Epigenetics Does Not Prove the Tabula Rasa/Blank Slate Ideology...
During a few months of the harsh European winter of 1944-45, Nazi invaders cut off all food supplies to 4.5 million people in the still-occupied regions of the Netherlands, resulting in a mass famine that killed approximately 20,000 people from severe malnutrition. Decades later, its consequences continued to be felt in the children of women who were pregnant during that critical period in the history of the Netherlands, as they were found to have a higher incidence of metabolic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, cardiovascular problems, and schizophrenia, than the rest of the population of the same country.
It seems obvious that extreme conditions, depending on what is considered extreme for each species, often cause extreme effects on the organisms of living beings. However, it is also necessary that these organisms are not adapted to withstand such conditions, as is the case with humans. Therefore, it is not only the environment that influences them, because they respond and interact according to their own natures (their adaptive limits and potential).
Regarding the famous example above, often used to demonstrate transgenerational epigenetic effects, it does not prove that the environment is more important than biology, even though many have reached that conclusion. In fact, it proves that it is biology that determines the behavioral and/or organic reactions of living beings to the different environmental conditions in which they find themselves, always providing the final response. Therefore, if the human organism were fully adapted to a situation of food shortage, it would not suffer major repercussions if subjected to the same.
After all, what makes some species more adapted to extreme conditions, such as some bacteria, and others not?
Mainly their biology.
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