the oil age. It was [more of] a condition [without a remedy], not a problem with a [direct] solution. That is what happened, and we are stuck with it."

"Cheap oil had allowed populations to explode in precisely those parts of the world that had had, for millennia, a high infant mortality rate and modest life expectancy. Cheap oil was behind the "green revolution" that increased the food supply in the nonindustrial world. Oil was also behind many of the medicines and preventives that had neutralized… diseases. Now, suddenly, most of those children… survived, grew up, and produced more children who survived and grew up, and over… the twentieth century, the global populations hurtled into extreme numerical overshoot. Populations were, in effect, eating oil, notably in [the form of] food exports from the United States, where agribusiness had completely taken over from agriculture. Local farmers in Africa, Asia, or South America couldn’t compete with corporate Archer Daniels Midland’s oil-and-gas-based grain crops and U.S. government subsidies."

"Peak human population will surely lag … peak oil and peak mineral resources until these conditions express themselves as food shortages. This means that the human population will continue to rise for a while, even as we begin to encounter these … strict resource limits. It’s not possible to estimate how much the population will increase because the relationship between energy and mineral resources and food production is a very fragile equation, subject to any number of discontinuities. To these, add the complications of weather disasters arising from climate change, including drought, the spread of plant diseases, and so forth. This lagging further rise in [the] human population will only make the inevitable contraction more acute once food shortages begin. [Overpopulation] amounts to a human population overshoot … to the planet Earth’s ecology. We're putting a strain on everything the earth has to offer us. While the combination of peak stuff and [too many] billion humans is forcing the issue, ...the truth is that circumstances will now determine what happens, not policies or personalities. … Population overshoot is therefore unlikely to yield to management. Rather, the usual suspects will enter the scene and do their thing: starvation, disease, … violence … [and] death."

"Fossil fuels’ biggest impact on the agricultural sector stems from the use of natural gas in industrial fertilizer production. Industrial fertilizer was first mass-produced in 1914 using what came to be known as the . This invention enabled the , a boom in agricultural production that took place in the latter half of the 20th century, starting in Mexico and India. From 1961 to 2010, cereal yields per acre increased by 217 percent in Mexico and 183 percent in India. It is no coincidence that the human population has more than quadrupled since 1920. We often attribute the Green Revolution to the spread of high-yielding crop varieties. Yet these varieties typically require industrial fertilizer application. The Haber-Bosch method, combined with mechanization and pesticides derived from fossil fuels, [has] represented a massive and unsustainable injection of fossil fuels into our food system. Today, the production of one food calorie in the United States requires 2.7 fossil fuel calories."

"Driven by the Anthropocene engine, human population has grown exponentially, and individual societies have approached collapse multiple times over the past 8,000 years. The disappearance of the Easter Island civilization and the collapse of the Mayan empire, for example, have been linked to the depletion of environmental resources as populations rose. The dramatic decline of the European population during the Black Death in the 1300s was a direct consequence of crowded and unsanitary living conditions that facilitated the spread of Yersenia pestis, or plague."

"In the 20th century we decisively broke our dependence on energy systems that were fed by the wind and sun and which we supplemented with human and animal muscle power. That leap was made possible by innovations that allowed us to extract, pump, use, and transform raw materials, particularly to unlock energy stored in coal and oil to make chemicals and plastics. That in turn allowed a massive expansion in population, lifespans, and economic growth. The rise of industrial capitalism from 1851 to 1971 went hand in hand with a surge in population, mainly in cities, provided with better food and public health."

"On a global level, there is no threat to human survival greater than that posed by world overpopulation—paradoxical though that may seem—and it is abundantly clear that consensus decision making is ineffective for dealing with that. Some kind of “solution” is nonetheless unavoidable, and is certain to be ugly. To say that there is no visible world leadership on that transcendental question is to understate the case. Optimists on the population problem don’t measure progress in terms of a decrease in population, or even a decrease in the rate of increase, but in terms of a decrease in the rate of increase of the rate of increase."

"The human population will continue to increase until it can’t. When it can no longer increase, it will crash. Our extreme efforts to focus our minds elsewhere are symptoms of a desperate attempt to find solid footing, to believe in a future that will not vanish. Mankind has had a storied existence on Earth. Our thirst for knowledge and innovation has provided comfort and security. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that our remarkable progress has become our worst enemy. We know our planet is finite. Images of Earth from space make it plain for all to see. However, people routinely ignore this verifiable certainty in all aspects of their lives, treating the world as [if it were] infinite. Modern-day human activities are not only wiping out ecosystems and biodiversity but [also] plundering the clean air, water, and topsoil that helped bring about our tenure on the planet. Entire ecosystems have vanished, including the tallgrass prairie in North America, Madagascar’s rainforests, and the Aral Sea in Asia. We use Earth’s natural resources like a bunch of drunks on the greatest bender of all time. Human consumption is negatively modifying the planet and permanently damaging the biological systems upon which our continued existence depends. The deterioration of our ecosphere has been exponentially accelerating for at least 100,000 years. As technological advances improve our lives, humanity becomes increasingly detached from its environment and the natural resources allowing us to persist. People now have a much closer affinity with iPhones, Amazon, online shopping, restaurants and bars, Netflix, beauty salons, and sporting events than forests, grasslands, marshes, and oceans. Few now understand our existence on Earth is entirely dependent upon photosynthesis. Instead, they believe their survival is contingent on parents, doctors, farmers, governments, bankers, police, and other players in society. It’s not that those institutions, people, and specialties aren’t important, but they represent the retailers. Photosynthesis is the wholesaler. There is a supply chain disruption occurring on a massive scale in our relationship with the planet. The ancient forests and grasslands that provided the planet with free oxygen in the air and sequestered carbon dioxide, making it habitable for humans and other complex life, are nearly gone. For most people, the natural resources that support their existence and lifestyle might as well be from a distant galaxy. This extreme disconnect has resulted in people losing their capacity to understand the dire circumstances facing complex organisms on Earth, including themselves. The deafening alarm bells portending our extinction are routinely misunderstood or ignored. For those who perceive our state of crisis, there is a great deal of angst. Much of the frustration, anger, and sadness results from having unrealistic expectations of human beings. Despite our advanced technologies, the basic tenets of human behavior haven’t changed for centuries or millennia. Letting go of the false expectations that Homo sapiens can or will modify our behavior can bring us an element of peace. Expectations are incredibly powerful in structuring our moods and emotions. Identifying unrealistic expectations can reduce our chances of being disappointed and can increase happiness. A better understanding of our behavioral history can provide valuable insights into recognizing human capabilities and limitations."

"… as our population has grown, humans have been liquidating the planet’s natural resources for thousands of years. The effects of our current population on forests, grasslands, biodiversity, clean air, and water are catastrophic. Zero population growth means the planet would still be trying to support the current population, over 8 billion people. Humanity can no longer pay even the interest. We’ve already spent much of the planet’s clean air, water, and biodiversity with no mechanism for repayment. Zero population growth isn’t going to happen. We can’t curb our evolutionarily programmed need to grow and reproduce any more than we can stop the sun from rising. Like all populations of organisms on the planet, the number of humans will continue to increase until it’s no longer possible. When that day happens, Earth will be a truly inhospitable place."

"In 1968, with the release of their book The Population Bomb, Paul and Anne Ehrlich were among the first to identify the most significant factor that will precipitate the collapse of humanity. Their book inspired an environmentalist fad in the 1970s. The premise for the book was gradually rationalized away by most as the work of lunatics. It was listed by the Intercollegiate Review as one of the 50 worst books of the 20th century. In the Human Events list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” it garnered an 11th-place honorable mention. Since that time, the global population has more than doubled. During those five decades, humanity has identified six types of quarks, developed the modern internet, eradicated smallpox, decoded the human genome, and developed vaccines for Ebola and COVID-19. Despite all our new technologies and discoveries, the most basic concept of rapid human growth inside a finite system—our planet—leading to collapse is a concept too difficult for our greatest minds to reconcile. Humanity’s carefully calibrated psychological filters go into overdrive to prevent this simple mathematical postulate from entering our psyche. As seemingly prescient as the Ehrlichs were, our collision course with extinction was preordained long before their book was published in 1968."

"Population growth vanished from the agendas of mainstream environmental organizations that previously regarded escalating numbers as a major environmental threat. These groups were primarily shackled by their fear of alienating donors, ultimately selling their purpose and integrity for money. Criticism from progressive and conservative interests claiming that overpopulation is a myth further incentivized these groups to pretend the rising global population wasn’t a factor in planetary degradation."

"Those who defend the belief that overpopulation isn’t at the core of every environmental problem are not unique. Every myth presents itself as an authoritative, factual account, no matter how much the topic varies from natural law or ordinary experience. There is a long, bloody history of Homo sapiens defending myths against those who might either question their veracity or have a competing myth. It has resulted in the deaths of millions of people [and other animals] since the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution. As a result of ignoring the obvious reality, newborns are effectively positioned as moneymaking machines. The former prime minister of Japan suggested that women who bore no children should be barred from receiving pensions. In most countries, those who choose not to have children are required to pay for those who do through taxes. In this campaign for more babies, childbearing is reduced to a means for economic growth. Even though overpopulation, natural resource extraction, and environmental degradation are clearly linked, the needs of the economic market trump the needs of the planet. Children are nothing more than moneymakers in the eyes of politicians, forever blind to the moral, environmental, or humanitarian consequences of their policies. Market thinking has obliterated moral thinking on a grand scale. After all, if the West doesn’t produce more children, it can’t produce the wealth needed to look after parents when they retire. No social animal is ever guided by the interests of the entire species to which it belongs. No pika cares about the interests of the pika species; no northern spotted owl will lift a feather for the global northern spotted owl community; no wolf alpha male makes a bid for becoming the king of all wolves. Likewise, few humans care about the interests of Homo sapiens. People only care about themselves and those who directly affect their lives."

"Humanity has moved past the point where future generations are an issue. If there are any, they will be few in number. Ignoring the inevitable is something all species do. Humans are no different than bacteria in a Petri dish or a mountain pine beetle in a climate-stressed lodgepole pine forest. All available resources are utilized to grow and reproduce until the inevitable collapse. We’re traveling down the same path as all species that have gone through exponential increases. The only difference is Homo sapiens is doing it on a grander scale. The Herculean ability to ignore the greatest threat to our existence would be comical if not for the rapidly approaching consequential conclusion to our existence."

"Economic and political instability will continue to increase as food and water supplies are impacted in more areas on the planet by pollution, drought, flooding, and other extreme weather events. However, while the focus is almost entirely on the supply side of the economic equation, the demand side may be the bigger issue. The planet is currently adding an additional 80 million mouths to feed each year, 4.5 times more people than the entire population of Syria. As the chasm between uncertain supplies and increasing demand widens, the social and biological implications for humanity are both unpredictable and alarming."

"Many people, including environmentalists, often avoid linking the multitude of environmental problems to overpopulation. Some believe that a global shift to veganism could support the current population and more. Others attribute the crisis to various factors [that] are frequently cited as primary contributors to the ongoing environmental crisis, overshadowing the impact of population growth."

"[There's an] excessive number of humans who [want to] live a lifestyle that promotes equality, along with [others] being minimalist and/or vegan... [and] similar overpopulation by other organisms is considered a plague."

"Our emphasis [on] science has resulted in alarming rises in world populations that demand an ever-increasing emphasis [on] science to improve their standards and maintain their vigor."

"It is still the case that the worst enemies of life are, on the one hand, an excess of life (human life, in particular) and, on the other, the legislation and structure of societies based on . The sturdier a society, the more peaceful it is; the more efficient (i.e., the ransacking of natural resources), the quicker . Everything that upsets the established order of society, causing chaos and panic, gives time to nature and, ultimately, humans too."

"Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, Subsistence, increases only in an arithmetical ratio."

"The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race."

"What has caused the recent super-exponential rise in world population? Before the industrial revolution both fertility and mortality were comparatively high and irregular. The birth rate generally exceeded the death rate only slightly, and population grew exponentially, but at a very slow and uneven rate. In 1650 the average lifetime of most populations in the world was only about 30 years. Since then, [hu]mankind has developed many practices that have had profound effects on the population growth system, especially on mortality rates. With the spread of modern medicine, public health techniques, and new methods of growing and distributing foods, death rates have fallen around the world. […] On a world average the gain around the positive feedback loop (fertility) has decreased only slightly while the gain around the negative feedback loop (mortality) is decreasing. The result is an increasing dominance of the positive feedback loop and the sharp exponential rise in population […]."

"H. sapiens took around 250,000 years to reach a global population of 1 billion in 1820, and just over 200 years to go from 1 billion to 8 billion. This was largely made possible by our species’ access to cheap, easy, exosomatic energy, mainly fossil fuels. Fossil fuels enabled us to reduce negative feedback (e.g. food shortages) and thus delay and evade the consequences of surpassing natural limits. In that same 200 year period, fossil energy (FF) use increased 1300-fold, fueling a 100-fold increase in real gross world product, i.e. consumption, and the human enterprise is still expanding exponentially."

"There is no way we could keep going as we have been. The increase in human population in the 1990s has exceeded the total population in 1600. The population has grown more since 1950 than it did during the previous four million years. The reasons for our recent rapid growth are pretty clear. Although the Industrial Revolution speeded historical growth rates considerably, it was really the public health revolution, and its spread to the Third World at the end of the Second World War, that set us galloping. Vaccines and antibiotics came all at once, and right behind came population. In Sri Lanka in the late 1940s life expectancy was rising at least a year every twelve months. How much difference did this make? Consider the United States: if people died throughout this century at the same rate as they did at its beginning, America's population would be 140 million, not 270 million."

"The Earth's population is plagued by famines, energy shortages, epidemics, environmental pollution, degeneration, terrorism, dictatorship, anarchism, slavery, excessive increase of waste materials, racial hatred, food shortages, destruction of rain forests, the "greenhouse effect", pollution of lakes, streams and oceans, hatred towards asylum-seekers; radioactive emissions, chemical pollution of water, air, plants, food, human beings and animals. Crime, murder, mass murders, manslaughter; alcoholism, hatred of strangers, oppression, hatred of one's fellowman, extremism, sectarianism, drug addiction, overpopulation, annihilation of animal species, war, violence, torture and capital punishment, general mismanagement, water contamination, eradication of plant species; hatred, vice, jealousy, lovelessness, lack of logic, false humanitarianism, lack of housing, increased traffic, destruction of arable land, unemployment, the collapse of health care, the collapse of care for the elderly, destruction of nature, the collapse of solid waste removal, and the lack of living space, among others. In spite of the many efforts, mankind's problems are not decreasing but, instead, continue to rise steadily in direct proportion to population increases."

"… technology use harnesses far more energy and materials than we could ever manage without it, and while doing so may make our lives much easier and more comfortable, it comes at the cost of increasing ecological overshoot. As we increase overshoot, we concomitantly increase all the symptom predicaments that overshoot causes. Technology use also has another nasty side effect. It reduces and/or eliminates negative feedbacks which once kept our numbers in check. Many diseases we once suffered from like smallpox, measles, whooping cough, tetanus, etc. have been temporarily eliminated by the technological development of vaccines. Our medical industry has also wiped out many other diseases through proper sanitation, use of antiseptics, anesthetics (allowing surgeries to correct most internal ailments), antibiotics, antifungals, and antivirals to kill or prevent many diseases, and many other innovations that allow us to live better, more comfortable lives. The development of indoor plumbing, electrical systems, heating and air conditioning systems, insulation, refrigerators and freezers, and cooking devices all allow us to accomplish daily tasks either much easier or provide more comfort to us by regulating temperature and humidity levels in our living spaces. Therefore, technology use reduces or removes negative feedback thereby promoting population growth which also promotes technology growth. However, in terms of reducing overshoot (and symptom predicaments such as climate change, energy and resource decline, pollution loading, and biodiversity decline), technology use is maladaptive. This will become painfully clear as time moves forward when more or different technology does not actually solve overshoot. Population decline is what will actually work to reduce overshoot, caused by the failure of our agricultural systems, increased disease caused by antimicrobial resistance and new viruses emerging, and increased failures of infrastructural systems caused by extreme weather events. Reduced technology use will be facilitated by this mechanism, and ALL species wind up experiencing die-off whether they use technology or not."

"Most non-domesticated life on earth is in decline and about 200 species a day are going extinct due to a wide range of environmental problems. Many humans are at risk of being harmed or killed by related problems this century. All of the many problems are caused by the same thing: humans have used non-renewable energy to explode their population from 1 billion to 7 billion in 100 years, and now consume so large a share of the earth’s resources that almost all non-domesticated species are in decline."

"We’re in serious trouble. Many red lights are flashing on the dashboard. Most people are now aware that something is seriously wrong, and each has their favorite lens through which to view the problems… The common denominator to all of these problems is overshoot. Very few people are able to see through the lens of overshoot because overshoot is a very unpleasant topic with no painless solutions and no way to avoid its consequences, and because humans evolved to deny unpleasant realities like overshoot."

"Human numbers are rising at roughly 1.2% a year, while numbers are rising at around 2.4% a year. By 2050 the world’s living systems will have to support about 120m tonnes of extra humans and 400m tonnes of extra farm animals."

"Baconian science is at the root of the apocalypse. We have been blessed by advances in medicine, agriculture and engineering. Science has done exactly what we asked of it and now we are set for annihilation. If European science had petered out after the discoveries of the seventeenth century, we would be less numerous and [the] Earth would not be warming."

"This moment is special because we have dramatically built up our population, technology, science, medicine, and democratic institutions as a direct result of vast amounts of surplus energy stemming from a one-time resource. The fossil fuel experience has made us dangerously confident about our cleverness and dominance over nature. What makes this century special, then, is that we will have to cope with a diminishing supply rate of the resource that has been of paramount importance to our high-tech existence."

"Humans collectively must ultimately face the uncomfortable question of whether Earth’s natural systems can support 8 billion or more people at a modern standard of living. Since the resource footprint of a U.S. citizen is at least four times that of the global average, the key question is whether the planet can support an increase in material throughput four times higher than present when the strain is apparent already. As noble as it may be to wish [for] a modern living standard for an eventual ten billion or more people, it is likely that committing to such a course could result in more human suffering than would transpire under the adoption of more modest goals. The responsible path is to reduce global resource dependencies and abandon the imperative for growth starting now."

"Even something as seemingly altruistic as health care selfishly focuses on human health, to the exclusion and often direct detriment of ecosystem health. Are we really doing ourselves favors in the long term by making the destructive human enterprise healthier, more populous, longer-living, and therefore better able to carry out its damaging activities? If this sounds abhorrently anti-human, it’s because the human enterprise is currently relentlessly anti-planet. Anything that is anti-planet will dismantle ecosystems that serve as critical life support for humans, spelling failure for the human enterprise. So it’s really the human enterprise that is anti-human by way of being anti-planet. […] The best way to assure long-term prosperity is to forge a non-human-centric partnership with nature that does not always put short-term human interests above those of non-human elements of nature. Even “good” activities like health care therefore miss the boat in terms of building a better tomorrow."

"Since growth is an absurd short-lived anomaly, what about leveling out in population, resource use per capita, and adopting a steady-state economy? The problem here is that the rate at which we are depleting one-time resources today is unsustainable. We’re simply spending our bank account without paying attention to the balance and without any source of additional income. Most clearly, forests and wild spaces are down by a factor of two in the last 60 years and will be gone within 60 years at current rates of depletion. Before even getting to steady-state conditions, inevitable near-term increases in population together with sought-after increases in standards of living around the world spell an even shorter lifetime for critical habitats. Meanwhile, fisheries are failing in domino fashion; aquifers are being depleted at rates alarmingly higher than replacement; soils are degrading and arable land is lost; fertilizer depends on a finite resource; habitat loss is resulting in species extinctions far in excess of natural rates. Even the plunder of mineral resources in the seemingly infinite crust is getting harder, only a fleeting century or so into our spree. Sustaining present levels for even a few more centuries is a dubious (i.e., unsubstantiated) proposition. It is practically absurd to imagine sustaining present practices for 10,000 years. Humans simply have not yet demonstrated an ability to maintain a technological society without utter reliance on grossly unsustainable inheritance spending."

"Earth has never in its history had to contend with 8 billion fire apes, intelligent enough to have leveraged power by exploiting and burning one-time resources. We now operate outside the bounds and protections of evolution: in breach of contract, without a map to success. What could possibly convince us that this fireworks show—which has not even come close to standing the test of time—can maintain anything like its current resource impact for the long haul? Humans have demonstrated convincingly that we can live in a primitive state for hundreds of thousands of years. Our present mode is a few-century flash, supported almost entirely by inheritance-spending. Arguing that we have found a new normal is a precarious position that I would not be eager to defend. Parties end. Fireworks shows end. Why would our flash be any different? It’s not just guesswork: what other outcome could result from rapid resource exploitation on a finite planet?"

"We face unprecedented pressures on resources and on our environment, as human population and standard of living both surge on a finite planet. Nature will not allow this trend to continue indefinitely."

"Human population will not be allowed to grow [indefinitely]. Even small growth rates will step up pressure on natural resources, and Earth can only support so much, long-term. Independent of what the “right” number is, once settled, we will not be able to dial it up without imperiling the hard-won success. Even under steady human population, any increase in resource use per person will also not be compatible. In general, growth leads to a dead end: to failure."

"As a jarring illustration of our tendency to value the human side over the prerequisite physical/ecological side, imagine that somehow we manage to emerge from the coming centuries having established a truly sustainable existence. All resources are renewed by nature at the rate of extraction for human needs; population is steady and at a level just tolerable to the planet in terms of indefinite support. Diverse ecosystems are left to thrive in their natural states. But imagine that we are still plagued by cancer and other maladies, so that life expectancy is, say, 90 years. Then what if a team of researchers hits on a cure for (most forms of) cancer? Hurray! At last! Unambiguously good, right? Well, not so fast. All other elements held the same, longer life spans translate to a higher population, putting additional resource burdens on the planet that it cannot handle in the long term. In order to adopt and implement the cure for cancer, we would have to either deliberately reduce population or lower the standard of living to accommodate the change. All other considerations of the complex society about economic impacts, equity of distribution, legal and political facets, or interaction with religious belief systems must take a back seat to the most fundamental and important question: is this change physically viable on this finite planet in the long term?"

"People tend to prefer the narrative that we, ourselves, are the superheroes, and that our superpowers are not from the fossil fuel suit, but are cognitive in nature. Yet we have the same neural hardware (if not slightly downsized) as our prehistoric ancestors. The main cognitive revolution happened about 70,000 years ago when humans started to believe in things that do not exist (like spirits or potential future gains) that allowed large-scale coordination and shared identity to outcompete evolution’s more biophysical tricks of sharp teeth/claws, speed, strength, camouflage, poison, or overwhelming numbers. Global spread of homo sapiens and megafauna extinctions quickly followed, and it is at this point that the human experiment began to smolder: something was off. About 10,000 years ago, agriculture started and the first visible flame ignited. About 300–400 years ago, the Enlightenment lit a fuse by developing a scientific approach to understanding the world. It was not long before the fuse found fossil fuels and we now witness the predictable explosion that ensued. The explosion is breathtakingly rapid on any meaningful timeline, only appearing in slow motion to the few generations experiencing the phenomenon and thus seeming “normal.” So we can trace some part of our current planetary dominance to human ingenuity, but perhaps the lion’s share actually is attributable to the energy bonanza—as suggested by the dramatic change in the pace of innovation before and after the fossil transition."

"A plausible scenario for ecosystem collapse... is based on the fact that we currently support 8 billion people on a fossil-intense agricultural system. We have over-leveraged that finite resource to "borrow" millions of years of eco-services (photosynthetic energy) and now host a population that probably never could have existed in ecological equilibrium. Even if fossil fuels were not going away, it seems likely we would see continued erosion of the globe's ability to support this current unsustainable mode. We have already lost about half of the wild animal life in my lifetime: is that halfway to collapse? Take away the fossil fuels, and I imagine over-hunting and rapid deforestation will take an enormous toll on ecosystem health."

"[It] is truly alarming from an ecological point of view: not only has the human population grown like gangbusters, but the level of affluence per person has soared by an even larger factor."

"The dream of eventually having 10 billion people living at American standards completely ignores the glaring fact that we seem to be circling the drain even at today’s impact level (i.e., overshoot). How could we possibly entertain the factor-of-five increase in resource demand that would accompany a realization of “the dream?” It seems delusional… and likely to turn into a nightmare if pursued."

"Human population is going up… We’re not exactly doing the planet (or ultimately ourselves) any favors presently. Will adding more humans that subscribe to our current cultural model somehow make the situation better? Will improving standards of living (thus increasing resource demand) mysteriously turn things around? It’s hard to see how—not without enacting a whole new model."

"Increasing the standard of living of a growing population makes today’s ecological pressures look adorable."

"It is easy to get caught up in the heady whirlwinds of modernity. We have accomplished amazing feats in these past few centuries, and our extrapolative minds envision a continued acceleration. Given that our life span overlaps only a portion of the tale, it is easy to lose the context that our boom (the Industrial Revolution and what followed) is almost entirely due to fossil fuels. This energy surge in turn powered a surge in material access and economic activity (and human population) in what is perhaps fittingly described as a fireworks show."

"What did we do with our fossil fuel bonanza? We exploded population by revolutionizing agriculture [and health]. Now when fossil fuels inevitably (and soon?) decline, we’re left with an overhang that can no longer be supported. The resulting population decline will suddenly cast Malthus in a new light: oh what a starry-eyed soothe-sayer [sic]! When that day comes, […] realize that it’s no more tragic than the ant colony waning as it must."

"Our fossil fuel bonanza has left our ecosystem in a perilous state. We have destroyed vast forests and habitats, polluted water and soil, kicked off a rapid climate trend that natural systems may not adapt to quickly enough, and basically overrun the planet."

"…fossil fuels allowed us to drastically overshoot the natural carrying capacity of the planet, and that bill will come due when the underlying resource inevitably dwindles. Sometimes simple is simply right."

"The human explosion has accelerated across the millennia, most recently reaching a fever pitch owing to the employment of fossil fuels—leveraging stored solar energy about a million times faster than it was created. The ensuing access to minerals and ability to transform landscapes has rapidly and radically altered our world within just a few human generations."

"In 1800, every human on the planet had a corresponding 80 kg of mammal mass in the wild. Wildland mammals outweighed humans in an 80:50 ratio. Today, each human on the planet can only point to 2.5 kg of wild mammal mass as their “own.” Let that sink in. You only have 2.5 kg (less than 6 pounds) of wild mammal out there somewhere. A single pet cat or dog generally weighs more. Not that long ago, it was more than you could carry. Now, it seems like hardly anything! I especially fear the implications for mammals should global food distribution be severely crippled."

"As if the Enlightenment was not enough, in quick succession we joined another enormous river. One could say that the process of science opened the door to fossil fuels, but science and fossil fuels might be best described as a dynamic duo. Fossil fuels gave us the power to advance our science-amplified degree of control to an entirely new level. Resources that had been previously inaccessible became available. It became far easier to clear land for agriculture and other uses. We learned to make fertilizer from methane, unleashing unprecedented agricultural surpluses that inevitably resulted in a human population overshoot. Fossil-fueled furnaces led to steel, concrete, and other materials on a massive scale, paving the way to megacities and global trade. Science itself was amplified by having access to fossil fuels, via a flood of new devices and capabilities invented with—and powered by—cheap energy. Advances in science and technology in turn allowed greater access to buried fossil energy. This positive feedback arrangement facilitated runaway expansion of the [human] enterprise, leading to a battery of hockey stick curves."

"Energy has been fundamental to our story of growth. The various hockey stick curves over the last century or so are a reflection of energy and population. What’s more, human population itself is a reflection of energy, as mechanized, fertilized agriculture was made possible by fossil fuels. Since energy per capita has also increased like a hockey stick, the ecological impact (and many other metrics like GDP) takes on the shape of a super-exponential (still resembling a hockey stick on a logarithmic plot)."

"We have used [fossil fuels] to expand the human enterprise and population, knock down forests, destroy and fragment habitats, drive extinctions, and generally threaten the vitality of the planet. [But] “solving” the energy problem as fossil fuels give out is pretty frightening: how would it not simply perpetuate the ecological nosedive we have initiated? Only if we put ecological concerns above energy do we stand any chance of survival."

"I acknowledge that cancer is a class of disease, and no universal cure is likely to emerge. But feel free to substitute any longstanding cause of death. […] In a sense, it is death that makes life special and worthy of celebration. […] What would a successful cure look like? Human lifespans would increase. All other things being equal, a reduced death rate means more humans on the planet, putting additional pressures on the entire community of life and further threatening the vitality of the planet—including humans, to be clear. Moreover, access to the cure would almost certainly be more available to the affluent half, who are already heavy users of resources and thus cause outsized harm to the planet. So a cure to cancer would serve to boost ecological destruction, in practice."

"Truly, the end of modernity will probably be brutal for most of the 8 billion people on the planet, who will cling to what they know and fail to adapt. But even if they were mentally ready, the Earth is not ready to support 8 billion humans without a massive fossil subsidy, so human population will likely fall a lot in hard times."

"Compared to biologically relevant timescales, the human explosion commenced just “yesterday” when grain agriculture began taking root... set[ting] the stage for planet-crushing present-day human populations in a time that is still contextually short. Each “improvement” like cities and technology only accelerated the rapidity of the unsustainable ascent. Mounting ecological damage was part and parcel of this expansionist story long before cars, planes, and smartphones arrived—like two sides of a coin."

"Humans are voracious (big brains to feed and a lot of un-furry surface area to keep warm), and therefore are ecologically expensive. If the Earth tightens its belt, [one should]n’t assume that humans will fare well. We are summer children borne of “good” times, where “good” translates to “biodiverse.” Cleverness is no guarantee against starvation, as countless clever humans who have starved can’t tell [us]."

"[Our] success [in eliminating hunger and inequity] inevitably grows the population, scaling up the current tension... to planetary limits... [and] curing all diseases and achieving effective immortality would be ecologically disastrous!"

"Since the current low levels of mortality go hand-in-hand with ecological devastation and a doomed modernity, their embrace is itself a problem…"

"The Green Revolution transformed agriculture by inserting fossil fuels at every turn. Fertilizer came from natural gas. Diesel allowed large-scale mechanization of plowing, planting, harvesting, processing, and transporting large amounts of food. Petrochemical pesticides smote economically worthless (but ecologically invaluable) products of evolution into the foul dust. We fed a growing human population, now 8 billion strong. It boils down to a diet of fossil fuels: again, temporary."

"To those who resist the notion that increasing food production also means increasing human population, consider this. In 1950, the global population stood at about 2.5 billion people. The Green Revolution was about to explode into global agriculture, substantially increasing crop yields on the back of profligate fossil fuel inputs (for fertilizer, mechanization, energy for irrigation, transport, processing, etc.). Let’s say this tsunami of energy and technology had not arrived on the agricultural scene, and that moreover a global edict (“magically” followed) held annual food production at the 1950 level thereafter. Would we have 8 billion people today? Impossible. We would still have 2.5 billion, correct? In 1950, the world produced enough food for 2.5 billion people, so that same amount of annual food would sustain 2.5 billion people today…or perhaps 2 billion taller, heavier people; or 3 billion people with more equitable, modest distribution and less waste. But you get the point: hold the food supply steady and you essentially hold the population below some cap. Inarguable. Those additional 5.5 billion people were made possible by a technological wave of food increase."

"[Eight] billion humans are driving a sixth mass extinction, which leaves no room for even 10 humans if fully realized, let alone 10¹⁰."

"Maintaining 8 billion human people on Earth [without fossil fuels] is no more possible than invading space. It’s not an actual, realizable choice—beyond transitory and costly stunt demonstrations."

"How we live and consume matters just as much as the growing density of our numbers combined with the proliferation of our machines that devour energy on our behalf. (Roads and cell phones all consume energy and materials too.) All three demographic issues are increasing at unsustainable rates and feed each other to propel more economic growth, more emissions and more fragility. The world’s current population is 7.9 billion and grows by 80 million a year. It has slowed down in recent years because the affluent don’t need the energy of children as much as the poor. Even so civilization will add another billion to the planet every dozen years. Redistributing energy wealth (and emissions) from the rich to the poor will not avert disaster if human populations don’t overall decline. Our numbers also reflect a demographic anomaly that began with fossil fuels, a cheap energy source that served as Viagra for the species. Prior to our discovery of fossil fuels, the population of the planet never exceeded one billion. Our excessive numbers are purely a temporary artifact of cheap energy spending and all that it entails — everything from fertilizer to modern medicine."

"In recent decades, support for family planning has waned, and global fertility decline has decelerated as a result. Projections calibrated across the decades of strong family planning support have not acknowledged this change and are consequently underestimating global population growth. Scenarios used to model sustainable futures have used overly optimistic population projections while inferring these outcomes will happen without targeted measures to bring them about. Unless political will is rapidly restored for voluntary family planning programs, the global population will almost certainly exceed 10 billion, rendering sustainable food security and a safe climate unachievable."

"Putting an end to the population explosion will not of itself save the ecosphere, but not ending it will add greatly to the dangers the planet faces. The environment can sustain a quality of life for just so many people."

"In what year will the human population grow too large for the Earth to sustain? The answer is about 1970, according to research by the . In 1970, the planet's 3 and a half billion people were . But on this New Year's Day, the population is 8 billion. Today, wild plants and animals are running out of places to live."

"... Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years and we are struggling to provide 7 billion of us with sufficient food, clothing, and shelter to lead decent lives. There cannot be an economist on the planet who thinks Earth could support 7.168 trillion people. Human population growth cannot go on forever, no matter how optimistic economists might be."

"Human overpopulation, the ever-increasing power of our technology, and the demand of our omnicidal, neoliberal economic system of infinite growth on the basis of finite resources threaten the earth with total destruction."

"Ever since Malthus, at least, it has been clear that means of subsistence do not grow as fast as population. No one has ever liked the idea that famine, plague, and war are nature's way of redressing the imbalance -- Malthus himself suggested that the operation of "preventive checks," which serve to reduce the birth rate, might help prolong the interval between such events. And in the two hundred years since Malthus sat down to pen his essay, there has been no worldwide cataclysm. But in the same two centuries world population has grown exponentially while irreplaceable resources were used up. Some kind of adjustment is inevitable. Today, many people who are concerned about overpopulation and environmental degradation believe that human actions can avert catastrophe. The prevailing view holds that a stable population that does not tax the environment's "carrying capacity" would be sustainable indefinitely, and that this state of equilibrium can be achieved through a combination of birth control, conservation, and reliance on "renewable" resources. Unfortunately, worldwide implementation of a rigorous program of birth control is politically impossible. Conservation is futile as long as population continues to rise. And no resources are truly renewable."

"Around 8,000 BC, world population was something like five million. By the time of [the birth of Jesus] Christ, it was 200 to 300 million. By 1650, it was 500 million, and by 1800 it was one billion. The population of the world reached two billion by 1930. By the beginning of the '60s it was three billion; in 1975 it was four billion; and after only eleven more years it was five billion. This cannot go on forever; collapse is inevitable. The only question is when."

"People who believe that a stable population can live in balance with the productive capacity of the environment may see a slowdown in the growth of population and energy consumption as evidence of approaching equilibrium. But when one understands the process that has been responsible for population growth, it becomes clear that an end to growth is the beginning of collapse. Human population has grown exponentially by exhausting limited resources, like yeast in a vat or reindeer on St. Matthew Island, and is destined for a similar fate."

"As human populations expand they necessarily appropriate ecological space required by other species. Human ‘competitive displacement’ of non-human organisms from their habitats and food sources is now the greatest contributing factor to . Consider that with only 0.01 % of total Earthly , H. sapiens’ expansion has eliminated 83 % of wild animal and 50 % of natural plant biomass. From a fraction of 1 % ten millennia ago, humans now constitute 36 %, and our domestic livestock another 60 %, of the planet’s much expanded mammalian biomass compared to only 4 % for all wild species combined. Similarly, domestic poultry now comprise 70 % of Earth’s remaining avian biomass. Meanwhile, commercial fishing depletes the oceans at the expense of rapidly declining marine mammals and birds. Seabirds are the most threatened bird group, with a 70 % community-level population decline between 1950 and 2010."

"Population estimates are usually based on demographic data alone with no consideration of exogenous factors. This is unrealistic. For living organisms, the fact of their own existence ensures that no environment or habitat remains ideal for long. As the subject population expands, it will invariably use up any crucial resource in fixed supply. Even renewable resources can be depleted once the population goes into ‘overshoot’, a situation in which aggregate consumption exceeds food species’ recovery rates or waste accumulation exceeds natural assimilative capacity. The rise and fall of reindeer populations introduced to two previously unoccupied (by reindeer) Pribilof Islands in the early 20th century is a classic example. Collapse was attributed to overgrazed food sources (primarily lichen) abetted by the stress of exceptionally cold winter."

"...for most of our species’ time on Earth—including most of the agricultural era—humanity’s natural propensity to expand has been held in check by negative feedback, e.g., food and other resource shortages, disease, and inter-group conflict. Circumstances changed with the scientific/industrial revolution, particularly the increasingly widespread use of fossil fuels. It took 200,000 – 350,000 years for human numbers to reach one billion early in the 19th Century, but only 200 years (as little as 1/1750th as much time!) to balloon another seven-fold by early in the 21st Century. Improvements in medicine, public sanitation, and population health contributed to this expansion, but coal, oil, and gas made it possible. Fossil fuels are the energetic means by which humans extract, transport, and transform the prodigious quantities of food and other material resources into the products needed to support our burgeoning billions. More than any other factor, fossil fuels enabled H. sapiens to eliminate or reduce normal negative feedbacks. Freed from historic constraints, our species was, at last, able to exhibit its full potential for geometric growth."

"Humanity is already far into ecological overshoot: we are learning the hard way that the ecosphere under stress is still immeasurably more complex than even the global human enterprise. It can generate a vastly larger arsenal of negative feedbacks in response to human excesses than any imaginable human control system can match."

"Humans invade and populate all accessible favourable habitats; human populations use up all available resources; under favourable conditions, human populations are capable of exponential growth. […] The industrial/scientific revolution spawned technologies, particularly improvements in public sanitation and disease control, that greatly reduced death rates while fossil fuels alleviated food and resource shortages. With the suppression of negative factors, positive feedback prevailed; between the early 1800s and 2023, the human population exploded from one to eight billion. Meanwhile, what we now call ‘neoliberal economics’ began taking form in the late 1800s. In just two centuries, the human population grew eight times larger than the maximum attained over the previous 3000 centuries, and the world economy grew 100-fold in real terms! […] Overshoot may be a quasi-natural phenomenon, but it is also a potentially terminal condition. There are now about 80 cities in the world with populations in excess of five million—each has more people than existed on the entire planet at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago. […] Life in higher-income countries just seemed to be getting better and better, at least in material terms. Little wonder that by the 1950s, MTI governments and international institutions everywhere were adopting the neoliberal vision of perpetual economic and population growth via continuous technological advance as the dominant development narrative of global culture. There are, of course, significant problems—all this occurred on a finite, non-growing planet with serious history. With nurture-reinforcing-nature in propelling the expansionist juggernaut, the human enterprise surged into ecological overshoot; resource consumption and waste production are overwhelming the bio-productive and waste assimilation capacities of the ecosphere. This is not merely an aesthetic concern: the functional integrity of the ecosphere is essential for human existence. Overshoot may be a quasi-natural phenomenon, but it is also a potentially terminal condition."

"The current human population is 14,000-fold larger than the average populations of other mammal species of similar body size! […] If humans were a typical mammal whose global population corresponded to the arithmetic mean (average) of populations of mammals of similar body size, there would be only 500,000 people on Earth!"

"Almost all of today’s low-energy countries have a population density so great that it perpetuates dependence on intensive manual agriculture, which alone can yield barely enough food for their people. They do not have enough acreage, per capita, to justify using domestic animals or farm machinery, although better seeds, better soil management, and better hand tools could bring some improvement. A very large part of their working population must nevertheless remain on the land, and this limits the amount of surplus energy that can be produced. Most of these countries must choose between using this small energy surplus to raise their very low standard of living or [to] postpone present rewards for the sake of future gain by investing the surplus in new industries. The choice is difficult because there is no guarantee that today’s denial may not prove to have been in vain. This is so because of the rapidity with which public health measures have reduced mortality rates, resulting in population growth as high [as] or even higher than that of the high-energy nations. Theirs is a bitter choice; it accounts for much of their anti-Western feeling and may well portend a prolonged period of world instability."

"The doubling of life expectancy is largely down to medical advances. Without medical care, we’d probably be at a much lower population level. I can’t find projections, but given that even some fairly routine injuries and sicknesses would be life-threatening without medical intervention, one would expect a more pyramidal pyramid, and 2 billion people doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. This is also amplified by [there] being [fewer] people to innovate ideas like the green revolution, which [led] to higher populations. In nature, population overshoot is usually remedied by a higher die-off rate, not a lower birth rate. But humans think that medical care and increased lifetimes are a sign of progress. Medical advances can even allow some who wouldn’t have been able to have children to have children, thus exacerbating overshoot."

"A lot of technologies have been utilised in storing food or growing more of it. And we know that increased access to food increases population size. The reverse is also true, of course, so we should expect population to fall as harvests come under stress from the effects of climate change."

"Humans are a species, so they are no different in needing to reproduce to propagate their traits, which may eventually lead to what would be considered a new species, though that would likely take tens or hundreds of thousands of years. If our ancestors had considered the effects of what they were doing, why some prey species appeared to disappear, for example, then we wouldn’t be here, as we’d limit what we did, how we expanded, how we spread. Humans would, at best, have remained a very limited species, if it survived at all. But that is not the way life works. Clearly, we have followed the maximum power principle, since we’re a species, and so consume as much energy and resources as we can. In basic terms, a body needs food for energy and humans have figured out how to produce increasing quantities of food (at least in terms of calories) using agriculture, machines, artificial fertilisers and pesticides. This has enabled an explosion in population in a positive feedback loop (with higher population forecast, we figure out how to support that population, leading to more agriculture and higher yields, so we end up with a higher population). The huge success of agriculture and mechanisation, has lead to almost no human being involved in the production of the food that keeps us alive, so we’ve had to invent other ways to kill our time. We now have a huge variety of products and services to help us kill our time before we die. Some of it is pleasurable so we want to do more of it and invent new ways to live. All the time, killing more of the rest of life. But getting here was inevitable because we are a species and don’t have free will to counter those inbuilt drives."

"As food makes babies perhaps the critical development was agriculture but then without fossil fuels, we could never have produced as much food as we do now, and deliver it across the world. But then, if we hadn’t started cooking food, we might not have been clever enough to figure out how to use fossil fuels to produce food. And without language, we could never have communicated complex ideas about agriculture, tool making and the use of fossil fuels. So we go round and round."

"It is often said that humans are in overshoot. What does that mean? In simple terms, it means exceeding a limit. However, if a limit has been exceeded, then how is it a limit? People usually refer to overshoot as exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. The ability for the planet to support the current population of humans. And yet here we are. Humans have apparently been in overshoot territory for a long time, but that hasn’t affected the numbers. Indeed, the population of humans continues to grow."

"We have well over 8 billion people on this planet. All ecosystems have been perturbed, and wildlife has been hugely depleted by over 70% in just the last half century. Deforestation continues apace at almost 5 million hectares per year. So, it’s impossible for all humans to live sustainably right now. If a few chose, and succeeded, to live sustainably, it would have no measurable effect on the planet."

"It is apparently futile only to insist that the more back­ward countries restrict their birth rates. What is needed most of all is economic and technical assistance to these countries. This assistance must be of such scale and generosity that it is unlikely before the estrangement in the world and the egotistical, narrow-minded approach to relations between nations and races are eliminated."

"Government policy, legislation on the family and marriage, and propaganda should not encourage an increase in the birth rates of advanced countries while demanding that it be curtailed in underdeveloped countries that are receiving assistance. Such a two-faced game would produce nothing but bitterness and nationalism."

"I want to emphasize that the question of regulating birth rates is highly complex and that any standardized, dogmatic solution "for all time and all peoples" would be wrong."

"...increasingly, technology has come up against the law of unexpected consequences. Advances in health care have lengthened life spans, lowered infant-mortality rates, and, thus, aggravated the population problem."

"As human beings, with over 8 billion of us on planet Earth at present, we now find ourselves in a very analogous situation to both the early cyanobacteria from over 2 billion years ago and the yeast cells one would culture within a nutrient-rich broth in a petri dish. It isn’t that we’re in danger of transforming our planet into an uninhabitable hellscape, as nothing we’ve done or are in the process of doing is going to have a catastrophic effect of that magnitude. However, there are a number of ways that we’re polluting, destroying, or depleting our environment in ways that not only are non-renewable and unsustainable, but that are going to have negative downstream effects that impact future humans, hundreds and even thousands of years down the line, in ways that most of us aren’t prepared to fully reckon with. And that’s unfortunate, because we should be prepared. After all, unlike yeast, cyanobacteria, or any other species that’s impacted its environment due to its collective, accumulated actions, we can not only detect and quantify the effects we’re having, but can choose to change our action at any time."

"Erroneous belief about population growth has cost dearly. In poor countries, it has directed attention away from the factor that we now know is central in a country's economic development, its economic and political system. And in rich countries, misdirected attention to population growth and its... consequence of natural-resource shortages has caused waste through such programs as now-abandoned synthetic fuel programs, and the useless development of airplanes that would be appropriate for an age of greater scarcity."

"Adding more people causes problems, but people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed our progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination. The ultimate resource is people—skilled, spirited, and hopeful people who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and inevitably they will benefit not only themselves but the rest of us as well."

"Capitalist elites seeking to increase the size of their labour force used pro-natalist state policies to prevent women from practicing family planning. [...] We should not ignore the relationship between population growth and ecology, but we must not treat these as operating in a social and political vacuum."

"History upon Terra tells us what horrors follow upon religious mandates of unlimited reproduction."

"Malthusian predictions that relentless population growth will outstrip food production and trigger starvation worldwide have recurred over the centuries. They have come and then gone as farmers have deployed new technologies to increase food output. Even now, enough food is being produced to adequately feed every person on the planet; the fact that nearly one billion people are nonetheless going hungry is a damning indictment of the world's food-distribution system. But since demand is growing, production will also have to increase in the years ahead. With the world's population expected to expand to more than nine billion by 2050 and much of that growth occurring in China, India, and other countries where living standards are rising fast, global food production will need to increase by 70-100 percent in order to keep pace and feed the already chronically hungry. This is a mighty challenge: all the more so because given current soil technology and environmental concerns, more food will have to be produced on roughly the same amount of arable land -- and with less water than is used now and at a time when both growing demand for biofuels and changing climate patterns are also putting pressure on production. Where will the needed rise in food supplies come from, and how quickly can the distribution problems be solved?"

"Given the Maoist position that a large population was a “resource”, rather than a burden, for the Communist state, it was politically incorrect to advocate population control [either by diet or medicine]."

