When Moses was a young man he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. Moses killed the Egyptian (which seems like a disproportionate response, but possibly there were extenuating circumstances) and then he fled to the land of Midea, on the Arabian Peninsula, to hide from the law. There he wed Zipporah, the daughter of a shepherd, and named their first child Gershom (Hebrew for a traveler, or transient), “for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”
‘Gershom’ was probably an odd name, even for then, and young poor Gershom likely had to explain it a lot to his classmates. For that matter, Moses’ name was also a pun, referencing him being pulled from the river where the Pharaoh’s daughter found him. Possibly Moses felt that bad puns were standard naming practice. Or he decided that if he had to suffer, his son would too. Zipporah didn’t get off easy on the naming front either, for that matter. Naming one’s child appropriately was obviously a major problem of the time. Fortunately we’ve had three thousand years of progress since then to come up with names that don’t get you beat up after school, like ‘Bob’ and ‘Tom’.
Being a stranger in a strange land is something we all understand. We all are alone, at some time, even when surrounded by many. I’ve been studying genetics and genomics for twenty years now, and yet sometimes feel like genomics is a foreign land in which I am a stranger. As I was raised in Wisconsin and yet live in Southern China, I should be accustomed to this state, but that is not so. Sometimes the discoveries and ways of thinking about genetics change so quickly I get left behind until I slowly but victoriously reach the forefront again. Sometimes it seems that the technology is helping those with lots of capital more than those without. The first instance is a gratifying challenge, the second is less so (I’m firmly entrenched, through no merit of my own, among my fellowworkers).
This site, therefore, is an attempt at look at the field of genomics from the outside while standing in the midst of it. Genomics is a fascinating science that can say much about us and our world. It can provide tools that can save and improve lives. It may also lead to changes that will make us feel alienated from ourselves and our world.
The title, Charter of the Genome, is a reference to the Charter of the Forest, written around 1217 and signed by Henry the Third. The Charter of the Forest was an addendum to Magna Carta, and reestablished some rights of the common people of England to their fields and forests that had been ignored after the Norman invasion. As I’ll be discussing on these pages, one can also consider that we may have rights to our genes and the world’s genomes that are now, conceivably, under threat. Though not from the Normans this time (still, watch out for the Normans).
The entries fall into four categories:
‘Outlaws of the Genetic Wastes’ references the classic Chinese novel 水浒传, ‘Outlaws of the Marsh’ aka ‘All Men Are Brothers’, written about a hundred years after the Charter of the Forest, which tells of a group of bandits struggling against overbearing officialdom (and also struggling against occasional periods of unwanted sobriety and lack of plunder). I strongly favor literature that can be called a classic yet consists mostly of drunken pillaging. Discussion on who has rights to determine how genetics is implemented will be stowed here.
‘Acta Diurna’ were daily notices published during the Roman Empire, somewhat of first attempt at a newspaper, but more boring and written on tablets. Comments on news in the genomics world will be placed here.
‘Summa Scientia Genetica’ references Thomas Aquinas’ ‘Summa Theologica’, written about the same time as ‘Outlaws of the Marsh’, which was (is) a compendium of the teachings of the Catholic Church. It’s a wonderfully reasoned series of arguments discussing almost everything tangentially related to religion. Ramblings on how philosophy can illuminate genomics fall into this category.
The past is not the only distant land from which to visit the field of genomics, the future provides an excellent embarkation point as well. The ‘Vulcan Genome Project’ contains posts of how genomics can expand and be expanded by our fervid imagining of the future (or in the case of Star Wars, distant pasts in distant galaxies).
Thanks for listening,
Brian Ring