Let me clear up a few definitions first, so that we’re on the same page - since the terms “nuture” and “nature” are nebulous and therefore hard to work with.

“Nature” seems to mean the genetic material of an organism, or something that can be passed on to further generations (the DNA).

“Nuture” can be any environmental stress placed on the organism. Stresses do not have to be “stressful,” meaning that it doesn’t necessarily mean a bad situation, just something that will result in a change in the organism.

My case study for this comment will be bacteria, and I’ll generalize to try to keep this short.

In bacteria, external stresses can easily bring about a change in the DNA of the organism. Shining UV light or exposing bacteria to other mutagenic substances will work - biologists have used this to create strains of bacteria that have desired characteristics.

Also, if you grow bacteria that are not resistant to an antibiotic, say penicillin, in a petri dish and then expose them to penicillin, even though most of the bacteria will be killed, there will almost always be a few colonies that have developed resistance to this antibiotic (note: they don’t always have the same changes to the DNA made here!).

So, it stands to reason that a stress like nuturing a child (just an enivironmental thing that brings about a change) can affect the DNA, right? Well, it seems pretty far-fetched to me and here’s why.

It’s easy to change the DNA of a single cell. That’s why it’s easy to do it with bacteria. When you try to change the DNA of an entire organism, however, this becomes more difficult - indeed, nearly impossible.

While I would agree that nuturing a child a certain way may be able to change the way they express their DNA, this DOES NOT mean that the DNA has changed in any way. This is not, for example, a change in the nature.

So this hopefully will clear up any confusion here on the issue. I haven’t seen the studies (you can’t unless you pay for them on the linked site) on this. I can’t seem to find any papers in journals on the topic either (although I must admit I did a very limited search).

I would imagine that this “passing on to subsequent generations” that was observed was an artifact of the experiment (again, I’d have to see the data and the methods used).

Also David, you make the claim that: “The ability of the genetic code in DNA to be corrupted by the environment is well known (for example with cancer). However, the ability for constructive changes of the DNA via the environment in this manner was previously unknown.”

This is wrong on both accounts. Cancer does not always change the DNA of the cancerous cell (only if exposed to mutagens, etc.. and not always then). Not only that, but this is simply one cell in an entire organism - cancer isn’t propagated through generations like this, only a genetic pre-disposition. Also, using stresses to bring about a “good” change in organisms is absolutely known (just look at the bacterial studies above).

My point is that even though “nuturing” a child may be able to change the way they think and act (not necessarily by only changing the way DNA is expressed), it will probably not change the “nature” (DNA) of the child. Even if this were possible, you’d have to change every cell in the organism in the same way to effectively completely change the genetic makeup of the individual and allow this change to be passed on to future generations.

I hope that clears up some of the mis-information here. I remain skeptical of the claim that nuture has affected nature in the rat study until I see the actual report/data.