"Supporting large families and unchecked growth (of which the greatest parameter is population increase) is a mantra which religion and authority have preached for thousands of years. Religions always need more clergy to reap donations from, and leaders more voters to turn into soldiers for their next war, or to make the gross (as opposed to per capita) GDP figures look good. We are being farmed, we have always been farmed for thousands of years by an economic system that prioritises cold hard profit figures over real prosperity. Competition fuels growth even more, as humans are extremely territorial. The problem with the existence of countries is that they speed up civilisational collapse. They all end up competing for economic and population growth, therefore significantly accelerating civilisational overshoot and collapse."

"Thanks to the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels, humans (really just a small minority of them) are able to live richer lives today than even the queens and kings of yore could have dreamed of. Furthermore, we’ve used some of those finite resources to increase food supplies and to expand the human population, which provides the economic system with both more workers and more consumers, a necessity to keep the economy growing under our current economic model. The world’s population increased from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7 billion today, and we add about 80 million more each year. Humans have quickly become the most numerous megafauna on the planet."

"Humans, because of their intelligence, have found ways to [temporarily] defeat survival of the fittest. As areas get overpopulated, humans have moved to areas where they have a better chance of survival. Humans have found ways to increase food supply, through the use of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and refrigeration, all of which require fossil fuels. They have developed trade, so that so areas with shortfalls can benefit from surpluses elsewhere. Humans have developed a world financial system, which has helped enable worldwide trade. The financial system has also allowed investors to pay for goods after they are put into service, so that the cash flow resulting from an investment can be used (after the fact) to pay for the cost of the investment. This enables investment, and faster use of resources, including energy resources. One of the reasons for continued upward population pressure is the fact that humans have evolved to live beyond their reproductive years. In their declining years, humans often need assistance, either from their offspring or from a public pension program, or both. Because of concern for their own old age, people without pensions tend to have enough children so that there is a significant chance that a child of the right sex will survive to adulthood. With improving medical care, this tends to lead to [an] ever-rising population."

"As long as the world’s population is rising, even in lesser developed countries, there is going to be a continuing need for more food, clothing and housing. This is an issue we don’t seem to be able even to talk about. It may offend people."

"The energy resource that we learned to develop this time is fossil fuels, starting with coal about 1800. World population was able to expand greatly because of additional food production permitted by fossil fuels and because of improvements in hygiene. A period of stagflation began in the 1970s, when we first encountered problems with US oil production and spiking oil prices. Now, the question is whether we are approaching the Crisis Stage as described by Turchin and Nefedov."

"As energy supplies deplete, we will increasingly need to “choose our battles.” In the past, humans have been able to win many battles against nature. However, as energy per capita declines in the future, we will be able to win fewer and fewer of these battles against nature, such as our current battle with COVID-19. At some point, we may simply need to let the chips fall where they may. The world economy seems unable to accommodate 7.8 billion people, and we will have no choice but to face this issue."

"Many people believe that humans can have a sustainable future by using solar panels and wind turbines. Unfortunately, the only truly sustainable course, in terms of moving in cycles with nature, is interacting with the environment in a manner similar to the approach used by chimpanzees and baboons. Even this approach will eventually lead to new and different species predominating. Over a long period, such as 10 million years, we can expect the vast majority of species currently alive will become extinct, regardless of how well these species fit in with nature’s plan. The key to the relative success of animals such as chimpanzees and baboons is living within a truly circular economy. Sunlight falling on trees provides the food they need. Waste products of their economy come back to the forest ecosystem as fertilizer. Pre-humans lost the circular economy when they learned to control fire over one million years ago, when they were still hunter-gatherers. With the controlled use of fire, cooked food became possible, making it easier to chew and digest food. The human body adapted to the use of cooked food by reducing the size of the jaw and digestive tract and increasing the size of the brain. This adaptation made pre-humans truly different from other animals. With the use of fire, pre-humans had many powers. They spent less time chewing, so they could spend more time making tools. They could burn down entire forests, if they so chose, to provide a better environment for the desired types of wild plants to grow. They could use the heat from fire to move to colder environments than the one to which they were originally adapted, thus allowing a greater total population. Once pre-humans could outcompete other species, the big problem became diminishing returns. For example, once the largest beasts were killed off, only smaller beasts were available to eat. The amount of effort required to kill these smaller beasts was not proportionately less, however."

"… the problem the world is facing today is like one that smaller economies have faced, over and over, in the past: The population has become too large for the economy’s resource base, which now includes fossil fuels. Today’s leaders reframe the problem as voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change in order to make the situation sound less frightening."

"We are dealing with an age-old problem: Humans are able to outsmart other animals, and for this reason, human populations tend to rise except when external conditions are quite adverse."

"History shows a repeated pattern of overshoot and collapse. A population would grow until the carrying capacity of the local area was reached. Food surpluses would become lower and lower, so less food could be saved up for fluctuations in rainfall and temperature. Eventually, civilizations would succumb to one or another problem: disease, attack by a neighboring group, climate fluctuations, or governments overthrown by unhappy citizens. We tell ourselves that overshoot and collapse cannot happen now, but human population is high relative to fossil fuel resources, and intermittent wind and solar are not working out well as substitutes."

"Humans are smarter than other animals, allowing the population of humans to grow, while the population of many other species tends to fall. […] The large rise in the population of the less advanced economies contributes to the huge number of immigrants wanting new homes in higher-income countries. […] The issue is that available resources do not rise fast enough (in the area, or with the technology available) to provide enough physical goods and services for the population. If a new approach can be developed, or a neighboring area with additional resources can be conquered, [the] population can start to grow again. […] Outgrowing our resource base is not a phenomenon that began with fossil fuels. […] In 1796, when [the] world population was about one billion, Robert Thomas Malthus wrote about population growing faster than food production. This was before fossil fuels were widely used. Now, about 230 years later, [the] population has risen to eight billion, thanks to the availability of fossil fuels. We need major innovations, or additional energy resource types, if we want to work around obstacles now."

"The hard fact is that in an age of climate breakdown, human numbers matter. And the ecological impact of another 2-3 billion humans will be immense."

"We must look at the whole man, and at his whole environment. Above all, we must realize that every grain of rice he puts into his mouth, every bit of potato, every piece of meat, and every kernel of corn, must be replaced by another bit from the earth—somewhere. We must realize that not only does every area have a limited carrying capacity—but also that this carrying capacity is shrinking and the demand growing. Until this understanding becomes an intrinsic part of our thinking and wields a powerful influence on our formation of national and international policies we are scarcely likely to see in what direction our destiny lies."

"[There's] too many people making too much muck and too much noise with too little space to do it in."

"Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste. Biological diversity is being threatened by over-exploitation, toxic pollution, agricultural mono-culture, invasive species, competition, habitat destruction, urban sprawl, oceanic acidification, ozone depletion, global warming, and climate change. It’s a runaway train of ecological calamities."

"Homo sapiens’ appetite is gargantuan. As we strive to get at dwindling resources for ever more people, we dig deeper into the Earth, blow the tops of mountains, divert rivers, cut down forests and pave over swaths of land. We fill the land, water, and air with our pollution. We’re driving record numbers of species to extinction and decimating others with activities from chemical poisoning to hunting for bushmeat, or simply by taking over their habitat. Greenhouse gases from our industry are changing the Earth’s climate, with such dangerous consequences as ocean acidification, rising sea levels and flooding, changes in rainfall patterns including in vital “breadbaskets,” and loss of forest cover. While the word “sustainable” has become popular, growing human numbers and activities are anything but. Increasing awareness of our impact has led to developments in renewable energy, recycling, earth-friendly farming and more. There have also been spectacular advances in family planning. But powerful—notably religious—opposition has kept governments and international bodies from actively promoting small families and prevented hundreds of millions of women who would plan their families from having access to modern methods. Those who deny that overpopulation is a problem say the poor don’t consume much. Yet the poor want nothing more than to consume more, as proved by India and China. Who can blame them? And a burgeoning number of desperately poor people does have a major impact: they cut down forests to grow food, drain rivers, deplete aquifers, and overfish and over-hunt in their local area. But make these points and you’ll be accused of blaming the poor for the problems of the rich. We seem bound to learn the hard way that there really is a limit to how many people the Earth can support. We wish it weren’t so, but it really is starting to look as if Malthus was right."

"...the gains of low infant and maternal mortality and rises in population longevity—brought about in great part by harnessing fossil fuels, the agricultural revolution, modernization, and disease and injury reduction efforts—in many instances impedes rather than facilitates moving toward sustainable living. It can be argued from the ecological perspective that most public health efforts, as humanitarian as they are by intention and immediate effect, through accelerating population pressures on the environment are paradoxically hastening the destruction of the earth's habitat on which the next generation of humanity depends. It raises the concern that our perceived gains may be only illusory and temporary, with huge but unmeasured and unlinked environmental costs that will eventually lead to shorter lives of misery for our descendants."

"In the past, when one civilization collapsed, others evolved to replace it. Today the world-wide agroindustrial complex is making unprecedented demands on the whole earth’s biological ecostructure. After a brief half-century in which factory farming enlarged the meagre diet of the poor (though not for all, nor always to their benefit), the multinational food industry has become a primary impetus towards overpopulation, obesity, pollution, and global warming. Policies and practices whose effects were once circumscribed are now a threat to human survival."

"Agriculture, by overcoming the limitations inherent in the closed system of hunting/gathering, made possible the open-ended expansion of both the population and the means of feeding it. Once it had been adopted, there was no turning back. The more that a civilization farmed, the more it needed extra hands, and so large families were deliberately procreated, which in turn produced still more mouths to feed. Colin Tudge calls it a vicious spiral, Ronald Wright a progress trap."

"Nature’s modus operandi is to kill off the weakest, leaving only the strongest and most biologically versatile to reproduce. But for homo sapiens, nature is not a force to be accommodated, but an opponent to be grappled with, and so ‘farming for money’ was joined by ‘medicine for money’. On top of the lucrative agroindustry which accellerates the population explosion, we have set up an equally profitable ‘health’ industry whose job it is to keep alive those whose bodies rebel at what they are so unhealthily force-fed. The result is an expanding segment of the population who, along with accellerating obesity, suffer from various diseases of malnutrition, together with allergies and intolerances to a growing list of foodstuffs that are increasingly difficult to avoid. In the end, humanity may consist of a remnant of survivors who spend their brief unhappy lives closeted against the encroaching poisons which their ancestors had so profitably created. Instant death by peanut may prove to have been a warning blip on the radar screen."

"Today the threat lies in the sheer scale of our greed and our technological ineptitude. We’re driving entire countries over cliffs. We are destroying the delicate ecological balance which a [sic] brief interlude of stable climate has allowed us. We make pious noises about the disappearing terrestrial species while largely ignoring the invisible havoc we’re bringing about in the earth’s oceans, the source and sustenance of life on the land."

"The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people but to poor ideology or land-use management is sophistic. If Bangladesh had 10 million inhabitants instead of 115 million [as of this writing], its impoverished people could live on prosperous farms away from the dangerous floodplains midst a natural and stable upland environment. It is also sophistic to point to the Netherlands and Japan, as many commentators incredibly still do, as models of densely populated but prosperous societies. Both are highly specialized industrial nations dependent on massive imports of natural resources from the rest of the world. If all nations held the same number of people per square kilometer, they would converge in quality of life to Bangladesh rather than to the Netherlands and Japan, and their irreplaceable natural resources would soon join the seven wonders of the world as scattered vestiges of an ancient [sic] history."

"The pattern of human population growth in the 20th century was more bacterial than primate. When Homo sapiens passed the six billion mark we had already exceeded by perhaps as much as 100 times the biomass of any large animal species that had ever existed on the land. We and the rest of life cannot afford another one hundred years like that."

"If we fail to limit our numbers and our impact, if we do not replace our goldrush economics with a rational sharing of what the earth can yield, this new century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all dark ages in our past."

"So among the things we need to know about ourselves is that the Upper Palaeolithic period, which may well have begun in genocide, ended with an all-you-can-kill wildlife barbecue. The perfection of hunting spelled the end of hunting as a way of life. Easy meat meant more babies. More babies meant more hunters. More hunters, sooner or later, meant less game. Most of the great human migrations across the world at this time must have been driven by want, as we bankrupted the land with our moveable feasts."

"What determines population growth? What has been the cause of the unprecedented growth in world population in our recent history? Many socio-economic reasons are given as explanations: medical advances, improvements in public health, sanitation and hygiene, increased food availability and agricultural productivity, extension of cultivation, and development of trade and transportation. Surprisingly, high quality energy sources are rarely mentioned or quickly discounted. Yet an argument can be made that each of the above factors contributing to population growth is aided and influenced by high quality energy supplies. Cheap and abundant fossil fuels have been a necessary precondition for the past century’s population growth. And while not all countries benefit directly from the consumption of high quality energy supplies, most countries benefit from the impact of high energy societies on low energy societies. What if energy consumption, or more precisely, energy resource availability, somehow determines population growth? Perhaps energy resources determine the Earth’s carrying capacity, or how many people the Earth can support? Perhaps different energy resources have different effects on population growth? If we hypothesize that the Earth’s population is ultimately determined by availability of energy resources, and if some of those energy resources are at or near their peak rates of production, then that may affect rates of population growth. If the correlation is strong enough, the number of people the Earth can support may also be at or near its peak. Therefore the number of people in 2050 may be very different from widespread United Nations (UN) forecasts. Growing populations consume more energy. Availability of energy allows populations to grow. Energy consumption exerts demands on energy resources making them scarcer. They become harder to extract. Nearby forests are depleted, coal mines must dig deeper, oil has to be drilled in more complex environments. In other words, energy resource extraction experiences declining marginal returns. This has led to the exploitation of new energy sources, which in turn expands the Earth’s carrying capacity. Then populations grow once more."

"Mature populations tend to reach equilibrium – the carrying capacity – and then fluctuate around this equilibrium. If a population outgrows its carrying capacity, regulating factors come into play, such as famine, or emigration. If a population is below its carrying capacity, birth rates tend to increase, so the population grows. The common assumption is that carrying capacity is determined by the availability of food, water and land. While availability of food and water are important factors in determining the carrying capacity of populations, they cannot explain the unprecedented increases in population that have occurred in the last several hundred years. The availability of land has always been a factor in increasing carrying capacity. In the historic past, the Earth’s carrying capacity could be increased by expanding into sparsely occupied, or frontier, lands. In a fictitious future, carrying capacity could be increased by expanding outward to other planets or solar systems. At present, there is very little unoccupied, habitable land remaining on this Earth and no nearby habitable planets to release the pressure of population growth, so any increase in carrying capacity must be a result of other factors."

"At present the world’s population is growing rapidly. The planet could not support the six billion plus people that exist today without first the commercialisation of coal, then of oil and, more recently, gas. These energy sources have been necessary for the unprecedented population growth that has occurred over the last three hundred years. It is reasonable to assume that unless current energy resource production is increased and new resources are exploited, the population will no longer grow. And if energy resources decline (e.g. a peak in production is reached), then we may see a decline in population."

"Roughly 10,000 years ago, increasing population pressure on wild food resources led to a shift from food gathering (hunter-gatherers) to food production (agriculturists) in several parts of the world. This led to demand-induced technologies and demand-induced searches for higher quality energy sources, such as water power for flow irrigation, animal draft power, iron tools, and fire for land clearing and for improvement of hunting and pastoralism. Population pressures in many parts of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led to serious shortages of wood which in turn led to many of the technological innovations that fuelled the Industrial Revolution. Coal’s replacement of wood as the most important source of energy in Western Europe is a classic example of demand-induced innovation…promoted by population pressures on forested land in Western and Central Europe. From the end of World War II, coal’s premier importance as an energy source declined sharply and was replaced by crude oil. Far offshore drilling of oil began in 1947 off the coast of Louisiana. One year later, the world’s largest oil field, al-Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, was drilled. Large new discoveries of oil and gas in Africa and Asia combined with the development of oil super tankers and pipeline networks reduced the price of oil and gas at a time when the costs of producing coal were continuing to rise. Diesel locomotives represented a major substitution of oil for coal. The post World War II era also saw large increases in automobile ownership, the beginnings of highway and motorway road transportation networks and the first passenger jet aircraft –all benefiting from and encouraging consumption of cheap oil supplies. These increases in the consumption of crude oil have coincided with the highest population growth in history. After the depressed population growth during World War II, growth rose quickly to a peak of 2.2% in 1964, the highest rate the world has ever known. (Per capita oil consumption peaked shortly thereafter, in the 1970s). Although population continues to rise, population growth has been declining since then. If there is a relationship between energy consumption and population growth, the different types of energy consumed may have different effects. If biomass is the only energy source, populations will not grow very fast. In such organically based economies, the problem of expanding raw material supply, and especially the related problems associated with the very modest energy supply maxima…must curb growth with increasing severity as expansion takes place. The emergence of coal as an energy source eliminated the carrying capacity limits to population growth that any traditional and biomass energy based culture would eventually face. Similarly, the predominance of oil after the middle part of the twentieth century raised the carrying capacity even further."

"According to the IEA [International Energy Agency], 1.6 billion people live without electricity. Much of Africa and Asia still rely on biomass as their primary source of energy, yet have very high population growth rates. How can there be a correlation between energy and population in these instances? While many developing world countries remain low energy societies, they, and their population growth rates, are impacted by high energy societies. Their primary energy sources may still be traditional biomass, but their population growth is due in large part to abundant oil and gas supplies. Vaccines and antibiotics that reduce third world mortality are discovered, produced and distributed with first world energy, and oil contributes at every step. Fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides that aided the Green Revolution in much of the developing world could not have been produced without large oil and gas inputs. The aeroplanes, boats and trains that deliver and distribute food all run on oil. While the commercialisation of higher quality energy sources may be very unevenly distributed, the societies that adopt new energy sources, high energy societies, have a profound impact on those societies that remain low energy societies, and these impacted populations then become part of Coal, Oil or Natural Gas Populations."

"Just 11,000 years ago, there were only roughly 5 million humans who lived on the planet Earth. The initial population growth was slow, due largely to the way humans were living—by hunting. Such lifestyle limited the size of family for practical reasons. A woman on the move cannot carry more than one infant along with her household baggage. When simple birth control means-often abstention from sex failed, a woman may elect abortion or, more commonly, infanticide to limit the family size. Further, a high mortality among the very young, the old, the ill and the disabled acted as a natural resistance to a rapid population growth. Thus it took over one million years for human population to reach the one billion mark. But the second billion was added in about 100 years, the third billion in 50 years, the fourth in 15 years, and the fifth in 12 years. Ever since humans became sedentary, some limits over the family size were lifted. With the development of agriculture, children may have become more of an asset to their families in helping with farming and other chores. By the beginning of the Christian era, human population grew to about 130 million, distributed all over the Earth. By 1650, the world population had reached 500 million. The process of industrialization had begun, bringing about profound changes over the lives of humans and their interactions with the natural world. With improved living standard, lowered death rate and prolonged life expectancy, human population grew exponentially. By 1999 there were about 6 billion people, comparing with 2.5 billion in 1950. The world population is well on its way to 7 billion with an annual growth rate of over 90 million."

"The use of fetuses as organ and tissue donors is a ticking time bomb of bioethics."

"It is important to acknowledge again how bioethics discussions within and among religious communities reveal features that generally distinguish them from self-consciously secular approaches to bioethics. While it is to be expected that different interpretations of text, tradition, method, and authority often lead to different conclusions among religious traditions in their respective judgments on particular topics, it seems equally clear that religious understandings, although nuanced differently among various faith communities, often reveal broadly shared characteristics that stand in stark contrast to the moral minimalism at work in many secular approaches. Such similarities should not be that surprising. For the convictions at work in religious this often eventuate in a discernible consensus among traditions that nonetheless remain distinct in their understandings of ecclesiology, method, and authority. Theological arguments characteristically function in a richer, more robust fashion than the lowest-common denominator, procedurally driven arguments at work in secular perspectives. While that robustness of vision poses challenges to the development of a common morality workable at the level of policy, it also invites a broader conversation about, if not a prophetic challenge to, the assumptions that undergird much of the conventional wisdom in bioethics discussion."

"[Bioethics] is "a phony branch of elite philosophy whose principle purpose seems to be to justify allowing badly ill or disabled people to die.""

"The aim of bioethics is to identify ethical problems raised by critical decision making in healthcare, and by genetic engineering and biotechnology research into microorganisms. Most of the key bioethical issues, especially the ones related to human life sprung from a debate between principles of morality, the development of science, and its potential contribution to ‘better living standards’, all framed within different cultural backgrounds. Bioethical research will thus take place interactively with other related disciplinary ethics. In the bioethical debate it is important not only to take on board the general perception of norms, but also to question until what extent bioethics will reshape those norm."

"Christian bioethics is a puzzle. The very name suggests an ethics other than one for humans generally. Can there be an ethics just for certain humans? Has a special ethics been given to Christians as the Torah was given to Israel? Can there be an ethics for all people, but which only some people can know or know fully?"

"An exploration of Christian bioethics at the beginning of the 21st century might with relief be regarded as anachronistic, as a matter of the past. This side of the Renaissance and the French Revolution, the once-Christian West is increasingly post-Christian. Though in some countries a particular Christianity is still established – in Germany, two – their role and force for public policy are progressively marginalized in the framing of law and public policy. There is no society that is unabashedly Christian, as Spain under Franco or Portugal under Salazar had been Christian."

"In many ways it is anachronistic to use this term prior to the 1970s, for the phenomenon of bioethics was in many ways associated with the deprofessionalization of medical ethics and its reconceptualization as a secular, philosophically oriented discipline independent of the health care profession."

"Secular bioethics emerged out of the Enlightenment hope to disclose a secular ethic that could transcend the multiplicity of Christianities and their moralities. This Enlightenment hope has persisted despite the bloodshed of the French and October Revolutions, leading among other things to the emergence of the medical humanities and the contemporary high expectations from a secular bioethics."

"The Roman Catholic medical-ethical handbooks and compendia of moral theology that emerged at the end of the 19th century and enjoyed a flourishing in the 1950s have a continuity with Roman Catholic moral theological reflections, reaching to the beginning of the 16th century and to the flowering of Western scientific interest in medicine and its foundational sciences. From the 16th century onward, moral theological interest in medicine was driven by the remarkable medical progress after the Renaissance. Even Descartes (1596-1650) thought he could extend life, given the promise of medical knowledge. Medicine claimed importance before it could convey much benefit. Though therapeutic benefits came later, there were striking advances in knowledge. From Vesalius to Harvey to Morgagni through Bichat and Virchow and the explosion of medical science in the 19th century. New construals of research and science altered the very meaning of medical knowledge. In contrast, in the wake of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) there developed a continuity in Roman Catholic moral theological reflections that extended unbroken into the early 1960s. Roman Catholic moral thought had a previous substantial change in its character when it passed from the pre-Scholastic to the Scholastic period. The pre-Scholastic era, which was pastoral in its character, was much loser in its theological spirit to that o the Church of the first millennium. The Scholastic period, which began in the 12th century and extended to the Council of Trent, was marked by a concern with discursive rational reflection and systematization. The modern period, which began with Trent, in great measure carried forward the Scholastic tradition, but now more fully developed. It was in this period that reflections on medicine became the focus of whole works and began to constitute a sub-discipline of moral theology. This post-Tridentine, medical-ethical, moral theological literature was insightful. It constituted much more than merely wooden applications of past reflections. This significant body of Roman Catholic medical ethical reflection and scholarship was characterized by its constituting a single coherent community of research."

"A common sense of doing Christian medical ethics or bioethics was available for Roman Catholics until the mid-1960s. As John Berkman observes, “The conceptual continuity in moral theology is clearly visible from the manuals themselves, which in 1950 maintained the same basic structure and categories of the manuals which begin in 1605.” There was a confidence in the ability of moral theological reflection to answer the questions posed by new technological and scientific developments."

"At the end of the 19th century, there was a significant increase in Roman Catholic moral theological investigations concerning matters medical. The moral theological handbook tradition turned to the needs of physicians, priests, and nurses. During this same period, new medical techniques were being developed and new understandings of etiology, pathogenesis, and therapy were gaining salience. A good proportion of contemporary surgical procedures trace their roots to this period, which enjoyed the combination of anesthesia with Lister’s asepsis. During this period the germ theory became well established and the first steps were taken in the development of antisera as medical treatments. The emergence of contemporary medicine motivated theological reflections. This was a period within which various aspirations to progress, secularization and modernization brought into question traditional Christian commitments. After the Second World War, there was continued acceleration in the tempo of scientific and technological progress. The response was a further development of the religious medical-ethical literature, to which not only Roman Catholics, but also Protestants and Jews began to make numerous contributions. Initially, the Roman Catholic response was both vigorous and in continuity with its manualist tradition. The Christian bioethics that took shape in the 1970s developed a character quite different from the Roman Catholic medical-ethical tradition of the past. It did not so much produce manuals or guides for the perplexed physician, nurse, or believer, as it did reports of theological perplexity. The guides were themselves often disoriented: the moral theologians on whom bioethicists might draw were frequently unsure as to the character of appropriate moral guidance. Roman Catholic bioethical scholarship took on the character of a moral science in confusion: moral theology was in search of its foundations. As Roman Catholicism passed through the aftermath of Vatican II, it became impossible to carry forward the tradition of medical-ethical reflection that had taken shape at the beginning of the 17th century. This rupture in the tradition of Roman Catholic bioethical reflections was associated with the religious changes that occurred in Roman Catholicism following Vatican II. Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) began a revolution as he sought to bring “ecclesiastical discipline into closer accord with the needs and conditions of our times.”"

"Christian bioethics as a family of bioethics had a brief and significant flowering. For some two decades it commanded a centrality in the public debate regarding the new medicine. It then receded from public policy discussions. This is not to deny that a rich and often thoughtful literature continued to grow, nurtured by authors from evangelical as well as other perspectives. Christian bioethics simply no longer commands the public notice it once enjoyed. During its flourishing, Protestant bioethicists such as Paul Ramsey and Stanley Haurwas claimed a prominent place for Christian bioethics. Their reflections garnered enough broad attention. Initially, the novelty of the debates was itself engaging, even as an old paradigm of Christian bio ethic collapsed, and many scholars energetically struggled to erect diverse new ones. During the 1960s and early 1970s the various Christian bioethics flourished at the vanguard of bioethical scholarship, so that in this period one could not have given an adequate account of medical ethics of bioethics without taking into account of the work of Christian thinkers such as Ramsey and Hauerwas. Yet, just as secular bioethics assumed an important role for public policy Christian bioethics receded in cultural significance and force. Christian bioethics served as an intermediate step in the emergence of secular bioethics. In part, this was due to Christian bioethics attempting to speak to the world in secular rather than in Christian terms. By discounting its particularity, Christian bioethics marginalized the importance of what it could offer. As Stanley Hauerwas had argued, this has been one of the major forces in the recent decline of Christian bioethics."

"Other factors were also influential in making a secular bioethics appear more attractive than a Christian bioethics. The secularization of the culture made the consideration of a Christian bioethics as a source of moral guidance unappealing. Reliance on traditional authority figures came to be regarded as pejoratively paternalistic, if not as an expression of a false consciousness. Traditional Christian morality interpreted by an authoritative hierarchy was at loggerheads with the view that society should be open, liberal, and pluralist. The very notion of a religious tradition as a source of moral judgment collided with an emerging sense of autonomy and individual rights. Indeed, traditional Christianity is not only hierarchical but robustly patriarchal. It takes seriously the declaration of St. Paul that “the head of the woman is the man” (1 Cor 11:3) and that “man was not created on account of woman, but woman on account of the man” (I Cor 11:9). Although accepting men and women as equally called to salvation, traditional Christianity recognized them in a hierarchy of honor and authority. Against the backdrop of the rights movements of the 1960s and their rejection of traditional claims of social authority, traditional Christian understandings were not only unacceptable and embarrassing, but to be positively rejected. Traditional Christian commitments came to be regarded as exploitative, thus driving a deep cultural wedge between traditional and post-Christianities."

"In an age that endorses diversity, while considering real disparities of belief as threatening, Christian bioethics, or at least traditional Christian bioethics, presented differences that matter, and that are therefore threatening. The Western history of religious wars and inquisitorial coercion encumbered Christian bioethics with a past that made its contemporary undertaking suspect. In a world bloodied by its response to difference, Christian bioethics offered to divide Christian from non-Christian, and Christian from Christian, seeming to endanger the fabric of a peaceable society. The particular content of Christian bioethics was a possible enemy off tolerance an a friend of conflict. Having engendered the religious wars of the past, Christianity of the mid 20th century was engendering the culture wars of the future. From the perspective of post-traditional Christians, and indeed in terms of many of the rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, traditional Christianity was reactionary at best. It resisted progressive liberalism’s commitment to freeing persons and social structures from the constraining hands of the past. It saw in abortion and the emerging contraceptive ethos not avenues of liberation but roads to damnation. Rather than celebrating this ethos of choice as a liberation from the tyrant of biological forces, which has subjected women to men, traditional Christianity recognized in the secular revolutions affirmation of extramarital sex, the contraceptive ethos, and abortion, as only a further enslavement to the passions and chaos they bring. Disagreements about these matters within Christianity itself heightened the moral confusion of the time. Christian bioethics, rather than providing a means to resolve bioethical controversies and to achieve a general consensus concerning health care policy, fueled further controversy."

"T o summarize, when Christian bioethics turned to the challenges of providing moral guidance for the new high-technology medicine, it found itself unequal to the task. The difficulties were multiple and deeply rooted in contemporary Christianity. Christianity was divided into a diversity of Christianites; it could not give unambiguous guidance. Given the plurality of visions, one could disingenuously select within rather broad constraints the religious perspective to approve behavior one wanted to embrace (e.g., if one wanted to find religious approval of artificial insemination by a donor, one needed only to select the appropriate Christian theologian). The mainline Christian religions were themselves in disarray about what it mean to be Christian: from within many Christian religions unambiguous guidance was often unavailable because centuries-old approaches to resolving moral controversies had been abandoned or rejected. Just as Christian bioethics had the opportunity to provide guidance for contemporary health care policy, Christianity seemed unclear as to what ethics it should offer. In consequence,, the relevance of Christianity to the modern would could not be doubted. As if this were not bad enough, the surrounding couture had grounds to regard Christianity as a threat to a democratic and open polity for several reasons. First, traditional Christianity sought answers to moral problems within a hierarchical structure, rather than from individual reasoning and choice unfettered by constraints of the past. Second, Christianity hierarchical structure was patriarchal. Third, Christianity, by the particularity of its moral commitments, accented differences rather than encouraging the emergence of a moral consensus to which all could subscribe fourth, Christianity, insofar as it offered an ethics that contrasted with a secular ethics, could not provide guidance for public institutions or policy in the secular pluralist societies that had emerged in the West after the Second World War. The Christianness of Christian bioethics was itself problematic."

"In the wake of the Enlightenment, it seemed necessary to articulate a medical ethics not reliant on traditional Christian morality or its various expressions in informal codes of gentlemanly behavior. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century medical ethical treatises of a secular nature became salient. Much of this occurred as codes of medical ethics of etiquette were crafted for the medical professions. There was the perceived need formally and secularly to determine the nature of proper medical behavior. As one entered the 20th century, there was a heightened recognition that old traditions could not guide and that a new medical morality was needed For example, a British secular medical ethics text published in 1902 acknowledges that “it is not sufficient to say, as some people do, that medical ethics may be summed up in the Golden Rule, or that a man has only to behave like a gentleman. The author recognizes that the guiding mores were changing so that “what was regarded as customary and even proper some years ago, has often come to be universally condemned.” It I as if the author protested to much in denying that “our conception of Christianity and chivalry had undergone a complete revolution within the same period.” Cultural, religious, scientific, technological, and economic developments were recasting th landscape of medical practice. Philosophy promised for health care in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980 what it had offered European societies in the 17th and 18th centuries: a rationally defensible ethics that can bid humans as such and justify in secular terms a content-rich account of human rights, duties, proper character, virtue, sentiments of care, etc. The medical humanities in the 1960s and 1970s recaptured the aspirations of the first, second, and third humanisms. The first humanism in the late 15th and 16th centuries claimed a basis for human dignity over against the emerging Christian religious divisions of the time. At the same time it reaffirmed classical Greek an Roman pagan ideals of paideia, philanthropia, and humanitas. The second humanism at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries continues Enlightenment themes in promising a cultivation proper to human as such. The third humanism and so-called New Humanism, which surfaced at the end of the 19th an beginning of the 20th centuries, anticipated the medical humanities movements of the 1960s and 1970s. the humanities were invoked to place the new sciences and technologies within the context of immanent human values and to provide a moral unity for an increasingly secular culture. The medical humanities in the 1960s and later bioethics were engaged with similar expectations: to disclose the values and goals proper to humans, so as to bind all in a coherent and well-directed technological culture. There was an additional claim: medicine and the humanities were recognized as mutually supporting. Medicine as a project of human caring was itself construed as one of the humanities. Its fully self-conscious appreciation was sought in the humanities. On the other, hand, the traditional humanities found a concrete bond to the human condition through their contact with medicine. The humanities could strengthen the tie between medicine and human values. Medicine, for its part, could reconnect the humanities with the human condition, saving them from being isolated scholarly pursuits. The vision of medicine and the humanities found it epiphany in Edmund Pelligrinos perceptive and provocative rallying cry:” Medicine is the most humane of sciences, the most empiric of arts, and the most scientific of humanities.” The humanities, rejuvenated from contact with medicine, were not just an academic undertaking or a cultural achievement. According to Pellegrino, they were also to constitute a personal moral calling. The humanist must also be “authentic.” The medical setting requires that the humanist incorporate the values he or she professes an the character traits that are embodiments of the liberal arts teachings, to be human if not humane…truly, the humanist must be “holier than thou.”"

"The challenge of providing a secular foundation for bioethics can be seen as defined historically against three fundamental Western experiences of fracture and rupture: (1) the Reformation with its consequent fragmentation of Western Christendom into a plurality of Christianities and Christendoms, (2) the Enlightenment with its formation of a secular, intellectual culture, which aspired to transcend this diversity, and (3) post-modernity with its recognition that are returned to this diversity, given the Enlightenment's failure to justify a single, canonical, content-full morality by discursive reason alone. These experiences frame the moral geography for current debates regarding bioethics. They establish taken-for-granted expectations regarding moral diversity, the role of secular morality in spanning religious moral difference, and the contemporary experience of post-modernity. They account as well for a kind of nostalgia felt for the moral unity of the Western Middle Ages expressed in various hopes to see humans bound in a universal moral community governed by a global bioethics enforced legally across the world and in a persistent faith that discursive moral rationality can establish a universal ethic, despite its many failures."

"There is a continuity between the discursive, rational commitments of the Scholasticism that emerged in the 13th century and the Enlightenment project of providing rational account of proper moral probity. Although the Enlightenment attempted to give an account of morality undirected by revelation and ecclesiastical authority, thus involving a substantive break with previous moral assumptions, the Enlightenment as well as Scholasticism share a substantive commitment to reason’s abilities to provide outside of right worship and right belief a universal account of morality. Bioethics as it took shape in the 1970s reflected a late-Enlightenment attempt to provide a secular surrogate for the religious moral authorities that had once guided the West (Engelhardt, 2002). Secular and Western Christian bioethics have drawn on philosophical assumptions regarding the capacities of discursive reflection. They both have a penchant for attempting to identify moral truths with the deliverances of systematic moral reflections. In contrast, Orthodox Christianity lives in an understanding of morality uncompromised by Scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment."

"Because Orthodox morality is primarily therapeutic, it is not juridical. The goal is not to do justice but to bring God’s mercy to the repentant. Although any falling short of the mark of saintly perfection is sinful, the response to sin is not punitive (e.g., penance is not punishment but treatment). Bioethics should be healing, aimed at restoring through repentance and purification the individual’s focus on God."

"Orthodox bioethics is not natural-law oriented. Unlike Western Christianity, which came to look for traces of God in nature, Orthodox Christianity approaches nature as an icon, as a window through which to see God, with the result that Orthodox Christianity is innocent of the natural-law theory of the West (Foltz, 2001)."

"Orthodox Christians hold that Christian bioethics is non-developmental in the sense of affirming the same moral commitments and insights that directed the Church of the first thousand years: it understands that all that has been essential for the appropriate moral life has been available since the time of the Apostles. This difference from Western secular and religious moral philosophical understandings is in part grounded in the Orthodox Christian recognition that truth is not merely a what (i.e., a set of discursive propositions referring to an objective truth) but a radically transcendent Who (i.e., the Trinity), with Whom since Pentecost right-worshipping Christians have had the possibility of a full relationship."

"In approaching new technological developments, the present is set within the now of the past. In addressing issues such as cloning, the use of embryonic stem cells, and germ-line genetic engineering, Orthodox Christians will not seek new moral insights. There will not be a search for new medical-ethical or bio-ethical principles, but the recall of a permanent possibility for epistemic insight grounded in the consequences of the Incarnation. The goal will be to provide an expression of an abiding truth in part guided by the writings of the Fathers but always crucially sustained by the presence of the Holy Spirit, so as to express in a new context the enduring moral consciousness of the Church."

"The obligation to become involved in sin (i.e., to engage in an activity that by itself falls short of the mark) to pursue salvation requires confronting moral issues within a value framework that at times does not produce black-and-white choices (through idolatry, sexual impurity, and murder of the innocent are always forbidden). Given this moral framework, the bioethics of Orthodox Christian physicians, nurses, families, and patients is often at odds with the reigning expectations of the surrounding secular society, as well as the moral views embraced by many Christians. This disparity of moral vision is expressed in competing understandings of proper professional conduct. For instance, Orthodox Christian physicians should not consider themselves obliged to be religiously and morally neutral in their care of their patients. Although they should avoid coercion of any sort (Caon CXIX of Carthage, A,D, 419), the ideal is to bring all who can be influenced into a life of right worship and right belief. For example, the Orthodox Church celebrates holy physicians such as St. Panteleimon (304) who took advantage off their professional role to convert their patients. Rather than regarding the patients’ vulnerability as a ground for not attempting to exert influence, Orthodox Christianity regards confrontations with pain, suffering, and death as opportunities to open the way to repentance and conversion. Traditional Orthodox Christianity does not affirm the abandonment by physicians of their Christian duties in favor of the norms of a secular medical ethics."

"The history of Roman Catholic bioethics is completely intermingled with that of Catholic morality more generally. Although that morality continues to be expounded and developed by moralists working in the Roman Catholic tradition, its overall history is largely unwritten. There is, of course, a large body of established scholarly work on the great figures of Roman Catholic moral theory, especially on St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine there are also studies on the history of Catholic moral teaching on particular moral issues, including abortion (Connery 1977), the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary treatments (Cronin, 1989), and contraception (Noonan, 1965). Finally, there are systematic treatments of Catholic bioethics (Ashley & O’Rourke, 19889). But there is no comprehensive study of the history of Catholic moral theology, much less the history of Catholic bioethics. In particular, little has been done to trace the development of Catholic moral thought in the period most essential for the development of distinctive Roman Catholic positions in bioethics – that is, the period from the sixteenth century Spanish scholastics to the dominance of the moral manuals in the half century before Vatican Council II."

"There is an institutional explanation for the development of bioethics within Roman Catholic moral thought. Catholics, especially those in religious orders, have been institutionally involved in health care throughout its technological and institutional development. This is especially true of catholic involvement in hospitals over the last 150 years, the period in which health care developed into its present institutional form (Kaufmann, 1999). The moral questions raised in the institutional context of catholic health care, especially those involving difficult cases related to sexual morality, pregnancy, and end of life issues, provoked a pedagogical literature directed at nurses, physicians, and others. That literature is clearly continuous with, and an ancestor of, modern secular bioethics. Moreover, the institutional focus continues, for example, in the American bishops’ ‘’Ethical Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1994 and 2001)"

"The vocabulary and leading ideas of Catholic bioethics have developed out of the moral work of the great scholastic theologians, most notably from the moral analyses of St. Thomas Aquinas. This tradition of moral thought is often called “natural law theory” or the “natural law tradition” after a dominant component of Aquinas’s time, with notable highlights in the work of the 16th century Spanish scholastics, the 17th century causists, the 18th century synthesis of St. Alphonsus Ligouri, and the revival of Thomistic study in the ate 19th and 20th centuries. The working method throughout this period has been a form of casuistry: new and difficult cases were compared and contrasted with clearer, paradigm cases to illuminate their morally important properties so as to allow their correct moral classification is compatible with the absolutism that characterizes catholic moral analysis: the morally important properties of actions, once revealed by casuistry shows a certain form of intervention in pregnancy involves an intention to end or, more precisely, to shorten the life of the fetus, then the intervention is excluded by the exceptionless prohibition against intentionally killing the innocent."

"As we have seen, Roman Catholic bioethics is a conceptually and institutionally mature set of inquiries. It has deep historical roots within catholic theology, doctrine, and canon law, and consequently a developed set of positions and methods of moral analysis. Although traditional authorities are accorded some respect by all engaged as Roman Catholics in bioethics, there are very significant disagreements among Catholic bioethicists. These disagreement reach so deeply into the fabric of moral life an thought that they suggest radical fissures within the Catholic community. These divisions of moral conviction would not be troubling if they were simply about new and difficult cases or about casuistical details; but, as the preceding summaries and citations indicate, they go to the heart of key norms themselves. The resolution of the most central of these disagreements is surely essential if the traditions of Catholic moralizing are to be effectively brought to bear on the bioethical perplexities facing the Roman Catholic community and others who may look to its riches for guidance."

"The first obstacle to cloning your dog is that $100,000 cost. The second is getting the right kind of cells. It's easier if your dog is still alive, in which case you just take it to the vet to get a biopsy sample, an 8-millimeter piece of skin from the abdomen, or about half the width of a penny. Then you pack those samples into an ice-pack-filled plastic-foam box and mail the box to Sooam. You can clone a dog that has been dead for fewer than five days, too, as long as you wrap its body in wet towels and place it in a refrigerator, which keeps it from drying out before getting to the vet. If the dog is dead, Sooam asks that you send as many skin samples as possible so that the lab has a better chance of finding living cells."

"A prominent biologist Lee Silver, once said that biology would be forever defined as BD and AD: before Dolly and after Dolly. Such is the enormity of the findings of the Roslin Institute, where not only was Dolly the sheep created, but her predecessors Tracy, Megan and Morag. These animals are important in terms of their significance to science and the ethical issues that their creation raises."

"Wilmut has always been clear about his ethical beliefs and has publicly voiced his approval of 'therapeutic cloning', whilst strongly opposing anyone attempting to clone a human, claiming that they are 'very naïve'. He allays any fears that cloning would produce identical humans and explains that unlike identical twins, clones are derived from different eggs, developed in different uterus and most likely have different mothers. However, his condemnation of human cloning lies in both the process and the overall practical benefits. 'I don't like the idea of copying a person' he explains, 'because I think that each child should be wanted as an individual.' There are also practical considerations, 'we are one of the labs who are trying to clone a pig, with the aim that one day pigs will provide organs for transplantation into human patients - there is a real biological need there. In the process we have probably worked with over four or five thousand embryos without any success. Just where exactly would you get this many human embryos? It is obscene to even think about doing that to people.'"

"Hard lessons have been learnt by past situations involving science and secrecy. Nobel Peace Prize winner Joseph Rotblat said of Dolly's creation that 'it was as important as the building of the atomic bomb.'"

"First, a suitable surrogate mother animal is required. For the mammoth this would need to be a cow (as best biological fit) but even here the size difference may preclude gestation to term."

"If there are intact cells in this tissue they have been 'stored' frozen. However, if we think back to what actually happened to the animal - it died, even if from the cold, the cells in the body would have taken some time to freeze. This time lag would allow for breakdown of the cells, which normally happens when any animal dies. Then the carcass would freeze. So it is unlikely that the cells would be viable."

""Let's say that one in a thousand cells were nevertheless viable, practical issues come into play. Given that we have an efficiency of 1% cloning for livestock species and if only one in a thousand cells are viable then around 100,000 cells would need to be transferred," it said."

"Considered contrary to the moral law, since (it is in) opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union."

"The delivered kid was genetically identical to the bucardo. In species such as bucardo, cloning is the only possibility to avoid its complete disappearance."

"Dr. Josef Mengele: Do you know what I saw on the television in my motel room at one o'clock this morning? Films of Hitler! They are showing films about the war! The movement! People are fascinated! The time is ripe! Adolf Hitler is alive! [Takes photo album and places it on his lap] This album is full of pictures of him. Bobby Wheelock and ninety-three other boys are exact genetic duplicates of him, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs. [laughs] We were in a Biblical frame of mind on the twenty-third of May 1943, at the Berghof. He had denied himself children because he knew that no son could flourish in the shadow of so godlike a father! But when he heard what was theoretically possible, that I could create one day not his son, not even a carbon-copy but another original, he was thrilled by the idea! The right Hitler for the right future! A Hitler tailor-made for the 1980s, the 1990s, 2000!"

"Proponents of human reproductive cloning do not dispute that cloning may lead to violations of clones' right to self‐determination, or that these violations could cause psychological harms. But they proceed with their endorsement of human reproductive cloning by dismissing these psychological harms, mainly in two ways. The first tactic is to point out that to commit the genetic fallacy is indeed a mistake; the second is to invoke Parfit's non‐identity problem."

"Populations with low numbers of individuals possess minimal genetic variation. It is therefore desirable to avoid further losses of diversity. A subsequent generation resulting from natural breeding or artificial insemination (AI) would contain some, but not all, of the genetic variability of its parents. Losses would occur if any of the individuals failed to breed, a strong possibility with small populations. If cloning was guaranteed to be 100% successful, a good strategy might be to clone every individual (not impossible if the population size is only 9–18), then allow the offspring to mature and breed naturally. The probability of losing genetic diversity would then be reduced, especially if each parent gave rise to more than two identical copies of itself. Thus, an interesting and novel theoretical principle in animal conservation emerges, where individuals are effectively induced to reproduce asexually, somewhat like plants, thereby improving the long-term fitness of the species through the retention of genetic diversity."

"Current success rates with nuclear transfer in mammals are very low (less than 0.1–5% of reconstructed embryos result in a live birth (Di Berardino 2001, Wakayama & Yanagimachi 2001). Therefore, between 20 and 1000 nuclear transfers would need to be performed to achieve one viable offspring."

"Several attempts at cloning exotic or endangered species have received widespread publicity (e.g. Gaur (Bos gaurus), Banteng (Bos javanicus) and Bucardo (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica)). The distinguishing feature of these examples is that they employed trans-species cloning (Fig. 2⇓). In these instances, the oocyte cytoplasm being used to create embryos was derived from common domesticated species (Bos taurus (cow) or Capra hircus (goat)), while the cell nucleus was from the species of interest. Trans-species clones inevitably differ from either of the parental species in their nucleo-cytoplasmic characteristics. At the very least, mitochondria inherited from the recipient oocyte would have a major influence over functions, such as muscle development and physiology, that depend on mitochondrial gene expression. Animals resulting from these trans-specific cloning efforts would be scientifically valuable for their insights into the functional relationships involved in nucleo-mitochondria dialogue, but would not be directly useful for supporting the endangered populations."

