by B. C. CHASE
The cretaceous primates to which Doctor Ming-Zhen is referring is the species Purgatorius. They are known from teeth, jaws, and tarsals (ankle bones) dating to sixty-five million years ago or earlier (according to the strata in which they are found). A Yale study on the tarsals demonstrated a large range of motion typical of arboreal species such as primates. They are, for this reason and the morphology of their teeth and jaws, referred to as early primates or primate ancestors. They are not monkeys or apes. More like lemurs. I deal extensively with this in the notes at the end of the third book.
Tell us about the speech at the United Nations. How much of that is based on actual science?
Virtually all of it. The only thing in that speech that is fiction is the personal tragic story by Doctor Martin with his sister. That story, however, is based in part on an experience of my own.
What was your experience?
One day I was driving home on a route I took very frequently. When I arrived at a turn, I had a premonition that I should veer off the usual course and take a long, circuitous route. I had to very forcibly argue with myself to take the usual route. However, there had been an incident on that road and the way was blocked. We were stuck for such a long time that I had to turn around and take the long route home anyway. I was very curious as to why or how I had that strange feeling of foreboding which proved to be true. Was it a coincidence? There is no way to go back in history and scientifically test it, much in the same way that there is no way to go back into history and scientifically test evolution. But it is very interesting to ponder, nonetheless.
To get back to your original question, though, about how much of the speech is based upon science. Much of it is derived from the research of Doctor Rupert Shelldrake. I do not lend credence to everything he says, but some of his evidence for his ideas is very compelling and scientifically rigorous.
What motivated you to write the way you have? You are dealing with many different subjects and sciences. Where did the research come into play? Did it motivate the story?
I am very concerned about the trajectory science is taking. In Fall of Paradise, I include some notes that outline my specific concern, namely that science is becoming dogmatic. With that in mind, I write with the intention of ruffling some feathers. To do this, I highlight some questions concerning what I see as some of the most dogmatic scientific disciplines. Facts do not make truth, and this reality is only made worse by the fact that it is becomingly increasingly difficult to sort facts from pretense and publicity in academia these days. Marketing experts write the press releases that, unchanged and unchallenged, make up the bulk of the science news that most of us are fed in the media. And, contrary to the high expectations of the internet as a bastion of truth, it seems that the internet is making things worse in some ways (the sites Newsy and Newser are cases in point). If Paradeisia has given you pause or made you feel defensive, then I consider my mission accomplished.
What are your sources of science information?
I use Google Scholar a great deal in order to sort through the masses of science journals. I also utilize books, magazines, and anywhere I can find data that is verifiable or can be corroborated by reputable sources. I am a frequent consumer of science news on sites such as sciencedaily.com and refer to the original research papers whenever including information gleaned from such sources in my books.
Why the name Paradeisia: Origin of Paradise?
The name Origin of Paradise I naturally selected as a reference to Charles Darwin’s work.
Characters
Name
Role
Abael Fiedler
White House Chief of Staff
Adriaan Holt
Ranger, Out of Africa, Paradeisia (formerly a PH in Tanzania)
Amélie Babineaux
Senior Vice President, Legal Affairs, Preseption Logic Corporation
Andrews
Scientist at Paradeisia
Aubrey Vela
Waitress at International House of Bacon, becomes Henry Potters Executive Assistant
Bao Ming-Zhen
Wife of Zhou Ming-Zhen
Chao
Student of paleoanthropology at China Academy of Sciences
Chiang-gong
Pastor in Taiwan, Mei-xing's husband
Cynthia Peterson
Mother of Wesley Peterson
Donte
Li Ming-Zhen's boyfriend
Doctor Charles Stoneham
Director, Special Projects, Preseption Logic Corporation
Doctor David Katz
Head of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University
Doctor Fatima Kamil
Chief Biologic Scientist, Egyptian Ministry of Antiquity
Doctor Gary Riley
Neuroscientist at Cognitive Lifescience Corporation, husband of Stacy Riley
Doctor Guy Giordano
Chief Scientist, USAMRIID in Ft. Detrick
Doctor Kenneth Angel
Obstetrician/Gynecologist. Wesley and Sienna Peterson's fertility doctor
Doctor Ivan Toskovic
Head of Chinese Antarctic drilling operation at Lake Vostok
Doctor John Burwell
Pathologist at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Towson, Maryland
Doctor Karen Harigold
Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services
Doctor Matthew Martin
Cambridge University professor of biology
Doctor James Pearce
Head of Paradeisia Hospital
Doctor Phillip Compton
Director of the Centers for Disease Control
Doctor Richard Kingsley
OBGYN at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Towson, Maryland
Doctor Viktor Kaufmann
Chief Scientist, IntraWorld Capital Corporation
Doctor Zhou Ming-Zhen
Head of Department of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of China Academy of Sciences
Donald
Senior Systems Administrator, Preseption Logic Corporation
