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The Kinship of Strangers: When DNA Reveals What Identity Cannot Accept

Some truths arrive uninvited. They come in the mail, in the form of a cardboard box containing a plastic tube, a prepaid envelope, and instructions for depositing saliva. Six weeks later, they return as a percentage breakdown, a haplogroup designation, a list of genetic relatives you never knew existed. The Kinship of Strangers, the third novel in the Fractional Fiction series, asks what happens when those percentages contradict everything you were raised to believe about who you are and who belongs to your people.

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23andMe: Whitest White Man in All the World!

Three weeks ago, ago I paid $200 to send off my spit to 23andMe for DNA analysis. I had no idea what to expect, but the results are pretty much as expected! No surprises. No dangers. I now have third-party confirmation that I am officially the Whitest White Man in All the World!

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The Copenhagen Zoo Kills Marius, the Reticulated Giraffe, and Feeds Him to Lions: Meanwhile, Queens Cracks Down on Undercover Cockfighting

Two alarming animal things happened over the weekend, and the conflation of the dual mendacities against human nature leads us to recognize we are not really a wholly civilized world where the weaker among us in the animal world are cared for and protected as we expect them to care for us.

First, Marius, a two-year-old Reticulated Giraffe, was killed by the Copenhagen Zoo — the very entity vested and sworn to protect him — and he was fed to lions because Marius’ genetic stream wasn’t special enough to earn continued living:

The cause of death was a shotgun blast, and after a public autopsy, the animal, who was 11 feet 6 inches, was fed to the zoo’s lions and other big cats.

Administrators said they had decided to kill Marius, who was in good health, because his genes were well represented among the captive giraffe population in European zoos. But that explanation did not satisfy animal rights activists who had mounted a furious last-minute campaign to save him.

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The Biology of Alzheimer’s and Couch Potato Rat DNA

I am concerned with an ongoing effort in the scientific community to prove, once-and-for all, that some of us are genetically predestined to be lazy.  It seems there are those among us who are natural-born couch potatoes.  If laziness become a medical condition, then I’m sure we’ll soon see a category of disability that will then offer the lazier among us a Federally paid way of life for sitting around all day watching television.

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Living 200 Years and Knowing the Date of Your Death

If you had the choice to live to age 200, would you take up that blind offer?  My beloved wife Janna would not.  She’s perfectly content with her life and, if she died today, she would feel satisfied with the accomplishments of her life.  I, on the other hand, would love to live to age 200 if, of course, there were no sort of Twilight Zone curse involved where I was confined to a bed in a coma for 125 years, or I became a pack mule in the Himalayas for a century, or if I had to live in an active sewer and never see the light of day for 110 years.

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Proving American Indian Casino DNA

I’m not certain if Native American Gangs or casinos owned by Native American tribes do more harm to the heritage of a once proud nation.  Both gangs and casinos serve two evil masters — money and power — and in the end, the result is always emotional evisceration and a disgraced death.

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Long Live Your Bloodstream

Our blood knows our secrets and foretells our health.  Sometimes we’re told the now of the being of our bloodstream — high cholesterol, bad thyroid, liver complications — but what if our blood could tell us today, how we’ll end up in the future?  Would you want your blood to tell your longevity status?  Or would you prefer to live only in the now?

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The Manna of Life: Bone Marrow and Supermodels

When I taught Public Health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, I remember one day when the school was having a “Bone Marrow Drive” to help an employee stricken with cancer.  You could sign up for a free bone marrow screening to see if you were a match and, if you were not, your bone marrow would be placed in a database for future reference.  Bone marrow transplants are expensive, and painful, for both donor and recipient, but in many ways, that marrow is the manna of life.

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Fifteen Founding Mothers

First, we thought we only had six Founding Mothers for Native Americans.  Today, we know we have at least 15 Founding Mothers — and that only helps to enhance the ideal of the original Founding Fathers.

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Regulating Recreated Life

Do we want to regulate artificial life?  Or should we simply let new lifeforms evolve as they must and come into being as they want to join us, destroy us, or find their end with us?

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