"Developments in biotechnology have raised new concerns about animal welfare, as farm animals now have their genomes modified (genetically engineered) or copied (cloned) to propagate certain traits useful to agribusiness, such as meat yield or feed conversion. These animals have been found to suffer from unusually high rates of birth defects, disabilities, and premature death."

""Therapeutic cloning will hopefully be the solution for all the problems that have plagued transplant medicine for many years -- the shortage of tissue and rejection. Stem cells lines are basically immortal and with them we can turn them into any cell type," Robert Lanza, chief scientist for Advance Cell Technology, a U.S. company involved in regenerative medicine."

"Helen Wallace is more skeptical and wary about the demands on women from human cloning: "Claims that you could clone individual treatments of human beings to treat common diseases like diabetes, suggests you need a huge supply of human eggs. Where are they going to come from? Even if you don't have a religious view of the sanctity of life, you have to ask is there going to be a massive trade in human eggs from poor women to rich countries.""

"For Lanza, reproductive cloning is "like sending up a rocket knowing it's got a 25 percent chance it's going to blow up -- it's just not ethical.""

"The Doctor: She hates her own clones. She burns her own clones. Frankly, you're a career break for the right therapist."

"Some ethicists regard the cloning of humans as inherently evil, a morally unjustifiable intrusion into human life. Others measure the morality of any act by the intention behind it; still others are concerned primarily with the consequences-for society as well as for individuals. Father Richard McCormick, a veteran Jesuit ethicist at the University of Notre Dame, represents the hardest line: any cloning of humans is morally repugnant. A person who would want a clone of himself, says McCormick, "is overwhelmingly self-centered. One Richard McCormick is enough." But why not clone another Einstein? Once you program for producing superior beings, he says, you are into eugenics, "and eugenics of any kind is inherently discriminatory." What's wrong with duplicating a sibling whose bone marrow could save a sick child? That, he believes, is using another human being merely "as a source for replaceable organs." But why shouldn't an infertile couple resort to cloning if that is the only means of having a child? "Infertility is not an absolute evil that justifies doing any and every thing to overcome it," McCormick insists."

"This study demonstrates, to our knowledge for the first time, that adult neurons can be cloned by nuclear transfer. Furthermore, our data imply that reduced amounts of H3K9me2 and increased histone acetylation appear to act synergistically to improve the development of cloned embryos."

"The body of text, the bodies of letters: flesh is hereto be given to DNA analysis, taking the risk of being used in the future, and that a body, a replicant, a clone can be constructed."

"Meet Bessie, who could soon be the first cow to give birth to a cloned ox. If she delivers the rare Asian gaur growing inside her, she will herald a stunning new way to save endangered, or even recently extinct, animals. The bovine surrogate mother is carrying the gaur fetus on a farm near Sioux City, Iowa, and is expected to give birth to "Noah" next month. "He will be the first endangered animal we send up the ramp of the ark," said Robert Lanza, the vice president of medical and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology, and one of the lead authors of a study published Sunday in the journal Cloning. "This is no longer science fiction. It's very, very real.""

"It is also our view that there are no sound reasons for treating the early-stage human embryo or cloned human embryo as anything special, or as having moral status greater than human somatic cells in tissue culture. A blastocyst (cloned or not), because it lacks any trace of a nervous system, has no capacity for suffering or conscious experience in any form – the special properties that, in our view, spell the difference between biological tissue and a human life worthy of respect and rights. Additional biological facts suggest that a blastocyst should not be identified with a unique individual person, even if the argument that it lacks sentience is set aside. A single blastocyst may, until the primitive streak is formed at around fourteen days, split into twins; conversely, two blastocysts may fuse to form a single (chimeric) organism. Moreover, most early-stage embryos that are produced naturally (that is, through the union of egg and sperm resulting from sexual intercourse) fail to implant and are therefore wasted or destroyed."

"SNCT is a widely used cloning technique whereby a cell nucleus containing the genetic information of the individual to be cloned is inserted into a living egg that has had its own nucleus removed. It has been used successfully in laboratory animals as well as farm animals. However, until now, scientists hadn't been able to overcome the limitations of SNCT that resulted in low success rates and restricted the number of times mammals could be recloned. Attempts at recloning cats, pigs and mice more than two to six times had failed. "One possible explanation for this limit on the number of recloning attempts is an accumulation of genetic or epigenetic abnormalities over successive generations," explains Dr. Wakayama."

"There was one good argument against cloning, and only one. It increased the total number of people, and to me that number already felt far too large."

"Dr Singla added, "Without cloning, one buffalo would have given birth to a single offspring every year. Through cloning, we can get surrogate mothers to give birth to 40-50 calves every year.""

"Critics worry the cloning of endangered species could hamper efforts to conserve biodiverse habitats by offering a sort of "silver bullet" solution to saving endangered species."

"When you get down to a few dozen members of a species you're really talking about very serious problems," Lanza said. "So this is a tool. From now on that there's no need ever really to ever lose that genetic diversity that's remaining in these wild populations."

"In a first, Mitalipov and his privately funded team report that these cloned embryos were grown past an eight-cell size (where earlier attempts had stopped) into a full-blown early embryo, containing hundreds of embryonic stem cells. Embryonic cells taken from these cloned embryos were grown into six colonies of cells, the first successfully grown cloned human embryonic stem cells. The embryos were destroyed in the cell collection process. Some of the cells were successfully prompted to become more specialized skin and heart cells. That is the next step in someday using the cells in "regenerative" medicine, where cells cloned from a patient would be used to grow into transplant organs to treat diseases and injuries such as paralysis. "For stem cell biology, there will be history before this result and then history after it with the study as the dividing line," says stem cell researcher Paul Knoepflerof the University of California, Davis. "No doubt This is a real milestone.""

"Since 1998, when a University of Wisconsin team first isolated embryonic stem cells grown from a human embryo, researchers have sought to use cloning techniques to create such cells that would be genetic copies of ones belonging to sick patients. The same cloning techniques, which essentially place a new set of genes into a hollowed-out egg, and then kick-start the combination to start dividing and become an embryo, have been used since the cloning of "Dolly the Sheep" in 1996. That helped to create genetic copies, twins, of animals ranging from prize bulls to an extinct kind of wild goat. In those cases, the embryos were implanted into a surrogate mother instead of being destroyed to harvest stem cells. Knoepfler warned that fertility clinic operators outside the USA might try to replicate the team's method to try to clone a human baby. However, Mitalipov says that his team's technique would not likely create a cloned embryo that could be implanted into a surrogate mother's womb and lead to a pregnancy. "The embryos we produce this way did not lead to pregnancy in monkeys," he says. "We think there is something in the manipulations to make them that make a successful pregnancy impossible.""

"The real significance of the advance may be to re-ignite debate over human cloning, says bioethicist Insoo Hyun of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "Basically, FDA has jurisdiction over clinical research using cloning technology to create a human being," says the Food and Drug Administration's Curtis Allen. "To date, FDA has not licensed such a therapy." "No legitimate scientists would want to use this technology for reproductive purposes," says stem cell expert George Daley of Children's Hospital Boston. "They would see it not only as unethical, but unsafe and probably illegal." Still, "This study shows that human cloning can be done," said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposes research that destroys embryos. "The more important debate is whether it should be done.""

"No doubt the person whose experimental skill will eventually bring forth a clonal baby will be given wide notoriety. But the child who grows up knowing that the world wants another Picasso may view his creator in a different light."

"It's a different way to begin separating out nature and nurture, and to see how different this boy would be. But I have many times been asked if my children have followed me into research — it's something people subconsciously expect. For a clone, the pressure would be even greater. People would expect the clone to be like the original, and put expectations and limitations on them, and that's the reason why I don't like to use that technique. I think people should be wanted as individuals."

"The FDA claims that the scientific evidence shows that food from clones is no different than other food. But any attempt to evaluate the current science on the foods safety of products from clones is doomed to fail, as there have been virtually no peer-reviewed scientific studies designed for evaluating cloned food."

"Since FDA could not find studies on milk or meat from clones, the Agency chose to assess the safety of these foods indirectly, by looking at studies that investigated basic issues about cloning technology."

"For the post-puberty period in cow clones, for example, FDA says that "Most of the possible food consumption risks arising from edible products of clones (E.g., milk or meat) would occur during this Developmental Node," but the Agency notes that "little information is available on animals during this developmental phase, and much of that information comes in the form of single sentences or short mentions in journal articles that address some other issue.""

"Hydrops, an abnormality common in cloning in which fluid builds-up in the fetus and/or placenta, can lead to abortion, stillbirths, or early deaths of clones, and usually results in euthanasia of surrogate cows. The incidence of hydrops in cloning is as high as 42%, but in natural breeding or other assisted technologies the condition is extremely rare, with estimates as low as 1 in 7500."

"FDA notes that "early reports, beginnning in 1998, of clone moraltiy rates were 50 to 80 percent," but states that more recent studies show better results, with mortality rates dropping to around 20%."

"A 2005 study cited by FDA, on semen quality from two clones, found clones has a lower pregnancy rate (55% compared to 63%) than natural comparators and almost double the rate of spontaneous abortions. A 2004 study found that the range of rates of development to blastocyst for embryos fertilized in vitro by sperm from six bull clones was lower than that of comparators, while pregnancy and calcing rates of clones were 83%, compared to 90% for comaprators."

"On meat consumption, FDA notes only that "differences in meat nutrient composition were very small...." But its chart comparing nutrient levels in cloned versus natural pigs shows clones have lower levels of all except one amino acid, while cholesterol and all except two fatty acid levels were higher for clones.The agency offers no explanation or dicussion of these findings."

"FDA's "Animal Health" section for the post-puberty period in pig clones consists of a single sentence: "No reports on aging and maturity in swine clones were identified." The Agency later repeats that it "was not able to identify any peer-reviewed studies on non-reproductive postpubertal studies (sic) in swine clones." Thus, the Agency relies solely on the Viagen data for this period, which, as noted above, consisted of data on just five clones, and found that clones weighed less than natural comparator animals and had reduced marbling and back-fat thickness."

"FDA has a long history of interpreting the definition of a “new drug” broadly, basing it on the functional claim intended from a new technology. Under the FFDCA, new drugs include “articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals.”220 Thus, for example, FDA is currently reviewing genetically engineered (GE) “fast growing” salmon under its “new animal drug” authority, because the GE fish is structurally and functionally affected by the technology. Similarly, cloning companies claim that their technology will affect both the structure and function of the cloned animal, by producing animals with improved meat qualities or high-yielding dairy animals. Furthermore, cloning experts say that the cloning technology is the same in animals as it would be in humans, and FDA has already stated that any human cloning research would be regulated as a new drug by the agency under FFDCA, and would require submission of an “investigational new drug application.”221 FDA offers no explanation as to why animal cloning should be exempted from the rigorous new drug review procedures that it requires for human cloning research."

"Reproductive cloning is a technology used to generate an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing animal. Dolly was created by reproductive cloning technology. In a process called "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT), scientists transfer genetic material from the nucleus of a donor adult cell to an egg whose nucleus, and thus its genetic material, has been removed. The reconstructed egg containing the DNA from a donor cell must be treated with chemicals or electric current in order to stimulate cell division. Once the cloned embryo reaches a suitable stage, it is transferred to the uterus of a female host where it continues to develop until birth. Dolly or any other animal created using nuclear transfer technology is not truly an identical clone of the donor animal. Only the clone's chromosomal or nuclear DNA is the same as the donor. Some of the clone's genetic materials come from the mitochondria in the cytoplasm of the enucleated egg. Mitochondria, which are organelles that serve as power sources to the cell, contain their own short segments of DNA. Acquired mutations in mitochondrial DNA are believed to play an important role in the aging process."

"Reproductive cloning is expensive and highly inefficient. More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring. More than 100 nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce one viable clone. In addition to low success rates, cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders."

"In 2002, researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported that the genomes of cloned mice are compromised. In analyzing more than 10,000 liver and placenta cells of cloned mice, they discovered that about 4% of genes function abnormally. The abnormalities do not arise from mutations in the genes but from changes in the normal activation or expression of certain genes. Problems also may result from programming errors in the genetic material from a donor cell. When an embryo is created from the union of a sperm and an egg, the embryo receives copies of most genes from both parents. A process called "imprinting" chemically marks the DNA from the mother and father so that only one copy of a gene (either the maternal or paternal gene) is turned on. Defects in the genetic imprint of DNA from a single donor cell may lead to some of the developmental abnormalities of cloned embryos. Due to the inefficiency of animal cloning (only about 1 or 2 viable offspring for every 100 experiments) and the lack of understanding about reproductive cloning, many scientists and physicians strongly believe that it would be unethical to attempt to clone humans. Not only do most attempts to clone mammals fail, about 30% of clones born alive are affected with "large-offspring syndrome" and other debilitating conditions."

"Given the paucity of data that directly address the safety of meat and milk from cloned animals, the FDA used indirect measures of food safety, primarily data on the health of the clones at different life stages. The operating hypothesis is the notion that an animal that appears healthy must be safe to eat (e.g. the Critical Biological Systems Approach). This approach is not scientific—this is reasoning by inference, not from data. Furthermore, FDA has bent over backward to interpret data from cloning companies in a way that minimizes the potential problems raised by SCNTs. Both of these problems need to be remedied in the final Risk Assessment."

"It is clear from studies FDA reviewed on animal health that clones have higher rates of illness and death than non-clone comparators, particularly at the younger ages. This could lead to greater use of drugs on clones, which in turn could exacerbate antibiotic resistance. FDA’s Risk Assessment failed to assess this risk. In both cloned cattle and sheep, one of the biggest health problems is large offspring syndrome (LOS). As the name implies, LOS refers to offspring that are abnormally large at birth, but they also have a range of other abnormalities. FDA lists 11 clinical signs associated with LOS, including fetus weight more than 20% larger than average for the breed, deformities of limb and/or head, disproportionate or immature organ development, increased susceptibility to infection, and cardio vascular problems. Since cattle with LOS tend to have increased susceptibility to infection, there would be a greater need for antibiotics and other drugs to help fight the infections in those LOS cattle. Although LOS doesn’t appear to happen normal reproduction or AI, it does happen with some of the ARTs, such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF), embryo culture, as well as with SCNTs"

"In sum, contrary to FDA, we feel the data on offspring of clones are disturbing— particularly the increase in preweaning death rates of offspring of clones compared to offspring of comparators and the increases in the rate blood measurements (both hematology and clinical chemistry) being considered outliers (e.g. extreme values) to increase over time with the offspring of clones while it decreases over time with offspring of comparators. The fact that any differences were seen in offspring of clones compared to offspring of comparators deserves much more scrutiny. Clones are known have much higher preweaning death rates compared to non-clones. The fact that preweaning death rate of offspring of clones was higher, depending on clone source, compared to offspring of non-clones, suggest that some of the adverse health impacts in clones are being passed on to their offspring and so should deserve much more scrutiny. Instead, FDA tries to explain away all this troubling data so that they can conclude that offspring of clones are not that different than offspring of non-clone comparators."

"The notion that clones are “identical twins born at different times” is scientifically wrong and very misleading. There is a fundamental distinction between identical twins produced naturally and a SCNT “clone.” Identical twins normally arise by the splitting of an already fertilized egg, so that the two twins share not only the same genetic complement but also have split the cytoplasm from the egg. With SCNT clones, a very different process takes place (Campbell et al. 1996). The egg [from which the nucleus has been removed] comes from one animal, the nuclear material comes from a somatic cell from another animal. This somatic cell is usually fused with the enucleated egg, and then is stimulated electrically or biochemically, while the resulting embryo, if it starts to grow, is then transplanted into the womb of a third animals which acts as the surrogate mother. Thus, a clone of an existing animal will not share the same egg cytoplasm as the original animal, and, while it might share the genes of the original animal, the fact that a nucleus from a somatic cell has been used means that the genes in the somatic cell are subtly different that genes from a fertilized egg. As the FDA notes, the genes in somatic cells need to be reprogrammed so that they are more like fertilized cells. Indeed, research has suggested that, for proper development to occur, a donor nucleus must undergo a reversal of differentiation and a genome-wide epigenetic reprogramming (Riek et al. 2001). Difficulties in this process are believed to be the cause of the high rate of birth defects, and other health problems, in clones. While the FDA acts like a lot is known about epigenetic reprogramming, the reality is that, some ten years after Dolly, there is still a lot that is not know about epigenetic reprogramming which helps explain why the vast majority (e.g. 95%) of cloned embryos do not survive to adulthood."

"The notion that cloning poses “no unique risks” compared with other artificial reproductive technologies is highly misleading. First, by focusing only on whether or not “unique risks” occur with cloning ignores the importance of quantitative differences in risks between cloning and other reproductive techniques. Over 90% of cloning attempts end in dead animals."

"A number of researchers have noticed similarities between some of the mitochondrial depletion diseases in humans and some of the abnormalities seen in SCNT and hypothesize that aberrant nuclear-mitochondrial interactions in SCNTs could be responsible for some of these abnormalities. A research team in Germany found that “A survey of perinatal clinical data from human subjects with deficient mitochondrial respiratory chain activity has revealed a plethora of phenotypes that have striking similarities with abnormalities commonly encountered in SCNT fetuses and offspring. We discuss the limited experimental data on nuclear-mitochondrial interaction effects in SCNT and explore the potential effects in the context of new findings about the biology of mitochondria” (Hiendleder et al. 2005: 69). Researchers in the United Kingdom have suggested that potential overpopulation of mitochondria could lead to the large offspring syndrome often seen in SCNT cow clones and call for more work in this area: “a cytoplasm over-populated with mitochondria would lead to cellular expansion that might be indicative of the reported large-offspring syndromes. This under-researched area of investigation could provide clear answers to some of the developmental abnormalities witnessed in NT offspring and aborted feotuses, whether mediated through failure of somatic cell reprogramming or independently” (St John et al. 2004: 638-639)."

"In sum, there is a unique risk posed by SCNT clones that is not posed by other ARTs (artificial reproductive technologies): the potential for aberrant nuclearmitochondrial interactions. Embryos created via SCNT embryos differ from those created by other ARTs in two ways: they may be heteroplasmic (e.g. contain mtDNA from two sources) and nuclear-encoded mitochondrial DNA transcription and translation factors persist in SCNT, but not IVF, embryos."

"Why do we need therapeutic cloning? As a layman, several important reasons come to mind. One, implantation of human embryonic stem cells is not safe unless they contain the patient's own DNA. Two, efforts, to repair central nervous system disorders may need to recapitulate the process of fetal development, and that could only be accomplished by human embryonic stem cells. Three, therapeutic cloning is done without fertilizing an egg. It can be strictly regulated. If we also enforce an absolute ban on reproductive cloning, we will not slide down the dreaded slippery slope into moral and ethical chaos. Any powerful new technology comes with the possibility for abuse. But when we decide that the benefit to society is worth the risk, we take every possible precaution and go forward. The unfertilized eggs that will be used for nucleus transplantation will never leave the laboratory and will never be implanted in a womb. But if we do not make this research legal, if we do not use Government funding and oversight, it will happen privately, dangerous unregulated and uncontrolled."

"In response to something that Dr. Frist said, I need to object, and that is that, Senator, you insist on separating therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cells. However, in my own case, I require re-myelination of nerves. That means replacing the conductive coat of fat, myelin, that allows electricity to come down, currents from the brain to the central nervous system for function. At the moment, only embryonic stem cells have the potential to do that, and experiments are being done now in larger animals demonstrating that. In fact, a scientist at Washington University, Dr. John McDonald, whom I have been working with says that there is no way he would inject stem cells without being able to use my own DNA for safety reasons. So without the ability to use my own DNA, without that somatic cell transfer, I am out of luck. The other thing is to please remember that therapeutic cloning, nucleus transplantation, is done with unfertilized eggs. You keep referring to destroying an embryo. I think that destroying an embryo is what happens when the leftovers from fertility clinics are thrown out. We can agree that they go to the garbage routinely. But to say that an unfertilized egg has the same status, I believe is incorrect, and I think that this is the line of research that holds so much promise and can also get us around the ethical quandary that we keep putting ourselves in. We are talking about an unfertilized egg that will never leave the lab, that will never be implanted in a womb, and that can be regulated. And it is crucial for research."

"Drucker: You know, we shouldn't forget that not long ago, there were almost no more fish left in the ocean and half the world's population faced the threat of hunger. Cloning technology turned that around. Extremists won't admit they'd rather people went hungry than eat cloned fish, so they yell about human cloning."

"Stewart Newman: If embryo cloning is permitted, within a few years frustration over lack of progress in producing safe and effective therapeutics from (?) embryo stem cells will lead to calls to permit harvesting of embryo germ cells from two to three month clonal embryos, and we may find ourselves here again."

"Christopher Reeve: If nucleus transplantation, aka therapeutic cloning, is banned, it will be a tremendous setback for science, and it will be indefinitely ... it will indefinitely prolong the suffering of hundreds of millions around the world, who are afflicted with wide variety of diseases and disabilities."

"Rudolf Jaenisch: The technique of therapeutic cloning combines nuclear cloning and embryonic stem cell research with the goal of creating a customized stem cell line for a needy patient. For instance, if anyone of you is severely diabetic, one would take, for example, a skin cell, remove its nucleus and transfer the nucleus into a human egg from which its own nucleus has been removed. The nucleus would be injected then ... would be ... and then the nucleus of this cell is exposed to signals of the egg, it reverts to its embryonic state, and your skin cell begins to re-express those things that it expressed when it was an embryo. Whether the cell that results from this is a new embryo or a skin cell rejuvenated is as much a question of philosophy as of science. The cloned cells can be grown in the petri dish and can be induced to differentiate to insulin producing cells and implanted into you back. They will not be rejected because they are from your own body. So this is one possible scenario, medical scenario, there are many others, including treatment for Parkinson, blood diseases, liver diseases and so on."

"Rudolf Jaenisch: In vitro fertilization, the embryos has a unique combination of genes that has not existed before, and it has a high potential to develop into a normal baby, healthy baby when implanted. In therapeutic cloning, the embryo has identical combination of genes as a donor, has no conception. Therefore the cloned embryo does not represent the creation of new life, but rather reprogramming and rejuvenation of an existing cell from your body. One could argue it's a special form of transplantation. The cloned embryo has a very low, exceedingly low potential to ever develop into a normal baby, because of the overwhelming problems which is associated with reproductive cloning. So the generation of embryonic stem cells from cloned (Inaudible) for the purpose of therapeutic cloning would appear to pose fewer ethical problems than the generation of embryonic stem cells from in vitro fertilized embryos, and the majority in this country certainly supports that."

"James Kelly: Complex technical obstacles stand in the way of human cloning through somatic nuclear transfer ever being medically used in humans. These obstacles include short and long term genetic mutations, tumor formation and unexpectedly tissue rejection. In addition, the cloning process is very inefficient in itself, often requiring a hundred women’s eggs to create an embryo able to yield stem cells. Because of these roadblocks, scientists expect it will take decades before cloning will have clinical uses, if ever, regardless of whether stem cells from cloning ... cloned embryos can show results in the lab. And leading scientists in the embryonic stem cell field, including James Thompson, have admitted that the cost of cloning based therapy would be astronomical. Others have simply said that no one can afford it. If human cloning research is allowed to move forward, these obstacles will need to be overcome for each of cloning's potential medical uses. This will unavoidably necessitate diverting crucial resources from other avenues that have already proven their ability to safely address the conditions that cloning has only hoped to address in the distant future. In humans, adult stem cells have successfully been used to treat multiple sclerosis, diabetes, certain forms of cancer, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and immune deficiency syndrome. They're in clinical trial for spinal cord injury, heart disease, and ALS. More work certainly needs to be done to refine and expand their uses and to improve their performance, but refining, expanding and improving are far cries from embarking on a new, highly problematic research, with little hope of leading to medically available treatments. In fact, such a trade off would be madness. Yet we're being told that cloning is our brightest hope to cure disability and disease. Many sick, disabled and dying people have embraced this message in the name of desperation and trusting hope."

"Stuart Newman: I'm here to argue that not only is full term cloning a bad idea, as Dr.Jaenisch forcefully pointed out, but that so-called therapeutic cloning, that is, nuclear transfer to make stem cells, is also in the long run going to be a bad idea. And I want to emphasize that my views on this don't arise from any notion of the sanctity of the embryo or any religious ideas or anything like that. But I do feel that there's probably nobody in this room that won't have some point in which they say, this is unacceptable. So for example, if a clonal fetus is allowed to develop to seven months, in order to harvest cells, this might be unacceptable to more people than growing clonal embryos for only seven days or 14 days. Probably everybody in this room would say, we certainly don't want to make full term babies for the purpose of transplanting tissue. Probably everybody would object to that. What I would like to convey to you is that the logic of the science and medicine is leading us in that direction. Not because anybody is motivated to do that per se; specifically, I don't think any of the scientists involved are motivated to do that, but there are all sorts of pressures, patient pressures, commercial pressures--and the patient pressures I believe are very genuine, authentic and must be satisfied in some way, so I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be patient pressures--but there will be pressures to bring us to the point. As was quoted from my Senate testimony, there are, in fact, stem cells that can be harvested from two month old embryos. These are called “embryo germ cells.” So if clonal embryos were produced, and it became possible, as some scientists are attempting, to grow the embryo for two months rather than just for seven days or 14 days, it would be possible to harvest these embryo germ cells. Now, why would you want to do that? John Gearhart at Johns Hopkins has worked on those cells, and has shown that they are apparently as versatile as embryo stem cells from the early petri dish cultures, but they don't have the same propensity to cause cancer when transplanted into adult animals. Now that's a very important motivation for harvesting these later stem cells."

"Stuart Newman: Dr. Jaenisch mentioned the scenario of treating diabetics with embryo stem cells. But one of the problems in Type 1 diabetics is that they reject their own insulin producing cells. So even if you could clone that person into a clonal embryo, grow up islet cells and transplant them back into the diabetic, the person's immune system would still reject those cells. So you would have to find some way to immune-suppress the diabetic patients anyway, so as to treat them with embryo stem cells. I think that the American people are very optimistic and only want to hear about the promises, and don't want to hear about the downside. I just point out that in a very recent paper of Dr. Jaenisch 's that he spoke about, where he showed the proof of principle of using stem cells and transplanting differentiated bone marrow cells back into the mouse with the immune deficiency, there was another experiment as well where they corrected the genetic defect in the embryo stem cells. The embryo stem cells were used to produce a full term clone of the original genetically defective mouse, but with the genetic condition corrected. They now had a genetic twin of the original mouse with the corrected gene, and were then able to use bone marrow from that corrected mouse to treat the original mice. Now here's a scenario for which many people would say, “great!” People are already having new children to provide bone marrow for children with genetic conditions. If the public was aware that now you could clone your sick child and use the bone marrow from the new child--whom you'll love like your old child, of course--and transfer that bone marrow back into your sick child, huge sectors of the public would find that acceptable. And this is what I mean when I say that we're on a track where we're coming closer and closer to full term cloning, by way of all sorts of intermediate stages. And it's not that there aren't people already advocating this."

"Stuart Newman: Dr. Jaenisch has argued very strongly against full term cloning, and as developmental biologists he and I know the reasons that this should never be attempted. But there are many people out there, bioethicists who are saying, well, we take risks every day in our lives. If it's risky to have a cloned child, well, so be it. We go out and drive our cars, right? We breathe the air. So let's take these risks. And this is crazy. But apparently otherwise responsible bioethicists are advocating this. And to my mind, this is going to happen; it's virtually inevitable unless legal restrictions are put in place. I disagree with some of the very punitive criminalization of scientific activities and therapies from abroad in the proposed Brownback legislation. I think something has to be done about that. But on the point of prohibiting embryo cloning, I think that it must be done, or we'll all wind up in a place where we don't want to be."

"Christopher Reeve: I work with Dr. John McDonald at Washington University in St. Louis, and he is a very knowledgeable researcher on (Inaudible) stem cells, and a few years ago he said to me that in order to cure my particular condition, which is demyelination of nerves in a very small area of the spinal cord, right at the second cervical vertebrae, that if you imagine the rubber coating around a wire that allows conductivity of electricity, the same thing as with nerves, myelin is like that rubber coating. It's a fatty substance that if it comes off of the nerves, then signals do not go from the brain down to the spinal cord as required. However, it is possible, and he's demonstrated this as graphic(?) as possible, to re-myelinate. Now, a few years ago, he said, we would be willing to inject human embryonic stem cells into you and hope for the best. But hoping for the best is a very dangerous proposition for people with spinal cord injuries because our spinal cord injury affects every organ in the body, and the most serious side effect is that it severely compromises the immune system, so spinal cords patients, particularly with high level injuries like mine, are prone first to pneumonia, which I've had at least five times since my injury, many patients often die from that. Also, it compromises the cardiovascular system, compromises the digestive tract, the ... your whole bowel-bladder-sexual function, skin integrity and also bone density, so that osteoporosis becomes a very ... a very critical factor. So literally he said to me that the immunosuppression that would be required just to inject 30million human embryonic stem cells from an anonymous donor might kill me. And now, he would be unwilling as a doctor, because of the ethics involved that a doctor is ethically bound to give his patients the best possible treatment, he would not inject me with embryonic stemcells unless we go the other route, which is therapeutic cloning- taking an egg, removing the nucleus, taking DNA from my skin and deriving stem cells from that, which would be injected in a manner that would probably not be rejected by my immune system. So my future, and others would agree, many scientists would agree, my future, in terms of being able to recover will depend on some way of delivering stem cells without compromising my immune system and therapeutic cloning, which would use my DNA is the best hope."

"Antonio Regalado: I'm Antonio Regalado, from the Wall Street Journal, I just had an informational question for Mr.Reeve. You said that your doctor, Dr. McDonald, would not implant embryonic ... human embryonic stem cells into you unless that you went through the therapeutic cloning ... that that was your best chance of being able to recover potentially. Have you actually pursued that line of research directly with your own cells? Any attempts to transform them?"

"Christopher Reeve: No, you have to understand that therapeutic cloning is a very nascent technology that's not ready for use in humans. But knowing that it will not . . . provided our scientists are allowed to go ahead with the research, it really shouldn't take that long before they're ready for humans. However, knowing that there is a better technology out there than just using embryonic stemcells, he as a doctor feels, given the immune rejection problem for people with spinal cord injuries, he's not going to go ahead, as he had planned to. There was a plan to actually use embryonic stem cells as soon as it would be allowed by the FDA. He is not going to do that until therapeutic cloning gets to the point where it could be applied to humans. And I just want to make one other very quick comment and that is in England, just a month ago, Dr. Ann Bishop, who works with the tissue engineering corporation over there, was able to take mouse embryonic stem cells that derived . . . had been made obviously therapeutic cloning, and they turned those cells into tissue that is applied to the lungs, to deficient cell types or cell tissues in the lungs, and said, have already reported, I guess it's public knowledge, that they feel they are now ready to do it in humans, so the idea that it would be decades before you could get to human application, I think that is one example I'm giving you right now of the fact that that's not true. I can give you another example. Doctor Oswald Stewart, of the Reeve Research Center, UC Irvine has said that you could probably get to the use of therapeutic cloning in humans within about three to five years. So I absolutely dispute the time line that's been put up before."

"Apporva Mandavilli: I'm Apporva Mandavilli, from Biomednet news. There is this difference between the U.S. and U.K. as far as regulation, so what's to stop the average patient from just getting on a plane and going to the U.K. and getting the treatment they need? And is there a concern among the scientific community that this is going to set U.S. research back?"

"James Kelly: This is a topic that I discussed with Dr. Young of Rutgers. Dr. Young is in favor of therapeutic cloning, and he pointed out to me on the Internet, his Internet forum, speaking on the moral issues, he said that why ban cloning in the United States when somebody might be able to get on a plane, fly to England, whatever, if it was available, if it was a treatment, and be cloned? The only way we could find out whether or not they actually had such a therapy upon their return would be to do a DNA check of all returning people to the United States, which is ... of course is not going to happen. My response to Dr. Young and here again, my reasons for even looking into this in the first place and for opposing cloning on the scientific reasons I've mentioned in my opening five minutes, my response to Dr. Young is, people can get on a plane, and they can fly to other countries. NBC mentioned the Eastern European countries as one where they might be able to engage in child prostitution. Does that mean that we should make child prostitution legal in the United States? Because if cloning is going to be banned, it's going to be banned because of these scientific reasons. It's going to be banned for moral reasons. That's why the ... that's why Senator Brownback proposed the legislation. And if it's banned for moral reasons, we shouldn't change our moral perspective in the United States simply because somebody else somewhere else in the world says something is moral that we in the United States have decided is immoral."

"Christopher Reeve: On the other hand, you have to understand that our allies are not rogue nations. The U.K., Australia, Canada, Singapore, Israel, India, these are just some of the countries that have already passed therapeutic cloning. In fact, England passed it twice. The House of Lords considered it, passed it, the pro-life groups objected to it, they took time to listen to those groups and then they passed it a second time. And therapeutic cloning is allowed with strict government oversight. And to say that those countries are less moral than we are, I think is hubris on our part that's out of control."

"Stuart Newman: It's kind of interesting how the ways of thinking about this evolves. I agree that these cloned animals are not normal. Dr. Jaenisch 's work has given ample proof of this. Moreover, the tetraploid embryos are also abnormal, and Dr. Jaenisch said before that in making clonal embryos to generate these stem cells you don't make a new individual, because it's an individual that is genetically precedented, that is, it's genetically derived from a prototype. But back in 1997, when Dolly was first cloned, although there were people that said we should clone humans and people that said we shouldn't clone humans, it seemed like everybody agreed that if you do clone a human, it'll be a human. But now, people are saying, bioethicists, and I just heard Dr. Jaenisch say it, that when you make these clones by nuclear transfer, you're making something that's like ... more like a manufactured item. It's not really anew individual. Therefore, you could potentially do anything you want with it. If you wanted to grow it up to an abnormal full term whatever, it wouldn't be a person. As Dr. Jaenisch said, you're not creating a new individual by doing this, so you have something that you are now at liberty to do whatever you want with..."

"James Kelly: The Justice Department just testified to the House, and in their testimony, they specifically said that they can't tell the difference from the cloning process and the reproductive process as far as the embryos being implanted. And they specifically said that they would not be able to regulate reproductive cloning. Separate from therapeutic cloning."

"Craig Venter:... the ultimate end of the slippery slope argument gets back to reproductive cloning instead of therapeutic cloning, right? That's the slippery slope that's held in front of all of us as the big evil."

"Christopher Reeve: I believe, throughout history, there has been common agreement in societies around the world that the life results because of the union of male and female. Whether it's done in a test tube, or whether it's done through intercourse. And fertilized embryos in clinics are still the union, result of the union of male and female. Therapeutic cloning takes an egg that is not fertilized, and is left in the cellular stage, in the very early stages, about three to five, seven days, then the nucleus is removed and the DNA from a patient. Either male or female can be put into it. Now, that is an aberrant life form. If you were to take it further and implant it, then only insane people would want to do that, in my opinion. But considering the fact that they're talking ... you're talking about the difference of life as we've understood it for hundreds of thousands of years, versus a collection of cells that will never become a human being, and I don't even believe deserves a status of the word embryo. It could be called a pseudo-embryo, it could be called, you know, some other name should come up from it, because just like test tube babies scared people before, the buzzword embryo scares people today. Cloning scares people today, but this is simply a manipulation of cells that are not equivalent to life as we've always known it."

"I find my blood pressure rising when Clinton's cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fund-raisers but boycott gun-rights fund-raisers... and then claim it's time to place homosexual men in tents with Boy Scouts, and suggest that sperm donor babies born into lesbian relationships are somehow better served and more loved."

"The London Sperm Bank recently came under public scrutiny for rejecting a prospective sperm donor because he’s dyslexic. Aside from dyslexia, this repository also screens out men seeking to donate sperm if they have ADHD, dyspraxia, Asperger’s and other neurological conditions, many of which have a demonstrated genetic link. On the company’s website, these traits were listed as “neurological diseases,” along with Cerebral Palsy, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Epilepsy, Tourette Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis."

"Screening policies in the human gamete industry reflect larger cultural assumptions that pathologize difference. In my research on both sperm donation in the 1990s up to my current work on egg donation, I have discovered there are a number of reasons a prospective sperm or egg provider may be rejected: too short, too tall, overweight, “socially inappropriate,” not having the “right motivations,” not attractive enough, a variety of “health reasons,” possibly even religion or ethnicity, and so on. The reasons for rejecting a potential donor are often unspoken."

"Are there genetic predispositions to coffee drinking? Highly unlikely. I referred to this kind of donor selection process as grass roots eugenics—where people select donors based upon fuzzy interpretations of genetics, imagining a prototype perfect donor whose desired traits will be passed down to their child. People choose donors with whom they feel they have a connection. If they plan to tell the child how they were conceived, they also want to be able to say good things about the donor who helped create them."

"Nearly two centuries ago, in this room, on this floor, Thomas Jefferson and a trusted aide spread out a magnificent map, a map Jefferson had long prayed he would get to see in his lifetime. The aide was Meriwether Lewis and the map was the product of his courageous expedition across the American frontier all the way to the Pacific. It was a map that defined the contours and forever expanded the frontiers of our continent and our imagination. Today the world is joining us here in the East Room to behold the map of even greater significance. We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind."

"Today's announcement represents more than just an effort making triumph of science and reason. After all, when Galileo discovered he could use the tools of mathematics and mechanics to understand the motion of celestial bodies, he felt, in the words of one imminent researcher, that he had learned the language in which God recreated the universe. Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most define and sacred gift. With this profound new knowledge, humankind is on the verge of gaining immense new power to heal. Genome science will have a real impact on all our lives and even more on the lives of our children. It will revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases. In coming years, doctors increasingly will be able to cure diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and cancer by attacking their genetic roots."

"Increasing knowledge of the human genome must never change the basic belief on which our ethics, our government, our society are founded. All of us are created equal, entitled to equal treatment under the law. After all, I believe one of the great truths to emerge from this triumphant expedition inside the human genome is that in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same."

"What more powerful form of study of mankind could there be than to read our own instruction book? I've been privileged over the last seven years to lead an international team of more than a thousand of some of the best and brightest scientists of our current generation, some of them here in this room, who have been truly dedicated to this goal. Today we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life."

"Most of the sequencing of the human genome by this international consortium has been done in just the last 15 months. During that time, this consortium has developed the capacity to sequence 1,000 letters of the DNA code per second, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We have developed a map of overlapping fragments that include 97 percent of the human genome, and we have sequenced 85 percent of this."

"In response to the call for a human genome–evolution project (McConkey and Goodman 1997), the view has been expressed that what makes us human resides in the 1.5% difference in genomic DNA that separates us from chimpanzees (Gibbons 1998). This view is far too narrow. Features that we associate with being human did not just arise de novo in the past 6 million years since the lineage to humans separated from that to chimpanzees. Rather, some of the most striking human features, such as greatly enlarged brains and prolonged childhoods in social nurturing societies, have deep roots in our evolutionary history. Forty to 30 million years ago(Ma) neocortical portions of the brain increased in the two emerging branches of anthropoid primates—the platyrrhines (or New World monkeys) and the catarrhines. Within the catarrhine branch, additional marked enlargements occurred by 18–6 Ma in the lineage to the ancestors of modern hominids, and the largest neocortical increases occurred in the past 3 million years in the lineage to modern humans. A parallel evolutionary trend prolonged fetal life and the periods of postnatal life needed to reach full maturity. We may surmise that the genetic program for our enlarged neocortex has both ancient conserved features and more-recently derived features—in particular, the anthropoid-specific features shared with New and Old World monkeys and apes, the hominid-specific features shared with apes, and some human-specific features. Although many mutations in the past 40 million years have shaped the neurogenetic program for an enlarged neo-cortex, it is possible that just a small number of regulatory mutations in the past 6 million years have brought about the final enlargement of our neocortex compared with that of chimpanzees. Behaviorally, the separation between chimpanzees and humans is much smaller than once thought. Chimpanzees are emotionally complex and intelligent. They use tools and have material cultures (McGrew 1992), are ecological generalists, are highly social (De Waal 1995; McGrew et al. 1997), and apparently can learn and use rudimentary forms of language (Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin 1994; Fouts 1997). In agreement with the newer information on the social lives and intelligence of chimpanzees and other apes (McGrew et al. 1997), the results of molecular studies of primate phylogeny (Goodman et al. 1998, and in press) challenge the traditional anthropocentric view that humans are very different from all other animals. Rather, the molecular results reveal that genetically we humans are only slightly remodeled apes. We share with our most distant living ape relatives (the gibbons and siamangs) 95% identity in genomic DNA, and with our closest relatives (the chimpanzees and bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees) 98.3% identity in typical noncoding DNA and probably 99.5% identity in the active coding sequences of functional nuclear genes."

"The human genome, like the structure of blood, air or water, was discovered, not created. There is an endless amount of information on genes that begs for further discovery, and gene patents put up unacceptable barriers to the free exchange of ideas."

"Aside from inheriting half of the genome of each of our parents, we are born with a small number of novel mutations that occurred during gametogenesis and postzygotically."

"The incompleteness of the fossil record makes it hard to test these ideas. But in Europe, the only place with a relatively complete archaeological record, fossils show that within a few thousand years of our arrival, Neanderthals vanished. Traces of Neanderthal DNA in some Eurasian people prove we didn't just replace them after they went extinct. We met, and we mated. Elsewhere, DNA tells of other encounters with archaic humans. East Asian, Polynesian and Australian groups have DNA from Denisovans. DNA from another species, possibly Homo erectus, occurs in many Asian people. African genomes show traces of DNA from yet another archaic species. The fact that we interbred with these other species proves that they disappeared only after encountering us. But why would our ancestors wipe out their relatives, causing a mass extinction – or, perhaps more accurately, a mass genocide?"

"The analysis of mutation rates in genomic repeat elements has also been applied to study transgenerational IR effects in human populations, namely in individuals living in the vicinity of the Chernobyl reactor accident or near nuclear test sites (Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan; Dubrova et al., 1996, 2002a, b). In all of these studies, they found an increase in the mutation rate among the progeny of the exposed parents. Taken together, these data support the hypothesis that exposure to IR can induce germline genomic instability that may predispose future generations to an increase risk of genetic diseases, infertility, and even cancer."

"[F]rom the time of our emergence as Homo sapiens, perhaps as long as 195,000 years ago (McDougall et al. 2005; White et al. 2003), we have lived as hunter-gatherers, picking fruit from trees, foraging wild grains, digging for vegetables, and hunting animals both large and small. The power of our own experiences, “living in the now” and the effects of socialization that make “normal” simply what we are used to, can obscure the fact that the technocratic society we know and reproduce in today accounts for less than 1% of human history (Table 1). Only 1-2% of our biological make-up has evolved since the ape-human split between 5 and 7 million years ago, meaning that the vast majority of our genes are ancient in origin (Trevathan et al. 2008). There have been a few simple genetic changes since the third little pig and his wife invented agriculture around 10-12,000 years ago, but the pace of cultural evolution is generally much faster than biological evolution. As a result, humans today occupy 35,000-year-old model bodies that are not particularly well adapted to the technocratic and industrializing cultures many of us live in (Armelagos et a. 2005; Eaton et al. 2002)."

"You may be surprised to learn that your sequencers are greater than 90 percent identical to proteins in other animals. It's my belief that the basic knowledge that we're providing the world will have a profound impact on the human condition and the treatments for disease and our view on our place in the biological continuum. The genome sequence represents a new starting point for science and medicine with potential impact on every disease. Taking the example cancer, each day approximately 2,000 people die in America from cancer. As a consequence of the genome efforts that you've heard described by Dr. Collins and myself this morning and the research that will be catalyzed by this information, there is at least the potential to reduce the number of cancer deaths..."

"For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you except these necessary things to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you!"

"Don't you know how much this place stinks? Don't you know what it's like to stand every day in blood, in the blood of children? I hate this place..."

"What you have drunk, what you have drunk -- it was not beer that you drank, it was your blood that you drank!"

"Le sang qui vient de se repandre, est-il donc si pur?"

"A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."

"Just be firmly resolved not to eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the flesh."

"One tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees — . The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there."

"This is what the says: By this you will know that I am the : With the staff that is in my hands I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink and the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water."

"Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!"

"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."

"Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft."

"I didn't know when you were burnt to death you'd bleed. I thought the blood would all dry up in the terrible heat. But I was bleeding heavily. The blood was dripping and hissing in the flames. I wished I had enough blood to put the flames out."

"Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood."

"The first records of our young world were those of tears and blood; its last records will be those of tears and blood also."

"I have often noticed that ancestors never boast the descendants who boast of ancestors I would rather start a family than one blood will tell but often it tells too much"

"Dance mehitabel dance caper and shake a leg what little blood is left will fizz like wine in a keg."

"And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it. For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

"So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell: for I the dwell among the children of Israel."

"Out of a gap A million soldiers run, Redcoats, every one."

": I don't need your blood money! : But you might as well take it. We think that you should. : Think of the things you could do with that money, Choose any charity — give to the poor. We've noted your motives. We've noted your feelings. This isn't blood money — it's a... : A fee. : A fee, nothing more."

"Blud's thicker than water."

"Blood is an energy conductor. I am full of that, all I need is an outlet."

"I track my history Bloody burned family tree Native blood runs in me Murderous tendencies Keep blood lust away Keep violence at bay Can't deny genetics Animal DNA."

"The ink of political fiction is blood."

"Blood is thicker than water."

"Hands across the sea Feet on English ground, The old blood is bold blood, the wide world round."

"Qi comes into existence in Xhong Jiao and concentrates in the region of lungs. Qi moves on the surface of the entire body and inside of it, day and night without stopping for an instant. Qi is also motive power of blood circulation. Xue, blood, is the quintessence of water and cereals diluted in the spleen and the stomach. Blood concentrates in the heart and from there is supplied to the kidneys and the lung from a signal sent by the liver. Blood circulates throughout the whole body, it includes red and white components. The eyes, having received blood, can see. The ears, having received blood, can hear. The hands, having received blood, can take. The feet, having received blood, can walk. It means one should accumulate Qi and feed the body with blood Xue."

"BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar."

"It is alleged that I was born in Granger, Utah, in 1883, on the 24th of October. I was there but do not remember the event. However, my mother was an honest woman and I must take her word."

"He is born naked, and falls a whining at the first."

"A man is born alone and dies alone."

"Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born."

"If birth is a manifestation of life, death is another."

"Population growth results first and foremost from the physical labour that only the biological female can perform. This labour, which is performed by the woman’s body, can be described as reproductive labour and it includes the processes of menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. These have been defined as natural processes or events, things that just happen, rather than as work performed by the woman, but like all other forms of labour these activities require energy and drain physical resources. The decline in levels of fertility that has taken place throughout much of the world has been decline in the level of this reproductive labour, but most scholars dismiss the notion that women had or have a particular motivation to reduce fertility. The pains and pleasures of the body are assumed to be perennial factors that are always present and therefore do not create change. However, changes in fertility rates show us that the burden of reproductive labour borne by the average woman has risen and fallen sharply over generations."

