CAJ - Talk

When I talked to my friends about epigenetics, I had to start from the beginning, because they didn’t have a clue what it was about. I tried to explain that epigenes are little tags on genes, that you can turn on and off. They didn’t really get that, so I drew it for them. I learned that it is easier to understand when you have a picture. They were really interested and told me to find out more about cancer and epigenetics. At the end we had a great discussion on the ethnological question of my topic. Should the government prohibit smoking, drinking, bad eating habits…? Two of my friends immediately said: yes. Their argument was that if you affect other (unborn) people, it should be prohibited. The other on said that it is your body, so your decision. I thought it is hard to prohibit things like that, because where do you start? Who says what’s good and what’s not? When it comes to smoking, we agreed that there are no good aspects. But eating habits? Would you be allowed to have fast food once a month? Or not at all? We talked about it for almost an hour. And I realized that the answer to this question is probably not black or white.