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Asked by flostar2001 to Rachael, Penny, Jennifer, Jean-Paul, Dave on 10 Jan 2014. This question was also asked by cabesbabes.
Question: If we suffered from radiation, could we perhaps develop powers as in the GONE series by Michael Grant?
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David Christensen answered on 10 Jan 2014:
I guess it is theoretically possible that the mutations caused by radiation could affect people in a way that benefits them, but I think it is quite unlikely. Most often the radiation is likely to cause cells to die as they kill themselves once they detect that their DNA has been damaged. This then means that you lose the mutated DNA and you would lose any chance that that mutation might have been beneficial. But, this cell suicide will only happen if the mutation is great enough to be detected by the systems in the cell that look out for DNA damage. If the mutations were really well targeted and small, then maybe you could make a human with some kind of unique abilities. This would be difficult though and testing it would be highly unethical!
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Penelope Mason answered on 10 Jan 2014:
I agree with Dave that it would be unlikely to be a good thing! There’s only two caveats to that:
Firstly, if you are subjected to low levels of radiation for a long time you get used to it and your cells get better and more efficient at dealing with it (basically they make more repair proteins). Then if you get a slightly higher dose, you’d probably be better off at dealing with the damage than someone who has never been exposed to the low dose. This is called radiation hormesis and is still theoretical in humans: although studies have noted that people who handle radiation have a lower rate of skin cancer in their hands than the normal population, there might be confounding effects (they wear gloves more often, for example).
I wouldn’t exactly call it a super power though – although under these conditions and over time, as a species you’d get better at dealing with more radiation. We, for example, have evolved to deal with a particular level of DNA damage because our environment requires us to do so. An alien race from somewhere with very little radiation might consider it a super power, but it’s all perspective!
Secondly, low-ish levels of radiation cause more DNA damage and therefore higher rates of mutation in the species it affects. This tends to speed up evolution a bit, and means that if you are looking for random super powers to emerge, judicial application of radiation plus some specific breeding might cut down your wait by a few hundred years . I wouldn’t recommend it, though…
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Andrew commented on :
Alison explored the idea of real human superpowers in an article in the Sun newspaper online. It’s behind a paywall so you’ll have to pay for access but the link is: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/5351216/Real-life-superpowers.html in case you’re interested.
But like Dave says, radiation mutations are very likely to be damaging to our DNA. Alison suggests a more successful route might be using retroviruses to change our genes directly, but this is very unlikely to happen because of the ethical concerns!