By Bill Caswell

Special to Ottawa Construction News

Not only in this day and age do new ideas get quickly shunned by most people, but this type of action has belonged to humans as far back as recorded history. Good or great ideas get shunned, even though they logically serve people’s needs.

With time, some useful ideas do get accepted, at which point everyone joins the parade and believes that this action or trait had been obvious all along.

One of the greatest difficulties of accepting fact occurred in 1819, with the discovery of dinosaur bones in strong Anglican Britain. More and more bones and skeletons were unveiled between 1823 and 1875. Since the clergy/intellect/political leaders of the day had ascertained that the world was created 4,000 years prior, and had humans as the centerpiece of God’s masterful work, what were these other creatures? What was their age? And where were the corresponding human bones of that time? Even worse, the Bible, the factual book of the day, said that Noah had collected every animal in the world on his ark and these fossilized creatures were not on the ark.

The debate was about understanding the role of God – or what was the explanation for this historical, but contradictory, evidence? People could not accept that creatures mutated into other forms because that would suggest that God had made a mistake at the beginning AND THAT WAS IMPOSSIBLE.

Verbal wars broke out and had intellectuals such as the esteemed George Cuvier, a lead scientist in France, attacking Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who postulated in 1809 that animals varied in their nature because they inherited certain characteristics that were determined by their environment. Cuvier stated that Lamarck was “less severe in scrutinizing the evidence” than he should have been, “mingled fanciful conceptions with real discoveries and had constructed his results on imaginary foundations resembling enchanted palaces.”¹

In England, Gideon Mantell published in 1831 that “there was a period when the earth was populated by quadrupeds of a most appalling magnitude, at a time before the creation of the human race”. He was condemned by the leading scientist of the day, Richard Owens, and this condemnation lasted even until and during Mantell’s burial.

At Oxford University, the cleric Frederick Nolan railed at the impiety of geological research. Many set forth to outlaw such studies.

It was a huge battle for Britain to abolish colonial slavery (laws for which occurred in 1829) because leading parliamentarians (and plantation owners) held sway. They stated bluntly that the evidence showed that the slaves enjoyed this kind of life.

The simple fact was that those who suggested an alternative to the Biblical history were viewed as radicals in the most important corners of British society: parliament, clubs, universities, church.   These outcasts were denied good jobs. Some even were imprisoned, such as George Holyoake, a journalist, who, while incarcerated, suffered his daughter’s dying of malnutrition.

In 1832, Charles Darwin, a somewhat aimless youth, departed on the Beagle to travel to the south Atlantic and then around the world, as an intellectual companion to Captain Robert Fitzroy (since it was a naval rule that the captain could not converse with the crew). To keep busy, Darwin collected samples of flora, fauna, and rocks during the almost five-year odyssey.

This hysteria against promoters of new ideas was the reason that Charles Darwin had not yet committed to paper ideas that had flowed out of his experience during the voyage of the Beagle that docked back in England in 1836. With time, Darwin was aware that other intellectuals had arrived at similar conclusions that animals evolved, adapting to their ambience. These others could publish before him if he continued his wait (to avoid public condemnation), so he put his ideas to print with On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Today, Authors Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape), Malcolm Gladwell (Blink), and Dr. Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) have made a clear case for our brain’s logic processor still being a slave to the ancient part of our brain; and as a result of this well-established fact of the brain’s internal conflict, we have humans fighting humans in war, business, and everywhere else. That is, humans fail to cooperate when they would benefit by doing so. The authors’ messages were well received, turning their publications into best-selling books. Yet, a few million convinced readers are but a drop in the bucket to the Earth’s eight billion inhabitants.

CCCC runs into the same prejudice of business not paying attention to the fight between old (limbic) and logic (prefrontal cortex) parts of the brain. Even though Bill Caswell has demonstrated dozens of times, the performance escalation of companies that understand and work around these cerebral conflicts, there is a reluctance of most companies to adapt to this new idea.

What are you waiting for? Jump in. The water’s more than fine, it is liberating. Win by generating more co-operation within your own company. How? Start by making everyone in your firm less unequal.

