Category: Genetics

Micro Love

May 4, 2012 By arne hendriks 3

We must teach ourselves to desire the short. The greatest challenge to achieve the goal of smaller humans is our cultural and biological inclination to think bigger is better. Bigger as better is programmed so deeply into our subconsciousness that to think outside of its deeply embedded…

Immunity & Indirect Short Stature

April 29, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Pygmies’ short stature evolved to equip them for life in the jungle. But the exact driving force is the subject of scientific debate. It could have given them an evolutionary edge because smaller bodies are better suited to move through dense forest or because they…

D.I.Y. Shrink List.

April 7, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

If we are to believe this last report published by MIT Press, economic collapse is just around the corner. If that’s true it won’t hurt to prepare our children both mentally and physically for a world in which there will be a lot less of…

Parental Height Minus 10

March 14, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

In an exiting paper by S. Matthew Liao,  Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache, it is argued that human engineering may well be a reasonable tool to achieve a sustainable relationship between the planet and its human population. One of their more intriging suggestions is the possibility…

Messengers of the Small Truth

March 4, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Growth is a human default mode. Every individual, every reproduced cell and in fact every selfish copy of our DNA, intends to proliferate. From an evolutionary perspective such a default mode made perfect sense in the year 4.000 BC when the world population of Homo…

Complex Desire

February 19, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Since growth is a function of the fundamental desire of DNA to replicate itself, it is very difficult to obstruct. Any genetic mutation that surpresses this fundamental desire can be considered a revolutionary force. The refusal for increased grow goes against the system. Unlike the…

Somatostatin Zebrafish Farm

January 18, 2012 By arne hendriks 3

One of the most promising consequences of downsizing the human species is the change in space and time it’ll take to grow food. In several research installations at Food Forward (a look into the future of food) The Incredible Shrinking Man investigates new possibilities. Like the…

The Larons

November 9, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

People living in remote villages in Ecuador have a genetic mutation that may just hold the key to shrinking mankind. The villagers have a rare condition known as Laron syndrome. They are generally less than three and a half feet tall, they are proportional, and interestingly, they are…

Human Hypervariability

November 2, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

Humans are an extremely hypervariable species. There is a large intraspecial difference between its largest and smallest members. The smallest adult person, Chandra Bahadur Dangi, is less than 55 centimeters tall, while the tallest person that ever lived, Robert Wadlow, reached a height of 272 centimeters. That makes…

Tall Risk

August 3, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

A study of 1,3 million women published in The Lancet Oncology finds that tall women are more likely to develop cancer. The researchers looked at the incidence of 17 cancer types, from breast cancer to leukemia, in a long-term health study across socio-economic levels. Cancer…

The ORC

June 26, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Louise S. Bicknel of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medecine and Ernie M.H.F. Bongers of the Institute for Genetic and Metabolic Disease discovered which 5 genes are responsible for Meier-Gorlin Syndrome, a form of primordial dwarfism. Unlike with Dwarfism of Sindh MSG does create…

Peter Gabriel on Humanoid Height

April 21, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Human prejudice against being small is a complicated mix of biological and cultural reasons. In the 1972 dystopian song ‘Get them out by Friday’ by progressive rockband Genesis, small size is appropriated for the economic benefit of a greedy project developer. The 9 minute mini-opera envisions a…

Of Snell Mice and Men

April 17, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Mice and men display striking genetic similarities in hormone dependent growth disturbances. If a mouse responds in a certain way to a genetic mutation, chances are that a human will respond in similar fashion. The first dwarf mouse was discovered by Nobel Prize winner George Snell in…

GHRHR

February 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

It seems as if nature itself is already investigating ways to counter hypergrowth, overpopulation and overconsumption. It’s creating perfectly proportioned, but small, human beings. Pituitary dwarfism, also known as Dwarfism of Sindh, is a form of growth absense where all parts of the body grow equally slow. At…

Dwarfism of Sindh

January 18, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Donald Platt points out an interesting case of dwarfism in Pakistan. In 1994, an article appeared in a Pakistan newspaper, describing the existence of a cluster of familial dwarfism in two remote villages in the lower Indus valley.  The subjects were perfectly proportioned and in…

The Methuselah Gene

September 28, 2010 By arne hendriks 3

The strong correlation between size and the aging process has been discussed here before. However the connection between the two is a very complex puzzle of different ingredients, all playing a role in the aging/growing process. A type of gene mutation long known to extend…

Is there a better human size?

September 9, 2010 By arne hendriks 0

43 years ago, in 1967, R.J. Hansen and M.J.Miley, two civil engineering professors from MIT, published an article in Technology Review, on the advantages of smaller human beings. They ask themselves if we can afford to NOT consider, in all it’s aspects, the question of…

Growth Hormone

July 6, 2010 By arne hendriks 0

Tuning down the amount of growth hormone secreted by the pituitary gland in order to decrease human size is easier said then done. Growth hormones are responsible for a number of important processes in the body including the increase of calcium retention and the strengthening…

20% = 73%

June 23, 2010 By arne hendriks 8

The Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes found that when a body increases in dimensions and retains its geometric similarity, its volume and weight increase much faster. This means that an increase in human heigth of 20% equals an average increase in body mass of 73%…

The Truth About Your Height

May 1, 2010 By arne hendriks 1

Thomas T. Samaras could be considered the godfather of shrink-thinking. The Incredible Shrinking Man just aquired his 1994 book, The Truth About Your Height. Exploring the Myths and Realities of Human Size and Its Effects on Performance, health, Pollution, and Survival. It states:  “Short people…