"Compared with controls, PP cases had odds ratios of 95 for previous preterm birth, 186 for abortion and prematurity and 158 for fetal loss, abortion/prematurity after controlling for confounding variables. Compared with controls, PTB cases had an odds ratio of 96.5 for previous preterm delivery, 84 for abortion and prematurity, and 320 for fetal loss/abortion and prematurity after controlling for confounding variables. Conclusions: Previous preterm delivery, abortion and prematurity and fetal loss/abortion and prematurity all increase risk for subsequent preterm birth with or without PROM."

"Only the male superior position was significantly associated with preterm premature rupture of membranes (odds ratio 2.40, 95% confidence interval 1.16 to 4.97) and preterm delivery without premature rupture of membranes (odds ratio 1.82, confidence interval 1.02 to 3.25) after confounding variables were controlled for. No sexual positioning or sexual activities related significantly to term premature rupture of membranes."

"Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety."

"Only about one-half of the 123 million women who give birth each year receive antenatal, delivery and newborn care. But, even many of those who get care do not receive all the components of care they need (including routine care and care for complications)."

"For the generation under age 35, nearly half of all births are now outside marriage. This family structure, once common mainly among African-Americans and the poor, is spreading across races and into the middle class. Factor in education, though, and the difference is stark, raising concerns of a new class divide. Among young women without a college degree — those like Michelle Sheridan — 55 percent of births are outside marriage, according to an analysis by the research group Child Trends. For those with at least a four-year degree, it's just 9 percent."

"Mean labor pain scores were significantly higher in control group than immersion bath (IB) group suggest that use of IB as an alternative form of pain relief during labor. WI in primipara at any stage of labor, from 2 cm external opening of the uterine cervix, significantly decreased parturition duration compared with traditional delivery. It raised both the amplitude and frequency of uterine contractions proportional to uterine cervix gaping with no disturbances in contraction activity of the uterus. A 3-cm gaping of uterine cervix is the optimal timing for WI in the primipara because earlier WI at 2-cm uterine cervix gaping also accelerated the labor but required repetitions of WI or use of oxytocin for correcting weakened uterine contraction. In contrast, IB did not influence the length of labor and uterine contractions frequency. However, contractions length was statistically shorter in IB and it can be an alternative for woman's comfort during labor, since it provides relief to her without interfering on labor progression or jeopardizing the baby. WI during first stage of labor reduces the use of epidural/spinal/paracervical analgesia/anesthesia compared with controls and there is no evidence of increased adverse effects to fetus/neonate or woman from laboring in water or water birth. Neonatal swimming can accelerate babies growth in early stage. In a microbiological study, comparing neonatal bacterial colonization after water birth to conventional bed deliveries with or without relaxation bath showed no significant difference between three groups in neonatal outcome, infant's and maternal infection rate."

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

"The birth of a child that a woman says was unplanned—either mistimed or unwanted—at the time of its conception is a clear indication of a mismatch between reproductive intentions and outcomes. DHSs ask every woman who had any live births during the past 5 years to think back to the time she became pregnant and to say if she had wanted to become pregnant then, did not want to until later, or did not want to have any (more) children at all. Because interviewers refer to the child by name when asking about each pregnancy, women may redefine pregnancies that were unwanted at the time they occurred as having been wanted (perhaps less so for those that were mistimed). Even so, despite this almost certain bias, the proportions of births that women say were unwanted at conception range from 5% or fewer in 13 sub-Saharan African countries and in Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, up to 20% or more in Malawi, Yemen, Nepal, Cambodia, Haiti, Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. Proportions of births unplanned (unwanted plus mistimed) are far higher, exceeding half of all births in 9 of the 67 countries in developing regions for which data are available."

"There are two most powerful days in your life: the day you're born, and the day you discover why."

"The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships. The fulfillment of this duty has always posed problems to the conscience of married people, but the recent course of human society and the concomitant changes have provoked new questions. The Church cannot ignore these questions, for they concern matters intimately connected with the life and happiness of human beings."

"If a true Christian mother weigh well these things, she will indeed understand with a sense of deep consolation that of her the words of Our Savior were spoken: "A woman...when she hath brought forth the child remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world;" and proving herself superior to all the pains and cares and solicitudes of her maternal office with a more just and holy joy than that of the Roman matron, the mother of the Gracchi, she will rejoice in the Lord crowned as it were with the glory of her offspring. Both husband and wife, however, receiving these children with joy and gratitude from the hand of God, will regard them as a talent committed to their charge by God, not only to be employed for their own advantage or for that of an earthly commonwealth, but to be restored to God with interest on the day of reckoning."

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

"Before becoming someone’s wife, I need to be a daughter first. I owe it to the one who gave me birth and life."

"As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began, And on a simple village green; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar."

"The present exploratory study measured pain and tactile thresholds in response to mechanical stimu-lation of the hand before labor, during labor, and after parturition in women. In women who had Lamaze childbirth preparation (but not in women who did not have childbirth preparation), pain thresholds were significantly higher during labor (determined up to 8 cm cervical dilatation) than prior to labor and 24 hours postpartum. Tactile thresholds did not change during any of these conditions. These findings support earlier findings in this laboratory that vaginocervical mech-anostimulation elevated pain thresholds in human and animal subjects, and more recent findings that pain thresholds increased in rats during delivery of individual young. The present findings suggest that an endogenous process that attenuates the pain of parturition is activated when the cervix dilates during labor."

"Esaw selleth his byrthright for a messe of potage."

"And show me your nest with the young ones in it, I will not steal them away; I am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet— I am seven times one to-day."

"Lest, selling that noble inheritance for a poor mess of perishing pottage, you never enter into His eternal rest."

"Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations."

"The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning."

"Do you know who made you?" "Nobody, as I knows on," said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added— "I 'spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me."

"When I was born I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do."

"The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge."

"We don't use the word evolution. We hope to walk a very thin line. On one hand we want the scientists to say this film is right and accurate, and yet we don't want to have the church picketing the film."

"The stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfil the law of their being."

"There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."

"The keystone argument of Signature of the Cell [by Stephen C. Meyer] is that chance, by itself, cannot account for the genetic information found in the genomes of organisms. I agree. And so does every evolutionary scientist."

"Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called "creationism" and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God. This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man?"

"Evolution was still at work, pruning the failures from the gene pool with unblinking patience."

"Evolution. — The development of higher orders of animals from the lower. Modern, or so-called exact science, holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the unknowable, made their starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive basis."

"Scientific accounts of our origins aren't just more accurate than religious stories; they are also a lot more interesting."

"The evolutionary vision is agnostic in regard to systems in the universe of greater complexity than those of which human beings have clear knowledge. It recognizes aesthetic, moral, and religious ideas and experiences as a species, in this case of mental structures or of images, which clearly interacts with other species in the world's great ecosystem."

"... we need to put everything into an evolutionary framework, simply because complexity arises in biological systems by accretion and modification and not by reinvention. Thus, the properties of many of the components in our cells, whether these are mRNAs or proteins, will be conditioned not only by processes of selection for specified activities and levels because these are positively required but may also take up any value because there are no negative consequences for the organism. This ‘don't care’ condition will almost certainly be present because it is a cheap solution to the regulation problem of complex systems. Thus a 20% or a twofold increase, or indeed the very presence, of a protein may be very significant or totally irrelevant depending on whether it is following a ‘don't care’ condition. Only experiment can decide that."

"Evolution doesn't happen without pain or loss. A lot of fish died, in order for a few to stand. The price may be worthwhile…"

"If they believe it (evolution), they go back to scoff at the religion of their parents."

"The first objection to Darwinism is that it is only a guess and was never anything more. It is called a “hypothesis,” but the word “hypothesis,” though euphonious, dignified and high-sounding, is merely a scientific synonym for the old-fashioned word “guess.” If Darwin had advanced his views as a guess they would not have survived for a year, but they have floated for half a century, buoyed up by the inflated word “hypothesis.” When it is understood that “hypothesis” means “guess,” people will inspect it more carefully before accepting it."

"The only part of evolution in which any considerable interest is felt is evolution applied to man. A hypothesis in regard to the rocks and plant life does not affect the philosophy upon which one's life is built. Evolution applied to fish, birds and beasts would not materially affect man's view of his own responsibilities except as the acceptance of an unsupported hypothesis as to these would be used to support a similar hypothesis as to man. The evolution that is harmful—distinctly so—is the evolution that destroys man’s family tree as taught by the Bible and makes him a descendant of the lower forms of life. This … is a very vital matter."

"Why, these men would destroy the Bible on evidence that would not convict a habitual criminal of a misdemeanor. They found a tooth in a sand pit in Nebraska with no other bones about it, and from that one tooth decided that it was the remains of the missing link. They have queer ideas about age too. They find a fossil and when they are asked how old it is they say they can't tell without knowing what rock it was in, and when they are asked how old the rock is they say they can't tell unless they know how old the fossil is."

"The real question is, Did God use evolution as His plan? If it could be shown that man, instead of being made in the image of God, is a development of beasts we would have to accept it, regardless of its effort, for truth is truth and must prevail. But when there is no proof we have a right to consider the effect of the acceptance of an unsupported hypothesis."

"There are many examples in evolution of a vital adaptation taking place at a cost. Anatomically, evolution seems to create a series of compromises; advantages tempered by being achieved against the constraints of the existing raw material. Upright walking has the cost of disorders in the back and acute difficulties in childbirth. Speech has the cost of a structure of the larynx which is extremely dangerous. The fact of these compromises does of course emphasize the power of the need that the advantage be achieved. If it is dangerous to speak, the pressure in its favor must have been very strong."

"Perhaps the most important single contribution that the study of human evolution can make, especially to the non-scientific community, is to set these racial differences in their historical context. People may still feel hostile towards one another for all kinds of irrational reasons. But the study of evolution can demonstrate just how misplaced some of those reasons are."

"Evolution has solved, through adaptation, problems of survival, enabling the species to reproduce itself. Evolution in that sense is an ordinary process, applicable to every species."

"A fire-mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jellyfish and a saurian, And caves where the cavemen dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod— Some call it Evolution, And others call it God."

"There was an ape in the days that were earlier, Centuries passed and his hair became curlier; Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist— Then he was a MAN and a Positivist."

"Anthropological, biological, and genetic evidence all put the origin of modern humans at between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, probably in Africa. There is also much data that show an outburst of cultural behavior occurring around 50,000-40,000 years ago in Europe. That's when archaeologists date the oldest evidence of burial ceremonies, body ornaments, and cave paintings."

"The cosmology of scientific materialism … considers the cosmos an absurd accident, and life within it to be no more than another accident."

"Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form: Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same."

"Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."

"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection."

"The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient."

"Mere chance … alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species and species of the same genus."

"This belief, that Darwinian evolution is "random", is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of the truth. Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially non-random."

"Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered … has no purpose in mind. … It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker."

"In any developing science there are disagreements. But scientists — and here is what separates real scientists from the pseudoscientists of the school of intelligent design — always know what evidence it would take to change their minds. One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pity’s sake, let’s stop confusing the philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact."

"Nature is neither kind nor unkind. She is neither against suffering nor for it. Nature is not interested in suffering one way or the other unless it affects the survival of DNA. It is easy to imagine a gene that, say, tranquilizes gazelles when they are about to suffer a killing bite. Would such a gene be favored by natural selection? Not unless the act of tranquilizing a gazelle improved that gene's chances of being propagated into future generations. It is hard to see why this should be so, and we may therefore guess that gazelles suffer horrible pain and fear when they are pursued to the death - as many of them eventually are. The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease."

"After the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals gradually became the most dominant life form on earth, the most intelligent of the mammals being the primates, and the most intelligent of the primates, the apes. Due to the separation of the South American, Eurasian and African continents beginning some 150 million years ago, the primates in these three areas afterwards evolved separately. In Africa, apes diverged from monkeys about 23 million years ago, with humans descending from these African apes, our branch splitting off from the ancestors of chimpanzees perhaps as recently as five and a half million years ago, and no earlier than eight million years ago."

"What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astonishing? That question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new fangled theories."

"According to Goldschmidt, all that evolution by the usual mutations—dubbed "micromutations"—can accomplish is to bring about "diversification strictly within species, usually, if not exclusively, for the sake of adaptation of the species to specific conditions within the area which it is able to occupy." New species, genera, and higher groups arise at once, by cataclysmic saltations—termed macromutations or systematic mutations—which bring about in one step a basic reconstruction of the whole organism. The role of natural selection in this process becomes "reduced to the simple alternative: immediate acceptance or rejection." A new form of life having been thus catapulted into being, the details of its structures and functions are subsequently adjusted by micromutation and selection. It is unnecessary to stress here that this theory virtually rejects evolution as this term is usually understood (to evolve means to unfold or to develop gradually), and that the systematic mutations it postulates have never been observed. It is possible to imagine a mutation so drastic that its product becomes a monster hurling itself beyond the confines of species, genus, family, or class. But in what Goldschmidt has called the "hopeful monster" the harmonious system, which any organism must necessarily possess, must be transformed at once into a radically different, but still sufficiently coherent, system to enable the monster to survive. The assumption that such a prodigy may, however rarely, walk the earth overtaxes one's credulity, even though it may be right that the existence of life in the cosmos is in itself an extremely improbable event."

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution"

"Recently there's been a resurgence of rejection of evolution - possibly one of the most concrete and indisputable discoveries of science. To the extent that we deny this, we're wandering in the darkness."

"Paleontologists should recognize that much of their thought is conditioned by a peculiar perspective that they must bring to the study of life: they must look down from its present complexity and diversity into the past: their view must be retrospective. From this vantage point, it is very difficult to view evolution as anything but an easy and inevitable result of mere existence, as something that unfolds in a natural and orderly fashion. Yet we urge a different view. The norm for a species or, by extension, a community is stability. Speciation is a rare and difficult event that punctuates a system in homeostatic equilibrium. That so uncommon an event should have produced such a wondrous array of living and fossil forms can only give strength to an old idea: paleontology deals with a phenomenon that belongs to it alone among the evolutionary sciences and that enlightens all its conclusions—time."

"When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining that God was a magician, with such a magic wand as to be able to do everything. However, it was not like that. He created beings and left them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave each one, so that they would develop, and reach their fullness. He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time that He assured them of his continual presence, giving being to every reality. And thus creation went forward for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia until it became what we know today, in fact because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. The beginning of the world was not the work of chaos, which owes its origin to another, but it derives directly from a Supreme Principle who creates out of love. The Big-Bang, that is placed today at the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine intervention but exacts it. The evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve."

"God is an unnecessary hypothesis for explaining the natural world. But … this is not something that needs to be ascribed to God anyway, so it hardly implies that evolution and religion are incompatible, any more than showing that God is not needed to explain plumbing makes plumbing incompatible with religion."

"Said the little Eohippus, "I am going to be a horse, And on my middle fingernails To run my earthly course! * * * I'm going to have a flowing tail! I'm going to have a mane! I'm going to stand fourteen hands high On the Psychozoic plain!""

"I do not want to discuss evolution in such depth, however, only touch on it from my own perspective: from the moment when I stood on the Serengeti plains holding the fossilized bones of ancient creatures in my hands to the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back. You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves."

"We applaud the burgeoning emphasis on change in regulatory genes as the stuff of morphological evolution... if only because one of us had written a book to argue that the classical, and widely ignored data on evolution by heterochrony should be exhumed and valued as a primary demonstration of regulatory change. We do not see how point mutations in structural genes can lead, even by gradual accumulations, to new morphological designs. Regulatory changes in the timing of complex ontogenetic programs seem far more promising—and potentially rapid, in conformity with our punctuational predilections. The near identity of humans and chimps for structural genes, and the evidence of major regulatory change indicated by human neoteny provides an important confirmation."

"It's his last book. He wrote in in 1881, the year before he died, and usually we expect that in old age, just before death, that a great scientist will write a pontificating philosophical treatise on the nature of reality. And Darwin... wrote a book on worms. ...He was interested in worms because they were... a metaphor for his larger world-view. The worms that slowly churn the topsoil of England... that work literally beneath our feet, that we never notice, that we think are insignificant because they're so small and lowly, are in fact producing the very soil that is the basis of agriculture. And therefore Darwin uses it as a metaphor for the importance of apparently tiny things when you extend them over long periods of time. And that's what evolution is, the extension of small change (to Darwin) over vast periods of time. So the worms become a metaphor for evolution and for the whole process of temporal change, a very fascinating book."

"Los pasivos alzan el clamor llamándose apóstoles de la evolución y condenando todo lo que tiene algo de rebeldía; apelan al miedo, hacen llamamientos patéticos al patriotismo; acuden a la ignorancia y llegan a aconsejar al pueblo que se deje matar y ultrajar en los próximos comicios y vuelvan una y otra vez a ejercer pacíficamente el derecho de sufragio, a que una y otra vez lo burlen y lo asesinen los tiranos. Pero nada de salirse del fétido rincón, al cual se pretende evolucionar agregando más y más inmundicias, más y más cobardías. ... La evolución verdadera que mejore la vida de los mexicanos, no la de sus parásitos, vendrá con la revolución: ésta y aquella se completan y la primera no pueda coexistir con los anacronisnos y subterfugios que despiertan hoy los redentores del pasivismo. Para evolucionar es preciso ser libre y no podemos tener libertad si no somos rebeldes, porque nunca tirano alguno ha respetado a los pueblos pasivos; jamás un rebaño de carneros se ha impuesto con la majestad de su número inofensivo, al lobo que bonitamente los devora sin cuidarse de otro derecho que el de sus dientes. Hay que armarse, pero no de un voto inútil, que siempre valdrá tanto como el tirano quiere, sino de armas efectivas y menos candorosas cuyo uso nos traiga la evolución ascendente y no la regresiva que preconizan los luchadores pacifistas. ¡Pasividad, nunca! Rebeldía, ahora y siempre."

"The old "red in tooth and claw" view of the natural economy has to be updated. We need a new metaphor for the forest, one that helps us visualize plants both sharing and competing. … Evolution's engine is fired by genetic self-interest, but this manifests itself in cooperative action as well as solo selfishness. The natural economy has as many trade unions as robber barons, as much solidarity as individualistic entrepreneurship."

"With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms of thought crumbled; new ideas everywhere arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas; and we now have the spectacle of a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy. The unprecedented rapidity and multiformity of scientific progress during the last fifty years could not have failed to provoke an equally unprecedented intellectual quickening among the non-scientific. That the highest and most complex organisms have been developed from the lowest and simplest; that a single physical basis of life is the substance of the whole living world; that no line of separation can be drawn between the animal and vegetable; that the difference between life and non-life is only a difference of degree, not of kind; that matter is not less incomprehensible than mind, while both are but varying manifestations of one and the same unknown reality – these have already become the commonplaces of the new philosophy."

"After the first recognition even by theology of physical evolution, it was easy to predict that the recognition of psychical evolution could not be indefinitely delayed; for the barrier erected by old dogma to keep men from looking backward had been broken down. And today for the student of scientific psychology the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact, proving the Buddhist explanation of the universal mystery quite as plausible as any other. "None but very hasty thinkers," wrote the late Professor Huxley, "will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality; and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.”"

"Children, behold the Chimpanzee; He sits on the ancestral tree From which we sprang in ages gone. I'm glad we sprang: had we held on, We might, for aught that I can say, Be horrid Chimpanzees to-day."

"These odds [50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1] are roughly the same as you could give to the idea of just one of our body's proteins having evolved randomly, by chance. … A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?"

"Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide [chain of essential life substances] right, let alone the thousands on which living cells depend for survival. This situation is well known to geneticists and yet nobody seems to blow the whistle decisively on the theory."

"But were this world ever so perfect a production, it must still remain uncertain, whether all the excellencies of the work can justly be ascribed to the workman. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; much labour lost; many fruitless trials made; and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making. In such subjects, who can determine, where the truth; nay, who can conjecture where the probability, lies; amidst a great number of hypotheses which may be proposed, and a still greater number which may be imagined?"

"So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression."

"We have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite "Natura non facit saltum." We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms."

"The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious — fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance."

"Asking general questions led to limited answers, asking limited questions turned out to provide more and more general answers."

"Natural selection … works like a tinkerer."

"Evolution is not just "chance caught on the wing". It is not just a tinkering of the ad hoc, of bricolage, of contraption. It is emergent order honored and honed by selection."

"Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and others formulated definite evolutionary theories, but it was left to Charles Darwin to give the convincing demonstration of the fact of evolution, and in providing this demonstration Darwin made what is perhaps the greatest contribution that has ever been made to the sum of human knowledge. There is probably no department of human knowledge that has not felt its vitalizing influence."

"Take Eva Lution, an' what does she say 'Bout how we all sprang from an ape? An' there's the goriller and big chimpanzee, Patterned exactly our shape. An' I've seen some folks, an' I guess so have you, An' it ain't none of our bizness neither, That actually looked like they sprang from an ape, An' didn't have fur to spring either."

"Evolution is at the heart of who we are, what life is on this planet."

"I wouldn’t get out of bed for 25,000 genes, and we don’t find form in the genome. We share most of our DNA with chimpanzees, but nowhere in the genome have we found what it is that makes us so different from chimps."

"Why don't we see gradual transition in the sequences of fossils? According to Darwin, and the current neo-Darwinists, the fossil record has gaps in it because of the haphazard way in which fossilization occurs — it is bound to be an imperfect record of the history of life. But is it? Is the jerky and abrupt nature of the record really just due to 'gaps', or does it reflect the way evolution actually happened? There is a strong feeling among leading palaeontologists that the punctuated history shown by fossils reflects the way life has evolved — in leaps and bounds rather than in gradual transition. There is also a growing sense that there is much more to understanding 'macroevolution' — the large-scale picture one gets from the fossils — than the simple idea of natural selection can alone explain."

"Despite the babbling of the creationists, evolution is inevitable in a competitive world, and it does work."

"[P]hysical scientists who desire, unselfconsciously, to uplift their fellow humans, endure with difficulty the thought that the destiny of mankind rests supinely in the power of the unbound electron. Mechanistic determinism is abhorred just as whole-heartedly by many a man of letters who sees no logical escape from its tentacles, as it is by “fundamentalist” preachers who see in the triumph of materialism a prospective loss of their own bread and butter. Most dreaded of all mechanistic tenets, apparently, is Darwinian evolution. That monkey has made man in his own image is felt to be a degrading thought. Why? Because such a conclusion is taken to taken to mean that man, once made, continues to be controlled by the same elementary forces which originally produced him. But biological evolution, even if true, entails no such implications. Monkey (or the common ancestor), may have caused man to evolve into his present form ; but man, on the other hand, can now create new types of monkeys at will, by exercising a controlling influence over their breeding habits. And this is the very type of causation idealized by the vitalists. Man, the complex, sets causes in motion which influence the nature of monkey, the simpler animal. Moreover, while the materialistic supposition that monkey originally created man is beyond our present powers of verification, the influence exercised by man over monkey can be observed, any day, in the laboratory. In this argument, at least, we must concede that the vitalists’ variety of causation is more solidly upheld by facts than is the mechanistic type of cause raised by materialists to epic grandeur in the sage of biological evolution. We must admit that while the vitalists begin their theorizing with fictional flights, the materialists conclude their doctrines with an almost equally speculative sublimation of their underlying emotional set. Also, in justice to both, it may be said that the vitalistic account of causation is just as much an accurate observation of physical fact, as is the mechanistic account. Simpler energy units constantly influence more complex units and may, under favourable conditions, control their behavior, while more intricate assemblages of force, by virtue of new attributes derived from their complexity, as constantly compel compliance from cruder types of matter, and do, under our very eyes, completely regulate the simpler energy forms. Physical science must and does include both mechanistic and vitalistic types of causation."

"Ever since language allowed human cultural evolution to impinge upon age-old processes of biological evolution, humankind has been in a position to upset older balances of nature in quite the same fashion as disease upsets the natural balance within a host's body. Time and again, a temporary approach to stabilization of new relationships occurred as natural limits to the ravages of humankind upon other life forms manifested themselves. Yet, sooner or later, and always within a span of time that remained miniscule in comparison with the standards of biological evolution, humanity discovered new techniques allowing fresh exploitation of hitherto inaccessible forms of life."

"Evolution is a two-part process."

"Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it."

"Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology."

"Man, in that sense, will never die, because there may never be a taxonomical point in his evolutionary progress that can be determined as the last stage of man in the cline turning him into Neohomo, or some horrible throbbing slime."

"We do not have to adapt to the environment. We will change the environment to suit us."

"Pouter, tumbler, and fantail are from the same source; The racer and hack may be traced to one Horse; So men were developed from monkeys of course, Which nobody can deny."

"Most of us make one of two basic assumptions: we view the universe as a result of random events and life on this planet a matter of chance; or we assume an Intelligence beyond the universe who gives the universe order, and life meaning."

"Evolution is cleverer than you are."

"We conclude — unexpectedly — that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation. We hasten to add, however, that we are not "macromutationists" who believe that adaptations are nearly always based on major genes. The neo-Darwinian view could well be correct. … We hope to encourage evolutionists to reexamine this neglected question and to provide evidence to settle it."

"Development of an organism from a single germ cell into a multicellular entity is a self-organizing system from any point of view and I wish to contend that this self-organizing system is a subsystem of the self-organizing system called 'evolution'."

"It can therefore be said that, from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the faith, there are no difficulties in explaining the origin of man in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution."

"New knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory."

"Gould discusses iconographies like the “great chain of being” and the “march of progress” as influencing our perceptions of evolution. Today “family tree”-style pictures are beginning to replace the traditional image of the “march of progress” in biology textbooks. However, outside academia, there are still countless visual representations of evolution that maintain the fiction that evolution inevitably follows a certain predetermined linear progression and that that trajectory moves towards humanoid bodies and human or superhuman brains. Science fiction movies, TV shows, and comic books are powerful iconographies in today’s society, continuing to perpetuate the myth of trajectory-based evolution. According to the sci-fi genre, evolution follows an internal “blueprint,” a preset trajectory that takes organisms from simplicity to complexity for complexity’s sake."

"Not only is human evolution linear in the Farscape universe, but it also follows a pre-set trajectory towards increasing complexity. The next step after original Crichton is “advanced” Crichton, distinguished by the folded indentations in his forehead, evidence of a huge brain that is literally too big for his skull. A separate paper could be written about how extraordinarily disadvantageous such a variation would be, but what is equally interesting is the premise of the episode that states that “advanced” Crichton was “evolved” from original Crichton’s DNA. The implicit argument here is that humanity’s evolutionary trajectory is preset. Human beings will evolve in a particular way, regardless of anything else around them."

"[I]t is interesting that the defining characteristic of this future Crichton is his extraordinary intelligence and reasoning capabilities. This furthers the idea that evolution follows a trajectory towards more complex organisms and towards more intelligent organisms. This is consistent with the episode’s premise that evolution occurs irrespective of environment, but it is inconsistent with mechanism of evolution in actuality. The only trajectory evolution follows is one towards fitness for an organism’s environment. Human beings are very well adapted for our environment, but jellyfish are equally as well adapted to their environment, as are Moya’s many inhabitants to their environments."

"As in “My Three Crichtons", we have an episode from a science fiction show that is presenting evolution as something for which an organism’s genes have a solid, unchanging blueprint: an organism’s evolutionary path is preset, and by speeding up the passage of time relative to the individual, processes that would ordinarily take centuries or even millennia, like evolution, can now happen in a matter of days. What might have made more sense, if Star Trek insists on speeding up time, would be an accelerated birthrate as a result of this accelerated time, meaning that hundreds or even thousands of generations inherited slight genetic variations, were selected for or against, and (relatively) slowly evolved into the legged catfish-like creatures that the crew of Voyager discovers. In choosing not to take this route, however, “Threshold” is advancing an understanding of evolution that presents it as a linear progression encoded in an individual’s DNA, and thus, through some kind of mystical science, an individual could realize his species evolutionary potential within his lifetime."

"The idea that evolution must naturally proceed from simple creatures to more complex creatures is almost overpowering. The X-men are frequently referred to as the “next step” in human evolution (X-Men: First Class 2011; Gresh and Weinberg 2002, 133). According to Darwin, in order for evolution to occur, an individual must exhibit a variation that makes it better suited to its environment and then that variation must be selected for and passed down to future generations. When that variation has accumulated throughout the species, the species is considered to have evolved. Playing by Darwin’s rules, then, in order for the X-men to be the “next step” in human evolution, they must have a variation, that variation must prove useful in their environment, and that variation must be passed down to offspring."

"But, be that as it may, is this variation, or variations, beneficial to humanity in their environment? According to Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg, the X-men do have “helpful mutations..." This point is demonstrated numerous times in the adventures of the X-Men, where team members use their mutant powers to help them survive dangerous situations where normal humans would be killed instantly” (Gresh and Weinberg 2002, 135). What Gresh and Weinberg have overlooked, however, is that these “dangerous situations” came after the genetic variation, not before. Most of the battles the X-Men fight are either against other mutants-- such as Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who have a more violent response to human oppression of mutants-- or against anti-mutant hate groups, such as the Sentinels or Friends of Humanity, whose only goal is to wipe out all mutants. All of these “dangerous situations” come up in response to the X-Men’s genetic variation, meaning that this variation cannot be an adaptive response to an environment. Of course, under the theory of evolution by natural selection, every mutation need not necessarily be useful. However, the premise of the X-Men franchise is that these mutations are the foundation of the next phase of human evolution, so these mutations must provide some sort of selective advantage in order for that to be true. However, these variations seem much more likely to be selected against, since they get the X-Men into so much trouble. Assuming that the X-Men survive long enough to reproduce and care for offspring, very few potential mates are going to be willing to take the genetic risk of mating and producing offspring with them. The comics themselves support this, when the X-Men are ostracized from society as “dangerous.” Thus, the X-Men cannot possibly be the next stage of human evolution because their adaptations are neither advantageous, nor likely to be passed down to future generations. However, we buy into the notion that the X-Men are the logical progression of our species because they conform to our notions of evolution as something that follows a progression from simple-structured and simple-minded to physical and mental complexity. Because the variations that the X-Men exhibit are flashy, complex, and, very often, associated with some mystical higher functioning of the brain (such as Xavier’s telepathy and Magneto’s ability to move metal with his mind), they are embraced as the next phase, regardless of environmental pressures or sexual selection."

"Even in her transfigured state, the thought of goal-oriented evolution gave Evelyn the creeps. It smacked of Intelligent Design, the ludicrous evangelism of engineers masquerading as biologists, their PowerPoint presentations riddled with evasions and half-truths and pseudoscience. Such thinking confused causes and effects; it complicated unnecessarily the idea of evolution, a field where explanations are valuable only for their parsimony."

"The Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."

"An organism’s adaptations to its environment, such as the dandelion seed’s parachute, are the result of evolution. Evolution is the process of change that has transformed life on Earth from its earliest beginnings to the diversity of organisms living today. Because evolution is the fundamental organizing principle of biology, it is the core theme of this book."

"There is consensus among biologists that evolution is the core theme of biology. The evolutionary changes seen in the fossil record are observable facts. Furthermore, as we’ll describe, evolutionary mechanisms account for the unity and diversity of all species on Earth."

"Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae."

"Germs and disease vectors are moving targets, and evolution is the reason for this. Evolution happens in hospitals... over the course of just a few months. What you don't know about evolution can kill you."

"No individual organism understands that they need the rest of the ecosystem. That ecosystems reach an equilibrium state until perturbed is not through conscious actions. Evolution isn't a competition, it's just evolution. Traits that increase survival and reproduction get propagated. Organisms don't think about the future. We can see that clearly with humans."

"Equidem æterna constitutione crediderim nexuque causarum latentium et multo ante destinatarum suum quemque ordinem immutabili lege percurrere."

"Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others."

"When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it is for that reason that I speak of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better — ever so much slightly better — at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it."

"I am interested in a phase that I think we are entering. I call it "teleological evolution," evolution with a purpose. The idea of evolution by design, designing the future, anticipating the future. I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?"

"I judge things from an evolutionary perspective — "How does this serve and contribute to the process of our own evolution?" — rather than think of good and evil in moral terms. I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution."

"I speak about universal evolution and teleological evolution, because I think the process of evolution reflects the wisdom of nature. I see the need for wisdom to become operative. We need to try to put all of these things together in what I call an evolutionary philosophy of our time."

"Things evolve to evolve. Evolutionary processes are the linchpin of change. These processes of discovery represent a complexity of simple systems that flux in perpetual tension as they teeter at the edge of chaos. This whirlwind of emergence is responsible for the spontaneous order and higher, organized complexity so noticeable in biological evolution—one–celled critters beefing up to become multicellular organisms."

"The hallmark of evolution is its ability to process situations and generate order without relying on the crutch of a conscious designer. Most complex systems grow organically, solutions evolving through unguided and mindless forces, never reaching any final state."

"Molecular biologists may have ignored mitochondria because they did not immediately recognize the far-reaching implications and applications of the discovery... It took time to accumulate a database of sufficient scope and content to address the many challenging questions related to anthropology, disease, evolution, and more."

"I do not believe in evolution … and none of your professors believe in evolution. … Beliefs are opinions."

"If I did not think you a good tempered & truth loving man I should not tell you that... I have read your book [On the Origin of Species] with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false & grievously mischievous— You have deserted—after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth—the the true method of induction. … I have written in a hurry & in a spirit of brotherly love."

"You grow, we all grow, we're made to grow. You either evolve or disappear."

"Тhе сепtгаl роіпt геmаіпs that Darwin provided a theory which predicts that organisms should have parts adapted to ensure their survival and . This has led to the suggestion that life should be defined by the possession of those properties which are needed to ensure evolution by natural selection. That is, entities with the properties of multiplication, variation, and are alive, and entities lacking one or more of those properties are not."

"This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step."

"When you were a tadpole and I was a fish, in the Palæozoic time And side by side in the sluggish tide, we sprawled in the ooze and slime."

"Before I gifted Picard my golem my intention was to live beyond my years. To become my own legacy. Now I see, in my final days, that wasn't just poor humanity, it was poor science. Because evolution is not an act of preservation. It's addition."

"This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.""

"Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent, homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations."

"survival of the fittest"

"Darwinian man though well behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved!"

"Out of the dusk a shadow, Then a spark; Out of the cloud a silence, Then a lark; Out of the heart a rapture, Then a pain; Out of the dead, cold ashes, Life again."

"They were only built by chance; maybe a tweak or two to give them green eyes, or better hearing, or to keep them safe from cancer. The engines of their creation had no foresight and no future. All that matters to evolution is what works in the moment."

"Organic evolution has its physical analogue in the universal law that the world tends, in all its parts and particles, to pass from certain less probable to certain more probable configurations or states. This is the second law of thermodynamics. It has been called the law of evolution of the world; and we call it, after Clausius, the Principle of Entropy, which is a literal translation of Evolution in Greek."

"Aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation... reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature. With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained..."

"Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man."

"Samuel Butler's famous aphorism that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg has been modernized: the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA."

"Taylor: A planet where apes evolved from men?"

"Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised."

"The theory of evolution by Darwin does not explain how this transition occurred, from inert matter to living matter and then to the only form of living matter endowed with reason, which is man. It is not scientifically rigorous. A rigorous scientific theory meets the requirements of scientific rigor of Galileo, who was the father of science: mathematical description and experimental reproducibility. Requirements that evolutionary theory does not meet, precisely because it cannot describe nor even less reproduce the transition from nonliving matter to living species, plant and animal. It cannot answer the question of why among millions of species, only one, the human being, is endowed with reason. The science of life has not figured out how life arises; it is not an exact science."

"[A cell’s glycome, however, is] probably many thousands of times more complex than the genome."

"I would not expect religion to be the right tool for sequencing the human genome and by the same token would not expect science to be the means to approaching the supernatural. But on the really interesting larger questions, such as ‘Why are we here?’ or ‘Why do human beings long for spirituality?,’ I find science unsatisfactory. Many superstitions have come into existence and then faded away. Faith has not, which suggests it has reality."

"When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, ‘Wow, only God knew before.’ It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me."

"As we develop all this information [about the human genome], it will reveal the complexity, the interdependence of all this material. It will point to the origin as the result of an intelligent creator, an intelligent agent."

"It’s a parts list... If I gave you the parts list for the Boeing 777 and it had 100,000 parts, I don’t think you could screw it together and you certainly wouldn’t understand why it flew."

"The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations has been urged by several paleontologists . . . as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection. For the development by this means of a group of forms, all of which are descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow process; and the progenitors must have lived long before their modified descendants. But we continually overrate the perfection of the geological record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage. In all cases positive palæontological evidence may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown. We continually forget how large the world is, compared with the area over which our geological formations have been carefully examined; we forget that groups of species may elsewhere have long existed, and have slowly multiplied, before they invaded the ancient archipelagoes of Europe and the United States. We do not make due allowance for the intervals of time which have elapsed between our consecutive formations,—longer perhaps in many cases than the time required for the accumulation of each formation. These intervals will have given time for the multiplication of species from some one parent-form: and in the succeeding formation, such groups or species will appear as if suddenly created."

"There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. . . . The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the [evolutionary] views here entertained."

"I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, more or less different in the successive chapters, may represent the forms of life, which are entombed in our consecutive formations, and which falsely appear to have been abruptly introduced. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or even disappear."

"To discover the changes that have taken place in our globe, which can account for the remains of animals only fitted to live in warm climates being found in so northern a situation; and to explain the circumstances of human bones never having been met with in a fossil state, is the province of the geologist. To examine such fossil bones, and to determine the class to which the animal belonged, comes within the sphere of inquiry of the anatomist, and considerable increases its extent."

"The same Time which so ruthlessly assails the works and the monuments of man, was inspired with a zeal for the perpetuation of those which belong to the gods, really startling. The Vasty Cycles of Days since the Avatar of Time have been consumed by him but for this end. The Populations of the Old World seem to have lived that Time might solemnize their obsequies, and Stamp the forged Seal of Eternity upon their bones. The acts and Inscriptions of man dissolve into thin air, while the Races co-temporary with adolescent Time continue for our own and the years that are To Come. To touch the former with a breath is to blot them out, while the last are hermetically soldered down with stone, and coffined in the Centres of the Earth: so carefully guarded are they from rude and sacriligious [sic] hands, that to unrol the Cerements which bind them, it requires the most peculiar and subtle Genius of Skill, and fingers tipped each one with a most energetic soul."

"There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and identified, in museums around the world."

"The record of the rocks contains very little, other than bacteria and one-celled plants until, about a billion years ago, after some three billion years of invisible progress, a major breakthrough occurred. The first many-celled creatures appeared on earth."

"Beginning at the base of the Cambrian period and extending for about 10 million years, all the major groups of skeletonized invertebrates made their first appearance in the most spectacular rise in diversity ever recorded on our planet."

"To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer."

"The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a Great Designer; perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them, and new experiments are attempted on an improved design. But this notion is a little disconcerting. Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament)."

"For me biology is my life, my motive to life and is in my blood and even my soul.let is way to live. It's a connection between you and your God."

"You can’t fight biology. Only push at the rules, here and there."

"I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives."

"The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry."

"What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology."

"[A]ll of modern biology is an affirmation of this relatedness of the many species of living things and of their gradual divergence from one another over the course of time."

"Biology is Engineering."

"Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts -- some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole."

"Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries, and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effects on human welfare."

"According to the science of biology, people were not 'created'. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be 'equal'."

"Biologists have since debunked Nazi racial theory. In particular, genetic research conducted after 1945 has demonstrated that the differences between the various human lineages are far smaller than the Nazi postulated."

"Scientists studying the inner workings of the human organism have found no soul there. They increasingly argue that human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than free will - the same forces that determine the behaviour of chimpanzees, wolves and ants."

"For a biologist the alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all."

"Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it."

"Biology is not physics, because organisms are such complex physical objects, and sociology is not biology because human societies are made by self-conscious organisms. By pretending to a kind of knowledge that it cannot achieve, social science can only engender the scorn of natural scientists and the cynicism of the humanists."

"Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central. Marginal because - the living world constituting but a tiny and very "special" part of the universe - it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position, since of all the disciplines it is the one that endeavors to go most directly to the heart of the problems that must be resolved before that of 'human nature' can even be framed in other than metaphysical terms."

"Despite the beliefs and teachings of religion and psychology, impulses are biological and psychic directional signals to nudge the individual toward his or her greatest opportunities for expression and development privately, and also to insure the person's contribution to mass social reality."

"When you study science, and especially these realms of the biology of what makes us human, what's clear is that every time you find out something, that brings up ten new questions, and half of those are better questions than you started with."

"Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact."

"Today, the central and still fascinating questions for biologists concern the mechanisms by which evolution occurs."

"Any competent biologist is aware of a multitude of problems yet unresolved and of questions yet unanswered. After all, biologic research shows no sign of approaching completion; quite the opposite is true. Disagreements and clashes of opinion are rife among biologists, as they should be in a living and growing science. Antievolutionists mistake, or pretend to mistake, these disagreements as indications of dubiousness of the entire doctrine of evolution. Their favorite sport is stringing together quotations, carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists. Some of my colleagues and myself have been amused and amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really antievolutionists under the skin."

"There are two kinds of biologists, those who are looking to see if there is one thing that can be under stood, and those who keep saying it is very complicated and that nothing can be understood... You must study the simplest system you think has the properties you are interested in."

"More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track."

"No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled "New evidence for evolution;" it simply has not been an issue for a century."

"Complexity has always been difficult to resolve and to understand. Evolutionary biologists were among the first scientists to recognize this problem, when they dug their way toward new theories about evolution. They discovered that matter does not lack purpose."

"Posing questions about the living world and seeking answers through scientific inquiry are the central activities of biology, the scientific study of life. Biologists’ questions can be ambitious."

"What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world — temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics."

"When he meets a simple geometrical construction, for instance in the honeycomb, he would fain refer it to physical instinct, or to skill and ingenuity, rather than to the operation of physical forces or mathematical laws; when he sees in a snail, or nautilus, or tiny foraminiferal or radiolarian shell a close approach to sphere or spiral, he is prone of old habit to believe that after all it is something more than a spiral or a sphere, and that in this "something more" there lies what neither mathematics nor physics can explain. In short, he is deeply reluctant to compare the living with the dead, or to explain by geometry or by mechanics the things which have their part in the mystery of life."

"I have read a great deal now on the neurological side and much on the anthropological side and on the philosophical side and we have had all these discussions and all the time I have the feeling that something may break. I mean that some little light at the end of the tunnel may be sensed or some flash of insight may come. I of course know very well that there is no guarantee it will come, but I have already got myself into this state of expectancy that something will come to my imagination which has some germ of truth about it in this most difficult field."

"As a brain researcher, I'd started out simply accepting the strictly objective principles of the behaviorist position. In the 1950s and early 1960s, all respectable neuroscientists thought in these terms. In those days, we wouldn't have been caught dead implying that consciousness or subjective experience can affect physical brain processing. My first break with this thinking — although I certainly didn't see it that way at the time — came in a 1952 discussion of mind-brain theory in which I proposed a fundamentally new way of looking at consciousness. In it, I suggested that when we focus consciously on an object — and create a mental image for example — it's not because the brain pattern is a copy or neural representation of the perceived object, but because the brain experiences a special kind of interaction with that object, preparing the brain to deal with it. I maintained that an identical feeling or thought on two separate occasions did not necessarily involve the identical nerve cells each time. Instead, it is the operational impact of the neural activity pattern as a whole that counts, and this depends on context — just as the word "lead" can mean different things, depending on the rest of the sentence."

"Nothing in neurobiology makes sense except in the light of behavior."

"Neuroscience is the field of study that endeavors to make sense of such diverse questions; at the same time, it points the way toward the effective treatment of dysfunctions. The exchange of information among a half-dozen branches of science and the clinical practice of mental health have shaped a new scientific approach to the study of the brain."

"[I]t is particularly encouraging to see the growing number of computational studies being conducted at the cellular and molecular levels. Perhaps no where else in neuroscience is the risk of getting lost in the trees and separated from overall brain function as great."

"The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest gathering of scientists. It drew nearly 23,000 researchers to San Diego in late 1995, and it is almost impossible to cover single-handedly."

"The phenomenal world according to neuroscience is the result of the final transformations of sense data somewhere in the brain. Yet the brain itself belongs to that phenomenal world. R. D. Laing (1976) asks, "How, as a member of the set we have to account for, can it be used to account for the set as a whole, and all members of the set, including itself?""

"The more we discover scientifically about the brain the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena and the more wonderful do the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a superstition held by dogmatic materialists. It has all the features of a Messianic prophecy, with the promise of a future freed of all problems—a kind of Nirvana for our unfortunate successors."

"The first proponent of cortical memory networks on a major scale was neither a neuroscientist nor a computer scientist but... a Viennes economist."

"The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience. Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal."

"The biggest single obstacle to the full use of mathematics in real neuroscience is the sheer difficulty of the relevant mathematics. The brain is far more complex than today's computers; therefore to understand it, one must use even more sophisticated mathematics than the average research engineer is familiar with. Because of this difficulty, a few "middle men" have presented oversimplified description of biology to the engineers, and oversimplified descriptions of the engineering to the biologists. These oversimplifications have often led to considerable misunderstanding and justified mistrust."

"As we approach the 21st century, neuroscience is the crown jewel of medical progress. The molecular mechanisms encoded in the human genome are being carefully analyzed. Gene therapy is a practical reality."

"Although many philosophers used to dismiss the relevance of neuroscience on grounds that what mattered was “the software, not the hardware”, increasingly philosophers have come to recognize that understanding how the brain works is essential to understanding the mind."

"There was another major phase of split-brain research where we studied the patients as a way of getting at the other questions very much alive in neuroscience, everything from questions about visual midline overlap to spatial attention and resource allocations. At this point the split-brain patients provided a way of examining cortical-subcortical relationships, and other matters."

"A blind neuroscientist could give precise quantitative details regarding electrical discharges in the eye produced by the stimulus of light, and a blind craftsman could with instruction fashion a good material model of the eye; but sight and seeing can be known only by one who sees."

"Neuroscience has contributed so much in just a few decades to how we think about human nature and how we know ourselves."

"There are three levels of self to consider: the proto, the core, and the autobiographical. The first two are shared with many, many other species, and they are really coming out largely of the brain stem and whatever there is of cortex in those species."

"It now seems beyond question that the traditional account of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is simply wrong."

"Neuroscience systems level courses teach: 1) the role of neuroanatomical structures of the brain for perception, movement, and cognition; 2) methods to manipulate and study the brain including lesions, electrophysiological recordings, microstimulation, optogenetics, and pharmacology; 3) proper interpretation of behavioral data to deduce brain circuit operation; and 4) the similarities, differences, and ethics of animal models and their relation to human physiology. These four topics come together quite dramatically in Dr. Jose Delgado’s 1960s famous experiments on the neural correlates of aggression in which he stopped bulls in mid-charge by electrically stimulating basal ganglia and thalamic structures."

