http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2637
So we're '99 percent chimp' -- so what?
Wednesday, October 01, 2003 - 12:00 AM
The Daily Herald
We have very briefly touched, the past couple of columns, on some of the differences and similarities between humans and chimpanzees. Most critical these days seem to be the forty years of genetic data, and we learned that our chromosome set is very closely related to that of chimpsand other great apes. We also learned that the sequences of our genetic makeup match those of the chimpanzees with about 98.4 percent to 99.4 percent identity. Let's call it 99 percent for short. Chimpanzees are thus closer to us genetically than they are to other apes, and likewise qualify as our own closest genetic counterpart.
But as one wag has put it: "So what? We're 23 percent identical to a banana!" I can't vouch for the precision of the 23 percent, but it's got ball-park accuracy and forces some perspective.
We do share some genes with all other forms of life. We need the same "housekeeping genes" to replicate our DNA, to translate the genetic sequences into meaningful molecules to run our biochemistry, etc. But it is the similar genes beyond those that seem to carry special significance.
Jonathan Marks, a University of North Carolina academic, has tried to address this significance in his book "What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee" (2002 data). It's a very valuable, albeit very defensive, introductory study, and certainly only introductory. But I am indebted to it for some of the ideas we shall pursue.
I think I see maybe four basic ways by which people are likely to address this chimp/human near-identity, with admitted variations. First are those who believe that such identity is used to denigrate their religious beliefs. Some in this group either ignore or actively disparage the data. Second are those who find it bothersome but rationalize that the Creator used a "common blueprint" to make all sorts of critters, and he could embellish an ape blueprint to make a human more easily than using something else. Third perhaps are those who argue that God works through natural laws and evolution is just the method he took to create the body of humans. And fourth are those who argue that the natural laws did it all by themselves and there is no deity involved.
Clearly, I think, these positions say more about the persons holding them than they do about the meaning of the data. And that's precisely the point.
For meaning is something WE humans provide for things, something WE endow on even simple realities; meanings may or may not have any objective validity. Consider three basic terms: blood, race, handshake.
Blood is merely a liquid tissue that carries nutrients and wastes; it's mostly water. But it's the easiest tissue to identify and separate from the rest of the body, and we very early learned that we can not live without it. So it became the basis of an incredible mish-mash of pseudo-biology, politics, philosophy, theology, sociology, love and hatred. Some in society have endowed "race" with mystic and wonderful and terrible meanings. "Race" has no objective genetic reality at all, yet it refuses to die in our popular thought. Some endowed it with immoral meanings that we now struggle to erase.
And handshake? It's a simple physical touching of palms. But consider the incredible range of meanings it has acquired: gestures of unquestioning loyalty, of friendship, of healing conflicts, of denoting worth to other persons, of pledging honesty and integrity. Whence came those meanings? WE generated them, of course; they are in no way inherent in the biology.
So what meaning shall we attach to our 99 percent genetic identity with chimps? And to theirs with us? We go there next.
♦ Duane Jeffery is a professor of zoology at BYU.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B2.
