Evolution News

Humans Evolved Gene That Erases Memories

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Scientists remove gene for erasing memories in mice, the mice remember everything all the time. This is part of Alzheimer's research but what is marvelous to me is how and why animals evolved a gene to forget things in the first place.

Associated Press:

The gene appears to inhibit learning, said Dr. Robert D'Alessandri, vice president of WVU health sciences and interim director, chief executive officer and president of the institute. It may also have more than one function.

"It may be a protective mechanism," D'Alessandri said. "You don't want to remember everything forever, right? The brain is all about balancing one thing with another — learning versus filling your head with stuff and not being able to do anything with it."

Yesterday, we learned that bright children's brains muture longer and slower than average or lower intelligence children's brains. Now we learn there is a gene for forgetting things. This gene operates, evidently, in all mammals. I would strongly suggest that this gene is for mammals to not obsess over the death of their babies or young ones. The mother must forge onwards. She must be aware enough to nurse them and groom them and protect them, teach them to hunt, etc. But not to be so shattered when the vast majority of them die, that she cannot go on.

Indeed, this goes back to dinosaurs. And earliest mammalian reptiles. We know that crocodiles care for their eggs and when they hatch, their young. They shelter them and escort them about until they can fend for themselves. Birds are a famous example of mating and rearing young very carefully. Birds go through elaborate displays and courtship and many build time consuming nests and then they have to protect and feed the young and teach them how to fly, for example. Once the young depart the nest and learn to fend for themselves, the parents promptly forget about them and turn to driving them away.

Many mammalian mothers do this, too. Even herds of hoofed animals, the mothers and daughters stick together while some top male drives away the sons. In lion prides, when a new male drives off the old one, he turns around and kills all the cubs and gets the mothers and daughters pregnant. If the mothers remembered their slain young, this wouldn't be possible but the gene of forgetting all this cuts out the memory that is painful from her point of view and life goes on.

In the great apes, sometimes they die of broken hearts, just like we humans. Evidently, they can remember painful things longer than a cat does, for example. Dogs, thanks to being co-evolvers with humans, have gained some ground in this, too, namely, learning to remember things which is why occasional pets might refuse to eat or leave a grave sometimes, when someone they were very close to dies.

The gene for not learning/forgetting is very powerful. Humans have evloved brains that strive to overcome these powerful gene which is why very smart people must literally grow longer, the cognitive parts of the brain, I would venture to guess. More than one parent has noticed that children who seem to soak up learning the first six years, suddenly stop and become cranky and difficult and the scholarly grind has to have many penalties and lures to get them to learn nearly anything. No longer do they rush forwards, seeking more information. I have noticed this, myself. I can literally feel my brain rebelling and telling me to stop trying to learn things. It is rather annoying, to say the least.

I resolved many years ago to not yield to that inner voice and to force myself to learn something new at frequent intervals. For example, today, I have to try new systems and learn more skills on the computer. This is why I tinker with this site and alter it frequently. It is part of a personal program to prevent the mind from not thinking.

Dreams are most disturbing. Most people use this gene to forget the ruminations of the mind which wanders all over the place when unleashed. I love dreams and think it would be a shame to lose 1/2 of my existence, unconcious of what is really going on, so I have striven all my life to remember dreams and am quite successful with this. Many dreams are scary which is why the forgetting gene goes to work and erases them.

One function of the forgetting gene is to remove the memory of our faux pas we commit on a daily basis. We are very social animals and in our interactions, we step on each other's toes, we are often wrong about little and big things and this troubles our brains which strive for unity and self aggrandizement. Bush deals with this by forbidding any of his bad stuff to be examined and corrected. He simply ignores all of it and pretends it hasn't happened.

In one ear and out the other is his motto, I would guess.

So it is with many humans. The difference between genius and not genius might be the lack of this gene or a weakness associated with it. I know I remember my zillions of mistakes and periodically, they pop into my mind, unbidden and very annoyingly and even thinking of them is embarrassing but also humbling. I can really screw up! As we all do.

But most people don't remember that. Moving forwards in blessed ignorance, they can do and say things without regard to the past and this makes life easier, in an animal way. But if one wants to look at history, existence and the fate of the universe, doing this mindlessly is pointless as well as impossible.

This might be why so many geniuses are emotionally unstable. I have seen it within my own family. Myself, for that matter! It is a two edged sword. And frankly, I would rather be slashed to ribbons by the sword of memory than to spend my pitiful life ignorant of nearly everything including most of what I have done! This is a monumental waste. Why bother living in the first place?

