We are being told — not least by the naggers on the Today programme, and the wider BBC — that genetic screening is good for us and will shape the future for the better. We will live longer and healthier lives.

Such is the pressure behind this movement that the NHS and its political masters are discovering ways of reducing costs (read, “increasing costs”) by these methods. DNA tests are now routinely carried out by hospitals and the police, whether people want them or not.

There was a brief moment of clarity on Today last week when a doctor made the obvious point that the clearest genetic test for susceptibility to diseases is to examine the health of relatives, cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents, for what they caught, and what they died of.

Our genomes are right there before our eyes. No need to get an “expert” to do it for us. Actually, we are all naturally expert at reading genetics. We instinctively spot blood links in people’s faces, skin, bodies and other more subtle signals.

On a trip to northern Belgium more than 20 years ago, I was struck by how the faces on the streets resembled those in Cardiff, South Wales. The Belgae, a Celtic tribe, at one time settled in Wales before the Romans came. The genes are still visible. Or were until the mass migrations of the Labour years.

In Cork in Ireland, and all along the West coast, to this day you can see black-eyed Spanish people, descendants of the Armada wrecked on Irish beaches in Good Queen Bess’s time. And there are more than a few Vikings hanging out in Dublin.

We don’t need blood tests and a genome to work it out. Our genetic inheritance is fully visible and available to us without an array of medical interventions to tell us about ourselves, or others.

In some older American films, when two people decide to get married they go for blood tests to discover if they are compatible to have children. This was a legal requirement in many states, no doubt a hangover from the eugenics movement that swept the West before the Second World War, and was a factor in bringing Hitler to power. It had its origin in Darwinian determinism. Science does have a history of begetting totalitarianism.

Scientists often scorn astrology for its mechanical determinism, but much of science is built around similar assumptions. The new “science” of genometrics, as with cosmology and climate theory, are means of predicting the future by examining small slices of nature and converting the results into mathematical formulae. Even Nostrodamus might laugh.

What’s the difference after all between that and telling fortunes from the entrails of chickens, as the Greeks and Romans did?

Science is given respectability by the enormous amounts of public money spent on it. The Large Hadron Collider must be good because of its size and complexity, not to mention the £6 billion, and rising, it cost to build.

As the good doctor implied last week, the world is arrayed before us in all its glory, openly and honestly. But we choose to outsource our personal phenomenology to a bunch of hucksters and quacks, allied to credulous politicians, who spend our money like ocean swells trying to discover what we know — or should know — already.

We yearn for reassurance, even if it is arrogant nonsense.

Eugenics is making a comeback through genometrics. Who knows what horrors will return in its wake.

John Evans

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Have you noticed how the word “quantum” is everywhere now? It’s hard to find an intelligent publication these days which isn’t going quantum in a big way — if that isn’t a contradiction of terminology.

Copywriters could have a lot of fun with slogans like : “Go large, go quantum.” However, it’s not easy to see how quantums have a part to play in the real world, apart from the trendiness of the word itself.

Quantum mechanics is the newest fad in science, with its magical mystery tour of the universe that must owe a lot to Dr Who.

Upcoming computers will be quantum machines that run 1000 times faster than the trendiest current Mac or Vista PC. We’re persuaded that teleportation will at last be possible with them.

Okay, you go first. I may try it when you return with all your organs intact.

Nanotechnology, which uses quantum techniques, is invading every part of us from our clothing to our bodies. Why doesn’t anybody tell us that?

No learned discussion of the latest science is complete without a deep dive into the sub-atomic world of quantum fantasy.

And, to ram home my point, the latest James Bond flick — far distant from the world of Ian Fleming — is called Quantum Of Solace, a title clearly chosen more for its resonances than its meaning. It would be a better description of the atmosphere in 10 Downing Street right now. Although Gordon Brown requires more than a mere quantum of solace.

It’s as if the big, solid cosmos of the universe is now less interesting than the smallest of the small where the laws of physics are very different and weirdly unfamiliar.

I’m tempted to change the name of this site to Quantum of Syntagma, just to get into the flow, of course. I’ve decided against it because the word is just too small to do us justice.

The European Union could certainly find a use for it though.

I spent some of the longish Easter break thinking about Dark Matter — as you do.

The reason is, I have a theory about all this. But before you duck for cover, let me explain.

Physicists claim that the universe punches above its weight. It behaves as if it were much heavier than it appears to be. To make allowances for this the boffins describe the chunk they can’t see as “Dark Matter”.

Of course, this begs the question of how they weighed the universe in the first place. Does a weighing machine exist hidden away in the basement of the Physics department at some university? It would have to be bigger than the universe itself, of course, and it couldn’t weigh itself. Presumably the scales would have to be designated Dark Matter.

Anyway, they obviously think they’re on to something here.

Not quite. I remember an ancient text by the Buddha in which he says that only one-quarter of the universe is made known to us, the rest is hidden. Hmm, sound like Dark Matter to me. Sorry lads.

Now — are you still with me? — if we remove the word “Dark” from the equation we’re left with “Matter”. Did the Buddha think of the remaining three-parts as matter? What if it were software of some kind?

Say you were trying to show someone on a blog how to code a particular action — putting up a picture, for example. Every time you post the code the software converts it, usually into a blank space with a symbol or two dangling from it. That’s because you wouldn’t have fully completed the code. If you had, your student at the other end would get a picture instead of an explanation.

Hold that image in your head as we move on.

Quantum physicists say that if you have twin particles — presumably electrons — and you change one of them, the other changes too … wait for it … even if it’s on the other side of the universe!

How do they know that? They’re magicians, of course. Seriously. Their latest theory is called “M Theory”, the “m” standing for Magic and Mystery. I’m not making this up.

Anyway, you see where I’m going with all this.

Let’s assume Dark Matter is software or its mystical equivalent. Every time you wish for something, the “software” tries to convert it into reality. Remember the time you wanted something very badly : “Please land me a big job and a mansion in the country. I promise I’ll be good from now on.”? Fat chance.

Actually, it’s said you often get a rough approximation of what you ask for. That’s because, like the code, you won’t have framed it specifically enough, and you may even have changed your mind halfway through the process. Presumably that explains why camels often appear instead of horses.

Einstein mentioned the fact in his Relativity Theory that human observers affect the processes they’re observing. In other words they often see what they want to see. Take the human genome. These genes can only be seen by an electron microscope, which only shows what it’s been programmed to show. So, if we are set on finding “genes” we’ll find genes — and they will look like some fantasy picture by a splendid artist — a double helix, let’s say.

Physicists always look for complexity, that’s the way they’re made. So we have one dizzying set of particles after another, like the quark, which used to be soft cheese and is now a fundamental building block of the universe. The moon could be made of green cheese after all, if we want it enough.

Once — like Einstein and the Quantum chappies — you start breaking down matter, the whole of science reveals itself to be a sham. I’m not talking about technology which probably works on the “cosmic ordering” principle. Man dreams about flying like a bird, and decades later the Tiger Moth appears, later still the Jumbo jet. Not quite what we had in mind, but close. Teleology lives!

Back full circle and someone now claims to have found Dark Matter, neatly tidied away in some unused corner of the cosmos. It had to be. The mathematical model required it.

Or could it be the universe gave us what we wanted? The only question is, what on earth will we do with it?

Be careful what you wish for — you may get it.