Erika
Preseption handler, Preseption Logic Corporation
Fitzgerald Ignatius Jinkins
Founder/Creator, IntraWorld Capital and Paradeisia
General Fox
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Henry Potter
CEO, IntraWorld Capital
Jarred Kessler
Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Jeffery Riley
Son of Gary and Stacy Riley, two years old
Jia Ling
Student of paleontology at China Academy of Sciences
Kelle
Seeks revenge for death of husband and children
Kwame Aidoo
Secretary General of the United Nations
Lady Shrewsbury
Financier of IntraWorld Capital, Duchess of Shrewsbury
Lakeisha Franklin
Vice President, Legal Affairs, and Chief Counsel IntraWorld Capital
Layla Fayed
Student of Archeology, emphasis Historical Genetics, Cairo University
Li Ming-Zhen
Daughter of Zhou Ming-Zhen and Bao Ming-Zhen
Lisa Ching
United States Secretary of Agriculture
Lorraine
Flight attendant for Henry Potter
Maggie
Corporate Secretary for Henry Potter
Marco Gonzales
Vice President, Health and Security, IntraWorld Capital
Mei-xing
Chiang-gong's wife
Miranda
IT project management office director, best friend of Stacey Riley
Honorable Paul Hager
Former Canadian Minister of National Defense
President Robert Surrey
President of the United States
Sai Chu
Chief Financial Officer, TransWorld Capital
Sarah Rodriguez
>
Technician at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Towson, Maryland
Scott Nimitz
Operations Supervisor, Paradeisia
Sienna Peterson
Back office processor, wife of Wesley Peterson
Stacy Riley
Wife of Gary Riley
Todd Humphries
Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Tom Chastain
Owner of a charter aircraft company, member of Gary's church
Tony Bridges
Director of Operations, Paradeisia
Trey Wiggins
Captain, Manassas Police Department
Wesley Peterson
School teacher, husband of Sienna Peterson
Yue Zhang
Xiàozhăng (Head) of the China Academy of Sciences
* * *
[1] A paleoanthropologist specializes in fossilized hominids.
[2] A holotype is an original specimen on which a species was recognized and named.
[3] A scapula is a shoulder blade, coracoids are bones connected to the scapulae in front of the ribs.
[4] Mail & Guardian. "Out-of-this-world response to online ghost hunt." 11/16/2006. http://mg.co.za/article/2006-11-16-outofthisworld-response-to-online-ghost-hunt.
[5] Hu, Yaoming; Meng, Jin; Wang, Yuanqing; Li, Chuankui. "Large Mesozoic mammals fed on young dinosaurs." Nature. 2005/01/13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature03102. 10.1038/nature03102 10.1038/nature03102. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7022/suppinfo/nature03102_S1.html
[6] This was written before the more complete fossils of deinocheirus were discovered. Additional information is available in the author’s notes in Part III, Fall of Paradise.
[7] Propylthiouracil, or PTU, is a drug used to treat Graves disease and hyperthyroidism. It reduces the amount of thyroid hormone produced by the thyroid gland. It is known to cause serious liver injury, including failure and death.
[8] Agranulocytosis is a lowering of white blood cell count (to less than five percent of the normal level), resulting in severe suppression of the immune system and extreme risk of infection.
[9] Near the coast, the Antarctic ice caps were replenished by snow above and sea below, but in the interior, the lack of precipitation meant that movement of the glacial ice diminished to less than three inches a year in some areas. The ice there could be very old, over a million years, if it had been there that long. At Lake Vostok, the ice moved twelve feet a year from west to east, meaning that ice there would take 70,000 years to entirely cross it.
[10] The Saint Petersburg scientists' findings were corroborated by a study from Bowling Green State University which examined ice samples that had been bored above the lake by an international team in 1998. Though the ice was not extracted from fresh lake water as in the Russian study, nor was it from nearly as deep, it was from lake water that it was believed had glaciated above its surface. In the study, genetic traces of many types of microorganisms were discovered, including one which was known to inhabit the bowels of fish.
[11] This testimony is largely a transcript from testimony by the Honorable Paul Hellyer, former Minister of National Defense of Canada, however there are some wording changes and the addition or redaction of paragraphs. Any deviations from Minister’s testimony reflect the author’s imagination or other sources and do not reflect the actual words or communicative intent of the Honorable Minister.
[12] Katherine Mancuso et al. "Gene therapy for red-green colour blindness in adult primates" Nature. 461 (8 October 2009):784-787
[13] Book of Enoch.
[14]
[15] Trevor Price, et al. “Population and Developmental Variation in the Feather Tip.” Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution. Vol. 45, No. 3. May, 1991. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2409909
[16] Francesca Merlin. Explanation in Biology: An Enquiry into the Diversity of Explanatory Patterns in the Life Sciences. Volume 11 of the series History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences. pp 91-110. Springer Netherlands.
[17] J. Horner, M. Goodwin. “Ontogeny of cranial epi-ossifications in Triceratops.” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Volume 28, Issue 1, 2008.
J. Horner, M. Goodwin. “Major cranial changes during Triceratops ontogeny.” Proceedings of the Royal Society. Nov, 2006. Vol. 273, Issue 1602.