Societies have institutional memories which replace reality. These are very heavily edited by whoever has the power to impose unilaterally, a narrative. This is why the net has humongously disrupted that forgetting process! We often tell news organizations to learn to use Google so they can refer to their own past stories! They won't, if it interfers with the new directives they are issuing.

Computers and cameras now record at least one facet of reality and are a home base for us to reexamine what our brains are trying to erase or conceal. This is most disturbing to people who need to rewrite reality. Orwell's 1984 is a seminal book on this very process.

Culture of Life News Main Page

The Longer The Brain Continues To Grow, The Higher The Intelligence

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Scientists have documented how children's brains grow at different rates and the ones of very bright children mature slower and peak several years later than children of less intelligence. This is yet another facet of neoteny, homo sapiens evolved into animals with long childhoods and many of our features are baby-like including a long period of childish curiosity.

Associated Press:

Very smart children may seem advanced in many ways, but a new study shows they actually lag behind other kids in development of the "thinking" part of the brain.

The brain's outer mantle, or cortex, gets thicker and then thins during childhood and the teen years. The study found that in kids with superior intelligence, the cortex reaches its thickest stage a few years later than in other children.

This finding does not surprize me. In the great ape world, maturity is at about 6 to 7 years old. So the fact that many human brains stop growing the frontal cortex at that age would seem to be about normal. But due to neotony, the longer it takes to mature, the less like the near relatives, the Great Apes, we are.

In other words, to get that extra boost in intelligence, there has to be some most likely recessive genes that trigger growth processes at work here. It is a classic bell curve, the children in the middle range of intelligence mature at 9 years of age while the very intelligent children's brains continue to add more matter to the brain until age 11 years old. This information should be explored further because it has many important ramafications.

I was an accelerated child, intellectually far ahead of my classmates, skipping grades, even. I was also a naive, messed up kid, too. Any child could best me at cleverness, I was able to think of very difficult things but unable to cope with emotional or tricky games and things normal children delighted in, bothered me.

In other words, I was a female nerd.

My own children were the same way. It always interested me to see, up close with them, how easily they mastered various intellectual skills yet how immature they were. Far from being puzzled, it astonished me to see they thought through things the same, strange way I did when the same age.

More than one person has noticed that mathematical geniuses reach their top performace levels very suddenly after 12 years of age. By the time they are 16, they will have mastered much of the field and sometimes produce great work. The same is true of musicians, a closely related field if the musician is using or creating written scores which require the same intellectual skills mathematicians tap.

Many great composers died before they reached their 40th birthdays yet they produced an amazing amount of music in a short time span.

Einstein and Newton climbed great peaks in the field of physics and astronomy when still quite young. The part of the brain that continues to grow in higher intelligence children thins out like the brains of normal children but the integration of the thinking processes built up by very intelligent children remains, perhaps like a scaffolding being removed once a building is done.

To deal with the destruction of the Great Ice Ages, the global instabiliy of the climate and the competition to survive, the smarter the humanoid, the more likely that one would survive. When coping with the intricate difficulties of language or handling fire or making tools and of course, the ultimate intelligence test, giving birth to large brained babies which are hard to push out of the mother and which required very careful nurturing and care since the neotenic adult has no fur for the even more neotenic baby to cling to, the mother has to nurse and carry and protect a truly helpless baby and the smarter the baby, the longer the helpless period which meant, smart mothers could raise smart babies and not the other way around which is why, in less than 2 million years, the craniums of successful humanoids grew very big indeed.

Evolution never stops. Today, we see a great variety in human intellectual abilities but when it comes to producing more humans, high intelligence isn't very good for that. Namely, the people having the most babies tend to not be of that population. Thanks to both birth control and before that, people of high intelligence tend to not want lots of children or when they did have them, the children can be very difficult to cope with and even self destructive.

I come from a large family with more than one person at genius level and living in the family home was challenging, to say the least. Which is why my parents allowed me to exit a 16 years of age. I still had children of my own but this heavily interfered with going to school and other things, not that I would change anything!

But many very bright girls in the past and today end up choosing to not have children because they do make intellectual pursuits much more difficult. Another fact is, the various genes that contribute to creating our complex minds are so many and so variable, too many recessives can cause serious problems leading to mental retardation, for example. I know of more than one pair of scientists who have married and had a child who is very disturbed or mentally retarded. Asperger's syndrome is a disorder which seems to happen to the children of very bright parents.