"The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge."

"An example of such emergent phenomena is the origin of life from non-living chemical compounds in the oldest, lifeless oceans of the earth. Here, aided by the radiation energy received from the sun, countless chemical materials were synthesized and accumulated in such a way that they constituted, as it were, a primeval “soup.” In this primeval soup, by infinite variations of lifeless growth and decay of substances during some billions of years, the way of life was ultimately reached, with its metabolism characterized by selective assimilation and dissimulation as end stations of a sluiced and canalized flow of free chemical energy."

"It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter. —"

"The fine-tuning of the universe, about which cosmologists make such a to-do, is both complex and specified and readily yields design. So too, Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems readily yield design. The complexity-specification criterion demonstrates that design pervades cosmology and biology. Moreover, it is a transcendent design, not reducible to the physical world. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life."

"It is as though a puzzle could be put together simply by shaking its pieces."

"Life could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system, carried on meteors."

"Believing the first cell originated by chance is like believing a tornado ripping through a junkyard full of airplane parts could produce a Boeing 747."

"You know, my brothers, the nature of our business. The child you see before you, thanks to a talisman stolen from the powers of Earth, is able to take possession of the Blue Bird and thus to snatch from us the secret which we have kept since the origin of life... Now we know enough of Man to entertain no doubt as to the fate which he reserves for us once he is in possession of this secret. That is why it seems to me that any hesitation would be both foolish and criminal... It is a serious moment; the child must be done away with before it is too late..."

"Q: Strange, isn't it, Jean-Luc? Everything you know... your entire civilization... it all begins right here in this little pond of goo. It's appropriate somehow, isn't it? Too bad you didn't bring a microscope -- this is quite fascinating. Here they go... the amino acids are moving closer... closer...closer...Ohhhh! Nothing happened! You see what you've done?"

"Most miscarriages (about 60%) occur randomly when an embryo receives an abnormal number of chromosomes during fertilization. This type of genetic problem happens by chance; there is no medical condition that causes it. However, it becomes more common in women of increased reproductive age. Are there other genetic problems associated with repeated miscarriages? In a small number of couples who have repeated miscarriages, one partner has a chromosome in which a piece is transferred to another chromosome. This is called a translocation. People who have a translocation usually do not have any physical signs or symptoms, but some of their eggs or sperm will have abnormal chromosomes. If an embryo gets too much or too little genetic material, it often leads to a miscarriage."

"Early miscarriages usually happen because the embryo is not developing as it should. Chromosome problems are thought to be the most common cause. These problems usually happen for no reason and are unlikely to happen again. To develop properly, a baby needs the right number of normal chromosomes. He’ll need 23 from his mum and 23 from his dad. Chromosomal abnormalities can prevent a baby from developing. These abnormalities may happen because there are too many chromosomes or not enough chromosomes, or because there are changes to a chromosome’s structure. In that case, the pregnancy will come to an end at the embryo stage. It’s thought that up to 95 per cent of pregnancies with chromosomal abnormalities end in miscarriage."

"It is agreed that most, if not all, new mutations are deleterious. In plants, much fewer than 1% of radiation-induced mutants are found to be useful. In insects, a few induced mutations confer some advantage, but only to completely inbred populations - a situation quite in contrast with the human condition (NEWCOMBE 1960). According to DOBZHANSKY (1957) : ‘if anything, radiation-induced mutants are more destructive than the spontaneous ones. As far as genetic effects are concerned, the only safe dose of high-energy radiation is no radiation’. As observed in mammals, mostly the mouse, the effects of radiation-induced mutations may be : (1) Dominant: lethals, seen as reduced litter size, or non-lethals, evidenced as offspring which are malformed or diminished in vitality or life-span; semi-sterility, resulting from translocation, is seen one generation later as a reduction of litters by one-half and is handed down to subsequent generations (PAULA HERTWIG 1940). (2) Recessive mutations are demonstrated by mating the offspring of exposed males to females known to be (heterozygous) carriers of certain traits (W. L. RUSSELL 1954; CARTER et coll. 1956). (3) Mutations involving sex-chromosomes may be reflected by a change in the sex ratio of the offspring (sex-linked lethals, see Fig. 1)"

"In point of fact, as MULLER (1955) notes, the less harmful a mutant, the greater the number of individuals it affects, inasmuch as reproduction remains possible. Thus the total measure of mutational harm is the number of mutations produced, of whatever degree of harmfulness, rather than the damage to any one individual or generation. In a population which, like the human, is not inbred, the generation showing the greatest effect of a mutation should be the first filial one; but the total effect in the posterity, over an indefinite number of generations, is still greater (CROW 1958). This point shall be illustrated in relation to the foreseeable effects of radiation upon descendants of man (see Part 11)."

"There are a number of studies that show radiation can cause heritable mutations in the offspring of irradiated organisms. These “germ-line mutations” have been shown to occur in unique sequences of DNA called “minisatellite loci”. The high frequencies of spontaneous and induced mutations at minisatellite loci allow mutation induction to be measured at low doses of exposure in a small population, making minisatellite mutation a powerful tool to investigate radiation-induced heritable mutations. However, the biological significance of these mutations is uncertain, and their relationship to health risk or population fitness is unknown. We have adopted this mutation assay to study the role of adaptive response in protecting mice against radiation-induced heritable defects. We have shown that male mice, adapted to radiation with a low dose priming exposure, do not pass on mutations to their offspring caused by a subsequent large radiation exposure to the adapted males."

"Lola the six-clawed lobster has escaped the fate that would face most of her kind, thanks to her genetic mutation, and will be served up in an exhibit case at the Maine Maine State Aquarium rather than on a dinner table."

"Two assumptions are commonly made in the estimation of genetic risk: (1) that the seven specific loci in the mouse constitute a suitable basis for extrapolation to genetic disease in humans, and (2) that mutations are induced by radiation damage (energy-loss events leading to double-stranded damage) occurring within the gene and are induced linearly with dose, at least at low doses. Recent evidence on the mutability of repeat sequences is reviewed that suggests that neither of these assumptions is as well founded as we like to think."

"Last night I encountered a dream cat with a very long neck and a body like a human fetus, gray and transluscent. I don't know what it needs or how to provide for it. Another dream years ago of a human child with eyes on stalks. It is very small, but can walk and talk "Don't you want me?" Again, I don't know how to care for the child. But I am dedicated to protecting and nurturing him at any cost! It is the function of the Guardian to protect hybrids and mutants in the vulnerable stage of infancy."

"When the frequency of a gene in the general population exceeds 1%, is not considered a random mutation but a mutation that has been positively selected during evolution."

"It is possible that the presence of altered gene combinations, as in ADHD, can bring concrete benefits to society but are detrimental to the individual."

"Charles Xavier's dream — where all Earth's children, mutant or otherwise, live together in peace and harmony! Where people are judged for who they are — not what they look like or how they're born. That's why he created the X-men, to exemplify that dream."

"Mutants; the Children of the Atom. Men and women granted power beyond measure. Mankind not understanding these gifts of evolution have chosen to meet them with persecution and death. There are those mutants that agree with the humans that this world is too small for both species and that one shall by necessity forever stricken from the face of the Earth. I believe in an alternative. A world wherein man and mutant coexist in peace. They’re providing a much needed balance to an all too fragile world. To that end, I have assembled those men and women willing to fight for that peace. To defend the world that fear is optional. To that end, I, Professor Charles Xavier, have assembled the X-Men."

"Mutants are all around us. They could be your neighbors. They could be your co-workers. They could be related to you. Gifted with extraordinary powers, they are the next step on the evolutionary ladder. Some use their powers for good; some, for unspeakable evil. One group had dedicated its wondrous abilities to protect mankind, even those who hate and fear them. Known to the world at large as outlaws, they are the X-Men."

"Unique events are unrepeatable and cannot be subjected to any sort of experimental investigation. … His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin’s time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe."

"Here I am saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries, a view which John W. Campbell, Jr. deplored. We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't."

"We were always afraid a mutant with superior intellectual powers would come along," Baines said reflectively. "A deeve who would be to us what we are to the great apes. Something with a bulging cranium, telepathic ability, a perfect semantic system, ultimate powers of symbolization and calculation. A development along our own path. A better human being." "He acts by reflex," Anita said wonderingly. She had the analysis and was sitting at one of the desks studying it intently. "Reflex — like a lion. A golden lion." She pushed the tape aside, a strange expression on her face. "The lion god." "Beast," Wisdom corrected tartly. "Blond beast, you mean." "He runs fast," Baines said, "and that's all. No tools. He doesn't build anything or utilize anything outside himself. He just stands and waits for the right opportunity and then he runs like hell." "This is worse than anything we've anticipated," Wisdom said. His beefy face was lead-gray. He sagged like an old man, his blunt hands trembling and uncertain. "To be replaced by an animal! Something that runs and hides. Something without a language!" He spat savagely. "That's why they weren't able to communicate with it. We wondered what kind of semantic system it had. It hasn't got any! No more ability to talk and think than a — dog."

"According to Goldschmidt, all that evolution by the usual mutations—dubbed "micromutations"—can accomplish is to bring about "diversification strictly within species, usually, if not exclusively, for the sake of adaptation of the species to specific conditions within the area which it is able to occupy." New species, genera, and higher groups arise at once, by cataclysmic saltations—termed macromutations or systematic mutations—which bring about in one step a basic reconstruction of the whole organism. The role of natural selection in this process becomes "reduced to the simple alternative: immediate acceptance or rejection." A new form of life having been thus catapulted into being, the details of its structures and functions are subsequently adjusted by micromutation and selection. It is unnecessary to stress here that this theory virtually rejects evolution as this term is usually understood (to evolve means to unfold or to develop gradually), and that the systematic mutations it postulates have never been observed. It is possible to imagine a mutation so drastic that its product becomes a monster hurling itself beyond the confines of species, genus, family, or class. But in what Goldschmidt has called the "hopeful monster" the harmonious system, which any organism must necessarily possess, must be transformed at once into a radically different, but still sufficiently coherent, system to enable the monster to survive. The assumption that such a prodigy may, however rarely, walk the earth overtaxes one's credulity, even though it may be right that the existence of life in the cosmos is in itself an extremely improbable event."

"Mutants. Since the discovery of their existence they have been regarded with fear, suspicion, often hatred. Across the planet, debate rages. Are mutants the next link in the evolutionary chain or simply a new species of humanity fighting for their share of the world? Either way it is a historical fact: Sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute."

"For randomized controlled trials of treatments, it is essential to have a clear classification of pregnancy loss type for both fetal and very early loss events. In addition, there is a strong argument for mandatory karyotyping of all pregnancy losses to exclude a lethal trisomy karyotype or triploidy. This is because, irrespective of treatment intervention, pregnancy loss has occurred and may have been described as a ‘false’ treatment failure. Recent papers testify to the high rate of abnormal chromosome type when pregnancy loss has occurred (Bricker and Farquharson, 2002; Levine et al., 2002; Stephenson et al., 2002; Philip et al., 2003; Morikawa et al., 2004)."

"The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants."

"The most common cause of miscarriage is chromosomal/genetic abnormalities, leading to ~50% of spontaneous miscarriages. Genetic abnormalities most frequently occur due to aneuploidy—when the chromosomes fail to separate properly during cell division—meaning that some cells have extra copies of a particular chromosome while others have none. The exact causes of aneuploidy are not well understood, although increased maternal age (>35 yrs) is the greatest risk factor."

"Numerous authors have looked at the role of chromosomal abnormalities in these embryonic losses. One study looked at 144 spontaneous miscarriages by obtaining direct preperations of chorionic villi. Seventy per cent had abnormal chromosomes of which 64% were autosomal trisomies, 9% polyploidy, 7% monosomy X ad 6% structural rearrangements. Errors of gonadogenesis during meiosis will result in autosomal trisomies. Errors of fertilization can result in triploidy from dispermy. Errors of the first division of the zygote result result in tetraploidy or mosaicism. None of these would be expected to be a repetitive event except in the very rare instances of balances translocations or inversions in one parent"

"We applaud the burgeoning emphasis on change in regulatory genes as the stuff of morphological evolution... if only because one of us had written a book to argue that the classical, and widely ignored data on evolution by heterochrony should be exhumed and valued as a primary demonstration of regulatory change. We do not see how point mutations in structural genes can lead, even by gradual accumulations, to new morphological designs. Regulatory changes in the timing of complex ontogenetic programs seem far more promising—and potentially rapid, in conformity with our punctuational predilections. The near identity of humans and chimps for structural genes, and the evidence of major regulatory change indicated by human neoteny provides an important confirmation."

"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

"Anything can happen. How absolutely true. You're exactly the mutant I'm looking for! You're hired."

"Aside from inheriting half of the genome of each of our parents, we are born with a small number of novel mutations that occurred during gametogenesis and postzygotically. Recent genome and exome sequencing studies of parent–offspring trios have provided the first insights into the number and distribution of these de novo mutations in health and disease, pointing to risk factors that increase their number in the offspring. De novo mutations have been shown to be a major cause of severe early-onset genetic disorders such as intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, and other developmental diseases. In fact, the occurrence of novel mutations in each generation explains why these reproductively lethal disorders continue to occur in our population. Recent studies have also shown that de novo mutations are predominantly of paternal origin and that their number increases with advanced paternal age."

"The prevalence of chromosome abnormalities in women facing a single sporadic miscarriage is to be 45%. Approximately 50% to 60% of early spontaneous miscarriages are associated with a chromosomal anomaly of conceptus. Most common abnormality is aneuploidy, with autosomal trisomy accounting for more than 50% of chromosomally abnormal abortuses. A strong family history of recurrent miscarriage or genetic anomaly suggests a parental karyotypic abnormality, and a chromosomal analysis of the affected partner is appropriate in the primary evaluation. Chromosomal analysis of the miscarriage offers an explanation in at least 50% of cases. Parental karyotyping is not predictive of a subsequent miscarriage. Routine karyotyping of couples with recurrent miscarriage is not recommended. Cytogenetic analysis may be performed on products of conception to avoid unnecessary evaluation and treatment and because an aneuploid conceptus indicates a somewhat greater likelihood of success with a subsequent pregnancy (Evidence Level III)."

"What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills. So I gave them a teacher, Professor X. Of course, it was the natural thing to do, instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made the X-Men part of the human race, which they were. Possibly, radiation, if it is beneficial, may create mutants that’ll save us instead of doing us harm. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they’ll help us - and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together."

"This was a period when we were experimenting with the atom bomb. People were wondering what the effects would be. Everybody worried ‘Would we all become mutants? We played around with this ‘mutation thing’ and I came up with the X-Men, who were associated with radiation and its effects on humanity."

"Mutants and humans. They have long struggled to coexist. While some try to unite the world, others try to dominate it. Neither strategy has prevailed. But when conflicts reach an impasse, inevitably something happens to shift the balance forever."

"When an individual acquires great power, the use or misuse of that power is everything. Will it be used for the greater good or will it be used for personal or destructive ends? Now this is a question we must all ask ourselves. Why? Because we are mutants."

"They wish to "cure" us. But I say to you we are the cure! The cure for that infirm, imperfect condition called "Homo sapiens!" They have their weapons... We have ours. We will strike with a vengeance and a fury that this world has never witnessed!"

"It was things like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he thought, that made you believe the world was maybe just as well off destroyed."

"I'm either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they're afraid of mutants … Fear implies respect."

"It is a generally accepted assumption that sporadic pregnancy losses occurring before an embryo has developed represent a ‘physiological’ phenomenon, which prevents conceptions affected by serious structural malformations or chromosomal aberrations incompatible with life from progressing to viability. This concept is supported by clinical studies in which embryoscopy was used to assess fetal morphology prior to removal by uterine evacuation. Fetal malformations were observed in 85% of cases presenting with early clinical miscarriage. The same study also demonstrated that 75% of the fetuses had an abnormal karyotype. Fetal chromosomal aneuploidies arising from non-inherited and non-disjunctional events are common. Indeed, in a recent study using comparative genomic hybridization to study the chromosomal complement of all blastomeres in preimplantation human embryos, more than 90% were found to have at least one chromosomal abnormality in one or more cells. The clinical implications of minor, mosaic and possibly ‘transient’ aneuploidies remain unclear. However, while most fetuses with severe developmental defects will die in utero some aneuploidies can be compatible with survival to term. The most commonly encountered is trisomy 21, although 80% of affected embryos perish in utero or in the neonatal period. In most cases, the extra chromosome is of maternal origin and caused by a malsegregation event in the first meiotic division. The risk of this increases with maternal age and may be considered to be a biological rather than pathological phenomenon. Although fetal chromosomal aberrations may be identified in 29% to 60% of cases in women with RM, the incidence decreases as the number of miscarriages increases suggesting other mechanisms as a cause of the miscarriage in RM couples with multiple losses."

"I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen."

"The X-Men, created by Jewish American comics legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, is a team of mutants, a class of human being first introduced as people that “possess an extrapower…one which ordinary humans do not!!” (EUX1 #1: 8ii). Especially after the introduction of the mutant-hunting robot Sentinels in X-Men #14 (Nov. 1965, EUX1), Marvel Comics’ mutants have been increasingly inscribed with allegorical Otherness. They have been subject to many of the prejudices that have historically plagued marginalized minorities, including, among other things, forced and voluntary segregation, slurs, persecution, and genocidal campaigns, and, conspiracy theories about their aims as a group."

"Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn't developing as expected. About 50 percent of miscarriages are associated with extra or missing chromosomes. Most often, chromosome problems result from errors that occur by chance as the embryo divides and grows — not problems inherited from the parents."

"It's 1987, do you know what your children are? Paid for by citizens in support of the Mutant Registration Act."

"Sometimes something can go wrong at the point of conception and the foetus receives too many or not enough chromosomes. The reasons for this are often unclear, but it means the foetus will not be able to develop normally, resulting in a miscarriage. This is very unlikely to recur. It does not necessarily mean there's any problem with you or your partner."

"The most common cause of pregnancy loss is a problem with the chromosomes that would make it impossible for the fetus to develop normally."

"We conclude — unexpectedly — that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation. We hasten to add, however, that we are not "macromutationists" who believe that adaptations are nearly always based on major genes. The neo-Darwinian view could well be correct. … We hope to encourage evolutionists to reexamine this neglected question and to provide evidence to settle it."

"But, be that as it may, is this variation, or variations, beneficial to humanity in their environment? According to Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg, the X-men do have “helpful mutations..." This point is demonstrated numerous times in the adventures of the X-Men, where team members use their mutant powers to help them survive dangerous situations where normal humans would be killed instantly” (Gresh and Weinberg 2002, 135). What Gresh and Weinberg have overlooked, however, is that these “dangerous situations” came after the genetic variation, not before. Most of the battles the X-Men fight are either against other mutants-- such as Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who have a more violent response to human oppression of mutants-- or against anti-mutant hate groups, such as the Sentinels or Friends of Humanity, whose only goal is to wipe out all mutants. All of these “dangerous situations” come up in response to the X-Men’s genetic variation, meaning that this variation cannot be an adaptive response to an environment. Of course, under the theory of evolution by natural selection, every mutation need not necessarily be useful."

"Family entertainment? Bollocks. What they want is filth: people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats. Where's the fun in pictures? Oh, well, there we are. Here's the theme music. Goodnight."

"One way to further improve the estimate of the abortion rate is to account for at least some of the occult abortions that are not detected by high-sensitivity comes from studies comparing aneuploidy in very young embryos (cleavage stage and blastocysts) to conceptuses that spontaneously aborted after a pregnancy had been clinically detected. At the early embryo stages, monosomy (missing one homolog from one or more of the 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes) and trisomies (a extra chromosome at one or more of the 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes) were found to be equally common. But among conceptuses that survive to clinical detection, and then abort, essentially no autosomal monosomies were observed (<<1%). This repeated finding demonstrates that all autosomal monosomic conceptuses spontaneously abort before a pregnancy can be detected by elevated levels of hCG, i.e., prior to implantation. As a consequence, for every observed aborted conceptus that carried one or more trisomies after clinical detection, there must have been one occult aborted conceptus due to one or more monosomies. At least 50% of aborted fetuses are karyotypically abnormal and at least 60% of these carry one or more trisomies. There are therefore at least 0.5*0.6* = 0.3 occult abortions due to monosomy for every detected post-implantation abortion. In Fig. 3, I have added these additional occult abortions to the total."

"6.2 Genetic factors The finding of an abnormal parental karyotype should prompt referral to a clinical geneticist. Genetic counselling offers the couple a prognosis for the risk of future pregnancies with an unbalanced chromosome complement and the opportunity for familial chromosome studies. Reproductive options in couples with chromosomal rearrangements include proceeding to a further natural pregnancy with or without a prenatal diagnosis test, gamete donation and adoption. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis has been proposed as a treatment option for translocation carriers. Since preimplantation genetic diagnosis necessitates that the couple undergo in vitro fertilisation to produce embryos, couples with proven fertility need to be aware of the financial cost as well as implantation and live birth rates per cycle following in vitro fertilisation/preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Furthermore, they should be informed that they have a higher (50–70%) chance of a healthy live birth in future untreated pregnancies following natural conception than is currently achieved after preimplantation genetic diagnosis/in vitro fertilisation (approximately 30%). Preimplantation genetic screening with in vitro fertilisation treatment in women with unexplained recurrent miscarriage does not improve live birth rates. Preimplantation genetic screening in conjunction with in vitro fertilisation has been advocated as a treatment option for women with recurrent miscarriage, the rationale being that the identification and transfer of what are thought to be genetically normal embryos will lead to a live birth. The live birth rate of women with unexplained recurrent miscarriage who conceive naturally is significantly higher than currently achieved after preimplantation genetic screening/in vitro fertilisation (20–30%)."

"I'm telling you, with everything we know, about science, about the makeup of the human body, what happened in that classroom is impossible. That kid attracted an arc of electricity from thirty feet away, and not just from the Jacob's Ladder, I mean, after a second it was like it was coming out of the whole… building."

"We're stumbling around in a very dark age basically trying not to kill each other. So it hurts me when you say "So what?" Because you are not just different, Jeremy, I think you have a mind that we won't evolve to for like thousands of years — you're maybe the man of the future right here and now."

"People love a nice shot of an orange sunrise over the islands in Casco Bay, of waves crashing on the rocks in front of Portland Head Light, or of seagulls fighting over rotten bait. But the time tested crowd favorite is a picture of a mutant lobster. They’re actually a lot more common than one might think, sometimes they come up with multiple claws, sometimes they’re different colors, and sometimes they’re so riddled with shell disease that they’re almost unrecognizable."

"We hypothesize that the increased risk of spontaneous abortion with male age is a consequence of an increasing frequency of chromosomal anomalies in the spermatozoa with male age, which in turn increases the risk of spontaneous abortion. The influence of male age on the proportion of spermatozoa carrying a chromosomal anomaly or with damaged DNA has been documented in several groups of men. It may well result, in part, from the continuous replication of stem cell chromosomes from puberty onward; indeed, male stem cells have undergone about 150 chromosomal replications at the age of 20 years and about 600 by the age of 40 years. The chromosomal anomalies found in spontaneous abortions include autosomal trisomies, present in about 50 percent of abortuses with chromosomal anomalies, monosomy X (present in about 20 percent), and triploidy (16 percent). The remaining 12 percent correspond mainly to tetraploidy and structural anomalies of the chromosomes. The two most frequent anomalies sometimes have a paternal origin: Autosomal trisomies stem from nondisjunction during spermatogenesis in 10–20 percent or more of cases and, in monosomy X, the missing chromosome is most often the paternal one. Moreover, sperm chromosome aneuploidy may play a role in the etiology of recurrent pregnancy loss."

"There was a world of mutants, men and women who were more than normal men and women, persons who had certain human talents and certain human understandings which the normal men and women of the world had never known, or having known, could not utilize in their entirety, unable to use intelligently all the mighty powers which lay dormant in their brains."

"The people finally know. They've been told about the mutants. And they hated the mutants. Of course, they hated them. They hated them because the existence of the mutants makes them second-class humans, because they are Neanderthalers suddenly invaded by a bow and arrow people."

"Genetic bases of defective chromosome content or structure In a biological sense, genetic defects leading to abortion may originate from two partners: The conceptus and the uterus. From the conceptus side, it is well established that chromosomal anomalies lead to implantation defects. However, they occur mostly stochastically; to be the genetic cause of a recurrent loss, a genetic defect leading to systematic chromosome anomalies has to be found, as nicely reviewed recently by Kurahashi and coworkers. Abnormal chromosome structure may originate from defects in the checkpoint mechanisms that constitute a quality control factory of the cell, which is able to detect meiosis anomalies and is called Spindle Assembly Checkpoint (SAC), constituted by pro teins such as Mad1, Mad2, Bub1, Bub3, BubR1, and Mps1. A very recent study addressed this question on the general issue of defective reproduction performance, by screening two candidate genes, aurora kinase B (AURKB) and synaptonemal complex protein 3 (SYCP3). In the AURKB gene, the authors identified low frequency (0.5%) non synonymous variants (c. 155C.T, c. 236T.C, and c. 880G.A) inducing the changes p.A52V, p.I79T, and p.A294T in the polypeptidic chain, respectively. 236T >C and 880G >A were associated with antecedents of pregnancy losses. This preliminary study is one of those that pave the way toward evaluating genes playing a role in the quality of the meiotic progression. Two other genes have been investigated to this respect in miscarriage, BUB1 and MAD2. The authors showed firstly that as generally assumed, half the embryos from spontaneous miscarriages have an abnormal karyotype. By western blotting, the authors quantified the two proteins and estimated that they were under expressed in pathological cases. The authors also isolated chorionic villi where they targeted BUB1 and MAD2 expression by short hairpin RNA (shRNA) and showed that this induces an abnormal karyotype at a ~ sixfold increased frequency, compared to controls (indicating that mitotic defects can also be induced when these genes are dysfunctional). The role of MAD2 in such defects was independently confirmed by another study on trisomic abortuses. Clearly, therefore, anomalies in spindle assembly can lead to aneuploidies, and infertilities in the most severe cases, such as in the case of the recently identified mutation of the cohesin STAG3, leading to premature ovarian failure, but less severe mutations in the SAC genes could lead to variants that have more subtle effects. There is clearly space for studying this aspect of spindle stability on a wider basis than what has been performed up to now in the context of recurrent miscarriage."

"Robert Anton Wilson is the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. … Wilson is a primary source for the ironic style of conspiracism, a sensibility that treats alleged cabals not as intrigues to be exposed or lies to be debunked but as a bizarre mutant mythos to be mined for laughs, metaphors, and social insights."

"Of all creatures, only the Binder had bested the Lord of Hellwell. Then the gods had come to challenge his power. They had been puny in the early days, struggling to discipline their mutant powers with drugs, hypnosis, meditation, neurosurgery — forging them into Attributes — and across the ages, those powers had grown. Four of them had entered Hellwell, only four, and his legions had not been able to repel them."

"Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use."

"Stay in touch with my insanity Really is the only way It's a jungle out there kiddies Have a very fruitful day."

"Tarzan of the Apes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruel brutality of his own kind. Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey. The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to their victims. Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments of the ways of human beings."

"I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all the jungle there is none so great."

"Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future."

"A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man."

"The ability to manage well doesn't make much difference if you're not even in the right jungle."

"Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep."

"Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world."

"Roaming through the jungle of "oohs" and "ahs," searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats."

"Nature here is violent, base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there's a lot of misery, but it's the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain."

"When she walked...she stretched out long and thin like a little tiger, and held her head high to look over the w:Grass:grass as if she were treading the jungle."

"‘There is none like to me !' says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill; But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still."

"Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."

"Now these are the Laws of the jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey!"

"A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling."

"When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, And neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken, It may be fair words shall prevail."

"After several thousand years, we have advanced to the point where we bolt our doors and windows and turn on our burglar alarms - while the jungle natives sleep in open-door huts."

"He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world."

"Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law."

"Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way."

"And remember, when we talk of the fittest, it is all about the context. Sure, the lion is king of the jungle but airdrop him into Antarctica, & he's just a penguin's bitch."

"I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's 'The Elephant's Child' and 'The Jungle Book.' Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant."

"Welcome to the jungle. It gets worse here everyday. Ya learn ta live like an animal In the jungle where we play. If you got a hunger for what you see You'll take it eventually You can have anything you want But you better not take it from me."

"In front of me, I see the jungle burning; behind me, I see green plants sprouting. We shall merge into the One from whom we came."

"It may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end. My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us — the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star — we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child."

"Life is a zoo in a jungle."

"Leadership has to do with direction. Management has to do with the speed, coordination and logistics in going in that direction. The Workers are chopping their way through the jungle. The Managers are coordinating, making sure the tools are sharp, etc. The Leaders climb a tree and shout Wrong jungle!! The Managers shout back Be quiet! We're making progress!"

"No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty."

"The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy."

"A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy."

"À grands maux, grands remèdes. / Aux grands maux, les grands remèdes."

"For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable."

"To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy."

"The greatest remedy in the world is change; and change implies the passing from the old to the new. It is also the only path that leads from the lesser to the greater, from the dream to the reality, from the wish to the heart’s desire fulfilled. It is change that brings us everything we want. It is the opposite of change that holds us back from that which we want. But change is not always external. Real change, or rather the cause of all change, is always internal. It is the change in the within that first produces the change in the without. To go from place to place is not a change unless it produces a change of mind—a renewal of mind. It is the change of mind that is the change desired. It is the renewal of mind that produces better health, more happiness, greater power, the increase of life, and the consequent increase of all that is good in life. And the constant renewal of mind—the daily change of mind—is possible regardless of times, circumstances or places. He who can change his mind every day and think the new about everything every day, will always be well; he will always have happiness; he will always be free; his life will always be interesting; he will constantly move forward into the larger, the richer and the better; and whatever is needed for his welfare today, of that he shall surely have abundance."

"To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

"For a desperate disease a desperate cure."

"The water of Zamzam is a cure for whatever (ailment) it is taken for."

"Will you touch, will you mend me Christ? Won't you touch, will you heal me Christ? Will you kiss, can you cure me Christ? Won't you kiss, won't you pay me Christ?"

"Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are relieved, Or not at all."

"Take you up when you feeling down When you're sick he will come around Takes his cures from out the ground He's the one who can hypnotize And you'll never believe your eyes He can cause the dead to rise."

"Depression in its major stages possesses no quickly available remedy: failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder as it reveals itself to the victim, and one that helps situate it squarely in the category of grave diseases."

"Injuriarum remedium est oblivio."

"There is no remedy for love, but to love some more."

"Take a new drug while it still works."

"Despondency becomes not the dignity of our cause, nor the character of those who are its supporters. Let us awaken then, and evince a different spirit, — a spirit that shall inspire the people with confidence in themselves and in us, — a spirit that will encourage them to persevere in this glorious struggle, until their rights and liberties shall be established on a rock."

"Wakefulness (yaqza) — may God encompass you in this matter with thoughts and ideas — is not to the exclusion of dreaming if the soul of the vigilant is awake and unblemished by evil and impurity. Dreaming, however, is more extraordinary, and man is more avid for it, for it is like a legacy one inherits, while wakefulness is like something gained by toil. And ardour for a vision is commensurate with this."

"When the One who has realized God says, “I am God. You are God, and we are all one,” and also awakens this feeling of Oneness in his illusion-bound selves, then the question of the lowly and the great, the poor and the rich, the humble and the modest, the good and the bad, simply vanishes. It is his false awareness of duality that misleads man into making illusory distinctions and filing them into separate categories."

"Awaken from your ignorance and try at least to understand that, in the uncompromisingly Indivisible Oneness, not only is the Avatar God, but also the ant and the sparrow, just as one and all of you are nothing but God. The only apparent difference is in the states of consciousness. The Avatar knows that that which is a sparrow is not a sparrow, whereas the sparrow does not realize this and, being ignorant of its ignorance, identifies itself as a sparrow."

"Being the Avatar, I have come to awaken mankind, and would like the entire world to come to me. Real saints are dearest and nearest to my heart. Perfect Ones and lovers of God adorn the world, and will ever do so."

"I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts."

"We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality."

"The Union will awaken. It always has. We always will."

"They slide through the portal of wakefulness only to dash away, playing a game of hide and seek; they leave an image, a feeling, a shadowy memory peeping through everyday consciousness."

"Wakefulness Wakefulness is the way to life. The fool sleeps. As if he were already dead, But the Master is awake. And he lives forever. He that watches with a clear mind. How happy he is For he sees that wakefulness is life. How happy he is! That goes in the path of the awakened with great perseverance For he sees that wakefulness is life. He meditates, seeking Freedom and happiness. So be awake, reflect, watch. Work with care and attention. Live in the way and the light will grow in you. By watching and working The Master makes for himself an island Which the flood cannot overwhelm The fool is careless But the Master guards his watching. It is his most precious treasure He never gives in to desire He meditates. And in the strength of his resolve He discovers true happiness. He overcomes desire- And from the tower of his wisdom He looks down with dispassion Upon the sorrowing crowd. from the mountain top He looks down at those Who live close to the ground. Mindful among the mindless Awake while others dream. Swift as the race horse He outstrips the field. How wonderful it is to watch. How foolish to sleep. The simpleton who guards his mind And fears the waywardness of his thoughts Burns through every bond With the fire of his vigilance. The simpleton who guards his mind And fears his own confusion Cannot fall. He had found his way to peace."

"Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith."

"If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works. Besides, a reckless king will easily fall into the hands of his enemies. Hence the king shall ever be wakeful."

"All what they see in meditation, in dreams or in wakefulness, all proves to me that all what we see inside is nothing but subtle matter or illusion."

"We need not war to awaken human energy. There is at least equal scope for courage and magnanimity in blessing, as in destroying mankind."

"It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation, which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion, which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought."

"Doctor: Don't challenge me, Harriet Jones, because I'm a completely new man. I could bring down your Government with a single word."

"There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs. If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential. Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people’s unrest—in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system."

"William O. Douglas, in Points of Rebellion (1970), p. 92"

"The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance."

"Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people's expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would."

"Jesse: Man, some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, all of a sudden at age, what, 60, he's just gonna break bad?"

"The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree ; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit."

"We want our sound to go into the soul of the audience, and see if it can awaken some little thing in their minds... 'Cause there are so many sleeping people."

"All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known."

"Our awakening is touched with dismay; we must come to terms with this world or it will terminate us. When we speak of defending the environment, we are speaking of defending our own lives."

"By the time we awaken faintly to the awareness that we have been socially conditioned, we find ourselves so indoctrinated that it's difficult, if not impossible, to break the old patterns. ... Survival pressures demanding that we evolve, grow, and change, however, continue to proliferate. We don't want to change, but the floodgates open abruptly and we are overwhelmed. Crisis!"

"I am the choice of their awakening. My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine! Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance. Those billions are my one."

"Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side. p.83"

"If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?"

"When we dead awaken. … We see that we have never lived."

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

"Seraphim, The lost hosts awaken"

"When you meet the true Guru, He will awaken your heart; He will tell you the secret of love and detachment, and then you will know indeed that He transcends this universe."

"Sleep is a curious condition to be in, yet it is so common and so natural that it is seldom thought of any more than a state of wakefulness. While one is asleep he is of no more use, can do no more good than he could if he were dead;...The difference, however, between sleep and death is very great."

"In the life of the individual when love awakens it is older than everything else, because when it exists it seems as if it has existed for a long time; it presupposes itself back into the distant past until all searching ends in the inexplicable origin. Whereas all beginnings are ordinarily said to be difficult, this does not hold true of love’s beginning. Its happy awakening is unacquainted with work, and there is no advance preparation. Even if love can give birth to pain, it is not brought forth in pain; lightly, jubilantly, it bursts forth in its enigmatic coming into existence. What a wonderful beginning."

"What the age needs is not a genius — it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death. What the age needs is awakening. And therefore someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the intriguing mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget how God helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything may be to his honour."

"We can, of course, be deceived in many ways. We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. We can be deceived by appearances, but we certainly are also deceived by the sagacious appearance, by the flattering conceit that considers itself absolutely secure against being deceived. Which deception is more dangerous? Whose recovery is more doubtful, that of the one who does not see, or that of the person who sees and yet does not see? What is more difficult—to awaken someone who is sleeping or to awaken someone who, awake, is dreaming that he is awake?"

"Father in heaven, when the thought of thee awakens in our soul, let it not waken as an agitated bird which flutters confusedly about, but as a child waking from sleep with a celestial smile."

"Some investigators contend that EEG patterns denoting wakefulness indicate when consciousness is first possible. Wakefulness is a state of arousal mediated by the brainstem and thalamus in communication with the cortex. In preterm neonates, the earliest EEG pattern representing wakefulness appears around 30 weeks’ PCA. However, wakefulness alone is insufficient to establish consciousness, as unconscious patients in a persistent vegetative state may also have wakeful EEGs."

"Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti."

"There are some men whom a staggering emotional shock, so far from making them mental invalids for life, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvanize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity of soul."

"Set you intention to awaken from dreams. As you fall asleep for the night, assert to yourself that you will awaken after dreams during the night. Remind yourself that want to recall your dreams clearly and do the MILD Exercise Awaken from a dream and recall it. When you awaken from a dream in the night, first recall it in as much detail as you can, and then write out enough of it to describe the basic events and scenes of the dream. Increase your wakefulness. Get out of bed, go to the bathroom, wash your face with cool water. Carefully test reality to make sure you are actually awake. Do some stretches to increase your circulation and alertness. Get back in bed, and read your dream report, noting any important recurring dream images you find in it."

"Life is a waste of wearisome hours, Which seldom the rose of enjoyment adorns, And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers, Is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns."

"During that first minute of wakefulness, you have the best chance of bringing your dreams into your normal consciousness. Sometimes you can hold onto a flash memory a little longer if you don’t move around."

"Existence is a mystery, and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation. No, explanation is not needed – only exclamation, a wondering heart, awakened, surprised, feeling the mystery of life each moment. Then, and only then, you know what truth is. And truth liberates."

""If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty."

"There are hours for rest, and hours for wakefulness; nights for sobriety and nights for drunkenness—if only so that possession of the former allows us to discern the latter when we have it; for sad as it is, no human body can be happily drunk all the time."

"[By 1939] Simone Weil had developed a social and political awareness which it took the war and the German occupation to awaken in many French intellectuals and beyond which many of them, including Sartre, have never progressed."

"In many ways, America is on the receiving end of a pendulum that has been swung with great force, and for a long time, outward into the world. The impact is a wake-up call on every level."

"It has been proposed that arguments around fetal pain can be resolved by the fact that the fetus never enters a state of wakefulness in utero. This evidence is derived largely from observations of fetal lambs. Rigatto et al., for example, directly observed an unanaesthetised sheep fetus, in utero, through a Plexiglas window, for 5000 hours without observing signs of wakefulness such as eyes opening or coordinated movement of the head. Several factors explain this lack of wakefulness, including the environment of the womb, which is warm, buoyant and cushioned, and the presence of a chemical environment (most notably adenosine) that preserves a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation and suppresses higher cortical activation in the presence of intrusive external stimulation. Mellor et al. also propose that the fetus is unconscious based on the presence of sleep-like EEG patterns observed in the lamb fetus, which enter a more quiescent state together with lack of movement, during hypoxic stress, although it should be emphasised that this is quite different from the kind of noxious stress generated by surgery discussed here. Mellor et al. report that the general pattern of EEG during gestation is equivalent to a sleep-like state analogous to non-rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement sleep."

"Although these data are derived from sheep, this species has been a useful investigative model of human pregnancy and the extrapolation of these data to the human fetus is plausible. Being asleep or awake is not as easy to distinguish in the fetus and newborn as it is in adults but the broad categories can still be classified on the basis of EEG recordings. On this basis, sleep state differentiation appears in humans as early as 25 weeks in preterm infants and is complete at 30 weeks. EEG recordings in late fetal baboons support these observations and define only two physiological states from EEG analysis, quiet sleep and active sleep. While the lack of fetal movement during anoxic stress in sheep may not be the same as the response to acute surgical tissue damage in humans, this work does highlight the important differences between fetal and neonatal life and the potential pitfalls of extrapolating from observations of newborn preterm infants to observations of the fetus. Sedation of the fetus and suppression of cortical arousal in times of stress imply that the cortex in utero responds differently from the neonatal cortex and that it is only after birth, with the separation of the baby from the uterus and the umbilical cord, that wakefulness truly begins. This conclusion is not inconsistent with reports of fetal conditioning and habituation to repeated exposure of sounds and smells in late pregnancy which are often referred to as fetal learning. Such responses do not require a cortex in a state of wakefulness and can be induced in simple circuits in lower organisms."

"[I]increasing evidence suggests that the fetus never enters a state of wakefulness inside the womb. The placenta produces chemicals that suppress nervous system activity and awareness."

"Though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are."

"Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning."

"I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. … I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country."

"Goe to my Love where she is carelesse layd Yet in her winter's bowere not well awake; Tell her the joyous time will not be staid Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take."

"The goddess awakens in infinite forms and a thousand disguises. She is found where she is least expected, appears out of nowhere and everywhere to illumine the open heart."

"The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts — Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be."

"He who dreamed of democracy, far back in a world of absolutism, was indeed heroic, and we of today awaken to the wonder of his dream."

"The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind."

"Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable."

"The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare. If you cannot be present even in normal circumstances, such as when you are sitting alone in a room, walking in the woods, or listening to someone, then you certainly won't be able to stay conscious when something "goes wrong" or you are faced with difficult people or situations, with loss or the threat of loss. You will be taken over by a reaction, which ultimately is always some form of fear, and pulled into deep unconsciousness. Those challenges are your tests."

"When such challenges come, as they always do, make it a habit to go within at once and focus as much as you can on the inner energy field of your body. This need not take long, just a few seconds. But you need to do it the moment that the challenge presents itself. Any delay will allow a conditioned mental-emotional reaction to arise and take you over."

"If you are trapped in a nightmare you will probably be more strongly motivated to awaken than someone who is just caught in the ups and downs of an ordinary dream."

"The number of women who are now approaching the fully conscious state already exceeds that of men and will be growing even faster in the years to come. Men may catch up with them in the end, but for some considerable time there will be a gap between the consciousness of men and that of women. Women are regaining the function that is their birthright and, therefore, comes to them more naturally than it does to men: to be a bridge between the manifested world and the Unmanifested, between physicality and spirit. Your main task as a woman now is to transmute the pain-body so that it no longer comes between you and your true self, the essence of who you are. Of course, you also have to deal with the other obstacle to enlightenment, which is the thinking mind, but the intense presence you generate when dealing with the pain-body will also free you from identification with the mind."

"An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks and acts, as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetuate the unawakened state. That is why this book shows the main aspects of the ego and how they operate in the individual as well as in the collective. This is important for two related reasons: The first is that unless you know the basic mechanics behind the workings of the ego, you won’t recognize it, and it will trick you into identifying with it again and again. This means it takes you over, an impostor pretending to be you. The second reason is that the act of recognition itself is one of the ways in which awakening happens. When you recognize the unconsciousness in you, that which makes the recognition possible is the arising consciousness, is awakening. You cannot fight against the ego and win, just as you cannot fight against darkness. The light of consciousness is all that is necessary. You are that light."

"This book’s main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness; that is to say, to awaken. In that sense, this book is not “interesting”. Interesting means you can keep your distance, play around with ideas and concepts in your mind, agree or disagree. This book is about you. It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready. Not everyone is ready yet, but many are, and with each person who awakens, the momentum in the collective consciousness grows, and it becomes easier for others."

"Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness – also pointed to by the ancient teachers – was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not yet imperative. A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness."

"A New Heaven and A New Earth. The inspiration for the title of this book came from a Bible prophecy that seems more applicable now than at any other time in human history. It occurs in both the Old and the New Testament and speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of “a new heaven and a new earth.”(1) We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning of the word, and this is also its meaning in the teachings of Jesus. Earth, on the other hand, is the outer manifestation in form, which is always a reflection of the inner. Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. “A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm. Since human life and human consciousness are intrinsically one with the life of the planet, as the old consciousness dissolves, there are bound to be synchronistic geographic and climatic natural upheavals in many parts of the planet, some of which we are already witnessing now. (1) Revelation 21:1 and Isaiah 65:17 (New Revised Standard Version)"

"At the core of all utopian visions lies one of the main structural dysfunctions of the old consciousness: looking to the future for salvation. The only existence the future actually has is as a thought form in your mind, so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form, and that is ego."

"“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,”(1) writes the biblical prophet. The foundation for a new earth is a new heaven – the awakened consciousness. The earth – external reality – is only its outer reflection. The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free. Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening. Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence. So the new heaven , the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all. What did Jesus tell his disciples? “Heaven is right here in the midst of you.” (2) (1.) Revelation 21:1 (New Revised Standard Version). (2.) Luke 17:21 (New Revised Standard Version)."

"In modern versions of the Bible, “meek” is translated as humble. Who are the meek or the humble, and what does it mean that they shall inherit the earth? The meek are the egoless. They are those who have awakened to their essential true nature as consciousness and recognize that essence in all “others,” all lifeforms. They live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the Source. They embody the awakened consciousness that is changing all aspects of life on our planet, including nature, because life on earth is inseparable from the human consciousness that perceives and interacts with it. That is the sense in which the meek will inherit the earth. A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!"

"If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention."

"Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong."

"One by one objects are defined — It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of entrance — Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken."

"Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again."

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

"The greatest of vices according to Buddha is the lazy yielding to the impulses of temperament (pamada); the greatest virtue (appamada) is the opposite of this, the awakening from the sloth and lethargy of the senses, the constant exercise of the active will."

"Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, "Are we also blind?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains.""

"Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side. p.83"

"I often say to my students, when they first come and they begin to feel the infiniteness, the joy and the deep peace, and they feel very happy, I say to them, Don’t just joyride. Be quiet. Be one with this. Know that this is beyond belief. This is direct experience. But because this is taking place in you, a storm is coming. And this storm is the storm of ego! The storm of ego is going to come to crush what you have discovered, to bring fear in you, to make you feel that you are making a mistake, to bring in states of confusion. And some of you may give in to that and run away, and feel, ‘No, I must not do this anymore!’ But I want to encourage you. This exercise, this ‘meditation’, you may call it, comes from the very core of your Self. It comes from the God-place in you. And this tendency to run comes from the negativity, the toxicity that we have picked up in life. That is going to come up as though it wants to ruin your Garden of Eden inside your heart. I am telling you ahead of time that all beings who awakened to their true nature experienced these types of resistance, this type of aggression from the mind."

"Just as a blind man might find a jewel amongst heaps of rubbish, so this Spirit of Awakening has somehow arisen in me."

"How is it possible not to strive to know what the awakening minds of the young are eager to learn from us? It is little less than criminal that we should put them off with foolish speech or lies."

