The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #148865   Message #3463984
Posted By: GUEST,Stim
10-Jan-13 - 11:31 AM
Thread Name: BS: Seen any bad films recently
Subject: RE: BS: Seen any bad films recently
Well, Jack, how about Gene Therapy?, According to Wikipedia, which says "The most common form of gene therapy involves using DNA that encodes a functional, therapeutic gene to replace a mutated gene."

Now, by my reasoning, that seems, on the face of it, to be an evolution negating technology, and a pretty deliberate one, at that.

I would suggest that it is actually pretty possible to alter genetic mutation processes in a large population by simply introducing mutagens or anti-mutagens of various sort into that population. The thing is, it doesn't really matter how big the population is, if all are exposed to a product from single source, like, say, Coke, or Tylenol, or McDonald's special sauce, then that will effect the whole population.

As to your thought about, "Evolution has been an uninterrupted process on this planet for 3.5 billion years - how could it have stopped in the past 113 years in any single species?" The answer is, "extinction". And anything that is interferes with or alters the reproductive process in any way can end the game.

The thing is that people toss around the word "evolution" as if they understand it. The fact is that "evolution" is the name we give to a process of adaptation that we have observed--but we don't really understand all that well. We can certainly breed dogs, and we can do a lot of handy tricks by splicing things, be they fruit cuttings or genes, but we don't know very much about the underlying mechanism at all.