Individuals with AS can exhibit a variety of characteristics and the disorder can range from mild to severe. Persons with AS show marked deficiencies in social skills, have difficulties with transitions or changes and prefer sameness. They often have obsessive routines and may be preoccupied with a particular subject of interest. They have a great deal of difficulty reading nonverbal cues (body language) and very often the individual with AS has difficulty determining proper body space. Often overly sensitive to sounds, tastes, smells, and sights, the person with AS may prefer soft clothing, certain foods, and be bothered by sounds or lights no one else seems to hear or see. It's important to remember that the person with AS perceives the world very differently. Therefore, many behaviors that seem odd or unusual are due to those neurological differences and not the result of intentional rudeness or bad behavior, and most certainly not the result of "improper parenting".

By definition, those with AS have a normal IQ and many individuals (although not all), exhibit exceptional skill or talent in a specific area. Because of their high degree of functionality and their naiveté, those with AS are often viewed as eccentric or odd and can easily become victims of teasing and bullying. While language development seems, on the surface, normal, individuals with AS often have deficits in pragmatics and prosody. Vocabularies may be extraordinarily rich and some children sound like "little professors." However, persons with AS can be extremely literal and have difficulty using language in a social context.

This describes more than one genius. The sensitivity to light and sound, um, that is not only my parent's family but also my own. "I hear someone breathing!" is a typical complaint within my own siblings (usually hissed at me). I am the same way. In New York City, I would rise at night and track down car alarms and terminate them using my handy wire cutters. Once, when there was a very obnoxious alarm, I walked 10 blocks to locate it and disable it. There was a crowd of people standing around, holding their ears, wondering what to do when I held up my wire clippers---I had on ear protectors, we have them all over the house---and to cheers of the angry crowd, I and a young man jacked the car up and I reached in and snipped the wires.

My houses were soundproofed just so I and my kids could sleep at night. We also needed absolute darkness. I thought it was normal and would be amazed to meet people who had to have nightlights. Ugh.

It is amazing that smart alecks like us managed to survive because every time there is fear or disorder, our fellow humans tend to kill thinkers. Many teachers and professors in Iraq are being assassinated this year, for example. In Cambodia, years ago, all intellectuals were murdered, also. The Nazis hated intellectuals and so did Stalin. Indeed, all despots hate brilliant people and can't wait to be rid of them. This is also another reason why the human brain isn't getting smarter each generation.

And then there is Bush and his ilk. Whatever braincells this gang had, they blasted them away long ago. And look where they are leading humanity!

Culture of Life News Main Page

Tapeworms Are Actually Good For Us

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Scientists think that tapeworms which evolved with us for millions of years, are actually good for our health in several very significant ways. This shouldn't surprise us. This certainly might change the way we treat allergies and other problems.

USA Today:

Other studies suggest that short-lived infections with a benign parasite might relieve allergies and possibly autoimmune illnesses such as Crohn's disease and Type I diabetes by restoring the immune system's natural balance. Major human trials in the USA and Europe are set to begin this year.

This is a very exciting discovery but it shouldn't surprise people who understand Nature and evolution! You see, any germ, disease or parasite that swiftly kills all or any hosts doesn't last long! Oh, no! It would be like building a house only to burn it down the first night.

Long lived organisms and their parasitic freeloaders have to have a mutual benefit pact going or neither will prosper. This is why, universally, sexual diseases are very slow moving, they take years to kill the host. AIDS, when it first appeared, killed rapidly, it being a mutation and most mutations tend to kill much faster than older diseases that have evolved until they spare their hosts, pretty much.

Parasites have perfected this. They absolutely need the host as long as possible. This is why mushrooms will grow on old trees that are rotting away but they don't poison them. There are many parasitical entities out there. When I was young, my parents took us out to third world places that had parasites and several times, I had intestinal parasites. They do look yukky.

But then, I was never fat when young nor were any of my siblings. Indeed, people would say, "You can eat and never gain weight!" Well, duh!

Perhaps the snake in the Garden of Eden was really a tapeworm begging Eve to eat that apple! Now consider this:

To the squeamish, it might not matter that intestinal worms are less risky than foods that promote allergy. But some doctors say worms might do something that allergy-causing substances won't do - broadly reset the immune system so that it no longer reacts to allergy-causing substances or attacks the body's tissues, as it does in Crohn's disease and Type I diabetes. "This is an exciting new area with potential for opening new therapeutic avenues for diseases that are hard to control and treat," says Weinstock of Tufts New England Medical Center.