J. Scannella, J. Horner. "Torosaurus Marsh, 1891, is Triceratops Marsh, 1889 (Ceratopsidae: Chasmosaurinae): synonymy through ontogeny." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 13 Jul 2010. Vol 30, Issue 4.
[18] This is Doctor Horner’s estimate as to the possible number of affected species, including some species which he himself has named.
[19] “These apparent de novo gene origins [apparent because of the vast number of known functional genes which must have some origin given the Darwinian progression from the nonliving (a simple DNA strand) to the increasingly complex organisms] raise the question of how evolution by natural selection can produce functional genes from noncoding DNA. While a single gene is not as complex as a complete organ, such as an eye or even a feather, it still has a series of nontrivial requirements for functionality, for instance, an ORF, an encoded protein that serves some useful purpose, a promoter capable of initiating transcription, and presence in a region of open chromatin structure that permits transcription to occur. How could all of these pieces fall into place through the random processes of mutation, recombination, and neutral drift—or at least enough of these pieces to produce a protogene that was sufficiently useful for selection to take hold?”
Adam Siepel, Darwinian alchemy: Human genes from noncoding DNA. Genome Research. 2009. 19: 1693-1695.
[20] Chang, J. T. Recent common ancestors of all present-day individuals. Advances in Applied Probability. 1999. 31, 1002–1026.
[21] Experiments which have observed hundreds or thousands of generations of bacteria cultures have been conducted, often focusing on the possibility of environmental adaptations (through the removal of useful environmental elements, the addition of toxins, the force-feeding of less attractive nourishment sources, etc). These experiments have shown that, through genetic mutation, bacteria can survive environmental hazards, though typically at the expense of some other trait. Such phenomena have also been possibly observed in more complex organisms such as snakes and humans (humans which are resistant to HIV, cholesterol, or malaria due to mutations, or snakes which are resistant to the TTX toxin due to a mutation). However, these examples (aside from oftentimes inhibiting other important protein functions—human resistance to malaria is the result of sickle cell anemia—while also enabling survival) in no way obfuscate the need for de novo gene origination (the obstacles to which have already been discussed) producing synergetic proteins either simultaneously or concurrently in order to actuate entirely novel, multicomponent systems, and, ultimately, to speciation. This has never been observed and no experiment such as the one Doctor Ming-Zhen proposes has ever been conducted. For examples of the aforementioned studies, see the following:
Brown CJ, Todd KM, Rosenzweig. “RF Multiple duplications of yeast hexose transport genes in response to selection in a glucose-limited environment.” Molecular Biology and Evolution. August, 1998. 15(8):931-42. Nature. 1997. 387, 708 – 713.
Bennett, A.F., Lenski, R.E., & Mittler, J.E.. “Evolutionary adaptation to temperature. I. Fitness responses of Escherichia coli to changes in its thermal environment.” Evolution. 1992. 46:16-30.
Francis, J.E., & Hansche, P.E. “Directed evolution of metabolic pathways in microbial populations. II. A repeatable adaptation in Saccharaomyces cervisiae.” Genetics. 1973. 74:259-265.
Papadopoulos, D., Schneider, D., Meier-Eiss, J., Arber, W., Lenski, R. E., Blot, M.. “Genomic evolution during a 10,000-generation
experiment with bacteria.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U. S. A.. 1999. 96: 3807-3812.
[22] Blount, et al., “Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichi
a coli”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, June 10, 2008. “We are especially eager to find the potentiating mutation or mutations. We want to know whether the potentiating mutation interacts epistatically with a later mutation to allow expression of the Cit function or, alternatively, whether it was physically required for the later mutation to occur. We also want to test whether the potentiating mutation was itself beneficial or, alternatively, a neutral or deleterious change that fortuitously hitchhiked to high frequency. We anticipate that identifying the potentiating mutation will be especially challenging, however, because its only known phenotype is to increase the rate of production of certain mutants that are themselves extremely rare.” As of this writing, this experiment had witnessed some 60,000 generations of e. coli. I would note that the two potentiating mutations are, in fact, serious deficiencies which result in severely defective DNA causing catastrophic failure for the cell in most replications with errors. The first, named mutT, reduces the cell’s ability to remove damaged guanine nucleotides and thus allow mutations to proceed at a higher rate. The second, named mutY, prevents the removal of mispaired bases from DNA. (Wielgoss, S., Barrick, J.E., Tenaillon, et al. “Mutation rate dynamics in a bacterial population reflect tension between adaptation and genetic load.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2013. 110:222-227.) Humans have about fifty different genes from chimpanzees, and there have been somewhere around six million years since the CHLCA (chimpanzee-human last common ancestor). This means that, in the long-term evolution study on e. coli, an equivalent of over one million years has passed in human evolutionary terms, and yet merely modifications to existing genes (most of them neutral or deleterious) have occurred. There has been no new gene, not remotely. With fifty different genes (genes which are not orthologous) and forty million nucleotide differences separating humans and chimpanzees, one would think that at least one new gene would have amalgamated by one million years of evolution. In the e. coli study, billions of mutations have been given the opportunity to prove useful, but not a single new gene has appeared.