On Saturday 05 February 2005 12:07 am, DJA wrote: > > In other words, all mutations are blind chance, but those that don't > > survive and reproduce won't be around for long. > > Well, that's the point then isn't it. We're assuming mutations won't be > artificially selected out through gene manipulation.
Yeh but does not gene manipulation then just become another part of the environment? The mutations must be "smart" i.e. masked as benign effects and hidden long enough to prevent the gene manipulators from finding them. Sort of like key exchange. Actually to get around this argument about teleolgy (or what the f?) I should say there will still be mutations that are hidden from the detectors that drive the gene manipulation systems. Maybe this simply means an increase in fatal (or lifelong) diseases that do not manifest them selves until the teen age years or later like, for instance, most schizophrenia. I note that <quote> Genetic Link -- The probability of developing schizophrenia as the offspring of two parents, neither of whom has the disease, is 1 percent. -- The probability of developing schizophrenia as the offspring of one parent with the disease is approximately 13 percent. -- The probability of developing schizophrenia as the offspring of both parents with the disease is approximately 35 percent. </quote> <quote> Onset by Age -- Three-quarters of persons with schizophrenia develop the disease between 16 and 25 years of age. -- Onset is uncommon after age 30, and rare after age 40. </quote> See http://www.schizophrenia.com/family/schizintro.html I had a father a brother and a nephew who were/are schizophrenic. Good stuff though:) Too bad we cannot get DJA over in the KOOLER (Now why did we split that off ??? ) to spice things up a little. boblq PS. Second thought. Late in life manifestation of disease does not necessarily correlate with difficult to detect. The "diseases" that are problematic are those that hide behind genetically favorable patterns. This may well be a bunch of asocial characteristics such as a love of authority ... but here I head into very deep water. -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
