A new research in Human Molecular Genetics [1] [2] shows that smoking can be related to changes in genes of specific segments of the DNA, thus increasing cancer risk.

Weird how the same changes that are supposed to lead to the evolution of species from bacteria to the humans, are in other cases considered “bad”.

Even though we are not talking about mutations here, the logic is the same. Removing -CH₃ groups from specific places, made some genes express more intensely. A random change did not create something good. Instead, it increased the risk of having problems. And in a complicated system like humans, this is logical.

Smoking has been banned due to the obvious reasons of not having to put 20mg of chemicals into your organism just for… the fun of it. Any other attempt to justify this decision genetically will always hit wall on the “random changes -> Evolution” counter-argument. Who really knows if these epigenetic changes are not leading to some beneficial changes into the genome?