1 Michael Taylor, Impossible Monsters (New York, N.Y.: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2024).

            Bill Caswell leads the Caswell Corporate Coaching Company (CCCC) in Ottawa, www.caswellccc.comor email bi**@********cc.com.

The post Business advice: Shunning things that are new appeared first on Ottawa Construction News.

By Bill Caswell

Special to Ontario Construction News

By now you probably will have heard of CRISPR, as standing for a DNA manipulating tool.  Where is this leading and how can your business life affect the outcome?

An arms race

Work with viruses that attack bacteria clearly showed that an arms race between these two single-celled creatures, bacteria and viruses, had been going on for several hundred million years, enough time for the bacteria to develop effective countermeasures against viruses.

Inside the bacteria

Francisco Mojica of Spain, like many scientists, studied bacteria, because being a single-celled creature, it was considered easy to work with.  In 1977, he pioneered research illustrating that within the DNA of the bacteria’s single cell was a chain (now called CRISPR) that was an automatic defence against viruses. First, CRISPR would recognize the virus from the long list of enemies over the centuries. Then an adapted snake-like CRISPR chain would go toward the virus. One end of the CRISPR chain was equipped with a clamp that would seize the virus while the other end was like a cleaver and would chop up the virus into hundreds of pieces. Goodbye virus.

Well, it didn’t take long for scientists to realize that this was a very handy tool to have. Could humans make use of it?

The race begins

Not surprisingly, several laboratories around the world began investigating CRISPR to see if it could be put into action within human DNA. Lo and behold, answers were found. Not only might CRISPR deal with viruses in humans, CRISPR might deal with defective genes within human DNA. Perhaps It could be used to eliminate disease-causing mutations within human genes.

Whoops! DNA, genes, mutations, and other such terms need clarification. Let’s get to some of the more popular terms. (If you’re not into details, just skip the next lengthy section.)

DNA, bases, mutations, genes, chromosomes, RNA, and the whole gang

DNA is a very large molecule that exists in the same form in every one of the 30 trillion cells within our human body. It also exists in animals and plants. It is the musical score of the human or plant life, its symphony of action, so to speak. There is one musical score for a Beethoven symphony and a very different score for a Mozart symphony; and so, in many ways, your DNA is quite different from my DNA. DNA defines each of us uniquely. Other parts of the body read that score in order to play their instruments. So, some genes read the score to make me turn bald at age 26!

DNA has the ability to replicate itself, so that when the body creates new skin cells to replace the dying ones that we wash off every morning, the replacement cells carry exactly the same DNA message. The DNA molecule is humongous, made up of three billion base pairs (see base definition that follows) identified as AT-GC in DNA (and AU-GC in RNA, which we will come to shortly).

The order switches around, TA-CG, AT-GC, etc. While, on the surface, four identifiers might not seem like many choices to create three billion different combinations of DNA links, think of what we humans have been able to do with only two identifiers, 0 and 1 of the binary code: movies, streaming, Zoom, cellphone videos, etc. The actual structure of DNA is a pair of helixes (made of sugar and phosphate) that contain the base pairs of AT and of GC like ascending steps of a ladder within the helixes that shape the DNA molecule.

Acids and bases

All chemical bonds have a certain measure of acidity. It happens to be called pH and ranges from 1 to 7 for acids and 8 to 14 for bases, but that doesn’t matter to our story. Orange juice is acidic (actually vitamin C) whereas baking soda can form a base. As stated above, our DNA ladder is made up of a series of base pairs. The letters A, T, G, C identify bases named adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. (As well, U identifies the base, uracil, within RNA – see below.)

Mutations are errors in the copying of cells (and the DNA within the cells simultaneously). Just as a photocopier might print an erroneous speck every 500 copies, cells create a reproduction error, rarely – say, every 100,000,000 copies. While that may not seem a very high probability for the occurrence of an error, our cell reproduction at 300 billion cells being replicated every day in a human leads to a significant number of errors (i.e., mutations).

Diseases such as Huntington’s Disease, sickle cell disorder, congenital blindness, and deafness are often caused by erroneous (mutant) genes that we pass on to, and become activated (expressed) in, our children.

