This post is not a commentary on the book Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, although I do recommend the book. But this is around how to understand what is selfishness.
It seems scientists often forget about the common public when it comes to naming their books or concepts. That way, the title, selfish gene, is just another one: survival of the fittest, natural selection, god particle, the list goes on. None of these phrases represents what they truly meant. God particles have nothing to do with god, survival does not correlate with any physical fitness, or there is nobody in nature to select or reject anything.
Selfishness in biology simply means the ability to survive no matter what. It has little to do with a species’ deliberated actions using its brain, such as mating (or not mating), not sharing resources, stealing or killing. It only means making copies and preserving genes by passing from generation to generation.
What a headless virus can do
Take the case of the most popular show in town, the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 or Covid-19. The virus has two parts, the outer envelope, which has a bunch of proteins, including the famous spikes, all embedded in a lipid membrane and the inside material that contains the genome, a single-stranded RNA, preserved nicely on a protein called the nucleocapsid or N-protein. The genome is long and contains information to make new viruses using someone else’s workshop, the human cells.
The virus thus mobilises human cell machinery (e.g. ribosomes) to replicate. It creates billions of copies that infect millions of people. And the virus does all these without having a body or a brain!
Brain doesn’t need to follow
Human genes, too, want to preserve themselves. They are also selfish and want to be immortal. But it has a master, the human brain, which can overrule the instincts for the greater good. It may have inherent altruism, but more importantly, it is trainable based on a value system. While the brainless gene wants and will long for eternal life, you, as a human, can prefer not to have offspring. You may stop taking sugar, run for hours when no lion is chasing, donate organs to strangers.