Worms captured Weinstock's imagination and that of his collaborator, David Elliott of the University of Iowa, because worm infections appear to regulate the immune system so that it functions normally. The allergic response - itchy, watery eyes, a runny nose and constriction of smooth muscles - evolved to flush out intestinal worms. "The immune system didn't evolve for allergy," Weinstock says. "Why in a hundred billion years of evolution would we evolve a response for allergy?"

In fact, says Robert Coffman, vice president of the biotech firm Dynavax Technologies, the immune system developed two sets of responses: one for bacteria and viruses and one for worms. Called Th1 for germs and Th2 for worms, they work in opposition. When Th1 is active, Th2 takes a break. When Th2 is active, it's Th1's turn. All of the symptoms people link with allergy are part of the Th2 response.

So maybe, since we all don't have worms, this is why we are having allergy attacks? This makes perfect sense. At no time in the past have humans lived without intestinal parasites! Cows and horses can't digest grass, for example, unless their stomachs have various parasitical creatures. Clean them out and the animal starves to death!

There are even more pressing reasons to restore intestinal parasites. Associated Press:

"Obesity is the terror within,'' Richard Carmona said during a lecture at the University of South Carolina. "Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9-11 or any other terrorist attempt.''

Obesity rates have tripled over the past 40 years for children and teens, raising their risk of diabetes and other diseases. For the first time, Carmona said, children are being diagnosed with high blood pressure.

"Where will our soldiers and sailors and airmen come from?'' he said. "Where will our policemen and firemen come from if the youngsters today are on a trajectory that says they will be obese, laden with cardiovascular disease, increased cancers and a host of other diseases when they reach adulthood?''

Lowering the nation's obesity rate depends on changing behaviors, but too many Americans are health illiterate, meaning they cannot understand medical terms and directions from doctors, Carmona said.

The surgeon general offered few specific solutions but said public policy reforms would not be helpful in curbing obesity, explaining that common-sense health decisions cannot be legislated.

Isn't this a coincidence....NOT! Aside from eating too much sugar and too little labor, the vast majority of present obese people tend to be those who used to be peasants who lived deep within nature and all of whom had various parasitical creatures sharing the digestive system. The body, evolved to harboring these parasites, eats for them as well as the main frame.

So we have huge appetites. Perhaps the parasites also removed the more dangerous elements embedded in the food we digest? This is how they operate in other mammals! Why would we be exempt? They can run out of control and cause all sorts of health problems but removing them entirely may be the worst thing we could have done!

I know I had them in my own past, more than once. My doctor, when I was young, would flush out the parasites from all of us whenever we returned from journeys. I actually would examine them when this happened so I know what they look like.

Viewing it scientifically, it was interesting that they were totally unnoticed until removed. Now, to keep my weight even, I have to exercise and watch what I eat! Geeze.

Maybe we need our bloodsucking friends!

March 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Due to a missing gene on the 17th chromosome, a family in Turkey has children who walk like our lemurian ancestors. This is a very interesting case and proves, yet again, how genes control our bodies and how few genes seperate us from our distant relatives.

From the BBC:

Five siblings from Turkey who can only walk on all fours could provide science with an insight into human evolution, researchers have said.
The three sisters and two brothers could yield clues to why our ancestors made the transition from four-legged to two-legged animals, says a UK expert.

This is most interesting. I have posited in the past that not only was bipedalism a part of humanity's past, it is for a number of the Great Ape families, all of them, I would dare say. Namely, for the last 8 million years, bipedalism is what seperated the orangatang, gorilla, chimpanzee and human family from the get-go. The knuckle-walking of the other families is a recent innovation, I bet, in less than the last 3 million years!

Whenever our ancestors went on all four, they did it the same way these children are walking: flat palmed. The knuckle walking innovation had a very bad downside: it made the fingers inept and unable to make tools or groom well. In other words, it is a net loss. To increase preambulation, the gorilla and chimpanzee lost the ability to use their fingers for delicate tasks, dooming them into an evolutionary cul-de-sac.

Our most distant ancestors were insect eaters who ate some fruits when available abut anyone living in the wild knows, there are always insects whereas fruits are a very iffy thing. To catch bugs, our ancestors needed clever, fast hands that can pluck things swiftly, ever try to catch flies? Heh. Must be where the urge to pull off bug wings comes from, a deep genetic trait.

From Agence France Press:

All five are mentally retarded and have problems with language as a result of a form of underdevelopment of the brain known as cerebellar ataxia.

