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Plants May Be Able To Correct Mutated Genes
ddutt writes "NY Times is running a story that talks of an exciting new discovery, which, if confirmed, could represent an unprecedented exception to Mendel's
laws of inheritance. The discovery involves.. 'plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier.'"
Unfortunately, that will be the major headlines coming across the Fox News screen..."Evolution flawed: mutations don't occur. Jesus weighs in on Bill O'Reilly tonight!"
But the reality is that they don't know what causes this, they don't claim that it stops mutations on the whole, and they don't know if it stops all mutations. As per the article, it may only stop harmful mutations.
I Want To Believe
This would only be true for these specific plants and only if this mechanism ALWAYS prevented mutation.
If these conditions applied to us, we wouldn't have cancer.
Most Plant genomes are crazy complex. Besides that, polyploidy is often the norm in plant chromosomes. With that much genetic material to work with, i guess you'd be bound to find a 'do-over' someplace.
it may only stop harmful mutations.
Granted, I have just an armchair knowledge of evolutionary theory... but isn't that a little off point? I thought the point of evolution was the organism doesn't know which mutations are harmful, many are tried, and the ones that work survive.
Exactly, science doesn't work like that. If a part might be, or is, wrong, that doesn't invalidate the entire theory necessarily. Evolution is somewhat like gravity. We have all this obvious evidence, but the underlying stuff is kinda misty. Newton knew gravity existed and made some nice laws. Einstein said why those laws work. String theory is a more comprehensive way of explaining Einstein's theories. Science changes, because it needs to.
I don't get it.
Science changes, because it needs to.
Right. But also, because is those changes. Science is not some dogma, it's a process. So, for anyone who wants to get snarky about "holes" in evolution, well, no pooh-pooh Sherlock. It's not about authority or control, science is, instead, a process by which we attempt to attain and refine knowledge.
I Want To Believe
Full blown "Cancer" only happens when these problems get out of control, and the body can no longer contain/fix them.
Furthermore, if lethal cancer occurs once you are past child-bearing age (around 30 up until recently), it isn't such a "bad thing" for the species. Once you've reproduced, evolution is done with you.
Let's see:
1. Things aren't so structured and orderly. Look at your own body. Anybody who designed such flawed systems as knee joints and eyes with blind spots ought to be fired, if not outright charged with criminal negligence. Living organisms demonstrate the slow march of blind evolution, with functions and organs being co-opted for other purposes, and not being calibrated for ultimate efficiency. As much as anything else, organisms tend to look like compromises, and not optimal designs. They certainly don't resemble entities that we observe to be designed.
2. How could science ever pursue something like "Intelligent Design"? Who is this designer? Where did they design life? What forces did it/they bring to bear? How can a researcher hope to falsify any particular claim about the designer? These are the sorts of questions that must be answered, and in reference to evidence that can actually be gathered. That is how science functions.
This sentence betrays some substantial misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Evolution is not pure chance. Mutations themselves are likely to be so, but the selective processes are not random.
As well, what does "believability" have to do with it at all? Science follows the evidence, not the conceits and sensibilities of people. Imagine going back in time 5,000 years and telling some Mesopotomian that Earth is a sphere that orbits the sun, which itself orbits the central mass of a vast galaxy with billions of stars, which in turn is itself only a rather ordinary member of a vast cluster of galaxies. That you cannot imagine (or refuse to imagine) something to occur is not an argument against it, but merely fallacious thinking.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Should be noted, because a lot of the creationist kids around here don't seem to understand, that when someone says "know" or "they can tell" or "they decide" in these contexts, the poster is NOT talking about a conscious intelligence making a decision. They are making an anthropomorphization and only a moron would take it literally (as I have already seen several people do on this page.)
The Farewell Tour II
There are certain somatic (IE: not passed down from generation to generation) mutations and other varieties of DNA damage that lead to cancer. There is a mechanism in place to replace these mutations with another copy. The body also has a way of detecting and removing some viruses and retroviruses that have embedded themselves in the DNA of the host organism, to a limited extent.
This is true, but everything you describe is where the organism detects genetic changes when it has a clear copy of the 'good' genes elsewhere. In the case of cancer... one cell mutates, but all the others still have the good DNA. The thing that makes this case so interesting, from what I understand, is that the entire organism had the new DNA so what would it compare against... (no I didn't read the article yet)
Doesn't matter how dumb the primordial organic neuroprocessor is when it's been augmented with a Cyberdyne Systems omni-intelligent prepare-to-be-assimilated super jewel. Or, translated into Earth-speak, in the time-frame that these problems might become manifest, we might be able to fix them, or make them irrelevant.
Now, the above argument can be fired at all sorts of things where people might prefer to sit on their asses rather than fix something - the environment, for example! - but it raises an interesting point: if you don't like the Hope-We-Can-Fix-It answer, then just what alternative solution do you propose?
We can't exactly just turn people away from hospitals; I don't think we want our government to start imposing sterilization orders on "stupid people". So the study that you propose isn't gonna result in any useful action - is it? Except that if it revealed what you suggest, it would just be used as ammunition by people who want to control everyone. And therefore, even if it's true, it isn't actually anything we want to have sanctioned!
BTW, I'm not arguing against you here - it's pretty likely, in my view, that our capabilities and societies are acting pretty anti-evolutionarily, as you say. It's debatable about how strong such influences are - the nature vs nurture debate and so on - but even assuming that the influences are strong, I'm not sure what a decent humanitarian society can do about it.
Apart from develop yet more remedial technology...