I think it’s more an issue of him misrepresenting their research so loudly and to such perverted ends. I would give 1000 telomeres to see what they wrote to him.
My guess is that they used the Creative Commons license just because that holds more weight than a defamation suit, which is pretty difficult to execute. Ultimately they just want him to stop dropping their names into it.
I thought about contacting Dan Eisenberg just to ask what he sent him (all he can say is no) but if I did, and I shared it, then Lucas would immediately assume it was a troll or something.
the fact that there’s no inside scoop on who sent what and when makes me feel like it’s the real thing and not a troll faking one.
my guess is that they did tell him he is wrongly explaining their research, which when you consider who is talking, is definitely damaging to their character. If I wrote an article on something like the higher incidence of colon cancer in minorities and the KKK used my research to declare and to prove that non-white people have inferior colons with smellier poops and then they said “and our interpretation of that is that non-white people must be inbred” I’d fight that too. It doesn’t matter that Lucas isn’t making money or isn’t attributing the ripeness of youth to them, his entire premise that older men have better DNA is wrong. Dan (by the way he’s an anthropologist not embryologist) probably told him that the research doesn’t explain why there is longer telomere length in older men’s dna or what it means that children inherit it. That’s still unknown. Health benefits are usually found in longer telomeres in the body, but there are a lot of factors. One that I think of is how bipolar individuals have overly aged telomeres. Lucas doesn’t get that short telomere conditions from shorter telomeres in the brain etc have nothing to do with sperm telomeres. He still has short telomeres in the rest of his body. His sperm having long telomeres also doesn’t protect the sperm from mutations, and because sperm regenerate billions of times, making copies and copies, they have more and more genetic errors and mutations. Ovaries but regenerate so women don’t have that risk. What Lucas needs to remember is rotten lettuce. his sperm have been copied over so many times that they likely have lots of mutations. The longer telomeres he has won’t undo that. They’ll just help the (flawed) genetic package be passed down.
my guess is that the telomere lengthening is evolutionary. When young men reproduce, their sperm aren’t full of mutations, so protecting the ends of the spindles is less important. Plusyounger men are more fertile so there is a better chance of a good sperm surviving. And if the sperm has lost some genetic code due to telomere length, there’s time to reproduce again.
Older men don’t have those same factors. But having older men retain some ability to pass on some sort of genetic code is useful in case of human disease. If younger generations are wiped out or if disease decimates populations, rebuilding is possible through older men who could potentially pass on offspring with enough genetic mutations to be resistant to whatever is killing the population.
that is my theory. Notice how I didn’t mischaracterize the research of others to explain it?
to get back to Lucas, I’m guessing they told him he is wrong and that’s why he was begging to be told if he has good sperm in 10 words or less. They already explained it but he is Too dumb to get it.
Lucas: the answer is that your sperm is not superior because passing on longer telomeres does not outweigh or cancel out you also passing on a host of illnesses that you personally are at risk for and that you as an older man are at risk to pass on. Those risks separately and certainly together mean your kids have a greater chance of having serious defects.
here is the sad news, ten years ago, you were less at risk than you are now. Every year of your life increases your risk to any offspring.