Medical Scientist Challenges Origins of Life Theory, Says DNA Points to ‘Intelligent Originator’
by David Lindfield
A New Zealand medical scientist is challenging conventional theories about the origins of life, arguing that the extraordinary complexity and coded information contained in DNA point toward intelligence rather than unguided chemistry.
Dr. Orson Wedgwood, a healthcare researcher with a doctorate in organic medicinal chemistry, argues that scientists have yet to explain how the chemical building blocks of life could have spontaneously assembled into the sophisticated, interdependent system required for even a basic living cell.
“It’s a language, and this does provide evidence for intelligence,” Wedgwood told the Daily Mail in an interview.
Wedgwood, who develops life-saving drugs and has designed compounds that interfere with DNA replication, makes the case in his book, “DNA: The Elephant in the Lab.”
His argument centers on three problems he describes as “insurmountable hurdle[s]”: chemical, statistical, and conceptual.
DNA Presents a Fundamental Problem for Origins of Life
Scientists have demonstrated chemical processes capable of producing some of the ingredients necessary for life.
What remains unexplained, Wedgwood argues, is how those ingredients could organize themselves into an operational biological system.
One obstacle is statistical.
Proteins depend on amino acids being arranged in highly specific sequences.
Wedgwood argues that the probability of those components randomly arranging themselves into functional proteins without guidance becomes vanishingly small.
But the greater difficulty, he says, is conceptual.
Modern cells depend on DNA to store the instructions required to manufacture proteins.
At the same time, proteins are needed to copy, interpret, and translate the information stored in DNA.
That creates a fundamental chicken-and-egg problem for theories attempting to explain how the first living cells emerged.
The cell itself also requires a functioning membrane to hold everything together.