This is the most exciting part of this case! Are the genes for developing the part of the brain for speech this connected with bipedalism? So many interesting doors beacon to be opened. From a private web page created by a husband who lost his wife to degeneration of this part of the brain.

By definition, "ataxia" is a state of incoordination. The cerebellum is the "microprocessor" which controls and regulates motor-control neuron messages. So when upon consultation the Practitioner has intensively quizzed the patient and ruled out all the routine triggers for incoordination - such as inebriation, inner-ear conditions and countless others, the term "cerebellar" gets added to the "ataxia" label. But this is still not a "diagnosis".

The first move by a Neurologist when confronting an ataxia which defies explanation is to commission an MRI Scan of the cerebellum. He is looking for many things but in particular for a shrinkage / degeneration of the cerebellum which unlike "cerebellar ataxia" (which you will remember is just an incoordination symptoms label) is defined as "cerebellar atrophy". And this "is" a diagnosis .

It is odd to me that the abbreviation "CA" is often wrongly used interchangeably to represent both "Cerebellar Ataxia" and "Cerebellar Atrophy". They are really quite different "animals". One is a symptoms label and the other a diagnosable physiological disorder.

There are many incarnations and degrees of severity and progressivity of cerebellar atrophy. At the present state of medical science there is no reversal path for atrophy of any organ and no panacea medicinal treatment or cure. But it will not always be so - because recent developments in stem-cell regrowth of atrophied cells hold enormous promise for the future.

Apparently, when stricken later in life, one simply becomes increasingly disoriented and can't walk at all whereas these children seem quite mobile and able to do various tasks, they just can't stand up easily nor do they have any inner urge to do so.
From Web MD:

Aniridia-Cerebellar Ataxia-Mental Deficiency, also known as Gillespie Syndrome, is an extremely rare inherited disorder that is characterized by partial absence (aplasia) of the colored portion (iris) of the eye (Partial Aniridia), impaired coordination of voluntary movements due to underdevelopment (hypoplasia) of the brain's cerebellum (cerebellar ataxia), and mental retardation. Many affected individuals also exhibit a delay in the acquisition of skills requiring coordination of muscular and mental activity (psychomotor retardation). Aniridia-Cerebellar Ataxia-Mental Deficiency is believed to be inherited as an autosomal recessive genetic trait.

It seems, the family in Turkey, instead of trying to impose a bipedal regime on their children, let them follow nature's course. The good health and seeming happiness of the children in this case seems to make this a wise choice. I, for example, used to imitate animals such as using the much better otter system of swimming which is both safer and conserves energy in the most amazing way, one can swim effortlessly literally for miles by slithering through the water with small moves of the hands and feet to give more propulsion. It still baffles me why people want to swim the hard way, thrashing violently through the water instead of literally gliding along the surface, rolling over periodically.

I wonder if children suffering from this genetic problem are really being helped by shoving them into the bipedal straight jacket? After all, it isn't the most efficient way of getting around! Ask any four legged creature. They will look at you funny.

I grew up in high mountains with very thin air and I learned at about three years of age, four legs good, two legs, bad. I scrambled about the rocks and thorns on all four, moving along with absolute assurance. You can bet, I never fell down. By the time I was about nine, I could switch from bi to quad effortlessly which is why I could go all over the place as if it were flat ground. Like swimming, the less one thinks as a human, the easier it is.

In ancient chronicles like the Sagas of Iceland, there are tales of people like the children in Turkey. One family in a saga put their two retarded sons out with the sheep each spring and the boys contentedly hung out with them while the normal brothers ran around the oceans, burning people's homes, raping women and stealing stuff. Um. Evolution at work.

Walking On All Four: Genetic Glitch Causes Human Children In Turkey To Do This

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Due to a missing gene on the 17th chromosome, a family in Turkey has children who walk like our lemurian ancestors. This is a very interesting case and proves, yet again, how genes control our bodies and how few genes seperate us from our distant relatives.

From the BBC:

Five siblings from Turkey who can only walk on all fours could provide science with an insight into human evolution, researchers have said.
The three sisters and two brothers could yield clues to why our ancestors made the transition from four-legged to two-legged animals, says a UK expert.

This is most interesting. I have posited in the past that not only was bipedalism a part of humanity's past, it is for a number of the Great Ape families, all of them, I would dare say. Namely, for the last 8 million years, bipedalism is what seperated the orangatang, gorilla, chimpanzee and human family from the get-go. The knuckle-walking of the other families is a recent innovation, I bet, in less than the last 3 million years!