"I remember when I first went to Singapore. I marveled at how planned everything was. But the sense of marvel was not totally positive. They had everything laid out for you: where you were going to be born, what you were going to do as a child, where you were going to get your education, where they would channel you when you’d go to work. They had things planned out for your retirement, and then for your death. It gives rise to the feeling that you might as well go ahead and die and get it over with, if that was going to circumscribe the totality of your life. But thinking about the possibility that true awakening can be found through your efforts: that breaks through those circumscribed limits. That’s not part of anybody else’s plan, but that can be part of your plan. And to whatever extent you can nurture that conviction, it keeps your heart nurtured and nourished as well."

"I hearing get, who had but ears,"

"See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness."

"Most humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don't get off, you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet."

"If a word doesn't work for you anymore, then drop it and replace it with one that does work. If you don't like the word sin, then call it unconsciousness or insanity. That may get you closer to the truth, the reality behind the word, than a long-misused word like sin, and leaves little room for guilt."

"Open your eyes and see the fear, the despair, the greed, and the violence that are all-pervasive. See the heinous cruelty and suffering on an unimaginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict on each other as well as on other life forms on the planet. You don't need to condemn. Just observe. That is sin. That is insanity."

"The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others."

"An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks and acts, as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetuate the unawakened state. That is why this book shows the main aspects of the ego and how they operate in the individual as well as in the collective. This is important for two related reasons: The first is that unless you know the basic mechanics behind the workings of the ego, you won’t recognize it, and it will trick you into identifying with it again and again. This means it takes you over, an impostor pretending to be you. The second reason is that the act of recognition itself is one of the ways in which awakening happens. When you recognize the unconsciousness in you, that which makes the recognition possible is the arising consciousness, is awakening. You cannot fight against the ego and win, just as you cannot fight against darkness. The light of consciousness is all that is necessary. You are that light."

"This book’s main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness; that is to say, to awaken. In that sense, this book is not “interesting”. Interesting means you can keep your distance, play around with ideas and concepts in your mind, agree or disagree. This book is about you. It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready. Not everyone is ready yet, but many are, and with each person who awakens, the momentum in the collective consciousness grows, and it becomes easier for others."

"Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness – also pointed to by the ancient teachers – was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not yet imperative. A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness."

"To sum up: Enjoyment of what you are doing, combined with a goal or vision that you work toward, becomes enthusiasm. Even though you have a goal, what you are doing in the present moment needs to remain the focal point of your attention; otherwise, you will fall out of alignment with universal purpose. Make sure your vision or goal is not an inflated image of yourself and therefore a concealed form of ego, such as wanting to become a movie star, a famous writer, or a wealthy entrepreneur. Also make sure your goal is not focused on having this or that, such as a mansion by the sea, your own company, or ten million dollars in the bank. An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself having this or that are all static goals and therefore don't empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole. Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all."

"“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” writes the biblical prophet (Revelation 21:1). The foundation for a new earth is a new heaven – the awakened consciousness. The earth – external reality – is only its outer reflection. The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free. Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening."

"Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence. So the new heaven, the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all."

"The outward movement into form does not express itself with equal intensity in all people. Some feel a strong urge to build, create, become involved, achieve, make an impact upon the world.... Others, after the natural expansion that comes with growing up has run its course, lead an outwardly unremarkable, seemingly more passive and relatively uneventful existence. They are more inward looking by nature, and for them the outward movement into form is minimal. They would rather return home than go out. They have no desire to get strongly involved in or change the world... Some may feel drawn toward living in a spiritual community or monastery. Others may become dropouts and live on the margins of society they feel they have little in common with. Some turn to drugs because yhey find living in this world too painful. Others eventually become healers or spiritual teachers, that is to say, teachers of Being... On the arising new earth, however, their role is just as vital as that of the creators, the doers, the reformers. Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on his planet. I call them the frequency holders. They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others as well as through “just being.”"

"In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes a prediction that to this day few people have understood. He says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5, New Revised Standard Version). In modern versions of the Bible, “meek” is translated as humble. Who are the meek or the humble, and what does it mean that they shall inherit the earth? The meek are the egoless. They are those who have awakened to their essential true nature as consciousness and recognize that essence in all “others,” all lifeforms. They live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the Source. They embody the awakened consciousness that is changing all aspects of life on our planet, including nature, because life on earth is inseparable from the human consciousness that perceives and interacts with it. That is the sense in which the meek will inherit the earth."

"Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver."

"A healthy, mature human being of normal intelligence may have upwards of 20 million RNA molecules [thought to serve as a ‘filing system’ for memory] in each neuron. . . . An RNA molecule made up of merely 25 links could have any one of a million billion different combinations, . . . In fact, every RNA molecule contains many hundreds of units—not merely 25."

"There is no question, then, that RNA presents a filing system perfectly capable of handling any load of learning and memory which the human being is likely to put upon it—and a billion times more than that quantity, too."

"Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones."

"When you learn a new skill ... you are training your neurons to connect in a new way. . . . The more you use your brain, the more efficient it will become."

"The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. We have learned a lot about other human organs. We know how the heart pumps and how the kidney does what it does. To a certain degree, we have read the letters of the human genome. But the brain has 100 billion neurons. Each one of those has about 10,000 connections."

"A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy."

"Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia - hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city."

"An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain?"

"Life and consciousness are the two great mysteries. Actually, their substrates are the inanimate. And how do you get from neurons shooting around in the brain to the thought that pops up in your head and mine? There's something deeply mysterious about that. And if you're not struck by the mystery, I think you haven't thought about it."

"When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures."

"Neurons do not just fire and not fire . . . they must be capable of passing on much more subtle information than yes or no. They are not just hammers hitting the next nail, either more frequently or less so. They are, to complete this analogy, a carpenter’s kit, with screwdrivers, pliers, pincers, mallets—and hammers. . . . Each neural impulse is transformed along the way, and nowhere else than at the synapses."

"Every neuron, ... contains about a million pumps—each one is a slight bump on the cell membrane—and every pump can swap about 200 sodium ions for 130 potassium ions every second."

"In some developing tissues, a mass of identical cells somehow differentiates into many types. ...The mechanism behind this process appears to have evolved early on, and is highly conserved... At first this intimate mixture of fates seems puzzling, but there is a relatively easy way to achieve it: instruct each cell 'Be different from your neighbors.' This mechanism is known as lateral inhibition. An example is the nervous system. Since nerve cells form networks with long thin connections, and their ability to function depends on this geometry... when a cell develops into a nerve cell, it sends signals to nearby cells telling them not to do the same."

"We are what we are, ... because our brains are basically chemical machines rather than electrical ones."

"Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food."

"Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide [chain of essential life substances] right, let alone the thousands on which living cells depend for survival. This situation is well known to geneticists and yet nobody seems to blow the whistle decisively on the theory."

"If we recognise that every ecosystem can also be viewed as a food web, we can think of it as a circular, interlacing nexus of plant animal relationships (rather than a stratified pyramid with man at the apex)... Each species, be it a form of bacteria or deer, is knitted together in a network of interdependence, however indirect the links may be."

"I dare you to stand in a redwood grove and not be humbled, or to dive on a coral reef and see even just the glimmer of its former magnificence and have some respect for these ecosystems and the fact that we are sharing this planet."

"The organization of life extends beyond the individual organism to the biosphere, the zone of air, land, and water at the surface of the Earth where organisms exist. Individual organisms belong to a population, which is all the members of a species within a particular area. The populations of a community interact among themselves and with the physical environment (e.g., soil, atmosphere, and chemicals), thereby forming an ecosystem."

"Ecosystems are characterized by chemical cycling and energy flow, both of which begin when photosynthetic plants, aquatic algae, and some bacteria take in solar energy and inorganic nutrients to produce food in the form of organic nutrients."

"Planet Earth was separated into several ecosystems, each made up of a unique assembly of animals and plants. Homo sapiens was about to put an end to this biological exuberance."

"The synthesis of paleontology, taxonomy, and comparative anatomy that Cuvier achieved was based on a teleological approach to nature, one that gave primacy to functional purpose over structural affinity."

"Taxonomy makes sense out of the bewildering variety of life on Earth and is meant to provide valuable insight into evolution. As more is learned about living things, including the evolutionary relationships between species, taxonomy changes."

"Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than [one trillionth of a gram], each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world ..."

"[A bacterium] weighs as little as 0.00000000001 gram. A blue whale weighs about 100,000,000 grams. Yet bacteria can kill a whale."

"If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacterial cell to that of the chance assembly of its component atoms, even eternity will not suffice to produce one for you."

"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, ... But I guess that was exactly what I did."

"[The smallest bacterium] is so much more like people than Stanley Miller’s mixtures of chemicals, because it already has these system properties. So to go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to that bacterium."

"At Pueblo, each shell is pierced by a robot arm, and the mustard agent inside is sucked out. The shell is washed and baked to destroy any remaining traces. The mustard agent is diluted in hot water, then broken down by bacteria in a process not unlike the one used in sewage treatment plants. It yields a residue that is mostly ordinary table salt, Mr. Levi said, but is laced with heavy metals that require handling as hazardous waste. “Bacteria are amazing,” Mr. Levi said as he watched shells being destroyed during the last day of operations at Pueblo. “Find the right ones, and they’ll eat just about anything.”"

"A very small event in the microbial community can have an enormous impact on the environment."

"I’m surprised to see people get so wildly excited about a possible bacterium on Mars when our own planet is crawling with undiscovered species."

"Twelve thousand people die because of drug-resistant bacteria in Canada every year"

"I’m not talking about people, Natasha. I’m talking about bacteria, the real rulers of the Earth."

"Daß aber eine als bloß quantitativ erscheinende Veränderung auch in eine qualitative umschlägt, auf diesen Zusammenhang sind schon die Alten aufmerksam gewesen, und haben die der Unkenntniß desselben entstehenden Kollisionen in populären Beispielen vorgestellt; unter den Namen des Kahlen, des Haufens sind hierher gehörige Elenchen bekannt."

"It is said that there are no sudden changes in nature, and the common view has it (meint) that when we speak of a growth or a destruction (Entstehen oder Vergehen), we always imagine a gradual growth (Hervorgehen) or disappearance (Verschwinden). Yet we have seen cases in which the alteration of existence (des Seins) involves not only a transition from one proportion to other, but also a transition, by a sudden leap, into a quantitatively, and, on the other hand, also qualitatively different thing (Anderswerden); an interruption of the gradual process (ein Abbrechen des Allmählichen), differing qualitatively from the preceding, the former, state."

"Gesetz vom Umschlagen von Quantität in Qualität und umgekehrt. Dies können wir für unsern Zweck dahin ausdrücken, daß in der Natur, in einer für jeden Einzelfall genau feststehenden Weise, qualitative Änderungen nur stattfinden können durch quantitativen Zusatz oder quantitative Entziehung von Materie oder Bewegung (sog. Energie)."

"The guilds of the middle ages therefore tried to prevent by force the transformation of the master of a trade into a capitalist, by limiting the number of labourers that could be employed by one master within a very small maximum. The possessor of money or commodities actually turns into a capitalist in such cases only where the minimum sum advanced for production greatly exceeds the maximum of the middle ages. Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel (in his “Logic”), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes. The minimum of the sum of value that the individual possessor of money or commodities must command, in order to metamorphose himself into a capitalist, changes with the different stages of development of capitalist production, and is at given stages different in different spheres of production, according to their special and technical conditions."

"The laws of chemistry and physiology (for example) owe their existence to a breach of the principle of composition of causes, but these heteropathic laws, as we might call them, are capable of composition with one another. The causes which by one combination had their laws altered may carry their new laws with them unaltered into further combinations. So we needn’t despair of eventually raising chemistry and physiology to the condition of deductive sciences; for though it’s impossible to deduce all chemical and physiological truths from the laws or properties of simple substances or elementary agents, perhaps they are deducible from laws that come into play when these elementary agents are brought together into some moderate number of not very complex combinations. The laws of life will never be deducible from the mere laws of the ingredients, but the prodigiously complex facts of life may all be deducible from comparatively simple laws of life—which do indeed depend on combinations, but comparatively simple ones."

"Suivant un principe philosophique posé, depuis longtemps, par mon ouvrage fondamental, un système quelconque ne peut être formé que d'éléments semblable à lui et seulement moindres. Une société n'est donc pas plus décomposable en individus qu'une surface géométrique ne l'est en lignes ou une ligne en points. La moindre société, savoir la famille, quelquefois réduite à son couple fondamental, constitue donc le véritable élément sociologique. De là dérivent ensuite les groupes plus composés qui, sous les noms de classes et de cités, deviennent, pour le Grand-Être, les équivalents des tissus et des organes biologiques..."

"Thus, although each effect is the resultant of its components, the product of its factors, we cannot always trace the steps of the process, so as to see in the product the mode of operation of each factor. In this latter case, I propose to call the effect an emergent. It arises out of the combined agencies, but in a form which does not display the agents in action."

"But it will be argued that since the sole elements of which society is composed are individuals, the primary origin of sociological phenomena cannot be other than psychological. Reasoning in this way, we can just as easily establish that biological phenomena are explained analytically by inorganic phenomena. It is indeed certain that in the living cell there are only molecules of crude matter. But they are in association, and it is this association which is the cause of the new phenomena which characterise life, even the germ of which it is impossible to find in a single one of these associated elements. This is because the whole does not equal the sum of its parts; it is something different, whose properties differ from those displayed by the parts from which it is formed... By virtue of this principle, society is not the mere sum of individuals, but the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels and acts entirely differently from the way its members would if they were isolated. If therefore we begin by studying these members separately, we will understand nothing about what is taking place in the group. In a word, there is between psychology and sociology the same break in continuity as there is between biology and the physical and chemical sciences. Consequently every time a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon, we may rest assured that the explanation is false."

"Let there be three successive levels of natural events, A, B, and C. Let there be in B a kind of relation which is not present in A; and in C a kind of relation, not yet present in B or in A. If then one lived and gained experience on the B-level, one could not predict the emergent characters of the C-level, because the relations, of which they are the expression, are not yet in being. Nor if one lived on the A-level could one predict the emergent character of b-events, because ex hypothesi there are no such events as yet in existence. (What, it is claimed, one cannot predict, then, is the emergent expression of some new kind of relatedness among pre-existent events. One could not foretell the emergent character of vital events from the fullest possible knowledge of physico-chemical events only, if life be an emergent chord and not merely due to the summation, however complex, of constituent a-notes. Such is the hypothesis accepted under emergent evolution.)"

"To be sure, the symbolic faculty was brought into existence by the natural processes of organic evolution. And we may reasonably believe that the focal point, if not the locus, of this faculty is in the brain, especially the forebrain. Man's brain is much larger than that of an ape, both absolutely and relatively... Now in many situations we know that quantitative changes give rise to qualitative differences. Water is transformed into steam by additional quantities of heat. Additional power and speed lift the taxiing airplane from the ground and transform terrestrial locomotion into flight. The difference between wood alcohol and grain alcohol is a qualitative expression of a quantitative difference in the proportions of carbon and hydrogen. Thus a marked growth in size of the brain in man may have brought forth a new kind of function."

"Accordingly, the operations of a higher level cannot be accounted for by the laws governing its particulars forming the lower level. You cannot derive a vocabulary from phonetics; you cannot derive the grammar of a language from its vocabulary; a correct use of grammar does not account for good style; and a good style does not provide the content of a piece of prose. We may conclude then quite generally -- in confirmation of what I said when I identified the two terms of tacit knowing with two levels of reality -- that it is impossible to represent the organizing principles of a higher level by the laws governing its isolated particulars."

"Systems almost always have the peculiarity that the characteristics of the whole cannot (not even in theory) be deduced from the most complete knowledge of' the components, taken separately or in other partial combinations. This appearance of new characteristics in wholes has been designated as emergence. Emergence has often been invoked in attempts to explain such difficult phenomena as life, mind, and consciousness. Actually, emergence is equally characteristic of inorganic systems. As far back as 1868, T. H. Huxley asserted that the peculiar properties of water, its "aquosity," could not be deduced from our understanding of the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. The person, however, who was more responsible than anyone else for the recognition of the importance of emergence was Lloyd Morgan (1894). There is no question, he said, "that at various grades of organization, material configurations display new and unexpected phenomena and that these include the most striking features of adaptive machinery.""

"Each level of biological organization builds upon the previous level, and is more complex. Moving up the hierarchy, each level acquires new emergent properties that are determined by the interactions between the individual parts. When cells are broken down into bits of membrane and liquids, these parts themselves cannot carry out the business of living. For example, you can take apart a lump of coal, rearrange the pieces in any order, and still have a lump of coal with the same function as the original one. But, if you slice apart a living plant and rearrange the pieces, the plant is no longer functional as a complete plant, because it depends on the exact order of those pieces. In the living world, the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts. The emergent properties created by the interactions between levels of biological organization are new, unique characteristics. These properties are governed by the laws of chemistry and physics."

"Every system that has existed emerged somehow, from somewhere, at some point. Complexity science emphasizes the study of how systems evolve through their disorganized parts into an organized whole."

"If an emerging system is born complex, there is neither leeway to abandon it when it fails, nor the means to join another, successful one. Such a system would be caught in an immovable grip, congested at the top, and prevented, by a set of confusing but locked–in precepts, from changing."

"These emergent properties are due to the arrangement and interactions of parts as complexity increases. For example, although photosynthesis occurs in an intact chloroplast, it will not take place in a disorganized test-tube mixture of chlorophyll and other chloroplast molecules. The coordinated processes of photosynthesis require a specific organization of these molecules in the chloroplast. Isolated components of living systems, serving as the objects of study in a reductionist approach to biology, lack a number of significant properties that emerge at higher levels of organization. Emergent properties are not unique to life. A box of bicycle parts won’t transport you anywhere, but if they are arranged in a certain way, you can pedal to your chosen destination. Compared with such nonliving examples, however, biological systems are far more complex, making the emergent properties of life especially challenging to study."

"In life’s structural hierarchy, the cell is the smallest unit of organization that can perform all activities required for life. In fact, the actions of organisms are all based on the functioning of cells. For instance, the movement of your eyes as you read this sentence results from the activities of muscle and nerve cells. Even a process that occurs on a global scale, such as the recycling of carbon atoms, is the product of cellular functions, including the photosynthetic activity of chloroplasts in leaf cells. All cells share certain characteristics. For instance, every cell is enclosed by a membrane that regulates the passage of materials between the cell and its surroundings. Nevertheless, we recognize two main forms of cells: prokaryotic and eukaryotic. The cells of two groups of single-celled microorganisms— bacteria (singular, bacterium) and archaea (singular, archaean)—are prokaryotic. All other forms of life, including plants and animals, are composed of eukaryotic cells."

"We have a lot of genome-editing tools – like zinc finger nucleases, or CRISPR/Cas9 systems – that could theoretically allow you to epigenetically seek out and turn on genes that make your muscles physically large, make you strategically minded, incredibly fast, or increase your stamina. Of course, at this point, these types of things have been explored mostly in lab mice, but it's fun to speculate."

"Changing animals by putting human genes or cells into their structure is one way of making them more resemble the bit of the human condition you're interested in studying."

"The entire “library” of genetic instructions that an organism inherits is called its genome. A typical human cell has two similar sets of chromosomes, and each set has approximately 3 billion nucleotide pairs of DNA. If the one-letter abbreviations for the nucleotides of a set were written in letters the size of those you are now reading, the genetic text would fill about 700 biology textbooks."

"Three important research developments have made the genomic and proteomic approaches possible. One is “high-throughput” technology, tools that can analyze many biological samples very rapidly. The second major development is bioinformatics, the use of computational tools to store, organize, and analyze the huge volume of data that results from high-throughput methods. The third development is the formation of interdisciplinary research teams—groups of diverse specialists that may include computer scientists, mathematicians, engineers, chemists, physicists, and, of course, biologists from a variety of fields."

"So among the three theories—creationism, seeding theory, and natural selection—there is no real contest. Evolution by natural selection is the only known scientific theory that can explain the astonishing diversity of life we see around us today. And it is the only known scientific theory that has the power to account for the origins and structure of complex adaptive mechanisms—from callus-producing mechanisms to large brains—that define human nature."

"In the beginning was simplicity. It is difficult enough explaining how even a simple universe began. I take it as agreed that it would be even harder to explain the sudden springing up, fully armed, of complex order—life, or a being capable of creating life. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows us away in which simplicity could change into complexity, how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people. Darwin provides a solution, the only feasible one so far suggested, to the deep problem of our existence. I will try to explain the great theory in a more general way than is customary, beginning with the time before evolution itself began."

"What made Darwin’s insight so radical was its reliance upon a natural mechanism to explain the development of species. And intelligent Creator was not required for natural selection to operate. Darwin’s vision was of a dynamic, self-generating process of material change. That process was entirely arbitrary, governed by physical laws and chance."

"Natural selection was a brilliant concept, but like many brilliant concepts it assaulted long-cherished ideas and beliefs. It threatened the notion that human beings were a separate and extraordinary species, differing from every other animal on the planet. Taken to its logical conclusion, it demolished the idea that people had been created in God’s image."

"The phrase “common descent with modification” sums up the process of evolution because it means that, as descent occurs from common ancestors, so do modifications that cause organisms to be adapted to the environment. Through many observations and experiments, Charles Darwin came to the conclusion that natural selection was the process that made modification—that is, adaptation—possible."

"Natural selection tends to sculpt a species to fit its environment and lifestyle and can create new species from existing ones. The end result is the diversity of life classified into the three domains of life."

"Тhе сепtгаl роіпt геmаіпs that Darwin provided a theory which predicts that organisms should have parts adapted to ensure their survival and . This has led to the suggestion that life should be defined by the possession of those properties which are needed to ensure evolution by natural selection. That is, entities with the properties of multiplication, variation, and are alive, and entities lacking one or more of those properties are not."

"Here we are after a couple million years of natural selection has produced a race that overpopulates and makes war and dominates and rapes, and you want to know about wisdom! Natural selection doesn’t select for wisdom!"

"Natural selection. So much of bird life and behaviour—from the bright colours, to the hypnotic or downright peculiar meeting displays, to the songs—revolves around their need to procreate, to demonstrate the fitness of their genes."

"Humanity should study the foundations of heredity. But this will be possible only when science is liberated from superstition and limitation. Many accumulations have piled up on man. Heredity of one’s personal incarnations, heredity of the clan, heredity of one’s people, supermundane heredity, and also the many influences of accidental encounters, which imprint themselves on the psychic nature and change it. Indeed, scientists of limited mind can observe heredity only within the context of the family; in other words, within the most narrow limitations. They occasionally do observe those inherited traits that may appear even after several generations. But they cannot make the more sensitive observations, because they do not believe in reincarnation or in the Supermundane World. It is impossible to properly observe man within these narrow, ignorant limitations, but one may hope that science will free itself and will achieve true insights... The Thinker reminded, “Liberate science, hasten to remove its fetters.” (929)"

"Forms transmit their peculiarities to other forms that proceed from them, these other forms being part of their own substance, separated off to lead an independent existence. By fission, by budding, by extrusion of germs, by development of the offspring within the maternal womb, a physical continuity is preserved, every new form being derived from a preceding form and reproducing its characteristics. Science groups these facts under the name of the law of heredity, and its observations on the transmission of form are worthy of attention, and are illuminative of the workings of Nature in the phenomenal world. But it must be remembered that it applies only to the building of the physical body, into which enter the materials provided by the parents. Her more hidden workings, those workings of life without which form could not be, have received no attention, not being susceptible of physical observation, and this gap can only be filled by the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, given by Those who of old used superphysical powers of observation, and verifiable gradually by every pupil who studies patiently in Their schools."

"Modern science is proving more and more clearly that heredity plays an ever-decreasing part in the evolution of the higher creatures, that mental and moral qualities are not transmitted from parents to offspring, and that the higher qualities the more patent is this fact ‘ the child of the genius is oft-times a dolt; commonplace parents give birth to a genius."

"I don't think I was constructed to be monogamous. I don't think it's the nature of any man to be monogamous. Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed."

"All the biology that Dawkins tries to present as modern biology is no such thing... the idea of the selfish gene is an idea against biochemistry, against genetics which tells us that the DNA does not replicate itself, that it's not divided by itself, that it's divided by enzymes, that you have to take into account not only the genome; you also have to take into account the -ome, a whole system in which we can distinguish but not separate the different elements. That's why Dawkins has been so successful; science fiction is sold much better than scientific works."

"It is an article of passionate faith among 'politically correct' biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway."

"Genes embody knowledge about their niches. Everything of fundamental significance about the phenomenon of life depends on this property, and not on replication per se."

"Our sex is ultimately laid down by our genes."

"I would be quite proud to have served on the committee that designed the E. coli genome. There is, however, no way that I would admit to serving on a committee that designed the human genome. Not even a university committee could botch something that badly."

"The onion test is a simple reality check for anyone who thinks they can assign a function to every nucleotide in the human genome. Whatever your proposed functions are, ask yourself this question: Why does an onion need a genome that is about five times larger than ours?"

"Most Americans still believe that there is some biological legitimacy to our socially constructed racial categories. However, our modern scientific understanding of human genetic diversity flies in the face of all of our social stereotypes."

"In this unexpected scenario, the UFO occupants -- despite their obvious technological superiority -- are desperate for both human genetic material and the ability to feel human emotions -- particularly maternal emotions. Unlikely though it may seem, it is possible that the very survival of these extraterrestrials depends upon their success in absorbing chemical and psychological properties received from human abductees."

"Naomi Hunter: Each person is born with their fate written into their own genetic code... it's unchangeable, immutable... But that's not all there is to life. I finally realized that. I told you before. The reason that I was interested in genes and DNA. Because I wanted to know who I was... where I came from. I thought that if I analyzed my DNA I could find out who I was, who my parents were. And I thought that if I knew that, then I'd know what path I should take in life. But I was wrong. I didn't find anything. I didn't learn anything. Just like with the Genome Soldiers... you can input all the genetic information, but that doesn't make them into the strongest soldiers. The most we can say about DNA is that it governs a person's potential strengths... potential destiny. You mustn't allow yourself to be chained to fate... to be ruled by your genes. Humans can choose the type of life they want to live."

"A question commonly posed by clinicians, families and patients alike is, how do genes work in influencing risk for eating disorders? The lay conception of genetics tends to over-emphasize the deterministic aspect of genetic risk. Modeled after Mendelian inheritance one gene-one disorder examples (e.g. Huntington's), the misperception emerges that there is one gene for anorexia nervosa and if you have that gene you are destined to develop the condition. Clinicians are well-positioned to dispel these myths and offer more realistic albeit complicated explanations for complex inheritance patterns. By definition, eating disorders are complex traits. That means that their inheritance pattern in families does not follow traditional Mendelian patterns, and that they are influenced by multiple genetic and environmental factors of small to moderate effect. There is not one gene for anorexia nervosa or one gene for bulimia nervosa. More likely there are a number of genes that code for proteins that influence traits that index vulnerability to these disorders. Complicating the risk picture even further, these genes exist in concert with other genetic factors that may confer protection against eating disorders, along with main effects of risk and protective environments, as well as gene x environment interplay as we discuss in the following section."

"One prong in the approach to incorporating genetics into clinical work focuses on the parents of individuals with eating disorders. Whether the parents are involved in parent training, traditional family therapy, or other types of supportive interventions, they can be educated about genetic factors influencing eating disorders. A sensitive explanation that incorporates knowledge about complex genetic etiology (not the one gene-one disease model) and about how genes and environment interact can serve to relieve guilt in parents who have been blamed for creating the illness in their offspring (or alternatively erroneously assumed that their parenting was to blame). A genetic and biological explanation can help parents understand that their child’s resistance is not just stubbornness or deviousness, but that in his or her recovery, their child is fighting an uphill battle against his or her biology. This knowledge can empower parents to understand and can decrease frustration. Care should be taken that parents do not transform this knowledge into a new form of guilt (i.e., feeling guilty for passing on risk genes), as the roll of the genetic dice is one thing over which we have no control. Likewise, care should be taken not to allow the genetic information to impart complete absolution on parents, as parenting can always improve and positive parenting changes should also be prescribed as part of treatment."

"Patients read enormous amounts about their illness and are often aware of the genetic research on eating disorders yet they struggle to understand what the data mean for them and the challenges they face every day during recovery. Helping patients to understand the genetic literature is a first step. Although they might not initially see its relevance to their situation, helping them map how disordered eating and temperamental traits track in their families by using techniques such as labeling family trees can provide a useful context for understanding genetic and environmental contributions to their current situation. An understanding of genetic and environmental interplay can provide them with an explanatory model for not only their illness, but also for understanding their sensitivity to the environment. It can help provide them with the motivation to acquire skills that may help buffer them from the environment and combat their biology most effectively."

"Although several decades ago there was significant debate about the influence of “nature” versus “nurture” on the development of psychological traits and outcomes, it is now generally accepted that both genes and environment interact to influence personality and behavior. However, in the clinical setting, genetic influences on clients’ presentation of their personal histories, including characteristics of their family-of-origin environment, their perceptions of stressful life events, and their experiences within their social network, are not generally viewed from a genetic-epidemiological perspective."

"Jerome: For the genetically superior, success is easier to attain but is by no means guaranteed."

"The X-men are frequently referred to as the “next step” in human evolution (X-Men: First Class 2011; Gresh and Weinberg 2002, 133). According to Darwin, in order for evolution to occur, an individual must exhibit a variation that makes it better suited to its environment and then that variation must be selected for and passed down to future generations. When that variation has accumulated throughout the species, the species is considered to have evolved. Playing by Darwin’s rules, then, in order for the X-men to be the “next step” in human evolution, they must have a variation, that variation must prove useful in their environment, and that variation must be passed down to offspring. The genetic variation that the X-men have is called the x-gene; presumably the same gene, shared among the X-men but not among normal humans. There are huge problems with this, not the least of which is that an identical gene has appeared simultaneously in individuals who otherwise share very few genes. Furthermore, while Richard Dawkins, celebrated author of The Selfish Gene and authority on genetics, talks at length in about genes for various physical traits and sets of genes for various behaviors, he never once in his body of work mentions the possibility of a gene that has the same protein structure in each individual, but manifests itself in each individual in a radically different way. There is a gene for blue eyes and a gene for brown eyes, but the blue-eye gene will never produce brown eyes. Yet the x-gene is capable of producing invisibility, scales, telepathy, and wings, all with the same protein structure. Even epigenetics, which can account for different physiological manifestations of the same genetic code, cannot produce such a wide variety of traits."

"For the reader who isn't convinced that writing a book (no matter how highly acclaimed) makes up for exterminating a race, Card offers an alternative, albeit rather contradictory, excuse for his genocide's actions -- genetic determinism. Although this "science" has been shown to represent such an oversimplification that it's a downright distortion, Card makes it the foundation of the biology of his universe. From the very beginning, authorities can breed geniuses more easily than you or I could establish a strain of purebred blue budgies, and never mind that breeding for color and size involves at most a few genes, while breeding for intelligence would require a total understanding of the complicated interactions between whole chromosomes. In Card's strange world, children can inherit advanced qualities like a talent for xenobiology -- a bizarre combination of genetic determinism and Lamarckianism since these characteristics were presumably artificially acquired at some point in the past. (Or does Card imagine that there is literally a gene for xenobiological talent that we can breed for? How could such a thing evolve? Surely our genes would have to be macroscopic to carry all the information he assumes they do.) In any case, his pseudo-science serves primarily as an excuse for ugly actions running the gamut from genocide to vivisection."

"The attitudes vary between countries, there are numerous texts for various types of biobanks, the same texts raise different interpretations in different institutions, there are new ethical opinions expressed, and mainly the novelty of questions raised by the uses of samples that are possible today, especially in genetics, and were not foreseeable at the time of sampling make the field difficult in practice."

"There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification... I'm always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn't... We're very closely related."

"I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years."

"Liquid Snake: In nature, family members don't mate with each other. And yet they help each other to survive. Do you know why? It increases the chance that their genes will be passed on to a new generation. Altruism among blood relatives is a response to natural selection. It's called the Selfish Gene Theory."

"DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead -- a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia."

"Foods are digested in the human body to glucose, fatty acids, amino acids, and so on. These are used to produce energy to work and synthesize biomolecules, such as protein, nucleic acids, carbohydrate, and lipids. These changes are performed in cells and called metabolism. The metabolic pathways are composed of chemical reactions, which are catalyzed by enzyme."

"Mendelian genetics was a rather abstract subject, since no one knew what genes were actually made of, or how they operated. The first great leap forward came when biochemists demonstrated that each step in a biochemical pathway was determined by a single gene. Each biosynthetic reaction is carried out by a specific protein known as an enzyme. Each enzyme has the ability to mediate one particular chemical reaction and so the one gene—one enzyme model of genetics (Fig. 1.02) was put forward by G. W. Beadle and E. L. Tatum, who won a Nobel prize for this scheme in 1958. Since then, a variety of exceptions to this simple scheme have been found. For example,some complex enzymes consist of multiple subunits, each of which requires a separate gene."

"Group selection isn’t widely accepted by evolutionists for several reasons. First, it’s not an efficient way to select for traits, like altruistic behavior, that are supposed to be detrimental to the individual but good for the group. Groups divide to form other groups much less often than organisms reproduce to form other organisms, so group selection for altruism would be unlikely to override the tendency of each group to quickly lose its altruists through natural selection favoring cheaters. Further, little evidence exists that selection on groups has promoted the evolution of any trait. Finally, other, more plausible evolutionary forces, like direct selection on individuals for reciprocal support, could have made humans prosocial. These reasons explain why only a few biologists, like [[David Sloan Wilson|[David Sloan] Wilson]] and E. O. Wilson (no relation), advocate group selection as the evolutionary source of cooperation"

"I will argue that group selection is important, contrary to the prevailing dogma among biologists. If group selection is important, Prisoner's Dilemma is not a good model for evolution. It is still an amusing toy for mathematicians and game-theorists to play with."

"I do not believe the fashionable dogma. Here is my argument to show that group selection is important. Imagine Alice and Bob to be two dodoes on the island of Mauritius before the arrival of human predators. Alice has superior individual fitness and has produced many grandchildren. Bob is individually unfit and unfertile. Then the predators arrive with their guns and massacre the progeny indiscriminately. The fitness of Alice and Bob is reduced to zero because their species made a bad choice long ago, putting on weight and forgetting how to fly. I do not take the Prisoner’s Dilemma seriously as a model of evolution of cooperation, because I consider it likely that groups lacking cooperation are like dodoes, losing the battle for survival collectively rather than individually."

"The keystone of the new social structure, the pivotal factor of advancing civilization, the guide of the new religion, is biology; for man is an animal, and his characteristics, his requirements, and his reactions can be recorded and studied quite as carefully and precisely as those of any other animal."

"Speaking of rhetoric, there should be an editorial rule that sentences associated with sociobiology, with efforts to "justify slavery, imperialism, racism, genocide, and to oppose equal rights or ERA" [a quote from S.L. Washburn] should always appear next to sentences associating environmentalist/learning theory, with efforts to justify propaganda, psychological terror, false advertisement, public indoctrination of hatred of foreigners, class enemies, minority groups, and so on and so on. Juxtaposing sociobiology and learning theory in this manner ought to show how unproductive it is to claim through innuendo or otherwise that science will lead to pseudoscience, will lead to man's inhumanity to man: ergo no science. Actually, one could argue that since man is such a cultural/learning animal we should have greater fear of learning theory since learning has far more power over man's behavior than genes. More specifically, if humans were not such learning animals, they would not learn all that Galton trash: ergo stop learning research so that bad guys will not use the data to teach the trash more effectively."

"I believe that human preferences came to be what they are in those millions of years in which our ancestors (whether or not they can be classified as human) lived in hunting bands and were those preferences which, in such conditions, were conducive to survival. It may be, therefore, that ultimately the work of sociobiologists (and their critics) will enable us to construct a picture of human nature in such detail that we can derive the set of preferences with which economists start. And if this result is achieved, it will enable us to refine our analysis of consumer demand and of other kinds of behaviour in the economics sphere."

"Even God cannot make two times two not make four."

"Thus perhaps the chief error of contemporary ‘sociobiology’ is to suppose that language, morals, law, and such like, are transmitted by the ‘genetic’ processes that molecular biology is now illuminating, rather than being the products of selective evolution transmitted by imitative learning. This idea is as wrong - although at the other end of the spectrum - as the notion that man consciously invented or designed institutions like morals, law, language or money, and thus can improve them at will, a notion that is a remnant of the superstition that evolutionary theory in biology had to combat: namely, that wherever we find order there must have been a personal orderer. Here again we find that an accurate account lies between instinct and reason."

"Sociobiology reduces the human to the animal instead of observing how the animal becomes human."

"There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens."

"Wilson clearly laid down a radical biosociological research programme, claiming that sociology should be reduced to biology. This idea has profoundly influenced sociobiology and its reception in the larger public. Because of his claims to 'biologicize' culture and even ethics and the changes in evolutionary biology, which he at least co-provoked, sociobiology was soon singled out for criticism. But this challenge to other subject areas also inspired interesting new theories for instance in psychology or in philosophy."

"I know of no other way that human nature can have developed except by evolution, and there is now overwhelming evidence that there is no other way for evolution to work except by competitive reproduction. Those strains that reproduce persist; those that do not reproduce die out."

"Everything can be inherited except sterility. None of your direct ancestors died childless. Consequently, if we are to understand how human nature evolved, the very core of our inquiry must be reproduction, for reproductive success is the examination that all human genes must pass if they are not to be squeezed out by natural selection. Hence I am going to argue that there are very few features of the human psyche and nature that can be understand without reference to reproduction. I begin with sexuality itself."

"Reproducing sexually must improve an individual’s reproductive success or else sex would not persist. It is increasingly hard to understand how human beings came to be so clever without considering sexual competition."

"The idea that we were designed by our past was the principal insight of Charles Darwin. He was the first to realize that you can abandon divine creation of species without abandoning the argument from design. Every living thing is “designed” quite unconsciously by the selective reproduction of its own ancestors to suit a particular life-style."

"The study of human nature must have profound implications for the study of history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and politics. Each of those disciplines is an attempt to understand human behavior, and if the underlying universals of human behavior are the product of evolution, then it is vitally important to understand what the evolutionary pressures were."

"I have gradually come to realize that almost all of social science proceeds as if 1859, the year of the publication of the Origin of Species, had never happened; it does so quite deliberately, for it insists that human culture is a product of our own free will and invention. Society is not the product of human psychology, it asserts, but vice versa. That sounds reasonable enough, and it would be splendid for those who believe in social engineering if it were true, but is is simply not true."

"We assume, and rightly that a Russian is just as human after two generations of oppressive totalitarianism as his grandfather was before him. But why, then, does social science proceed as if it were not the case, as if people’s natures are the products of their societies?"

"There is, therefore, such a thing as a universal human nature, common to all people."

"Just as human nature is the same everywhere, so it is recognizably the same as it was in the past."

"In behavior, as in appearance, every human individual is unique."

"It is no harder to explain than a game of cards. There are aces and kings and twos and threes in any deck of cards. A lucky player is dealt a high-scoring hand, but none of his cards is unique. Elsewhere in the room are others with the same kinds of cards in their hands. But even with just thirteen kinds of cards, every hand is different and some are spectacularly better than others. Sex is merely the dealer, generating unique hands from the same monotonous deck of genetic cards shared by the whole species."

"People are attracted to people of high reproductive and genetic potential—the healthy, the fit, and the powerful. The consequences of this fact, which goes under the name of sexual selection, are bizarre in the extreme."

"When a neo-Darwinian asks, “Why?” he is really asking “How did this come about?” He is a historian."

"One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counterinvention. Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow. Every hegemony comes to an end. Evolutionary history is no different."

"In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages did a century ago."

"Breeding, in sexual species, consists of finding an appropriate partner and persuading it to part with a package of genes. This goal is so central to life that it has influenced the design not only of the body but of the psyche. Simply put, anything that increases reproductive success will spread at the expense of anything that does not—even if it threatens survival."

"The more competitive nature of men is a consequence of sexual selection. Men have evolved to live dangerously because success in competition or battle used to lead to more or better sexual conquests and more surviving children. Women who live dangerously merely put at risk those children they already have. Likewise, the intimate connection between female beauty and female reproductive potential (beautiful women are almost by definition young and healthy; compared with older women, they are therefore both more fertile and have a longer reproductive life ahead of them) is a consequence of sexual selection acting on both men’s psyches and women’s bodies. Each sex shapes the other. Women have hourglass-shaped bodies because men have preferred them that way. Men have an aggressive nature because women have preferred them that way (or have allowed aggressive men to defeat other men in contests over women—it amounts to the same thing)."

"Below the surface of every banality and cliché there lies irony, cynicism, and profundity."

"I asked John Maynard Smith, one of the first people to pose the question “Why sex?,” whether he still thought some new explanation was needed. “No. We have the answers. We cannot agree on them, that is all.”"

"Sex is recombination plus outcrossing; their mixing of genes is its principal feature….So sex equals genetic mixing."

"Evolution is something that happens to organisms. It is a directionless process that sometimes make’s an animal’s descendants more complicated, sometimes simpler, and sometimes changes them not at all. We are so steeped in notions of progress and self-improvement that we find it strangely hard to accept this. But nobody has told the coelacanth, a fish that lives off Madagascar and looks exactly like its ancestors of 300 million years ago, that it has broken some law by not “evolving.”"

"Evolving is not a goal but a means to solving a problem."

"Psychologists sometimes wonder why people are endowed with the ability to learn the part of Hamlet or understand calculus when neither skill was of much use to mankind in the primitive conditions where his intellect was shaped. Einstein would probably have been as hopeless as anybody in working out how to catch a woolly rhinoceros. Nicholas Humphrey, a Cambridge psychologist, was the first to see clearly the solution to this puzzle. We use our intellects not to solve practical problems, but to outwit each other. Deceiving people, detecting deceit, understanding people’s motives, manipulating people—these are what the intellect is used for. So what matters is not how clever and crafty you are, but how much cleverer and craftier than other people. The value of intellect is infinite. Selection within the species is always going to be more important than selection between the species."

"But as we shall see, the appearance is misleading. Animal altruism is a myth. Even in the most spectacular cases of selflessness it turns out that animals are serving the selfies interests of their own genes—if sometimes being careless with their bodies."

"The things that kill animals or prevent them from reproducing are only rarely physical factors. Far more often other creatures are involved—parasites, predators, and competitors."

"Parasites provide exactly the incentive to change genes every generation that sex seems to demand. The success of the genes that defended you so well in the last generation may be the best of reasons to abandon the same gene combinations in the next. By the time the next generation comes around, the parasites will have surely evolved an answer to the defense that worked best in the last generation. It is a bit like sport. In chess or in football, the tactic that proves most effective is soon the one that people learn easily to block. Every innovation in attack is soon countered by another in defense."

"Computer viruses have since become a worldwide problem. It begins to look as if parasites are inevitable in any system of life."

"He (Thomas Ray) had discovered that the notion of a host-parasite arms race is one of the most basic and unavoidable consequences of evolution."

"The longer your generation time, the more genetic mixing you need to combat your parasites."

"Parasites invent new keys; hosts change the locks. There is an obvious group-selectionist argument here for sex: At any one time a sexual species will have lots of different locks; members of an asexual one will all have the same locks. So the parasite with the right key will quickly exterminate the asexual species but not the sexual one. Hence the well-known fact: By turning our fields over to monocultures of increasingly inbred strains of wheat and maize, we are inviting the very epidemics of disease that can only be fought by the pesticides we are forced to use in ever larger quantities."

"Sex keeps the parasite guessing."

"A gene is by definition the descendant of a gene that was good at getting into future generations."

"Wherever you look in the historical record, the elites favored sons more than other classes….Lower down the social scale, daughters are preferred even today."

"The process of choosing somebody to have sex with, which used to be known as falling in love, is mysterious, cerebral, and highly selective."

"The sex that invests the least has time to spare to seek other mates. Therefore, broadly speaking, males invest less and seek quantity of mates, while females invest more and seek quality of mates."

"In species where the females get nothing useful from their mates, they seem to choose on aesthetic criteria alone."

"Sexual selection theory suggests that much of the behavior and some of the appearance of an animal is adapted not to help it survive but to help it to acquire the best or the most mates."

"Females choose; their choosiness is inherited; they prefer exaggerated ornaments; exaggerated ornaments are a burden to males. That much is now uncontroversial. Thus far Darwin was right."

"It is hardly surprising to find that the males best at seduction tend to be the best at other things as well; it does not prove that females are seeking good genes for their offspring."

"Advertising works. Brand names are better known if they are advertised with sexy or alluring pictures, and better-known brands sell better. Why does it work? Because the price the consumer would have to pay in ignoring the subliminal message is just too high. It is better to be fooled into buying the second-best ice cream than go to the bother of educating yourself to resist the salesmanship."

"As every bird-watcher knows, the beauty of a bird’s song is inversely correlated with the colorfulness of its plumage."

"Such “habituation” is just a property of the way brains work; our senses, and those of grackles, notice novelty and change, not steady states. The female preference did not evolve: it just is that way."

"If females have an existing aesthetic preference, it is only logical that males will evolve to exploit that preference."

"Human beings are a product of evolution as much as any slime mold, and the revolution of the last two decades in the way scientists now think about evolution has immense implications for mankind as will. To summarize the argument so far, evolution is more about reproduction of the fittest than survival of the fittest; every creature on earth is the product of a series of historical battles between parasites and hosts, between genes and other genes, between members of the same species, between members of one gender in competitions for members of the other gender. Those battles include psychological ones, to manipulate and exploit other members of the species; they are never won, for success in one generation only ensures that the foes of the next generation are fitter to fight harder. Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster toward a finish line that is merely the start of the next race."

"There is no nature that exists devoid of nurture; there is no nurture that develops without nature. To say otherwise is like saying that the area of a field is determined by its length but not its width. Every behavior is the product of an instinct trained by experience."

"The fifth method (that is, of analyzing human mating systems) is to compare mankind with other animals that share our highly social habits: with colonial birds, monkeys, and dolphins. As we shall see, the lesson they teach is that we are designed for a system of monogamy plagued by adultery."

"Humanity shares this profile of ardent, polygamist males and coy, faithful females with about 99 percent of all animal species, including our closest relatives, the apes."

"And in the matter of seduction itself, once more it is the male who is expected to make the first move. Women may flirt, but men pounce."

"Women cannot increase their fecundity by taking more mates; men can."

"In any case, no moral conclusions of any kind can be drawn from evolution."

"I am trying to describe the nature of humans, not prescribe their morality. That something is natural does not make it right."

"Nature is not inflexible but malleable. Moreover, the most natural thing of all about evolution is that some natures will be pitted against others. Evolution does not lead to Utopia. It leads to a land in which what is best for a man may be the worst for another man, or what is best for a woman may be the worst for a man."

"And even where I am wrong about human nature, I am not wrong that there is such a nature to be sought."

"The technological problems of suburban life may be a million miles from those of the Pleistocene savanna, but the human ones are not."

"Power seeking is characteristic of all social mammals."

