By Dr. Mercola

I've previously written about how your environment and lifestyle, particularly your diet, has a direct influence on your genetic expression. For example, research using identical twins have shown that diet trumps genes in terms of the level of health you achieve.

The science of epigenetics also challenges the conventional view of genetics, proving that the environment determines which traits a gene will express, and that your fate is in no way written in stone even if you have genetic predispositions.

Findings such as these offer tremendous amounts of hope for every single one of us, as it removes us from the position of victims of our heredity, and makes us masters of our own health and well-being.

Alas, as expressed in the featured article1 by Jonathan Latham, PhD, it has become increasingly clear that there's collusion going on between our government, industry, and scientists, to hide the fact that everything from human health and intellectual capacity to various addictions are indeed caused by the environment in which we find ourselves.

Latham starts off by discussing a truly blatant example of this type of manufactured PR. A recent study2 found that 98 percent of all variation in educational attainment (i.e. whether you complete high school or college) is accounted for by factors other than your genetic makeup.

"This implies that most of student success is a consequence of potentially alterable social or environmental factors," Latham writes.

"This is an important and perhaps surprising observation, of high interest to parents, teachers, and policymakers alike; but it did not make the headlines. The likely reason is that the authors of the study failed to mention the 98 percent figure in the title, or in the summary. Nor was it mentioned in the accompanying press release.

Instead, their discussion and interest focused almost entirely on a different aspect of their findings: that three gene variants each contribute just 0.02% (one part in 5,000) to variation in educational attainment.

Thus the final sentence of the summary concluded not with a plea to find effective ways to help all young people to reach their full potential but instead proposed that these three gene variants "provide promising candidate SNPs (DNA markers) for follow-up work."

Original post:
Genetics Research -- A Failed Science Now Used for Social ...

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