Whenever our ancestors went on all four, they did it the same way these children are walking: flat palmed. The knuckle walking innovation had a very bad downside: it made the fingers inept and unable to make tools or groom well. In other words, it is a net loss. To increase preambulation, the gorilla and chimpanzee lost the ability to use their fingers for delicate tasks, dooming them into an evolutionary cul-de-sac.

Our most distant ancestors were insect eaters who ate some fruits when available abut anyone living in the wild knows, there are always insects whereas fruits are a very iffy thing. To catch bugs, our ancestors needed clever, fast hands that can pluck things swiftly, ever try to catch flies? Heh. Must be where the urge to pull off bug wings comes from, a deep genetic trait.

From Agence France Press:

All five are mentally retarded and have problems with language as a result of a form of underdevelopment of the brain known as cerebellar ataxia.

This is the most exciting part of this case! Are the genes for developing the part of the brain for speech this connected with bipedalism? So many interesting doors beacon to be opened. From a private web page created by a husband who lost his wife to degeneration of this part of the brain.

By definition, "ataxia" is a state of incoordination. The cerebellum is the "microprocessor" which controls and regulates motor-control neuron messages. So when upon consultation the Practitioner has intensively quizzed the patient and ruled out all the routine triggers for incoordination - such as inebriation, inner-ear conditions and countless others, the term "cerebellar" gets added to the "ataxia" label. But this is still not a "diagnosis".

The first move by a Neurologist when confronting an ataxia which defies explanation is to commission an MRI Scan of the cerebellum. He is looking for many things but in particular for a shrinkage / degeneration of the cerebellum which unlike "cerebellar ataxia" (which you will remember is just an incoordination symptoms label) is defined as "cerebellar atrophy". And this "is" a diagnosis .

It is odd to me that the abbreviation "CA" is often wrongly used interchangeably to represent both "Cerebellar Ataxia" and "Cerebellar Atrophy". They are really quite different "animals". One is a symptoms label and the other a diagnosable physiological disorder.

There are many incarnations and degrees of severity and progressivity of cerebellar atrophy. At the present state of medical science there is no reversal path for atrophy of any organ and no panacea medicinal treatment or cure. But it will not always be so - because recent developments in stem-cell regrowth of atrophied cells hold enormous promise for the future.

Apparently, when stricken later in life, one simply becomes increasingly disoriented and can't walk at all whereas these children seem quite mobile and able to do various tasks, they just can't stand up easily nor do they have any inner urge to do so.
From Web MD:

Aniridia-Cerebellar Ataxia-Mental Deficiency, also known as Gillespie Syndrome, is an extremely rare inherited disorder that is characterized by partial absence (aplasia) of the colored portion (iris) of the eye (Partial Aniridia), impaired coordination of voluntary movements due to underdevelopment (hypoplasia) of the brain's cerebellum (cerebellar ataxia), and mental retardation. Many affected individuals also exhibit a delay in the acquisition of skills requiring coordination of muscular and mental activity (psychomotor retardation). Aniridia-Cerebellar Ataxia-Mental Deficiency is believed to be inherited as an autosomal recessive genetic trait.

It seems, the family in Turkey, instead of trying to impose a bipedal regime on their children, let them follow nature's course. The good health and seeming happiness of the children in this case seems to make this a wise choice. I, for example, used to imitate animals such as using the much better otter system of swimming which is both safer and conserves energy in the most amazing way, one can swim effortlessly literally for miles by slithering through the water with small moves of the hands and feet to give more propulsion. It still baffles me why people want to swim the hard way, thrashing violently through the water instead of literally gliding along the surface, rolling over periodically.

I wonder if children suffering from this genetic problem are really being helped by shoving them into the bipedal straight jacket? After all, it isn't the most efficient way of getting around! Ask any four legged creature. They will look at you funny.

I grew up in high mountains with very thin air and I learned at about three years of age, four legs good, two legs, bad. I scrambled about the rocks and thorns on all four, moving along with absolute assurance. You can bet, I never fell down. By the time I was about nine, I could switch from bi to quad effortlessly which is why I could go all over the place as if it were flat ground. Like swimming, the less one thinks as a human, the easier it is.

In ancient chronicles like the Sagas of Iceland, there are tales of people like the children in Turkey. One family in a saga put their two retarded sons out with the sheep each spring and the boys contentedly hung out with them while the normal brothers ran around the oceans, burning people's homes, raping women and stealing stuff. Um. Evolution at work.