"If reproduction has been the reward and goal of power and wealth, then it is little wonder that it has also been a frequent cause and rewarding of violence."

"Monogamy, enforced by law, religion, or sanction, does seem to reduce murderous competition between men."

"One of the legacies of being an ape is intergroup violence."

"By describing adultery as a force that shaped our mating system, I am not “justifying” it. Nothing is more “natural” than people evolving the tendency to object to being cuckolded or cheated on, so if my analysis were to be interpreted as justifying adultery, it would be even more obviously interpreted as justifying the social and legal mechanisms for discouraging adultery. What I am claiming is that adultery and its disapproval are both “natural.”"

"Jealousy is a “human universal,” and no culture lacks it, Despite the best efforts of anthropologists to find a society with no jealousy and so prove that it is an emotion introduced by pernicious social pressure or pathology, sexual jealousy seems to be an unavoidable part of being a human being."

"Wealth and power are means to women; women are means to genetic eternity….Men are to be exploited as providers of parental care, wealth, and genes. Cynical? Not half as cynical as most accounts of human history."

"Men and women have different bodies. The differences are the direct result of evolution. Women’s bodies evolved to suit the demands of bearing and rearing children and of gathering plant food. Men’s bodies evolved to suit the demands of rising in a male hierarchy, fighting over women, and providing meat to a family. Men and women have different minds. The differences are the direct result of evolution. Women’s minds evolved to suit the demands of bearing and rearing children and of gathering plant food. Men’s minds evolved to suit the demands of rising in a male hierarchy, fighting over women, and providing meat to a family. The first paragraph is banal; the second inflammatory. The proposition that men and women have evolved different minds is anathema to every social scientist and politically correct individual. Yet I believe it to be true for two reasons. First, the logic is impeccable….Second, the evidence is overwhelming."

"These concerns (that is, about differences being used to justify unequal treatment) are fair. But just because people have exaggerated sexual differences in the past does not mean they cannot exist. There is no a priori reason for assuming that men and women have identical minds and no amount of wishing it were so will make it so if it is not so. Difference is not inequality."

"We give boys tractors and girls dolls. We are reinforcing the stereotypical obsessions that they already have, but we are not creating them. This is something every parent knows. Despairingly they watch their son turns every stick into a sword or gun, while their daughter cuddles even the most inanimate object as if it were a doll."

"These facts have been first disputed and then actively suppressed by the educational establishment, which continues to insist that there are no differences in learning ability between boys and girls."

"There is a contradiction at the heart of feminism, one that few feminists have acknowledged. You cannot say, first, that men and women are equally capable of all jobs and, second, that if jobs were done by women, they would be done differently."

"Differences cannot be appealed to when they suit and denied when they do not."

"Without this evolutionary history in mind, it is impossible to explain the different sexual mentalities of men and women."

"Anthropology consists of studying the differences between peoples. But this has led anthropologists to exaggerate the motes of racial difference and to ignore the beams of similarity."

"The stuff of anthropology—the traditions, the myths, the crafts, the language, the rituals—is to me but the froth on the surface. Beneath lie giant themes of humanity that are the same everywhere and that are characteristically male and female. To a Martian an anthropologist studying the differences between races would seem like a farmer studying the differences between each of the wheat plants in his field. The Martian is much more interested in the typical wheat plant. It is the human universals, not the differences, that are truly intriguing."

"Wishful thinking that they are the same will be mere propaganda and no favor to either sex."

"Beauty is not arbitrary."

"Morality is never based upon nature."

"In the 1970s a few brave “sociobiologists” began to ask why, if other animals had evolved natures, humans would be exempt. They were vilified by the social science establishment and told to go back to ant-watching. Yet the question they had asked has not gone away. The principal reason for the hostility to sociobiology was that it seem to justify prejudice. This was simply a confusion. Genetic theories of racism, or classism or any kind of ism, have nothing in common with the notion that there is a universal, instinctive human nature. Indeed, they are fundamentally opposed because one believes in universals and the other in racial or class particulars."

"Sexual selection, as we have seen, is very different from natural selection in its effects, for it does not solve survival problems, it makes them worse."

"And I end with one of the strangest of the consequences of sex: that the choosiness of human beings in picking their mates has driven the human mind into a history of frenzied expansion for no reason except that wit, virtuosity, inventiveness, and individuality turn other people on. It is a somewhat less uplifting perspective on the purpose of humanity than the religious one, but it is also rather liberating. Be different."

"The Western cultural revolution that calls itself political correctness will no doubt stifle inquiries it does not like, such as those into the mental differences between men and women. I sometimes feel that we are fated never to understand ourselves because part of our nature is to turn every inquiry into an expression of our own nature: ambitious, illogical, manipulative, and religious."

"Nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically. … That look between animal and man, which may have played a crucial role in the development of human society, and with which, in any case, all men had always lived until less than a century ago, has been extinguished. Looking at each animal, the unaccompanied zoo visitor is alone."

"The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo."

"The directory of animals in the zoo ranges all the way from aardvark to zebra."

"I knew the ribosome was going to be the focus of Nobel prizes. It stands at the crossroads of biology, between the gene and what comes out of the gene. But I had convinced myself I was not going to be a winner."

"The ABC model was popularized in a review in Nature published later in 1991 by the senior author and Enrico Coen, whose group had been making parallel new findings of similar homeotic mutants in snapdragon. [...] The ABC model is still widely used as a framework for understanding floral development today."

"Two general conclusions can be reached from the comparison of flower development genes in two distantly related species. The first is that the basic mechanisms that define organ identity in developing flowers appear to be the same in both species. Genes exist whose mutants have similar phenotypes and similar interactions, and a single model can explain the action of these genes in both species."

"Perhaps it was Goethe's breadth of mind, his desire to understand the underlying unity of nature without too much concern for experimental details, that led him to this remarkable insight. [...] His clear appreciation of the significance of abnormalities was certainly ahead of its time. Goethe's perspective only came to experimental fruition in the twentieth century, as mutations affecting development stated to be investigated in detail. The unraveling of the abc model is a good example of how the outlook underwent a change."

"...we may equally well say that a stamen is a contracted petal, as that a petal is a stamen in a state of expansion; or that a sepal is a contracted stem leaf approaching a certain stage of refinement, as that a stem leaf is a sepal expanded by the influx of cruder saps."

"Much of our fascination with the data of evo-devo arises from the sheer novelty of discovery in biological domains that had been previously and totally inaccessible. These empirical gems also illustrate, even in these early days, the integrating power of scientific conclusions to translate a previous descriptive chaos into explanatory sensibility. As an example, consider the name given to the truly elegant theory of floral genesis, as developed by students of Arabidopsis, the "Drosophila" of angiosperm biology—the ABC Model (Coen and Meyerowitz, 1991; Weigel and Meyerowitz, 1994; Jurgens, 1997; Busch, Bomblies, and Weigel, 1999; Wagner, Sablowski, and Meyerowitz, 1999). In this elegantly simple model (see Fig. 10-12), based on genes with homeotic effects upon serially repeated structures arranged in systematic order (with repetition in concentric whorls rather than linearly along a body axis), A genes operating alone determine the form of the outermost whorl of leaf-like sepals; A plus B genes regulate petals in the next whorl within; B plus C genes mark the male stamens, while C genes working alone determine the most interior female carpels. Moreover, leafy, a "higher control" gene previously recognized as an initiator or suppressor of floral growth and placement in general (Weigel and Nilsson, 1995), apparently also regulates the more specific operation of the ABC series. (Busch et al., 1999, demonstrate that a protein produced by leafy bonds directly to a particular DNA segment of a C gene responsible for the generation of carpels.)"

"The evidence already discussed stresses the role played by the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi complex in the production and processing of secretory proteins. The stress put on secretion leads, however, to an apparent impasse. Since every eukaryotic cell possesses both an endoplasmic reticulum and a Golgi complex, it follows that all eukaryotic cells secrete proteins or that the organs of the secretory pathway have additional, perhaps more general and more important functions than secretion, which have been ignored or are still unknown."

"The evidence already discussed stresses the role played by the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi complex in the production and processing of secretory proteins. The stress put on secretion leads, however, to an apparent impasse. Since every eukaryotic cell possesses both an endoplasmic reticulum and a Golgi complex, it follows that all eukaryotic cells secrete proteins or that the organs of the secretory pathway have additional, perhaps more general and more important functions than secretion, which have been ignored or are still unknown."

"In summary, I have tried here to develop the view of retroviruses as one of a number of solutions to the problem of creating a virus. Each virus directs synthesis of two critical classes of proteins: proteins for replication and proteins for constructing the virus particle. By encoding the reverse transcriptase, retroviruses have evolved the ability to integrate themselves into the cell chromosome as a provirus. This is a very sheltered environment in which to live, only mutation interferes with the continual transmission of the virus to the progeny of an animal that is infected in its germ cells. In this context, the ability of some retroviruses to cause cancer is a gratuitous one. But it is today the most challenging and important attribute of these retroviruses and the one that will dominate future research efforts in this area."

"Use of restriction enzymes and recombinant DNA methods allowed resolution of a long standing and central issue in immunology, the genetic origin of antibody diversity. It turned out that an organism does not inherit even a single complete gene for antibody polypeptide chains. Rather, the genetic information is transmitted in germline as no more than several hundred gene segments."

"It is not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life."

"Indeed, in its endeavour to explain and predict particular events, which it does so successfully in the case of relatively simple phenomena (or where it can at least approximately isolate ‘closed systems’ that are relatively simple), science encounters the same barrier of factual ignorance when it comes to apply its theories to very complex phenomena. In some fields it has developed important theories which give us much insight into the general character of some phenomena, but will never produce predictions of particular events, or a full explanation—simply because we can never know all the particular facts which according to these theories we would have to know in order to arrive at such concrete conclusions. The best example of this is the Darwinian (or Neo-Darwinian) theory of the evolution of biological organisms. If it were possible to ascertain the particular facts of the past which operated on the selection of the particular forms that emerged, it would provide a complete explanation of the structure of the existing organisms; and similarly, if it were possible to ascertain all the particular facts which will operate on them during some future period, it ought to enable us to predict future development. But, of course, we will never be able to do either, because science has no means of ascertaining all the particular facts that it would have to possess to perform such a feat."

"The answer to this question, sketched in the first three chapters, is built upon the old insight, well known to economics, that our values and institutions are determined not simply by preceding causes but as part of a process of unconscious self-organisation of a structure or pattern. This is true not only of economics, but in a wide area, and is well known today in the biological sciences. This insight was only the first of a growing family of theories that account for the formation of complex structures in terms of processes transcending our capacity to observe all the several circumstances operating in the determination of their particular manifestations. When I began my work I felt that I was nearly alone in working on the evolutionary formation of such highly complex self-maintaining orders."

"Competition is a procedure of discovery, a procedure involved in all evolution, that led man unwittingly to respond to novel situations; and through further competition, not through agreement, we gradually increase our efficiency."

"My basic criticism of F. A. Hayek’s profound interpretation of modern history and his diagnoses for improvement is directed at his apparent belief or faith that social evolution will, in fact, insure the survival of efficient institutional forms. Hayek is so distrustful of man’s explicit attempts at reforming institutions that he accepts uncritically the evolutionary alternative. We may share much of Hayek’s skepticism about social and institutional reform, however, without elevating the evolutionary process to an ideal role. Reform may, indeed, be difficult, but this is no argument that its alternative is ideal."

"Hayek’s writings on cultural evolution are some of his most controversial. Some of the criticisms that have been advanced are:1) that his analysis of the evolutionary process is too pessimistic, leaving little room for attempts to improve the institutional or constitutional setting; 2) that Hayek’s endorsement of group selection as the mechanism by which cultural institutions are selected is inconsistent with his methodological individualism; and 3) that group selection itself has been discredited among biologists on grounds that are germane to its applications in the social sciences."

"By the 1960s Hayek was seeing complex orders everywhere. The orders were created as the result of individual elements following simple rules, and the principles at work could be effectively described using an evolutionary (though not Darwinian) metaphor. In the late 1960s Hayek explicitly added the mechanism of group selection to his description of cultural evolution. In the 1970s Hayek published the three volumes of Law Legislation and Liberty, and rules, orders and cultural evolution were all prominently on display. This was equally true of his last book, The Fatal Conceit, though there were also some new ideas to be found there. That Hayek’s health began deteriorating as this book was put together raises some intriguing interpretive issues."

"Hayek’s thought did not emerge in a vacuum, and part of the goal here, particularly in the early chapters, is to trace the intellectual background of his work. The dominating idea in Hayek’s early life was Darwinian evolutionary theory, stemming from his father’s and grand father’s work in botany and biology. Hayek ended his career with an evolutionary account of the growth of civilization."

"Regarding social order, Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century." He correctly attributes the modern origins of this argument to F.A. Hayek, whose pioneering contributions to cognitive science, the study of cultural evolution, and the dynamics of social change put him in the forefront of the most creative scholars of the 20th century. But Hayek's views about the "spontaneity" of social order remain controversial. In their extreme form, they imply that all deliberate efforts to manipulate social order — social engineering — are doomed to failure because the complex nature of our cultural heritage makes a complete understanding of the human condition impossible. Hayek was certainly correct that we have, at best, a very imperfect understanding of the human landscape, but "spontaneous" it is not. What distinguishes human evolution from the Darwinian model is the intentionality of the players. The mechanism of variation in evolutionary theory (mutation) is not informed by beliefs about eventual consequences. In contrast, human evolution is guided by the perceptions of the players; their choices (decisions) are made in the light of the theories the actors have, which provide expectations about outcomes."

"Hayek’s theory of evolutionary rationality shows how traditions and customs (those surrounding sexual relations, for example) might be reasonable solutions to complex social problems, even when, and especially when, no clear rational grounds can be provided to the individual for obeying them. These customs have been selected by the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of social reproduction, and societies that reject them will soon enter the condition of ‘‘maladaptation,’’ which is the normal prelude to extinction."

"Hayek was influenced by the biological metaphor of evolution (in contrast to Walras, who was inspired by notions in physics of “equilibrium”). Darwin had talked about the survival of the fittest, and Social Darwinism similarly contended that ruthless competition with the survival of the fittest firms would imply ever-increasing efficiency of the economy. Hayek simply took this as an article of faith, but the fact of the matter is that unguided evolutionary processes may, or may not, lead to economic efficiency. Unfortunately, natural selection does not necessarily choose the firms (or institutions) that are best for the long run. One of the main criticisms of financial markets is that they have become increasingly shortsighted. Some of the institutional changes (such as investors’ focus on quarterly returns) have made it more difficult for firms to take longer-run perspectives. In this crisis, some firms complained that they didn’t want to take on as much leverage as they did—they realized the risk—but if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have survived. Their return on equity would have been low, market participants would have misinterpreted the low return as a result of lack of innovativeness and enterprise, and their stock price would have been beaten down. They felt that they had no choice but to follow the herd—with disastrous effects over the long run, both to their shareholders and to the economy."

"Importantly, Hayek is keen to distance himself from the idea that by invoking the idea of cultural evolution he is drawing any strict analogy with the notion of natural selection in biology. […] Hayek, then, is clearly no believer in social Darwinism."

"Love in animals, has not for its only object animals of the same species, but extends itself farther, and comprehends almost every sensible and thinking being. A dog naturally loves a man above his own species, and very commonly meets with a return of affection."

"The boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men."

"It would be quite false to say that competition is the only relation that obtains between species. Mutual dependence is in general quite as important. Each kind exists within an ecosystem, and needs the others to keep the system going. Thus, grazing animals on the African plains co-exist because each specializes in eating some particular kind of plant, and needs the others to keep the whole pasture at a balanced level. They depend, too, on each other's specialized capacities to give warning of danger. … each also depends for survival on innumerable others, such as the insects which pollinate the plants, the fauna of their intestines and of course their predators. It is unthinkable that any species should be an island."

"FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity."

"Any kind of material form whatever, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near, all material form should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”"

"Rahula, whatever internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to, that is, head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces, or whatever else internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to: this is called the internal earth element. Now both the internal earth element and the external earth element are simply earth element. And that should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” When one sees it thus as it actually is with proper wisdom, one becomes disenchanted with the earth element and makes the mind dispassionate towards the earth element."

"But what is meant by “flesh” (σάρξ)? It is not what is corporal or sensual but rather the whole sphere of what is visible, available, disposable, and measurable, and as such the sphere of what is transient. This sphere becomes a power over us insofar as we make it the foundation of our lives by living “according to it,” that is, by succumbing to the temptation to live out of what is visible and disposable instead of out of what is invisible and nondisposable—regardless of whether we give ourselves to the alluring possibilities of such a life imprudently and with desire or whether we lead our lives reflectively and with calculation on the basis of our own accomplishments, “the works of the law.” “Flesh” embraces not only material things but also all of our creating and accomplishing insofar as it is concerned with achieving something demonstrable such as fulfilling the demands of the law (Gal. 3:3); to “flesh” belongs every achieved quality and every advantage that we can have within the sphere of what can be seen and disposed of (Phil. 3:4ff.)."

"From my youth upwards My Spirit walked not with the souls of men, Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes; The thirst of their ambition was not mine, The aim of their existence was not mine; My joys—my griefs—my passions—and my powers, Made me a stranger; though I wore the form, I had no sympathy with breathing flesh."

"All those men and women … who in their body serve the world through the desires of the flesh, the concerns of the world and the cares of this life: They are held captive by the devil, whose children they are, and whose works they do."

"When the spirit is lukewarm, and gradually growing cold as it moves from grace, flesh and blood inevitably seek their own interests. When the soul finds no delight, what is left except for the flesh to look for some? Then the base instinct covers itself with the excuse of necessity, and the mind of the flesh forms the conscience."

"In after ages, when humanity will have regained robust health, when peace will have been once more established between body and soul, and they again live together in primal harmony, it will scarcely be possible for men to comprehend the unnatural enmity Christianity has set between them. Happier and fairer generations, born of free unions, and nurtured in a religion of joy, will smile with pity at their poor ancestors, who passed their lives in melancholy abstinence from all the enjoyments of this beautiful world, and who mortified the warm, rosy-hued flesh till they became mere pale cold ghosts."

"We are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,-through sanctification of the Spirit;” and this sanctification, it is a comfort to know, is a sanctification we may safely confide in; because it is widely different from the self-sanctification, the fleshly holiness, or wilful separation, to which “he that runneth,” and “he that willeth,” addicts himself, in order that the idol self may be magnified and worshipped."

"When speaking of the spiritual nature or the soul, we are referring to that which is “inner” or “new.” When speaking of the bodily nature, or that which is flesh and blood, we are referring to that which is called “sensual,” “outward,” or “old.” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”"

"When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: “Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh."

"Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. ... Following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. ... They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all."

"The natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them with the multitude of the fleshly elements. Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior strength the weight that would pull them down, taught by the guiding lines of right instruction to leap upward from earth and earth-bound things into the ether and the revolving heavens."

"How can you desire flesh, which by nature is devoid of consciousness? The mind you desire cannot be seen or touched; and that which can be is not conscious. Why do you embrace it in vain?"

"There are bitter tears in human flesh."

"What you have eaten, what you have eaten -- it was not bread that you have eaten, it was your flesh that you have eaten!"

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."

"Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit."

"τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος, τὸ δὲ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος ζωὴ καὶ εἰρήνη."

"Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."

"You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”"

"Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other."

"Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."

"All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else."

"For everything in the world&mdash;the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life&mdash;comes not from the Father but from the world."

"Different types of molecules are discussed in relation to their fitness for providing the basis for a molecular phylogeny. Best fit are the "semantides", i.e. the different types of macromolecules that carry the genetic information or a very extensive translation thereof. The fact that more than one coding triplet may code for a given amino acid residue in a polypeptide leads to the notion of "isosemantic substitutions" in genic and messenger polynucleotides. Such substitutions lead to differences in nucleotide sequence that are not expressed by differences in amino acid sequence. Some possible consequences of isosemanticism are discussed"

"A common stone meets with more ready patronage than a man of genius. It may be said to have its social home and proper place of refuge in some Society, expressly established for its discovery, polishing, classification, preservation, &c., and all its numerous claims to notice and learned consideration, are admitted instantly; but Genius is "sui generis," and a homeless outcast by general consent, during the full term of its natural life. Driven through the inhospitable desert of mortality, or tossed upon its bleak and stormy seas, the man of genius finds at length a haven in posterity; and there, after due course of precedence has fulfilled its progressive order, his claim also is gradually admitted: the tenacious world being quite sure that he is dead "as any stone.""

"Because we have to use numbers so much we tend to think of every process as if it must be like the numeral series, where every step, to all eternity, is the same kind of step as the one before. ... There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis—incommensurable with the others—and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey."

"According to the extent to which a spirit is sui generis, the limits of what is permitted&mdash;that is, beneficial to him&mdash;become more and more narrow."

"In the human race, also, the superior specimens, the happy cases of evolution, are the first to perish amid the fluctuations of chances. ... The short duration of beauty, of genius, of the Caesar, is sui generis: such things are not hereditary. The type is inherited, there is nothing extreme or particularly "happy" about a type. ... The higher type is an example of an incomparably greater degree of complexity&mdash;a greater sum of co-ordinated elements: but on this account disintegration becomes a thousand times more threatening. "Genius" is the sublimest machine in existence&mdash;hence it is the most fragile."

"By using genetic engineering, biological researchers have already developed new weapons that are much more effective than their natural counterparts. Countless examples from the daily work of molecular biologists could be presented here, not least the introduction of antibiotic resistance into bacterial pathogens, which today is routine work in almost any microbiology laboratory. Indeed, many research projects in basic science show—sometimes unwillingly and unwittingly—how to overcome current scientific and technological limits in the military use of pathogenic agents. Furthermore, genetic engineering is not merely a theoretical possibility for future biowarfare: it has already been applied in past weapons programmes, particularly in the former Soviet Union. One example is the USSR's 'invisible anthrax', resulting from the introduction of an alien gene into Bacillus anthracis that altered its immunological properties (Pomerantsev et al., 1997). Existing vaccines proved to be ineffective against this new genetically engineered strain."

"Molecular biology and genetic engineering are still in their infancy, and more technical possibilities will arise in the years to come—for military abuse too (Fraser & Dando, 2001). More efficient classical biowarfare agents will probably have only a marginal role, even if the genetically engineered 'superbug' is still routinely featured in newspaper reports. More likely and more alarming are weapons for new types of conflicts and warfare scenarios, namely low-intensity warfare or secret operations, for economic warfare or for sabotage activities. To prevent the hostile exploitation of biology now and forever, a bundle of measures must be taken, from strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention to building an awareness in the scientific community about the possibilities and dangers of abuse. Any kind of biotechnological or biomedical research, development or production must be performed in an internationally transparent and controlled manner. In cases in which military abuse seems to be imminent and likely, alternative ways to pursue the same research goal have to be developed. Furthermore, as we mentioned above with regard to the smallpox genome sequence, it might also be necessary to apply restrictions to certain research and/or publications."

"Can genetic engineers restore a rapid worldwide rise in grainland productivity? This prospect is not promising simply because plant breeders using traditional techniques have largely exploited the genetic potential for increasing the share of photosynthate that goes into seed. Once this is pushed close to its limit, the remaining options tend to be relatively small, clustering around efforts to raise the plant’s tolerance of various stresses, such as drought or soil salinity. One major option left to scientists is to increase the efficiency of the process of photosynthesis itself—something that has thus far remained beyond their reach."

"You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life."

"Transferring genes between utterly unrelated species takes us into the realms that belong to God, and to God alone."

"When scientists began creating adenoviral vectors in the 1980s, most worked with a particular kind of adenovirus called Ad5, which ubiquitously infects humans and causes the common cold. Researchers stripped Ad5 of the genes it needed to replicate and inserted those genes into genetically engineered cell lines. That ensured that the modified viruses could be grown only in these special cells in the lab. It also opened up space in the Ad5 genome for scientists to stitch in new genes of their choosing. Many scientists hoped to use Ad5 to deliver a human gene that could correct rare genetic mutations—an approach called gene therapy. Those efforts came to a grinding halt in 1999 when a teenage boy with a rare genetic liver disease died after receiving an injection of an Ad5-based gene therapy, which had been designed in James Wilson’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania. The large dose of 38 trillion viruses the patient was given sparked massive body-wide inflammation and sent his immune system into overdrive. After that, scientists mostly stopped using adenoviral vectors for gene therapy, in which the dose needs to be high to reach many cells of the body."

"It is difficult to make a general judgement about genetic modification (GM), whether vegetable or animal, medical or agricultural, since these vary greatly among themselves and call for specific considerations. The risks involved are not always due to the techniques used, but rather to their improper or excessive application. Genetic mutations, in fact, have often been, and continue to be, caused by nature itself. Nor are mutations caused by human intervention a modern phenomenon. The domestication of animals, the crossbreeding of species and other older and universally accepted practices can be mentioned as examples. We need but recall that scientific developments in GM cereals began with the observation of natural bacteria which spontaneously modified plant genomes. In nature, however, this process is slow and cannot be compared to the fast pace induced by contemporary technological advances, even when the latter build upon several centuries of scientific progress. Although no conclusive proof exists that GM cereals may be harmful to human beings, and in some regions their use has brought about economic growth which has helped to resolve problems, there remain a number of significant difficulties which should not be underestimated."

"Animals tell us something. If the animals have suffered this way [from GMOs], potentially for us, let’s listen to what they’re telling us. Let’s take heed."

"But if the same tests, the same foods are examined by an independent scientist, then it turns out that in almost every case there are quite serious harms done to the rats, the mice or the other poor unfortunate animals, particularly internal organs like liver and kidneys and things of that sort."

"Genetic engineering is to traditional crossbreeding what the nuclear bomb was to the sword."

"So you did do it. You amalgamated one of Godzilla's cells together with the plant's cells. Are you proud of this? What kind science do you call this?"

"I stand by my assertions that although you can know what happens to any individual species that you modify, you cannot be certain what will happen to the ecosystem. Also, we have a strange situation where we have malnourished fat [[people]. It’s not that we need more food. It’s that we need to manage our food system better. So when corporations seek government funding for genetic modification of food sources, I stroke my chin."

"I went to Monsasnto, and I spent a lot of time with the scientists there, and I have revised my outlook, and I'm very excited about telling the world. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world."

"Everyone is scared of genetic DIY. It's crucial for artists to work with such technologies. It is important that we work between science and art."

"Genetic engineering crosses a fundamental threshold in the human manipulation of the planet, changing the nature of life itself."

"In principle, there's now nothing to stop intelligent moral agents "fixing" the [conditionally-activated level of] subjective physical distress undergone by members of entire free-living species by choosing and propagating benign alleles of SCN9A or its homologs via gene drives, i.e. engineering via CRISPR-mediated gene-editing not a currently utopian "no pain" biosphere ... but a “low pain” biosphere."

"When we wrote Ecofeminism we raised the issue of reductionist, mechanistic science and the attitude of mastery over and conquest of nature as an expression of capitalist patriarchy. Today the contest between an ecological and feminist world-view and a worldview shaped by capitalist patriarchy is more intense than ever. This contest is particularly intense in the area of food. GMOs embody the vision of capitalist patriarchy. They perpetuate the idea of ‘master molecules’and mechanistic reductionism long after the life sciences have gone beyond reductionism, and patents on life reflect the capitalist patriarchal illusion of creation. There is no science in viewing DNA as a ‘master molecule’ and genetic engineering as a game of Lego, in which genes are moved around without any impact on the organism or the environment. This is a new pseudo-science that has taken on the status of a religion. Science cannot justify patents on life and seed. Shuffling genes is not making life; living organisms make themselves. Patents on seed mean denying the contributions of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of farmers’ breeding. One could say that a new religion, a new cosmology, a new creation myth is being put in place, where biotechnology corporations like Monsanto replace Creation as ‘creators’. GMO means ‘God move over’. Stewart Brand has actually said ‘We are as gods and we had better get used to it.’"

"I know it's a long shot and people would say it's 'too absurd'… but I'm doing this with hopes of making a Mickey Mouse some day."

"There is an expression out there that a failed gene therapy makes a good vaccine."

"In a more general sense, all the quarter-million plant species— in fact, all species of organisms—are potential donors of genes that can be transferred by genetic engineering into crop species in order to improve their performance. With the insertion of the right snippets of DNA, new strains can be created that are variously cold-hardy, pest-proofed, perennial, fast-growing, highly nutritious, multipurpose, water-conservative, and more easily sowed and harvested. And compared with traditional breeding techniques, genetic engineering is all but instantaneous."

"Evaluating the potential threat posed by advances in biotechnology, especially genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and synthetic biology remains a contentious issue. The rapid development of the tools of molecular biology and metabolic engineering has enabled the development of chimeric organisms which possess characteristics which are not native to the wild variant. This is commonplace in the area of biomanufacturing, where genes are introduced into organisms such as E coli and products manufactured via large-scale fermentation. More recently, entire metabolic pathways, albeit of limited complexity, have been engineered into organisms, for example, for the production of artemisinin in yeast. In addition to such metabolic engineering projects, whole genomes are being sequenced, leading to the possibility of creating organisms de novo. Numerous lectures, briefings and articles have argued that the dual use nature of biotechnology, the training of foreign students in American universities, and the easy availability of information on the internet have given potential adversaries access to biological weapons of unimagined which pose an existential threat. Some believe that, inevitably, these advances will lead to a catastrophic biological attack. Others have argued the opposite that making all information publicly available will enable a more universal “white biotechnology” which will ultimately monitor the field and provide the means to defeat any threat developed by adversaries. It has been argued that, despite these advances, the scientific and technical requirements, as well as the fundamental laws of natural selection, will prevent such an attack."

"Since its first pragmatic elucidation in 1953, DNA structure and genetic engineering has extended its reach into agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, and even organic materials."

"Since the early 1990’s genetically engineered plants have been commercially available. So called “first generation” transgenic plants have been engineered for characteristics that enhance the agricultural yield and marketing. Such characteristics include resistance to pests, herbicides and extreme climates, as well as improved product shelf life. For example, since their first commercial cultivation in 1996, plants have been genetically modified for tolerance to the herbicides glufosinate and glyphosate. A “second generation” of transgenic plants, now in research and development, is aimed at enhancing consumer satisfaction by enhancing taste, texture, or appearance of produce. To date, no second generation transgenic plants are on the market."

"Gene therapy, involving the use of viruses as a vector for introducing generic material into cells, has had some success in treating genetic disorders such as severe combined immunodeficiency, and treatments are being developed for a range of other currently incurable diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and muscular dystrophy. Genes introduced in this manner are not transmitted to the next generation. Gene therapy targeting the reproductive cells—so-called “Germ line Gene Therapy”—at present carries an unquantifiable risk associated with interfering with other genes, hence near-term development and commercialization of this technology is unlikely."

"The genetic material for modification may be either derived from natural organisms using standard recombinant DNA techniques, or produced by DNA synthesis, the latter being much less labor intensive. In recent work, DNA sequences on the order of 1 million base-pairs have been synthesized entirely from digitized genome sequence information, and the resulting organisms were phenotypical and capable of self-replication."

"Development of novel (i.e., not known to be naturally-occurring) GMOs exhibiting unique designer characteristics requires substantially greater knowledge and capability. Many industrialized nations have laboratories capable of analyzing which immune response modifier genes in humans and livestock, when inserted into an organism together with pathogenicity (e.g., adherence and invasive) factor, will yield highly infectious pathogenic organisms."

"Hannah Devlin: In your book you describe a nightmare you had involving Hitler wearing a pig mask, asking to learn more about your “amazing technology”. Do you still have anxiety dreams about where Crispr might leave the human race?"

"Hannah Devlin: In 2015, you called for a moratorium on the clinical use of gene editing. Where do you stand on using Crispr to edit embryos these days?"

"Snake: I thought using genetically modified soldiers was prohibited by international law."

"The equivalent fundamental unit in DNA is the nucleotide base. Since there are 4 possible bases, the information content of each base is equivalent to 2 bits. The common gut bacterium Escherichia coli has a genome of 4 mega-bases or 8 megabits. The crested newt, Triturus cristatus, has 40,000 megabits. The 5,000-fold ratio between crested newt and bacterium is about the same as that between my present computer and my first one. We humans have 5,000 mega-bases or 6,000 megabits. This is 750 times as great as the bacterium (which satisfies our vanity), but what are we to make of the newt trumping us sixfold? We'd like to think that genome size is not strictly proportional to what it does: presumably quite a lot of that newt DNA isn't doing anything. This is certainly true. It is also true of most of our DNA."

"The natural balance produced by the Rock, Paper, Scissors scenario is not confined to lizards. Researchers from Stanford and Yale have discovered that the same scenario is responsible for preserving biodiversity in bacterial neighborhoods. The bacteria concerned are Escherichia coli—the type that are found in all of our digestive systems. The researchers mixed three natural populations together in a petri dish. One population produced a natural antibiotic called “colicin” but was immune to its effects, as snakes are immune to poisoning by their own venom. A second population was sensitive to the colicin but could grow faster than the third population, which was resistant to colicin. The net result was that each established its own territory in the petri dish. The colicin producers could kill off any nearby bacteria that were sensitive to the colicin, the colicin-sensitive bacteria could use their faster growth rate to displace the colicin-resistant bacteria, and the resistant bacteria could in turn use their immunity to displace the colicin producers!"

"Without their threatening presence, there is no need for gene recombination or sexual (versus asexual) reproduction. We wouldn’t have to keep up with the Joneses, or in this case the Escherichia coli or the Entamoeba histolytica, which are constantly mutating to get better at attacking us so they can reproduce and survive. Disgust is the emotion that protects purity. Haidt suggests that the emotion of disgust arose when hominids became meat eaters. It appears to be a uniquely human emotion."

"Bacteria, the study of which has formed a great part of the foundation of genetics and molecular biology, are the organisms which, because of their huge numbers, produce the most mutants. This is why they gave rise to an infinite variety of species, called strains, which can be revealed by breeding or tests. Like Erophila verna, bacteria, despite their great production of intraspecific varieties, exhibit a great fidelity to their species. The bacillus Escherichia coli, whose mutants have been studied very carefully, is the best example. The reader will agree that it is surprising, to say the least, to want to prove evolution and to discover its mechanisms and then to choose as a material for this study a being which practically stabilized a billion years ago!"

"Oscillatory reactions of the epigenetic type are also well known. They occur as a consequence of regulatory processes at the cellular level. Proteins are generally stable molecules, whereas catalysis is a very fast process. Thus, it is not unusual for the protein level in a cell to be too high, in which case other bodily substances act to suppress the synthesis of macromolecules. Such feedback gives rise to oscillations and has been studied in detail in, for example, the regulation of the lactose operon in the bacterium Escherichia coli."

"Evolutionary game theory originated as an application of the mathematical theory of games to biological contexts, arising from the realization that frequency dependent fitness introduces a strategic aspect to evolution. Recently, however, evolutionary game theory has become of increased interest to economists, sociologists, and anthropologists--and social scientists in general--as well as philosophers."

"Traditionally, game theory has been seen as a theory of how rational actors behave. Ironically, game theory... has shown... the limited capacity of the concept of rationality alone to predict human behavior. ...Evolutionary game theory deploys the Darwinian notion that good strategies diffuse across populations of players rather than being learned by rational agents. ...[A]gents choose best responses, and otherwise behave as good citizens of game theory society. But they may be pigs, dung beetles, birds, spiders, or even... s and s. How do they accomplish these feats with their small minds and alien mentalities? ...the agent is displaced by the strategy as the dynamic game-theoretic unit. ...[W]e provide agent-based computer simulations of games, showing that really stupid critters can evolve toward the solution of games previously thought to require "rationality" and high-level information processing capacity."

"Ever since Darwin read Malthus, the theory of evolution has benefited from the interaction of ecology with economics. Evolutionary game theory belongs to this tradition: it merges population ecology with game theory."

"Evolutionary game theory is one of the most active and rapidly growing areas of research in economics. Unlike traditional game theory models, which assume that all players are fully rational and have complete knowledge of details of the game, evolutionary models assume that people choose their strategies through a trial-and-error learning process in which they gradually discover that some strategies work better than others. In games that are repeated many times, low-payoff strategies tend to be weeded out, and an equilibrium may emerge."

"Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population."

"Current evolutionary game theory — where ideas from evolutionary biology and rationalistic economics meet — emphasizing the links between static and dynamic approaches and noncooperative game theory."

"Regeneration is the fountain; sanctification is the river (in deeper or shallower degree). Entire sanctification is the river in fullest flow."

"Why don't more animals regenerate? Although it's useful, regeneration isn't the best survival strategy because healing wounds is a trade-off between speed and accuracy. Perfect repairs can take time, whereas immediately closing an open wound minimizes the risk of infection or bleeding to death, although it does leave scar tissue. Animals use a fibrous connective protein called collagen to holds cells together (one-third of the human body consists of collagen). It's arranged in a basketweave (criss-cross) pattern in regular tissue, while scar tissue fibres are aligned side-by-side. Regular tissue is like fabric material, whereas scars are stitches holding two pieces of fabric together. Stitching is faster than weaving, so it's better for rapid repair."

"is a fermented beverage that originated from 's life work. ...Wigmore highly promoted rejuvelac as a form of "living water." ...Although she primarily fermented wheat... any grain can be used. ...Ann Wigmore's recipe... used unsprouted grain... Other rejuvelac recipes use sprouted grains. ...by sprouting the grains the flavor is far superior and tastes lightly lemony. The key... is to sprout the grains first and then blend them for the fermenting process. ...Fill the jar with clean filtered water ...scrape any foam or debris off the top of the liquid."

"Schwann (1837) the codiscoverer of the yeast cell, showed by experiment that fermentation and putrefaction were of microbial origin. He also disproved spontaneous generation: with sterile flasks and media he demonstrated that it was microorganisms in the air that produced putrefaction or fermentation of substances. Alcohol was produced when yeast was added to a sugar solution. When sterile media were exposed to the air, they decomposed, but if air was sterilized by heat, no decomposition occurred. Schwann reasoned that the air contained living germs that produced the putrefaction because arsenic and mercuric chloride, which were known to kill living things, also prevented putrefaction. These were the same kind of experiments Pasteur was to perform a quarter-century later. Schwann was the originator but Pasteur got the recognition. This is not to belittle Pasteur, whose many achievements earned him his place in history."

"Dill pickles and pearl onions are salted with just enough salt to plasmolyze the harmful organisms, and alcohol is generated first, then follows acetic and lactic fermentations to produce vinegar having a characteristic flavor. All vinegar having a certain per cent of solids is liable to deterioration through the agency of harmful bacteria hence storage in cool places is recommended for such as malt and cider vinegars."

"Raw cultured vegetables have been around for thousands of years... Rich in lactobacilli and enzymes, alkaline-forming, and loaded with vitamins, they are an ideal food that can and should be consumed with every meal. Since cultured foods are an excellent source of vitamin C, Dutch seamen used to carry them to prevent . For centuries, the Chinese have cultured cabbage each fall to ensure a source of greens through the winter... Cultured vegetables are a favorite food of the long-lived Hunzas. ...it's the active cultures of friendly bacteria (lactobacilli) inside [yogurt] that are responsible for good health. Similarly, the enzymes and the high lactic acid in raw cultured vegetables promote wellness and longevity."

"Gay-Lussac found that food treated by Appert's method was quite stable, but as soon as it was exposed to air, fermentation and/or putrefaction set in. Further experiments enabled Gay-Lussac to prove that air was the causative agent, and that if liquid foods were actually boiled, and then exposed to air, then the onset of the two processes was delayed. He also found that if brewer's yeast was heated, it was incapable of initiating fermentations."

"[K]oji [is] the Japanese manifestation of qu, also traditionally a mixed culture but today typically known as a single a strain of fungus, '. Before I started growing koji, I would never have believed it possible to fall in love with a mold. ...Koji itself is not generally eaten as a food (although it is delicious). Koji is the first step toward many elaborately processed foods and beverages. ...try it at least once using a starter culture so you can experience the unique aroma of fresh growing koji, because recognizing that unique smell is the most straightforward way you have to gauge whether you have the right mold growing if you try starting koji spontaneously using corn husks."

"Searching investigations into the chemical activity of the different species of acetic acid bacteria would be not only opportune in the interests of science, but also highly important to the practice of the vinegar industry. In this business the employment of selected pure culture ferments is not yet regarded as a fundamental rule, everything being still left to the mercy of chance. ...there are two different methods of making vinegar. In one of them wine forms the raw material, this method being known as the Orleans process... There (as elsewhere) the work is still performed in the same manner as it was centuries ago as follows:—A number of oaken casks, each of a capacity of some 55 gallons, are arranged in rows in a chamber maintained at a constant temperature of 18&deg; to 22&deg; C [64&deg; to 71&deg; F]. In the upper part of the front end (head) of each cask a circular aperture (a few cm in width) is provided, through which the cask can be filled or emptied, and which is generally kept closed, whilst near it is a very small hole (vent) always left open for the admission of air. In normal work each cask is about half full. Before setting a new cask in work, it is scalded out several times with steam or hot water, in order to extract the sap from the wood, and is then "soured" by impregnating it with good, boiling-hot vinegar. About 1 hl. (22 gallons) of good, clear vinegar and 2 l. (0.44 gallons) of wine are then placed in the cask, another 3 l. of wine being added at the end of eight days, 4 to 5 l. more after the lapse of another week, and so on until the cask contains 180-200 l. (40 to 44 gallons). Then, for the first time, vinegar is drawn from the cask, and in such quantity that about 22 gallons are left behind in the vessel. From that time the cask "mother" is in continuous use, 10 litres (2.2 gallons) of vinegar being withdrawn every week and replaced by an equal quantity of wine. The "mother" casks may remain in work during six or eight years without interruption, but at the end of this period they will contain such a considerable accumulation of deposited yeast, tarter and , as to necessitate their being emptied and cleansed. A skin, known as vinegar flowers or mother of vinegar, and composed of acetic acid bacteria, develops on the surface of the liquid, and the manner and luxuriance of its growth enables the operator to judge the progress of the fermentation. However, at the outset the growth proceeds very slowly, since the wine employed mostly contains but very few of these bacteria. Consequently an opportunity is afforded for the development of rapid-growing injurious organisms, chiefly certain budding fungi, which consume the acetic acid. The aerobic "vinegar eels" also make their appearance."

"If a number of flasks be charged with a clear nutrient solution, of a kind favourable to the growth of yeast and containing a fermentable sugar, and each of them be inoculated with a trace of a pure culture of different yeasts, such as are used in brewing, distillery work, vinification, &c., the cultures being then kept at room temperature for a couple of days, it will be found that cell reproduction and fermentation—manifested by the appearance of turbidity and gas bubbles—will occur in all. It will thereafter soon be possible to separate the flasks into two groups, according to the appearance presented. In the one group the yeast crop developed from the sowing will remain almost entirely within the liquid throughout the entire period of fermentation, and mostly at the bottom even from the start. Yeasts of this kind are termed bottom yeasts, and excite bottom-fermentation, the yeast crop being sedimental. In the other group the fermentation is very brisk and attended with the formation of large quantities of froth (head); and in the earlier stages a larger or smaller number of the new cells are raised to the surface by the ascending bubbles of gas, and remain there—provided the vessel be high enough to prevent frothing over—until fermentation is terminated and the froth breaks up, whereupon they sink down to the bottom of the liquid and increase the sedimental deposit. This kind of fermentation is termed top-fermentation, and the yeasts producing it are called top-fermentation yeasts. Typical examples of bottom-fermentation yeasts are afforded by the Munich lager-beer yeasts."

"The present status of surgery depends, primarily, upon the efforts of chemists, especially those interested in wine and beer production, to determine why milk turns sour, grape juice becomes wine, wine vinegar, and vinegar "a foul, insipid fluid," without the addition of any chemical reagent. The difficulty in explaining this change was due to the fact that no chemical formula could be evolved which fully represented the equation. It was easy to write a formula that expressed in definite terms the change that had resulted in a given case, but it was impossible to explain what had set the process in motion. Why was it that milk would change from sweet to sour, showing that the milk sugar it contained had become lactic acid, while a solution of pure milk sugar in pure water absolutely refused to undergo the same process? It became evident that there was something else inherent to the fermenting process that set it in motion. ... The problem was gradually clearing up as far back as Von Helmont... who first showed that the gas eliminated during fermentation was different from the air and identical with that formed by the combustion of charcoal and the calcination of limestone. ... Stahl... was the first to discover that vinous fermentation and putrefaction belong to the same class of phenomena... Leuwenhoek... in 1680 found, with the imperfect microscopes in use at that time, that yeast consisted of minute globular or ovoid particles... It took until 1836 for Schwann and Caignard-Latour, acting independently of one another, to prove that Leuwenhoek's globules were membranous bags, exhibiting the characteristics of vegetable cells and increasing and multiplying rapidly in the same way when brought under proper conditions. It had already been recognized that the yeast increased in vinous fermentation, and therefore it was natural that they should conclude that yeast was a plant, and that as it grew it in some unexplained way set up the chemical change. ... Schroeder and Von Dusch (1854) published the fact that a cotton plug prevented the something in the air that set fermentation and putrefaction in motion from coming in contact with the solutions or solids that otherwise would become proper media for the setting up of the processes. In 1860, and the next few succeeding years, Pasteur settled the whole question by his masterly review of the field, and his own remarkable series of experiments. Following this came Lister's appreciation of the results of these experiments in their application to surgery..."

"is a rich, nutrient-dense living water that's fermented from sprouted grains or seeds. ...rejuvelac not only costs pennies on the dollar but ranks in superiority in terms of probiotic quality and quantity. ...It takes about five days to make and is suprisingly easy ...The seeds or grains must be raw or they will not sprout. ...You can use rejuvelac in place of any recipe calling for water. ...Rejuvelac is also a [DIY] starter used in fermented creams, yogurts and cheeses [to include those made from nuts and seeds]. Stir in some juice, honey, and ice cubes for a delicious beverage. ...soak ...seeds or grains ...covered in water for eight hours or overnight. Buckwheat or smaller seeds, can take as little as two hours. ...Drain off the water. Give the grains a good rinse... twice a day (or more)... cover the sprouts with a breathable cloth. ...out of direct sunlight. Tilt the jar... and let the water drain out. ...After the berries have sprouted, give them a final rinse and fill... with water... approximately 4 to 6 times more water than sprouts. ...Let it sit thirty-six to forty eight hours [covered with a breathable cloth]. Less time... if the weather is warm... more if... cool. ...A slightly sour and fizzy taste should be the result. (If it tastes like it's gone bad, discard... you can water the plants with it—and begin again.)"

"During ... a characteristic fermentative yeast flora develops in the liquid... When the sugar is used up and the pH has dropped because of lactic acid production by the lactic acid bacteria, a secondary, oxidative yeast flora develops on the surface of the liquid in the form of a thick, folded layer of yeast."

