Bert Thompson, Ph.D.
Brad Harrub, Ph.D.
The collision occurred without warning. Prior to the impact, thoughts had revolved around dinner plans. Images of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, however, now have been replaced by an ear-piercing siren and flashing strobe lights, that dance off of street signs and store windows. Following the injured person’s six-minute ambulance ride, emergency room doctors assess the situation. There is extensive internal damage, and several organs are beginning to shut down. The prognosis is dim—unless a healthy kidney and liver are transplanted within the next 12 hours. A call is made to the National Organ Donor Registry, and the gravity of the situation is relayed to several donor officials. Within a matter of hours, a chartered air ambulance delivers the organs in a bright red Igloo™ cooler. As the anesthesiologist begins the necessary preparations for surgery, the patient notices the surgeon walk over and inspect the donated organs. The last words the patient hears as he drifts off to sleep is the surgeon saying, “Well, I guess chimp organs will have to do; after all, we share over 98% of the same genetic material.”
While many evolutionists proclaim that human DNA is 98% identical to chimpanzee DNA, few would lie by idly and allow themselves to receive a transplant using chimpanzee organs. As a matter of fact, American doctors tried using chimp organs in the 1960s, but in all cases the organs were totally unsuitable. The claim of 98% similarity between chimpanzees and humans is not only deceptive and misleading, but also scientifically incorrect. Today, scientists are finding more and more differences in DNA from humans and chimps. For instance, a 2002 research study proved that human DNA was at least 5% different from chimpanzees—and that number probably will continue to grow as we learn all of the details about human DNA (Britten, 2002).
In 1962, James Dewey Watson and Francis Harry Compton Crick received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery concerning the molecular structure of DNA. Just nine years earlier, in 1953, these two scientists had proposed the double helical structure of DNA—the genetic material responsible for life. By demonstrating the molecular arrangement of four nucleotide base acids (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymidine—usually designated as A,G,C, and T) and how they combine, Watson and Crick opened the door for determining the genetic makeup of humans and animals. The field of molecular biology became invigorated with scientists who wanted to compare the proteins and nucleic acids of one species with those of another. Just thirteen short years after Watson and Crick received their famed Nobel Prize, the declaration was made “that the average human polypeptide is more than 99 percent identical to its chimpanzee counterpart” (King and Wilson, 1975, pp. 114-115). This genetic similarity in the proteins and nucleic acids, however, left a great paradox—why do we not look or act like chimpanzees if our genetic material is so similar? King and Wilson recognized the legitimacy of this quandary when they remarked: “The molecular similarity between chimpanzees and humans is extraordinary because they differ far more than many other sibling species in anatomy and life” (p. 113). Nevertheless, the results were exactly what evolutionists were looking for, and as such, the claim has reverberated through the halls of science for decades as evidence that humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor.
One year following Watson and Crick’s Nobel ceremony, chemist Emile Zuckerkandl observed that the protein sequence of hemoglobin in humans and the gorilla differed by only 1 out of 287 amino acids. Zuckerkandl noted: “From the point of view of hemoglobin structure, it appears that the gorilla is just an abnormal human, or man an abnormal gorilla, and the two species form actually one continuous population” (1963, p. 247). The molecular and genetic evidence only strengthened the evolutionary foundation for those who testified of our alleged primate ancestors. Professor of physiology Jared Diamond even titled one of his books The Third Chimpanzee, thereby viewing the human species as just another big mammal. From all appearances, it seemed that evolutionists had won a battle—humans were more than 98% identical to chimpanzees. However, after spending a lifetime looking for evidence of evolution within molecular structures, biochemist Christian Schwabe was forced to admit:
Molecular evolution is about to be accepted as a method superior to paleontology for the discovery of evolutionary relationships. As a molecular evolutionist, I should be elated. Instead it seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many in fact that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message (1986, p. 280, emp. added).
In 2003, the completed human genome study is scheduled to be published. Before this massive project was created, scientists estimated that humans possessed 90,000 to 100,000 genes (a gene is a section of DNA that is a basic unit of heredity, while the genome constitutes the total genetic composition of an organism). With preliminary data from the genome project now in hand, scientists believe that the actual number of genes is around 70,000 (Shouse, 2002, 295:1447). It appears that only about 1.5% of the human genome consists of genes, which code for proteins. These genes are clustered in small regions that contain sizable amounts of “non-coding” DNA (frequently referred to as “junk DNA”) between the clusters. The function of these non-coding regions is only now being determined. These findings indicate that even if all of the human genes were different from those of a chimpanzee, the DNA still could be 98.5 percent similar if the “junk” DNA of humans and chimpanzees were identical.
Jonathan Marks, (department of anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) has pointed out the often-overlooked problem with this “similarity” line of thinking.
Because DNA is a linear array of those four bases—A,G,C, and T—only four possibilities exist at any specific point in a DNA sequence. The laws of chance tell us that two random sequences from species that have no ancestry in common will match at about one in every four sites. Thus even two unrelated DNA sequences will be 25 percent identical, not 0 percent identical (2000, p. B-7).
Therefore a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. Would it be correct, then, to state that daffodils are “one-quarter human”? The idea that a flower is one-quarter human is neither profound nor enlightening; it is outlandishly ridiculous! There is hardly any biological comparison that could be conducted that would make daffodils human—except perhaps DNA. Marks went on to concede:
Moreover, the genetic comparison is misleading because it ignores qualitative differences among genomes.... Thus, even among such close relatives as human and chimpanzee, we find that the chimp’s genome is estimated to be about 10 percent larger than the human’s; that one human chromosome contains a fusion of two small chimpanzee chromosomes; and that the tips of each chimpanzee chromosome contain a DNA sequence that is not present in humans (B-7, emp. added).
The truth is, if we consider the absolute amount of genetic material when comparing primates and humans, the 1-2% difference in DNA represents approximately 80 million different nucleotides (compared to the 3-4 billion nucleotides that make up the entire human genome). To help make this number understandable, consider the fact that if evolutionists had to pay you one penny for every nucleotide in that 1-2% difference between the human and the chimp, you would walk away with $800,000. Given those proportions, 1-2% does not appear so small, does it?