Mary-Claire King, the scientist who found that God is a girl | Science | EUROtoday

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The grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo gave genetics the chance to settle a debt with human rights. After a darkish previous all through the 20 th century, through which it was used to develop eugenics, justify racism and commit genocides, grandmothers allowed this science to assert. “Genetics is a tool and, like any tool, it can be used for good or for evil. A hammer can serve to build or kill,” defined just a few years in the past the geneticist Mary-Claire King, model new Princess Prize of Asturias de Science.

Thus she used that hammer: “We used genetics to build indestructible homes that allowed the return of stolen children.” King shared these phrases for a report on the Grandpa indexthe progressive instrument she developed when the Argentine grandmothers knocked on the door of science looking for an answer for her downside: to exhibit {that a} youngster was her grandson, kidnapped by the repressive equipment of the dictatorship, when their moms have been nonetheless lacking.

In the Eighties, earlier than fashionable DNA exams have been developed, this problem was rather more complicated than a paternity take a look at. “The biggest scientific problem faced by grandmothers – and, therefore, me too – was how to obtain a definitive proof of the identity of a child when both parents were missing and given by dead,” argued the geneticist, concerned till at this time with the reason for grandchildren and human rights worldwide.

After a lot effort, and with the assistance of different distinguished geneticists, he concluded that the very best obtainable instrument was the sequencing of mitochondrial DNA, which in 1985 was made by hand, “without any automation.” And though the method was gradual, the end result was “extremely informative.” King defined it like this: “Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother, so that each child or daughter has exactly the same mitochondrial DNA sequence as her mother. Therefore, a maternal grandmother, a maternal aunt or a maternal cousin – any relative bound exclusively through the maternal line – could provide coincidental tests to confirm the identity of a child.”

The grandmothers have been fascinated with the existence of a secret thread that united us with our moms; King remembers that they joked saying that mitochondrial DNA was proof that God was a girl, that he had put these chromosomes to assist them. It was an invisible path that the repressors didn’t rely and that utterly broke their plans. It was not sufficient to kill moms and erase the path of the child’s delivery: science had cornered them.

King’s work cornered many extra criminals when the foundations for the identification of victims of dictatorships, wars and genocides down all the planet: from the Balkans to Haiti, from Rwanda to the Philippines.

Mary-Claire King with Estela de Carlotto, historical leader of the grandmothers who contacted her in the 80s.

But the historical past of the geneticist in Argentina has extra morals. The final lesson, one which we’re studying on the identical time in numerous elements of the world, is that it isn’t handy to decrease the guard in entrance of the story. The authorities of Javier Milei has lower by decree the wings of the National Genetic Data Bank – a necessary organ to reap the benefits of the science of King – which places a critical threat to proceed discovering infants stolen by the dictatorship. Until now there have been 139 individuals. No lower than 139 recovered lives; 139 sinister disrupted crimes.

Another studying, , is to assert the position that scientific journalism – my workplace – can play in essentially the most important moments. The grandmothers went to science with a newspaper lower, a small information through which it was introduced {that a} man would endure an evaluation to exhibit his fatherhood. They have been the primary steps of the genetic proof and their dissemination allowed the victims to dream of definitive proof to a choose: “Is there something biological?”

And when the trials arrived to exhibit kidnappings and identities, we needed to be on the great facet of the story. Spontaneously, King herself claimed me the significance of “good scientific journalism” in these days: “What the scientific press did was to explain clearly and directly what the genetic test could contribute as evidence in favor or against a kinship. The clarity of that dissemination prevented the military from convincing the judges of their statement that we practiced voodoo.” Voodoo? “This is how they called the genetic evidence when we took the first cases to the courts,” King recalled.

“I am a geneticist and I have had the privilege throughout my career to face very important questions,” mentioned the scientist in Argentina in 2023, in a go to to the grandmothers and their recovered grandchildren, whom he has at all times continued to assist. “The most important questions come from the people,” he mentioned. His is the very best instance that science can and must be a instrument for “good” and for “the people.”

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2025-06-12/mary-claire-king-la-cientifica-que-descubrio-que-dios-es-una-mujer.html