Week9

It seems like physicists were very keen in becoming biologists during this time, have there been any other examples of professionals switching fields?

I was wondering how close were Watson and Crick? On one hand they were shown to be close colleagues and good friends in the film. But then Crick essentially threatens to sue Watson over the publication of his book. Were they really close and then just drifted over time, did they blow up at each other, were they never truly that close but more just two men working on DNA. What was their relationship? === One of the main contingencies of history we discussed regarding the race to the double helix was the fact that Rosalind Franklin dies of ovarian cancer in 1958. Is their any other evidence that supports the theory discussed in class about the x-rays being blasted at her waist being related to her cancer? === My question has to do with the movie "The Double Helix". Why does everyone seem to think that Franklin should have gotten credit for the discovery of the structure of DNA. Even though her work helped to get to it, she never found it, and refused to share info with Watson and Crick. If you know get close to the answer of a multiple choice question but fail to bubble in the space it is still wrong. So even though it was kind of sneaky on Watson's part, if she was to be listed with Watson and Crick, maybe she should have teamed up with them in the first place.

How could Barbara McClintock do her work on the genetic crossing-over in maize if the DNA stucture by Watson and Crick wasn't even completed yet? If scientists already knew a lot about genetics, then how did they not know about the shape of the DNA since they had to have know what they were dealing with?

In the video we watched last Monday the students were gathering their own DNA and comparing it to others DNA in the classroom and around the world and looking at how different the seemingly similar people actually were, but I do not recall them saying what genes they were actually looking at. For all we know they could have been looking at genes coding for some cancer or genetic disease rather than hair type, skin color, and such. Were the makers of the movie trying to make a point about the similarities of people by swinging the truth or was the movie portraying the truth? === If there is so little difference in DNA between two individuals, than how is DNA testing used in criminology to identify a person? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/20/local/me-dna20 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDMQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org%2FpageDocuments%2FAJWLK7M1AV.pdf&rct=j&q=dna%20fingerprinting%20troy%20duster&ei=uU-UTYx4zrLRAZL03e4L&usg=AFQjCNG3tJJhM4gevfiDFvc-qKxXH6wNkA&sig2=ZYOqxlspFXI5ldNyyoM-Rg&cad=rja

my question this week is, why is it that some people thought that the african race would eventually die out? did people think that like darwin's theory only the strong will survive and the weak will just end up evolving or become extinct? === If it's true that all humans derived from ancestors in Africa, wouldn't it be justified for people of European descent, as well as others, born in the United States to declare themselves as African- American in a race/ethnicity survey? === Why are white people considered Caucasians when people from the Caucasus are typically darker skinned? When did this mix-up occur?

Why is the term race still used to describe different cultural groups when "The Race Question" was supposedly answered years ago?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

=== I was wondering if there was not only people who thought of their race as superior to others back in the day, but if there was actually people who believed that those of other race were almost incapable of holding any position that a "white" person was, especially in the field of science? I know that many different races were discriminated against, but was there ever an instance that is well remembered where somebody fought back involving the studying of genetics? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Everett_Just === I am not an expert on such matters but it seems that there are much fewer groups of certain people living stereotypes than there once were. An example would be to say that several decades ago a larger number of African Americans were struggling to achieve career-wise. There would still have been a very present racist movement. There might also have been structural problems, like seniority, going against people who recently joined the work force even though they were equally qualified. Now this is not as much of an issue. It is widely seen and accepted that people of all skin colors are all equally qualified. There are also affirmative action laws and such. If what i have tried to say is true then shouldn't this whole race thing disappear soon? And i mean ties to race, not cultures and traditions. I feel like my generation doesn't care that much about where you are from as long as you are putting up a fight. Or am i just completely wrong? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_United_States === In the movie about race it seems easy to prove that there are no biological differences between what people define as different races. Why then, is it so difficult to make people understand that really we are all just humans, and that which would actually prove us different - DNA - is essentially identical across all races?

Especially the people in this interesting situation I stumbled upon the other day: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prom_Night_in_Mississippi Documentary: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/prom_night_in_mississippi/

I believe it is simple now to evaluate one's DNA and assess it for any hereditary imperfections. There must be laws now in place to regulate all this information. How have these laws affected research and the need for personal medical attention? http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2011/01/10/previewing-personal-genomics-in-2011-its-deja-vu/#more-5057