In her book, ‘Beyond Inheritance: Our ever-mutating cells and a new understanding of health’, Roxanne Khams tells us that we are made up of around 30 trillion cells. Each has at its centre the DNA which defines the way it works. Our DNA is of course very different to the DNA of the dog and the dinosaur and varies from the DNA of other primates in various important ways.

We all know now that mutations, selected for their utility, produce variants of their forebears more fitted to survive and these become more and more detached from their forbears as time passes. In this way new species adapted for changed environments or different circumstances come into being. The original single-celled organism has transformed itself into multicellular organisms as different from each other as it is possible to be, whether cute meerkats or the vicious twenty metre long octopuses in the age of the dinosaurs recently discovered.

We view the important mutations as those found in the DNA of the cells involved in the reproductive process. They will go on to form the new bacterium, animal or plant, and so determine the way it works, its strengths and its weaknesses: its likelihood to survive.

But that’s less than half the story. Of our 30 trillion cells, about 1 per cent of them get replaced every day. And this, in a process which is far from perfect. The author tells us: “You are a slightly different genetic version of yourself today from yesterday, and will be different yet again tomorrow.”

The DNA in new cells contains many mutations: there may be trillions of mutations in our bodies. Although, in the case of cells gone rogue – those we term ‘cancerous’ - they may kill us, many will probably not matter. It seems that some of those mutations may even work to our benefit. The author describes how new mutations can sometimes actually correct inherited conditions. There’s evidence of cells within the liver essentially evolving in situ to cope with conditions such as fatty liver disease. But these are the exception rather than the rule.

By the end of your life, each one of your cells may well have accumulated thousands of mutations of different sorts. But non-cancerous mutations cause all kinds of problems as well. When blood stem cells divide, one of the two cells stays a stem cell and the other becomes a blood cell. So, if blood stem cells divide at the same rate, they will have the same number of descendants. But mutant stem cells that divide at a faster rate have more descendants and so, in time, much of a person’s blood can derive from mutants. This happens in at least a tenth of us by age 70, and generally it is bad news because mutant blood cells seem to double the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

So then, what we have is essentially an evolutionary battle between our cells, where those that acquire a slight growth advantage gradually come to dominate. It is possible that this process is the root cause of ageing:  a number of conditions that are characterised by premature ageing involve issues with DNA repair that mean mutations accumulate even faster than usual.

Even if a build-up of selfish mutations is just one contributor to our gradual decrepitude, it means that the idea that we will ever halt ageing is nonsense. We may be able to slow the accumulation of mutations by taking drugs or with gene editing, but all such efforts will ultimately prove futile.

Even if body transplants become a reality, the brain will still eventually fail. A study of people who died in accidents found around 1500 mutations in each neuron analysed. There’s just no holding back the great flood of mutations for long. “We’re doomed Mr Mannering!”

But mutation applies not only to our DNA. It also applies to those ideas in circulation which Dawkins called 'memes'. They too change and so are subject to natural selection.

In days gone by, rumour was often treated as fact. Local news, passed from neighbour to neighbour was not exactly audited for quality and often changed as the rumour was passed on – a sort of mutation. And generally, the mutation which ‘won’ was the most lurid. So we had belief in ghosts and haunted forests and people (women) accused of witchcraft.

With literacy becoming very much more widespread, communications have become more reliable, but there is still a significant underlying problem. As part of the improvement in communication, we have journalism bringing us stories from around the globe. The quality of journalism however has always been very patchy: many journalists will try to investigate the provenance of a story, whilst others will accept whichever will support the version of the world their bosses want to promote.

And now we have people getting their world and local news from influencers who are not even pretending to be journalists. And so the ‘news’ becomes a mixture of opinion and highly selected ‘fact’. This came into the open – indeed celebrated – with accusations of ‘fake news’ against the so-called main-stream press (although obviously not Fox News) and the presentation by Trump's spokeswoman of ‘alternative facts’. All of which was an attempt by politically motivated people to persuade us of the existence of an illusory world, one of their creating.

And so we regress to previous times, but on a larger scale. It is difficult to resist the incessant bombardment by false information. Conspiracy theories tell us that cabals of billionaires control the world and that our democratic governments are mere fronts for the deep state (aka George Soros!).

But the so-called deep state is an undefinable, amorphous entity whose existence is not falsifiable. Why? because no-one can say what it is in sufficient detail for us to investigate the truth of the matter. It’s rather like the Brexit enthusiasts who, even now, cannot point us to its economic benefits.

Indeed, that these ideas keep being thrown at us is a part of the reason why the memes bound up in conspiracy theories continue to live – despite their obvious (to us) stupidity. Their power comes not from quality, but from quantity. Everyone says... And, eventually, we become or are tempted to become part of that ‘Everyone’ - just to fit in.

In times past, how things worked was essentially dealt with by story-telling - hence the idea of a flat earth which was at the centre of the universe and held up by an infinite column of animals standing on each others’ shoulders. This was before the discoveries of science started to explain things differently.

But now we have an attack on the scientific front as well. It’s anti-science and at the same time pushing a political agenda. Increasingly, we have in charge the anti-science brigade, chief of which is Robert F. Kennedy junior in charge of health in America. His anti-vax policies have already diminished the take-up of vaccines amongst anxious parents with what were until recently extremely rare childhood diseases such as mumps and measles now making a comeback.

And then there is the wholesale attack on the universities by the reduction in government funding for their scientific research. Trump regards them as left-wing organisations and thinks the easiest way to deal with them is to attack them in the wallet. The best research brains are already leaving for other countries.

But where they go, Trump supporters also go in order to try to destabilise democracies by suggesting that the right wing populists in those countries are right, Fortunately there is increasing kickback to this attempt at interference, but this all goes to show that the memetic part of our lives is not in great shape either.

We have always lived by memes. What is a meme, after all, but an assertion of what is said to be true? And we know that what is so asserted is often wholly or partly untrue. Currently though we have a battle royal of the memes. I’m hoping not for stale-mate, but that my side will actually win.

28 April 2026

Paul Buckingham