Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (591106)	7/15/2004 5:21:46 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

"...essentially claims you are dead wrong" No, he doesn't. Your lack of understanding of the science has handicapped your understanding of the issues. What he says is: "...at the end of the day you still need a set of male and female genes for the species to go on...." He is referring to two things, the evolutionary process, and the advisability of admixing two different germ cell lines to assure that random mutations which are environmentally beneficial (an exceedingly small number... still, critical to the long-term evolution of a species) are propagated to new individuals. He is not making any comment upon what is required, or not, for the creation of individuals. (Of course, this process of blending different germ lines has an equal chance of passing down harmful mutations... but as critically harmful mutations tend to kill off individuals, from an evolutionary point-of-view, this essentially 'doesn't matter', because individuals burdened with harmful mutations will tend to die off before reaching reproductory age... which is all that evolution 'cares about', thus generally only the useful adaptations replicate.) If germ lines from two different individual's egg cells are utilized (instead of one line from a sperm cell, and one from an egg cell), you get exactly the same process (of gene admixture), so his comments above would equally apply. (Excepting, of course, that said offspring would be female). If cloning procedures are utilized to evacuate nuclear content from an egg, and then replace with nuclear content from a sperm cell, then genetic admixture would equally occur if said cell were fertilized by another sperm cell. (In such a case, odds of female or male offspring would be 50/50.) Were single cells induced to divide ('cloning') as a form of species reproduction (without the step of admixing two different germ lines), the long term evolutionary health of a species (we're talking about times scales on the order of hundreds of thousands of years to millions of years here) would be adversely affected... because the species would have a lower rate of propagation of mutations --- thus likely would have less resiliance in the face of environmental changes. In other words, the genetic adaptability of the species would be reduced. This is rapidly becoming all academic though... since our scientific ability to manipulate our genetic inheritance is advancing many ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE faster then the slow march of 'natural' evolution. I have no doubt that within two generations or so (a blink of the eye to natural evolution) we will have mastered the tools to take control of our own species' evolution... and our genetic inheritance will be mutable. Essentially, we will move our species (and likely any other species we care to) onto a consciously selected evolutionary path... moving at speeds that leave 'natural selection' in the dust. On a parenthetical note: the male Y chromosome is but a chopped-down version of the female X chromosome, hobbled with a collection of genetic junk since it is unable to select out harmful genetic damage to it's strands as the X chromosome can... and throughout our species' evolutionary history, the Y chromosome has been shrinking smaller and smaller, and becoming more cluttered, so much so that many theorize that (were we not to take our own genetic destiny in our own hands), at some distant point millions of years in the future, the accumulated damage to the Y chromosome would doom our species to evolutionary failure. (So, quite naturally, I have no problems with the idea of us taking our evolutionary destiny into our own hands, and improving upon the design.) :)