Genes and chromosomes are divisions within the DNA. Groups or pieces of the DNA ladder collectively make up the chords and bars of the music. We know that our DNA has about 23,000 genes with specifically different characteristics. Those 23,000 genes are grouped (unequally) into 46 chromosomes, 23 having originally come from dad and 23 having come from mom when the first cell of you was created.

Dad’s 23 are different than mom’s 23, yet they are complementary so that you have a complete deck of 46 different cards (chromosomes). The variety of chromosome mixtures is such that your brother and you look and behave quite differently; you might have dad’s hair colour, while your brother might have mom’s hair colour. Also, that mix helps identify cells with different roles, such as heart cells differing from liver cells.

RNA (also a long molecule in every cell from which DNA has evolved) differs from DNA in that: (a) its four base components are AU-GC (not AT-GC – uracil being in place, rather than thymine); (b) it is structured around a single helix, rather than a double helix; and (c) it has one more oxygen atom in its sugar-phosphate backbone. The role of RNA (i) besides making replicates of itself, is (ii) to act as a messenger for DNA, and (iii) to make proteins (and enzymes – a type of protein that converts the format of other proteins, such as those we eat, into a usable form for human absorption).

Playing music

The whole gang operates together as follows. DNA is the music score. RNA carries that music down to, and helps, fabricate the workers in the cells (musicians), namely proteins – yes, proteins do all the work – and enzymes (which are special protein molecules that adapt the action to the situation, i.e., catalysts). The music (DNA) says it’s time to move an eye muscle, so the RNA reads that message from the right chromosome and within that, from the right genes that get the proteins and enzymes to blow the horn on C flat…i.e., immediately make the muscle movement happen.

Progress with CRISPR

We recently learned how to apply CRISPR as a gene-manipulating tool (called gene editing), earning its scientific researchers Nobel prizes (Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier). It is now clear that gene editing can serve the purpose of removing some of our most debilitating diseases.

It was put into action to fight COVID-19 with amazing success – an unheard of 95% vaccine effectiveness (when the goal was 50% effectiveness). It is clear now that our fight against viruses is nearly under control. It is also clear that with CRISPR we are on the path to eliminating our susceptibility to all harmful viruses, perhaps five or 10 years from now (just as bacteria have).

The next step

Scientists speculated that if we can manipulate genes with CRISPR tools, perhaps we can manipulate genes to make our embryos taller, or smarter, or more handsome. That is, we can create a super race. The movie GATTACA (using letters of the bases), starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, follows such a theme. Scientists and rule-making politicians agreed internationally that moving in such a direction was filled with too many unknowns to be pursued freely and a type of preventive moratorium was established.

Attempts to hold back science

I remember in the 1980s, in the early days of Internet, a common agreement that Internet would pursue the aim of increased communications and not be tainted with ads and commercialism. See where such a human agreement has taken us?

The atomic bomb, understood to be a danger in the wrong hands, was subsequently opposed by many of the scientists who helped build it. Although its development was limited by international agreement, rogue states (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Russia, etc.) have followed their own path in efforts to develop their own version of this pending disaster.

So, too, with CRISPR; a rogue American-Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, who was part of the international scientific CRISPR society, secretly applied CRISPR to a human embryo, on a set of Chinese twins (for disease prevention). He proudly announced his success at an international CRISPR conference, much to the horror of many attendees.

Although America did not take action, the Chinese government acted swiftly, arresting He when he was in China. He was fined nearly $500,000, banned for life from working in reproductive science, and is now serving out a three-year jail sentence in China for his bravado. The twins, fortunately, are healthy three-year-olds today and free from a hereditary disease.

The question is: How long will CRISPR be held back? The answer probably is: Not forever. Legally or illegally, some effort to construct a super race is bound to occur.

Conclusion

What can you as a business leader do? The answer is: become informed. Don’t allow your ignorance to promote your silence. Learn about CRISPR. Follow its progress. No longer belong to the silent majority.

Where to start?  Perhaps you might try looking over a best seller such as The Code Breaker.¹

Here’s hoping for your social contribution.

¹ Walter Isaacson, The Code Breaker (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2021).

Bill Caswell leads the Caswell Corporate Coaching Company (CCCC) in Ottawa, www.caswellccc.com or email bi**@********cc.com.

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