"If milk is produced under clean conditions, it is not likely to have a disagreeable odor or taste at any time, even when it is sour; rather the taste is agreeable like that of good butter milk. The curd is perfectly homogeneous, showing no holes or rents, due to the development of gas, and there is but little tendency for the whey to be expressed from the curd. This type of fermentation is largely produced by the group of bacteria to which has been given the name, Bacillus lactis acidi. The main by-product of this group of bacteria is ; small amounts of and alcohol, with traces of other compounds, are also formed. The agreeable odor and to some extent the flavor of milk fermented by these bacteria is due to other by-products than lactic acid, for this has no odor and only a sour taste. The acid fermentation of milk is often called the . In reality only the fermentation produced by the desirable group in which lactic acid is the most evident by-product should be thus called."

"Undesirable acid-forming bacteria... capable of forming substances that impart to milk an offensive odor and a disagreeable taste not infrequently appear instead of the desirable group. Instead of producing from the sugar of milk large quantities of lactic acid, these types generate other acids, such as acetic and formic, which impart a sharp taste to the milk. Besides the acids the bacteria of this group form gases from the sugar of the milk. Some produce small amounts of gas; others so much that the curd will be spongy and will float on the surface of the whey. The fermentation caused by them is often called a "gassy fermentation" and is dreaded by butter and cheese makers since the gas is indicative of bad flavors... Gas may also be produced in other types of fermentations... This class of bacteria enters the milk with the dust, dirt, and manure, in which materials they are especially abundant. No spores are formed; hence they are easily killed by heating the milk. They grow both in the presence and in the absence of free oxygen. High temperatures favor their growth, most rapid development taking place at 100° to 103° F. ...The normal souring of milk is due to a mixture of these two groups [Bacillus lactis acidi and the undesirable acid-forms] of bacteria. The relative proportions existing between the two in any sample of milk is dependent on a number of factors, most important of which is the degree of cleanliness..."

"Basically, the preparation method of soy sauce koji involves washing and soaking the rice grains overnight, steaming the well-drained soaked rice for about 60 minutes, rapidly cooling and breaking the lumps of rice, mixing uniformly the ash and starter, distributing in trays and incubating in a special room for about 5 days with in-between stirring of the mixture on the second day and the third day. The molded rice is thoroughly dried, packaged, and stored in cold room with low humidity. Strict observation of aseptic conditions is required at every step of the preparation."

"[T]he French Academy of Sciences in 1779 had posted a prize of one kilogram of gold for a solution of the mystery of fermentation. Unfortunately, the offer had to be withdrawn in 1793... but Cagniard-Latour's inquisitive spirit was undaunted by the cancellation... He described the features of yeast cells, classified them as plants, observed the process of budding and noted the differences in shape between wine- and beer-yeasts. He also found the multiplication of the cells required nitrogenous material in addition to fermentable carbohydrate. ...Unfortunately, however, he reverted to his research interest in physics."

"The is simply mixed with cooked, dehulled soybeans; the continues its growth without the... spores. ...however, [it] generally has a lightly weaker mycelium and the incubation time is a little longer than... sporulated methods. And... there are always some unwanted bacteria in the original tempeh. If you are careless and/or the humidity is high, their numbers will increase with each generation until eventually they prevail, preventing the formation of good tempeh. However, by being clean and careful, we have had no trouble in keeping this starter going for more than 12 generations..."

", or “fermented soybean paste,”... is an all-purpose high-protein seasoning, which has no counterpart among Western foods or seasonings. Made from soybeans, rice or barley, and salt... [i]t comes in a wide range of warm, earthy colors... Each miso has its own distinctive flavor and aroma... Miso’s range of flavors and colors, textures and aromas, is at least as varied as that of the world’s fine wines or cheeses."

"Koji is a culture prepared by growing... '... mold on cooked grains and/or soybeans in a warm, humid place. Koji serves as a source of enzymes that break down (or hydrolyze / digest / split) natural plant constituents into simpler compounds when making , , , , and other fermented foods. Its fragrant white... mycelium... has a delightful aroma resembling that of mushrooms. ...Koji is written with the exact same character in China and Japan. ...In China this character is romanized as qu... Koji was invented in China at least three centuries before the Christian era."

"Koji usually serves as the basis of secondary fermentation, in which its s help to (break down or digest or split) basic nutrients. ... ...digests carbohydrates ... breaks down proteins, and ... ...digests lipids (fats). Rice... barley... and soybean koji are used to make three different types of . Koji for Japanese is made from a mixture of roasted wheat and defatted soybean meal; this koji is dark-green in color. Whole soybean koji is used to make traditional Chinese soy sauce and fermented black soy beans (also known as... ...etc.). Rice koji is used to make Japanese ... and ... Koji is to sake as is to beer. Each saccharifies the starch... so that... sugars can be fermented to alcohol by yeasts."

"Sufu (Chinese soy cheese) and (chaotofu) are block-type fermented soy foods. In the manufacture... sufu utilizes mainly mold(s), whereas stinky tofu utilizes mainly bacteria. Molds multiply under aerobic condition and produce , , and other s"

"Being pregnant is an occupational hazard of being a wife."

"Our mothers' wombs the tiring-houses be, Where we are dressed for this short comedy."

"[P]regnant women also must take care of their bodies, not avoiding exercise nor adopting a low diet; this it is easy for the lawgiver to secure by ordering them to make a journey daily for the due worship of the deities whose office is the control of childbirth. As regards the mind, however, on the contrary it suits them to pass the time more indolently than as regards their bodies; for children before birth are evidently affected by the mother just as growing plants are by the earth."

"Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishings of tissue, the droolings of the flesh, these are signs, these are the things I need to know about. Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own."

"Eric Johnston, an attorney who helped draft the Alabama bill, thinks a man and a woman can have sex and go straight to a clinic to determine if she's pregnant. First off, you've gotta give her six minutes to clench her way to a toilet; otherwise she's gonna get a UTI and ruin an exam table. Secondly, that isn’t how it works...It's still hard to know if you're pregnant at six weeks. You might have no symptoms, or if you do, they’re symptoms like fatigue or bloating and gas. On the other hand, it does explain P.F. Chang's new motto: 'Maybe it's not us; maybe you're pregnant!'"

"So, this is my belly. I am twenty weeks. And I have the MTV awards coming up. And as you can see, little plum plum is ready for the world to know that he or she is here. I think I'm gonna have to just throw in the towel and if you can see that I’m pregnant, I just have to own it. So I maybe...Well, my baby maybe debuting itself on the awards. I'm going to be a mommy."

"The baby is coming in three weeks. I feel anxious. These last three weeks are my last weeks responsible for myself. So I'm trying my best to take care of my child like myself and enjoy my freedom I guess for the last three weeks. This is going to be nothing in comparison to having a child."

"I was supposed to do Coachella the year prior but I got pregnant unexpectedly. And it ended up being twins, which was even more of a surprise. My body went through more than I could. I was 218 pounds the day I gave birth. I had an extremely difficult pregnancy, high blood pressure. I developed toxemia, preeclampsia, and in the room, one of the baby's heartbeats paused a few times so I had to get an emergency c-section."

"The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."

"... the story of pregnancy is best recounted in s. The first trimester is characterised by and . The second trimester is characterised by a large stomach and a feeling of well-being. In the third trimester you may experience bloating around the face, , , , chronic , , , forgetfulness, fatigue, feelings of apprehension about the birth and a longing for pregnancy to be over."

"Motherhood is never honored by excessive talk about the heroics of pregnancy."

"Let me then say it bluntly: Pregnancy is barbaric. I do not believe, as many women are now saying, that the reason pregnancy is viewed as not beautiful is due strictly to cultural perversion. The child’s first response, 'What's wrong with that Fat Lady?'; the husband's guilty waning of sexual desire; the woman's tears in front of the mirror at eight months – are all gut reactions, not to be dismissed as cultural habits."

"Pregnancy is the temporary deformation of the body of the individual for the sake of the species. Moreover, childbirth hurts. And it isn't good for you. Three thousand years ago, women giving birth 'naturally' had no need to pretend that pregnancy was a real trip, some mystical orgasm (that far-away look). The Bible said it: pain and travail. The glamour was unnecessary: women had no choice. They didn't dare squawk. But at least they could scream as loudly as they wanted during their labour pains. And after it was over, even during it, they were admired in a limited way for their bravery; their valour was measured by how many children (sons) they could endure bringing into the world."

"A ship under sail and a big-bellied woman, are the handsomest two things that can be seen common."

"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."

"There was a time when doctors recommended alcohol to pregnant women for relaxation and pain relief, or even prescribed it intravenously as a tocolytic — meaning it stopped premature labor. One doctor who trained me spoke of a 1960s prenatal ward full of intoxicated women "swearing like sailors." Things began to change in 1973, when fetal alcohol syndrome, or F.A.S., was formally recognized after a seminal article was published in The Lancet, a medical journal. F.A.S. is a constellation of findings that includes changes in growth, distinctive facial features and a negative impact on the developing brain. We now know that alcohol is a teratogen, meaning it can cause birth defects. With that knowledge, the pendulum swung hard. In 1988, Congress passed the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act, which would add the well-known "women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects" label to alcoholic beverages for sale or distribution in the United States. (A warning about drinking and driving was also added.) Many people unfortunately took this as an opportunity to police pregnant women in public."

"The shamans are forever yacking about their snake-oil "miracles." I prefer the Real McCoy—a pregnant woman."

"And Venus, thou, with timely seed, Which may their after-comforts breed, Inform the gentle womb; Nor let it prove a tomb."

"Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life."

"I found that being pregnant was different from how I thought it would be...It shares a lot in common with writing in a way. You have an imaginary version of yourself pregnant, and an imaginary baby, an imaginary idea of yourself as a mother."

"Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."

"So Fanfare for the Makers: ... As mothers sit up late night after night Moulding a life."

"In the dark womb where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her."

"The question is not 'Can a man do it?' It's 'If a man does have a successful pregnancy, can he survive it?'"

"Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy."

"They did not understand how my world had shrunk. They couldn't see that the bigger I got, the smaller I became, and they didn't understand that once the baby came, I would be gone!"

"I dreamed of you for the first time the other night. You were swaddled in a blanket and floating. Your hair was dark brown before it curled and turned blonde, just like your father's. I brought my head down to my clavicle and nuzzled you, melting a little. I told you, or did you tell me that it wasn't time yet? We are waiting for you, wondering who you will be. I've made a habit of Googling strange changes in my body in the off chance they might be connected to your existence. Too much saliva, bleeding gums, muscle pains in the lower abdomen. Every time, no matter how seemingly random, all of these symptoms are correct, connected to the making of you. I'm reminded my body is marching onward without any help from me. There is a quietness that comes with pregnancy, a humbling. I'm listening for you. I'm full of wonder. Mornings and nights, my stomach grows. It's getting colder, an election is coming. I feel you flutter underneath my belly button. I want you to see the world's potential. You feel like the world's potential. I'm driving through Manhattan, looking out the backseat window of my friend's car, studying pedestrians as they move through the city. A man crosses the street in glasses, another jogs in place, his eyes focused ahead of him. I stare at these strangers. Will that be you? I wonder. I'm in the shower, rearranging all the names I'm thinking of for you in my head. I peer down at my belly and say one of them aloud to see if it fits. Water steadily beats against my back. In that moment I can't feel it myself or the space around me. Just you. Hello, I think, is that you? My chest swells and my eyes sting with the thought that one day soon, so very soon, your presence will be real. I close my eyes and try to imagine you moving through the pixelated darkness of my mind's eye. I cannot wait to see who you will be."

"He ploughed her, and she cropped."

"She's quick; the child brags in her belly already."

"As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time That from the seedness the bare fallow brings To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry."

": Wilt dine with me, Apemantus? : No, I eat not lords. : An thou shouldst, thou'dst anger ladies. : O, they eat lords. So they come by great bellies. : That's a lascivious apprehension. : So thou apprehend'st it, take it for thy labour."

"And since a man can't make one He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one."

"I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie."

"You become like a vampire when you're pregnant: your senses are so sensitive and your emotions are so heightened – that helps with performance because you really feel things. Any stories about something happening to little girls killed me. Put it this way: I did not find Inside Out uplifting."

"It's all very well for a man. He doesn't have to go through this sort of thing, and he knows he never will have to. How can he understand? He may mean as well as a saint, but he's always on the outside. He can never know what it's like, even in a normal way — so what sort of an idea can he have of this? Of how it feels to lie awake at night with the humiliating knowledge that one is simply being used? — As if one were not a person at all, but just a kind of mechanism, a sort of incubator."

"ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us. Two of the science's most illustrious expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we learn (L'Histoire generale des animaux and A History of Animated Nature) that the domestic cow sheds its horn every two years."

"Even village women and children know that the unicorn is a lucky sign. But this animal does not figure among the barnyard animals, it is not always easy to come across, it does not lend itself to zoological classification."

"Another immense service rendered by Dalton, as a corollary of the new atomic doctrine, was the creation of a system of symbolic notation, which not only made the nature of chemical compounds and processes easily intelligible and easy of recollection, but, by its very form, suggested new lines of inquiry. The atomic notation was as serviceable to chemistry as the binomial nomenclature and the classificatory schematism of Linnæus were to zoölogy and botany."

"These people call what they do "cryptozoology" — "-zoology" meaning "the study of animals", and "crypto-" meaning "shit we made up"."

"So far as happiness is concerned it matters very little what one wants; the main thing is that one should get it. Besides, zoology makes it clear that a sum of reduced individuals may very well form a totality of genius."

"Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can; for logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features."

"It is not clear that people have fully taken on board the idea that humans are animals. If they had, then perhaps academic disciplines such as sociology and anthropology would be viewed as specialist branches of zoology; medical doctors would be viewed as a subtype of veterinarians (one that specializes in tending to the health needs of just one species); human rights would be viewed as a subset of animal rights; and the socialization of children would be viewed as one example of the training or domestication of animals (making parents and teachers a subtype of animal trainers)."

"Bioremediation is a technology that uses microorganisms to treat contaminants through natural biodegradation mechanisms (intrinsic bioremediation) or by enhancing natural biodegradation mechanisms through the addition of microbes, nutrients, electron donors, and/or electron acceptors (enhanced bioremediation). This technology, performed in situ (below ground or in place) or ex situ (above ground), is capable of degrading organic compounds to less toxic materials such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and water through aerobic or anaerobic processes. Bioremediation is being used with increasing frequency to remediate contaminated media at hazardous waste sites because, compared with other remediation technologies, it often is less expensive and more acceptable to the public."

"Bioremediation technologies use microorganisms to treat contaminants by degrading organic compounds to less toxic materials, such as CO2, methane, water, and inorganic salts. These technologies include intrinsic or enhanced bioremediation, which is the focus of this report, and can be performed in situ or ex situ under aerobic or anaerobic conditions. During enhanced bioremediation, amendments are typically added to the media to supplement biodegradation processes. Amendments include nutrients (such asnitrogen and phosphorus), electron donors (such as methanol or lactic acid for anaerobic processes), electron acceptors (such as oxygen for aerobic processes, ferric iron or nitrate for anaerobic processes), or microbes (bioaugmentation) (EPA 1994, EPA 2000)."

"[E]ntomoremediation as a novel concept was critically projected as a bioremediation technique that needs to be harnessed in line with global realities of involving organisms like microorganisms and earthworms in soil decontamination. Entomoremediation is defined as a type of remediation in which insects are used in order to decontaminate a degraded soil. The candidacy of collembolans, ants, beetles and termites in entomoremediation is advocated because of their role as ecosystem engineers. The need for mass rearing of the insects to be used in proposed bioremediation is discussed. Bioremediation as a measure that requires interdisciplinary approach is emphasized. The need to use insects that are neither threatened or endangered in entomoremediation in order to achieve overall healthy balance of the soil environment is stressed."

"Oceanic phytoplankton seems generally to be associated with low biodiversity, and phytoplankton biodiversity does not correlate with zooplankton biodiversity ..."

"The inability to control horizontal position or to swim against significant currents in open waters separates 'plankton' from the 'nekton' of active swimmers, which include adult fish, large cephalopods, aquatic reptiles, birds and mammals. In this way, plankton comprises organisms that range in size from that of viruses (a few tens of nanometres) to those of large jellyfish (a metre or more). Representative organisms include bacteria, protistans, fungi and metazoans."

"Phytoplankton and zooplankton — tiny drifting plants and animals — are vital components of the marine and freshwater aquatic food chains, and our waterways. Plankton communities reflect the effects of water quality and cannot isolate themselves as oysters do by closing their shells in adverse conditions. Plankton are effectilvely our aquatic 'canaries-in-a-cage' — they accumulate over days the effects of hourly changes in water quality."

"It is important to note once again that the prohibition of murder and abortion must be appreciated in a therapeutic, not a juridical or punitive light, with which such offenses are often regarded in most Western moral, philosophical, and theological systems: the goal is not to subject the sinner to just punishment, but to bring the sinner through repentance and God’s grace to holiness. Because of this perspective the Orthodox Church never endorsed a doctrine of double effect, such as developed in the West, which allowed Roman Catholicism to approve of indirect abortions. The doctrine of double effects holds that when an action produces two effects, one good and one evil, one may nevertheless act, as long as the act is not evil in itself, the good effect is not produced by the bad effect, the evil effect is not intended,, and there is a proportionate reason (more good will be produced than evil). According to the doctrine of double effect, when these conditions are fulfilled, one is held to be juridically innocent In contrast, the Orthodox Church recognizes that close causal involvement in the death of another, whether a guilty or an innocent person, may harm one’s spiritual life. Orthodox Christianity recognizes harms from both involuntary and “justifiable” homicide, including homicide in a just war, both of which incur excommunication not as punishment, but as spiritual therapy (Basil, 1983, Canon 13, pp. 801-802). It is in this spiritually therapeutic context that one should understand the absolution of women who miscarry. The absolution expresses the Orthodox Christian healing approach to the involuntary loss of life."

"The woman who has suffered a miscarriage is not held to be guilty in a juridical sense, but in need of God’s loving grace. It is within this therapeutic perspective that the Orthodox Church approaches decisions made by women to engage in operations that will also incidentally lead to the abortion of a child (e.g., the removal of a cancerous uterus containing an unborn child), which in Roman Catholic terms would not count as an abortion. In such cases, the spiritual father must help the patient through repentance and love to repair the spiritual damage from the serious evil of involvement in the death of another person."

"Because spontaneous miscarriage and self-managed abortion are medically indistinguishable in most cases, prohibitions on abortion will predictably lead to the investigation and detention of many women experiencing miscarriages as well as those self-managing abortions."

"The effect of long-term exposure to dirty air on the risk of miscarriage has been analysed previously. Studies from Brazil to Italy to Mongolia found a link, but others failed to do so. However, the latest study is the first to assess the impact of short-term exposure to air pollution. It found that raised levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution that are commonplace around the world increased the risk of losing a pregnancy by 16%. “It’s pretty profound,” said Dr Matthew Fuller, at the University of Utah’s department of emergency medicine and one of the research team. “If you compare that increase in risk to other studies on environmental effects on the foetus, it’s akin to tobacco smoke in first trimester pregnancy loss.” NO2 is produced by fuel burning, particularly in diesel vehicles."

"Few studies on job stress relative to pregnancy have been carried out, but both animal and epidemiological studies have shown effect of exposure to stressful conditions during pregnancy and adverse effects on the offspring."

"Obesity has become a major health problem across the world. In the UK, obesity affects one‐fifth of the female population ( Anonymous, 2001 ). Maternal obesity has been reported as a risk factor for adulthood obesity in offspring ( Parsons et al ., 2001 ). Obesity may also lead to a poor pregnancy out-come, such as sudden and unexplained intrauterine death ( Froen et al ., 2001 ), and in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) receiving infertility treatment is associated with an increased risk of miscarriage ( Hamilton‐Fairley et al ., 1992 ; Wang et al ., 2000 ). However, in the general population there is less evidence for a link between obesity and spontaneous miscarriage ( Risch et al ., 1990 )."

"Spontaneous miscarriage affects 12–15% of all pregnancies ( Zinman et al ., 1996 ). Eighty percent of miscarriages occur before 12 weeks of gestation, and the majority are due to chromosomal abnormalities (Harlap et al ., 1980). Our figures from this study population are consistent with previously published data. The risk of miscarriage after the detection of a fetal heart on ultrasound scan is reduced to 5%, except in patients who have had recurrent miscarriages ( van Leeuwen et al, 1993 ). Many factors have been described to increase the risk of spontaneous miscarriage; however, obesity was not found to be a risk factor by Risch et al . (1990). Recent evidence indicated that obese women undergoing infertility treatment were at increased risk of spontaneous miscarriage ( Hamilton‐Fairley et al, 1992; Wang et al, 2000 ). However, this point has also been controversial (Lashen et al, 1999; Roth et al., 2003 )."

"From a medical perspective, there is no physically significant difference between a medication abortion and a spontaneously occurring miscarriage. For example, the medicines used in medication abortion are used to help safely manage an incomplete miscarriage."

"Overweight women are more likely to miscarry a healthy baby, according to research involving 204 women who had suffered a miscarriage. The researchers said the findings back up advice that obese women should lose weight before trying to conceive. "The excess miscarriage rate in overweight and obese women is due to the loss of chromosomally normal embryos," said Dr Inna Landres of Stanford University School of Medicine. "It's important to identify elevated BMI [body mass index] as a risk factor for miscarriage and counsel those women who are affected on the importance of lifestyle modification"

"Occupational studies included in this review found that several occupational and non-occupational factors influenced reproductive outcomes. Occupational factors involved included standing, lifting, and exposure to chemicals—typically, individuals exposed to noise were also exposed to other occupational hazards. Important non-occupational factors were mother’s age, mother's weight and height, mother’s weight gain during pregnancy, smoking, education, race and socioeconomic status. Gravidity and parity, and chronic diseases of the mother were also important factors for the examination of spontaneous abortion or preterm labour."

"New multi-disciplinary research on brain–body interactions triggered by stress in early pregnancy has shown that maternal biological responses, including localised inflammation in uterine tissue and sustained depression of progesterone production, challenge the endocrine-immune steady state during pregnancy, leading to serious consequences for the fetal environment. Recent basic science findings and new theoretical development around a ‘pregnancy stress syndrome’ associated with over-activation of the HPA axis warrant a new look at the epidemiological evidence around the age-old question of whether or not stress can actually cause human reproductive failure."

"Dr Sarah Stock, at the University of Edinburgh and not part of the research team, said: “Air pollution is clearly detrimental to the health of millions of mothers, babies and children worldwide. Measures to reduce the impact of air pollution are crucial to ensure the health of future generations.”"

"We always write stories of tragedies because that's how we reach our human depth. How we get to the other side of it? We look at the cruelty, the darkness and horrific events that happened in our life, whether it be a miscarriage or a husband who is not faithful. Then you find this ability to transcend. And that is called the passion, like the passion of Christ. You could call this the passion of Frida Kahlo, in a way. When I talk about passion, and I'm not a religious person, but I absolutely am drawn and attracted to the power of religious art because it gets at that most extreme emotion of the human experience."

"Fetus death risk reduction is included in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, little is known about how missed abortion in the first trimester (MAFT) is related to maternal air pollution exposure. We quantify the link between air pollution exposure and MAFT in Beijing, China, a region with severe MAFT and air quality problems. We analyse the records of 255,668 pregnant women from 2009 to 2017 and contrast them with maternal exposure to air pollutants (particulate matter PM2.5, SO2, O3 and CO). We adjust for confounding factors such as sociodemographic characteristics, spatial autocorrelation and ambient temperature. We find that, for all four pollutants, an increased risk of MAFT is associated with rises in pollutant concentrations, and the adjusted odds ratios (ORs) of these associations increase with higher concentrations. For example, the adjusted OR of MAFT risk for a 10.0 μg m−3 increase in SO2 exposure is between 1.29 and 1.41 at concentrations of 7.1–19.5 μg m−3; it drops to 1.17 below this range and rises to 1.52 above it at higher SO2 concentrations. This means that the risk increase is not linear but becomes more severe the higher the pollutant concentration. The findings provide evidence linking fetus disease burden and maternal air pollution exposure."

"In the existing body of literature, exercise during pregnancy has generally not been associated with miscarriage,17–19 and one case–control study has even reported a protective effect of exercise during pregnancy.20 In contrast, Hjollund et al.21 found an increased risk of early miscarriage among women who reported a high physical strain around the time of implantation of the embryo. Furthermore, lay people have tried to use excessive physical exercise as an abortifacient, and older literature mentions physical activity (e.g. jumping, running, and horseback riding) as a cause of miscarriage. Considering the relatively sparse literature and the somewhat inconsistent results, we wanted to examine the association between exercise during pregnancy and miscarriage in a large population-based cohort."

"The main results based on the total data material showed that an increasing amount of time spent on exercise was associated with a greater risk of miscarriage compared with non-exercisers. Exercising 1–44 minutes/week was not associated with an increased risk of miscarriage."

"In this study, based on data from nearly 93,000 women, a dose-response relation was seen for the association between the amount of weekly exercise and the risk of miscarriage early in pregnancy. Certain types of exercise, and particularly high-impact types of exercise, were found to be associated with a higher risk of miscarriage. In the analyses based only on prospectively collected exposure data, the association did, however, attenuate, indicating a certain degree of recall bias. An alternative explanation to recall bias may be that exercise only in the early stages of pregnancy hurts the pregnancy outcome. In this case, the difference in the HRs between the analyses based on the total data material and the subcohort of only prospectively collected data is not as much a result of the mode of data collection as a reflection of the fact that the total data material encompasses the very early miscarriages. Even within the subperiods of gestational age, the miscarriages occur earlier for the pregnancies with retrospectively collected exposure information than for pregnancies with a first pregnancy interview (Figure 2). In addition, we did see a positive trend in the association between exercise and the risk of miscarriages in the earliest period of pregnancy (gestational weeks 11–14) in the subcohort using prospectively collected data only."

"It is difficult to investigate very early miscarriages using prospectively collected exposure information, since the time period, in which collection of exposure information must take place, that is, the time from detection of pregnancy to the occurrence of an early miscarriage, is short."

"Only a few previous studies have investigated the association between exercise and miscarriage. The only study that clearly supports our findings is a cohort study, which concluded that self-reported physical strain around the time of implantation (days 6–9 after ovulation) was associated with an increased risk of miscarriage (HR 2.5, 95% CI = 1.3–4.6). In contrast, Latka et al found a reduced risk of miscarriage with no chromosome defect in women who exercised compared with those who did not (OR = 0.5, 95% CI = 0.3–1.0). The case–control design was, however, based on a hypothesis that exercise cannot lead to chromosome aberrations in the fetus, as the control group consisted of women with miscarriages with chromosome aberrations. This assumption may be questioned since mode of action is unknown. In a small prospective study, Clapp found no statistically significant difference in risk of miscarriage between recreational runners (n = 49), aerobic dancers (n = 39) and a control group of active women, who had stopped exercising before the time of conception (n = 29). The study population was in excellent condition and had been exercising for years prior to the pregnancy, and the results may not be representative of the population at large. Two other studies have only investigated late miscarriages."

"Miscarriage remains the most common complication of pregnancy despite many advances in the understanding of early pregnancy. Loss of three or more consecutive pregnancies before 24 weeks of gestation is the most accepted definition for recurrent miscarriage (RMC) in Europe, but has recently been defined by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine as a disease with two or more failed pregnancies. Despite best efforts to identify the underlying causes for RMC, it remains ‘unexplained’ in the majority of cases. Chromosomal errors appear to be common in the pre-implantation developing embryos6, 7, which predispose to increased risk of pregnancy losses. High rates of chromosomally abnormal cells within human embryos mean that the reproductive success is dependent on the endometrial ability to distinguish between normal and abnormal embryos. In vitro studies have provided convincing evidence that perturbation in the bio‐sensor function of the decidualised endometrium is an important mechanism underpinning RMC."

"Our study findings are supportive of the concept that increased female BMI may have a negative influence on the early pregnancy outcome. We found a significant positive correlation between the BMI and first-trimester pregnancy losses and anembryonic miscarriages. There were also significantly more first-trimester miscarriages in obese women than in normal-weight or overweight women with recurrent miscarriage."

"A study that examined miscarriage type and fetal karyotypes in RMC women found that very early pregnancy losses (anembryonic and embryonic loss with embryo <3 mm) are more likely to be karyotypically normal, and embryonic miscarriage (with embryo ≥3 mm) and fetal demise to be karyotypically more likely abnormal.36 It is possible to speculate from our study findings that obesity is likely to be associated with an increased risk of first-trimester miscarriages and, in particular, increases the risk of miscarriage of anembryonic pregnancies, which are likely to be karyotypically normal. However, it remains uncertain whether BMI may have any significant effect on the embryo loss pattern, and further well‐controlled studies are required to analyse their association."

"It is likely that an alternate mechanism exists in obesity that may be responsible for ‘biological super-fertility’ in obese women. Teklenburg et al.40 elegantly showed that the endometrial stromal cells transform into biological sensors of embryo quality upon decidualisation. There is a good body of evidence, from in vitro studies, to suggest that the inability of the peri‐implantation endometrium to mount an adequate decidual response impairs embryo recognition and selection upon implantation,34, 40, 41, 43, which leads to shorter TTP intervals and predisposes to RMC. This abnormal phenotype results in an extended window of implantation, which reduces the endometrial ability to be ‘selective’ in response to embryo quality.8 This concept is consistent with the previously reported association of late implantation of embryos with an increased risk of early miscarriage.44 The findings from our study may suggest that an obesogenic environment might have a negative influence on the peri‐implantation endometrium, which would predispose women to RMC."

"Our study findings support the concept of ‘biological superfertility’ in women with RMC and present a unique finding that superfertility may be more prevalent in obese women with a history of RMC. Further prospective studies in women with idiopathic RMC are required to confirm the association of BMI, RMC and superfertility. If confirmed, further investigation is required to understand why obesity predisposes to superfertility. Superfertility may likely be linked to impaired endometrial development in the peri‐implantation period; further research to describe the peri‐implantation endometrium in obese women and to study the exact mechanism by which obesity affects the endometrium is required. Clinical trials with therapeutic targets to improve decidualisation and thus reproductive outcome in obese women could hold significant clinical potential."

"A significant number of the respondents were under misapprehensions as to what caused the loss of the pregnancy. Three-quarters believed that a stressful event could bring about a miscarriage, 64% thought that lifting a heavy object could be a cause, and a fifth that previous use of oral contraceptives could induce pregnancy loss."

"Of those who took part 15% said they or their partner had suffered a miscarriage, but the majority of respondents (55%) believed that miscarriages are uncommon (defined as less than 6% of all pregnancies). The truth is that miscarriages end one in four pregnancies and are by far the most common pregnancy complication, the paper says. A fifth of people incorrectly believed that lifestyle choices during pregnancy, such as smoking or using drugs or alcohol, were the single most common cause of miscarriage, more common than genetic or medical causes. In reality, 60% of miscarriages are caused by a genetic problem."

"The authors concluded: “Patients who have experienced miscarriage may benefit from further counselling by healthcare providers, identification of the cause, and revelations from friends and celebrities. Healthcare providers have an important role in assessing and educating all pregnant patients about known prenatal risk factors, diminishing concerns about unsubstantiated but prevalent myths and, among those who experience a miscarriage, acknowledging and dissuading feelings of guilt and shame.”"

"Q: The moment in your special that really made me gasp out loud is when you joke about how you suffered a miscarriage before, and how you were secretly relieved because they were twins. Do you think that joke only works because the audience could see that you got pregnant again, so there is redemption to the loss?"

"Ali Wong: I think that’s part of it, for sure. But it really helped me when I had a miscarriage to talk to other women and hear that they’d been through it, too. It’s one thing to hear the statistics, but it’s another to put faces to the numbers so you stop feeling like it’s your fault. I think that’s one of the reasons women don’t tell people when they’ve had a miscarriage – they think it’s their fault. I remember I worried what my in-laws would think, which is so crazy. I thought they’d think their son had married a terrible person. Also, because I made the mistake of telling people as soon as I got pregnant, I then had to tell them the bad news, and then I felt like I was burdening them. So being able to joke about it was such a relief. Comedy only works when it comes from an honest place, and the relief that I’d miscarried twins was real!"

"Since microorganisms play major roles in maintaining earth's life-support systems, we need to be especially careful about tinkering with decomposition and other recycling processes. ... What is needed now is a reasonable procedure for assessment at the ecosystem level that leans to the side of caution when there are a lot of unknowns. Accordingly, there is urgent need for increased support for research in environmental microbiology (that is, microbial ecology) and ecosystem science."

"Microbiology is a biologic science as well as an applied field of human or veterinary medicine. In consequence, its scope ranges from problems of molecular biology including biochemistry and pathology to those of human behavior and socioeconomics as they influence infection."

"Those scientists who grew up in the tradition of medical microbiology naturally knew that animal viruses should be treated as potentially dangerous. They could reassure themselves that animal virologists didn't have shorter life spans than the average, and Dulbecco and Stoker, for example, did their experiments on the open bench."

"… once a healthy cell sort of abandons ship and decides that it's going to just be, like, a ravenous, invasive cancer cell, its voltage changes radically. And what you can do with an ion channel drug is change the electrical state of that cell by messing with the ion channels. And in tadpole experiments — and this is early days, but this is moving really fast. In tadpole experiments, they were able to use ion channel drugs to keep cells that had been genetically engineered to be tumors from changing their electrical voltage, right? And without doing any kind of genetic mucking around, they kept these tumors from forming in tadpoles that had been genetically engineered to express tumors."

"The plasma membrane is a heterogeneous structure whose thickness ia around 75 Å and which bounds the cell. An important constituent is lipid, which often represents as much as 70% of the membrane volume (depending on cell type). The membrane lipid readily excludes the passage of ions; it remains for imbedded proteins to form the channels which permit exchange of ions between intracellular and extracellular space. For nerve and muscle, electrical activation is associated with the movement of sodium and potassium (and other) ions across membranes by means of these channels; the proteins not only facilitate the flow of each ion but they control the flow of each giving rise to the ' of the membrane."

"Waste biomass is a cheap and relatively abundant source of electrons for microbes capable of producing electrical current outside the cell. Rapidly developing microbial electrochemical technologies, such as microbial fuel cells, are part of a diverse platform of future sustainable energy and chemical production technologies. We review the key advances that will enable the use of exoelectrogenic microorganisms to generate biofuels, hydrogen gas, methane, and other valuable inorganic and organic chemicals. Moreover, we examine the key challenges for implementing these systems and compare them to similar renewable energy technologies. Although commercial development is already underway in several different applications, ranging from wastewater treatment to industrial chemical production, further research is needed regarding efficiency, scalability, system lifetimes, and reliability."

"Bioelectricity is about the electrical phenomena of life processes, and is a parallel to the medical subject electrophysiology. One basic mechanism is the energy consuming cell membrane ion pumps polarising a cell, and the action potential generated if the cell is excited and ion channels open. The dipolarisation process generates current flow also in the extracellular volume, which again results in measurable biopotential differences in the tissue. An important part of the subject is intracellular and extracellular single cell measurements with microelecroeds. Single neuron activity and signal transmission can be studied by recording potentials with multiple microelectrode arrays. In addition to measure on endogenic sources, bioelectricty also comprises the use of active stimulating current carrying (CC) electrodes. Since bioelectricity is about life processes the experiments are per definition in vivo or ex vivo."

"I got in touch with a support group [for intersex people] when I was eighteen. They agreed to send me some information. … A big, brown envelope arrived, and I … opened it in private and read through it. I was … partly relieved in that I now knew what my condition was exactly, and why I'd had the surgery, and that it was an intersex condition. [But I was] … shocked and … horrified that nobody had had the decency to tell me about it as I was growing up. … The doctors decided not to tell me or my parents that it was an intersex condition, because they [thought] that [I would] grow up psychologically unbalanced and unable to cope with the [knowledge]. … The clitorectomy … cut the nerve endings out of the clitoris, [and] some of the erectile tissue; but most of it was left tied back onto the skin to the pubic bone. … [I]f I get aroused, it tightens up and pulls away from that bone and causes … excruciating pain. That's something I'm left with for the rest of my life; there's nothing that can be done about that."

"I think I've done quite a good job of integrating male and female attributes. I've since discovered that so many people who don't have intersex conditions do just the same after a midlife crisis. … What I don't understand is why people who are normally so willing to accept that each human being is unique, are suddenly so afraid of variation when faced with the fact that between the conventional extremes of what we understand as being male and female there are endless shades of variety."

"Sex segregation directly harms many intersex and transgender athletes and would-be athletes. But, these policies also harm many cisgender people who do not see a place for themselves in certain sports because they sense and are told by parents, peers, teachers, and coaches that they do not measure up to the normative masculinities and femininities that we attach to those sports. … [T]he material evidence of binary sex is not always visible, measurable, or stable over time."

"Trans feminists seek to interrogate society’s ingrained assumptions about the social and cultural meanings we ascribe to biology. They also generally incorporate an analysis of intersex people, who do not fit this reductive model, and who have suffered historical and ongoing mistreatment at the hands of a medical establishment obsessed with imposing binary biological sex on to bodies that don’t ‘fit’. The experiences of trans and intersex people show us that not all humans fit perfectly into two clear-cut categories of biological sex; indeed, the belief there are two separate sex categories is itself an erasure of sex variations that occur either naturally or through medical modification."

"Hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) belongs to the family and is a popular tree nut worldwide, mainly distributed in the coasts of the Black Sea region of Turkey, southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France), and in some areas of the United States (Oregon and Washington). Hazelnut is also cultivated in some other countries such as New Zealand, China, Azerbaijan, Chile, Iran, and Georgia, among others. Turkey is the world’s largest producer of hazelnuts, contributing ∼74% to the total global production, followed by Italy (∼16%), the United States (∼4%), and Spain (∼3%). Other countries contribute ∼3% to the total production ... Hazelnut is, therefore, the most popular tree nut in Europe. Several commercial hazelnut varieties are available ..."

"‘Jefferson’ is a new hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) cultivar for the in-shell market. It was released by the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station in Jan. 2009 as a replacement for ‘Barcelona’. It combines complete resistance to (EFB) caused by the fungus Anisogramma anomala (Peck) E. Müller with high nut yield, large nut size, and good kernel quality. Compared with ‘Barcelona’, Oregon's leading cultivar, ‘Jefferson’ has smaller trees, higher nut yield, and much higher nut yield efficiency. Pellicle removal ratings are better than ‘Barcelona’, and kernel quality is suitable for use in chocolate products and baked goods, although kernel size is larger than ideal for the kernel market. ‘Jefferson’ is recommended for Oregon's Willamette Valley and other areas with a similar climate."

"... There are three creatures, the squirrel, the , and the bird called the (sitta Europæa), which live much on hazel nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does this with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a , ...and yet so small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it; while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill: but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in some cleft of a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it he perforates the stubborn shell."

"You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal quires, Unwearied voices, wordless strains:"

"Inasmuch as peculiarities often appear under domestication in one sex and become hereditarily attached to that sex, the same fact probably occurs under nature, and if so, natural selection will be able to modify one sex in its functional relations to the other sex, or in relation to wholly different habits of life in the two sexes, as is sometimes the case with insects."

"Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!"

"With these came they, who from the bordring flood Of old Euphrates to the Brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general Names Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male, These Feminine. For Spirits when they please Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is their Essence pure, Not ti’d or manacl’d with joynt or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose Dilated or condens’t, bright or obscure, Can execute their aerie purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfill."

"If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. ... [E]rasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives."

"Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, ..."

"The poets feign that when the world began, Both sexes in one body did remain;"

"Don't, you know, as the French say, there are three sexes—men, women, and clergymen?"

"The other as goodly sight I saw, was women travayling the way, or toyling at home, carry their Infants about their neckes, and laying the dugges over their shoulders, would give sucke to the Babes behinde their backes, without taking them in their armes: Such kind of breasts, me thinketh were very fit, to be made money bags for East or West-Indian Merchants, being more then halfe a yard long, and as wel wrought, as any Tanner, in the like charge, could ever mollifie such Leather."

"Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Our virgins dance beneath the shade— I see their glorious black eyes shine; But gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such breasts must suckle slaves."

"Thy minnie scorns to suckle thee, thy minnie is an elf, Upon a bed of rose’s-leaves she lies and fans herself;"

"Enough for Him whom Cherubim Worship night and day, A breastful of milk And a mangerful of hay;"

"Anyone offended by breastfeeding is staring too hard."

"A mother who suckles her children gives herself directly, gives her own body to nourish the children, who are unable to live without it. This is love. So, the workman, who for the welfare of others, wears out his body by toil, and thus brings himself to the verge of death, also gives himself, his body, to nourish others. And such love is possible only to the man for whom, between the possibility of the sacrifice of himself and those beings whom he loves, no obstacle to sacrifice exists. The mother who trusts her child to a foster-mother cannot love it; the man occupied in acquiring and keeping riches cannot love."

"Mothers shall suckle their children for two whole years; (that is) for those who wish to complete the suckling. The duty of feeding and clothing nursing mothers in a seemly manner is upon the father of the child. No-one should be charged beyond his capacity. A mother should not be made to suffer because of her child, nor should he to whom the child is born (be made to suffer) because of his child. And on the (father's) heir is incumbent the like of that (which was incumbent on the father). If they desire to wean the child by mutual consent and (after) consultation, it is no sin for them; and if ye wish to give your children out to nurse, it is no sin for you, provide that ye pay what is due from you in kindness. Observe your duty to Allah, and know that Allah is Seer of what ye do."

"Munditias mulieribus, viris laborem convenire"

"Elegance is proper to women but toil to men"

"The husband’s the pilot, the wife is the ocean, He always in danger, she always in motion:"

"Man is the will, and Woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail: when Woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail."

"When men were men, and women were glad of it."

"Vive la différence!"

"[Long] live the difference!"

"Man does, woman is"

"In three months the fœtus is nearly three inches long, and weighs about three ounces. Hippocrates says, that it is at this time the motion of the male fœtus begins to be felt by its mother; but that those of the female are not felt till after the fourth."

"Yuri (voice-over): At four and a half months a human fetus has a reptile's tail – a remnant of our evolution. You can fight a lot of enemies and survive but if you fight your biology you always lose."

"Those at whose birth the feet appeared first, instead of the head, which is considered the most difficult and dangerous form of parturition, are called Agrippae, a word formed from aegritudo, or "difficulty," and pedes (feet). But Varro says that the position of children in the womb is with the head lowest and the feet raised up, not according to the nature of a man, but of a tree. For he likens the branches of a tree to the feet and legs, and the stock and trunk to the head. "Accordingly," says he, "when they chanced to be turned upon their feet in an unnatural position, since their arms are usually extended they are wont to be held back, and then women give birth with greater difficulty. For the purpose of averting this danger altars were set up at Rome to the two Carmentes, of whom one was called Postverta, the other Prorsa, named from natural and unnatural births, and their power over them.""

"She’s the kitchen wench, and all grease, and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light. I warrant her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world."

"What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease."

"I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus."

"Pigeons can be mated for life, and this is a great convenience to the fancier, for thus many races may be kept true, though mingled in the same aviary."

"Awè bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calvè cu; Bulluc sterteth, buckè verteth, Murie sing cuccu!"

"This Nicholas anon leet flee a fart, As greet as it had been a thonder-dent."

"A man may break a word with you, sir; and words are but wind; Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind."

"GLENDOWER: I say the earth did shake when I was born. [...] The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble. HOTSPUR: O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire And not in fear of your nativity. Diseasèd nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions. Oft the teeming earth Is with a kind of colic pinched and vexed By the imprisoning of unruly wind Within her womb, which for enlargement striving Shakes the old beldam earth and topples down Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth Our grandma earth, having this distemperature, In passion shook."

"CLOWN: Are these, I pray you, wind instruments? FIRST MUSICIAN: Ay marry are they, sir. CLOWN: O, thereby hangs a tail. FIRSTMUSICIAN: Whereby hangs a tail, sir? CLOWN: Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know."

"The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. … As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications."

"For evolutionary biologists there is something very special about the classification of living organisms, something that is not true of any other kind of taxonomy. It follows from the idea of evolution that there is one uniquely correct branching family tree of all living things, and we can base our taxonomy upon it."

"Humanity depends on healthy ecosystems: they support or improve our quality of life, and without them, the Earth would be uninhabitable. However, over the past 50 years, fast-growing demands for food, , water and other s have led to an unprecedented degradation of many ecosystem services so that their ability to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. Therefore, reversing ecosystem degradation is one of the great challenges of sustainable development. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires action by all actors in society, including governments, industry and individuals. One of the difficulties is that, even if there was a universal commitment to sustainable development, it is still unclear what goods, services and activities are sustainable and how they could be identified."

"... what you can be sure of is that many organisms have declined to the point where they can never do the services for us we want — even if the service is the pleasure of seeing a rare bird."

"Nature underpins human well-being in critical ways, especially in health. Nature provides of nutritious crops, purification of drinking water, protection from floods, and climate security, among other well-studied health benefits. A crucial, yet challenging, research frontier is clarifying how nature promotes physical activity for its many mental and physical health benefits, particularly in densely populated cities with scarce and dwindling access to nature."

"When most physicians are asked about the realm of biosecurity, they often are able to discuss the subject in broad strokes that include concepts such as bioterrorism, , and s. However, the restriction of knowledge of biosecurity solely to these components does not make the concept adequately concrete; consequently, biosecurity remains a floating abstraction with no firm tie to reality, constraining the ability of physicians to fully converse with government policy makers and the public on this vital national security matter. Biosecurity in the Global Age: Biological Weapons, Public Health, and the Rule of Law, by internationally renowned law professors and David Fidler, provides an opportunity to develop a robust understanding of biosecurity and its role in national and international policy."

"A leaflet drops through your letter box advising on ways to avoid contracting and spreading . Your bag is searched as you enter a country on the start of your holiday — and there's a fine of $200 for an undeclared apple. You drive across a disinfectant mat on a visit to a local farm. You call the council for advice on the spreading from your neighbour's garden. You switch to eating after reading about the role of industrial farming in the production of risk. You shudder as you remember the smell of . In many different ways you may have encountered events, practices, procedures, narratives and knowledges contained within the complex issue of ‘biosecurity’."

"The secure and continuous production of and are key to U.S. national security. The introduction of foreign-origin or emerging animal, plant, and human diseases by intentional acts of , terrorism, , or criminal activity can lead to severe consequences for domestic and international s, the economic security of the agricultural community, and food security, and the credibility of responsible state and federal agencies. Early public, animal, plant health, law enforcement, and intelligence assessments and investigations of suspected or confirmed intentional threats are critical additions to existing interagency prevention, response, and management protocols. Forensic microbiology, a multidisciplinary science, is essential to the nation's readiness for responding to a potentially criminal, intentional, or otherwise nefarious incident in the agricultural sector (plant or animal), and of eventual supporting attribution and the prosecution of the perpetrators."

"In a strict sense, biosecurity involves issues dealing directly with s and s, such as prevention of emergence, loss, accidents, theft, or use, and remediation after pathogenic damage. It addresses procedures and practices to help ensure that s and relevant sensitive information remain secure and out of the hands of terrorists. But we have to be practical. We inevitably pay a price for security."