January 31, 2006
Geoffrey Hamilton
Geneticist Michael R. Rose on
CBC's Quirks and Quarks: The Long Tomorrow
uses fruit flies and evolution for age research conclusions. Experiment: young fruit flies have their laid eggs
stolen. They are allowed to reproduce only when they are much older. This goes on
generation after generation until these flies gradually live three times longer than the original flies.
To begin with, the name dropping of "natural selection" by
Michael Rose
does not sound accurate. He is actually trying to
describe artifical selection. The CBC interview shows how. He says, "I tricked natural selection",
"natual selection was forced", "I changed the rules of that game". Even if he is not artificially selecting the
fruit fly winners of his game, he is part of the game itself.
(This is not to be pedantic, but to lay ground for further concepts.) Secondly, he uses natural
selection, as nearly everyone does, to imply
organic selection. Organic, in the sense I mean, has generally come to suggest 'without human interference',
or 'without conscious input', and is more
useful in making a contrast with artificial selection. What is 'natural' is everything
that happens, or is thought of by anyone, and has nothing to distinguish it from artificial selection.
...So... Rose should
say organic selection, but says it's natural, and then actually describes artificial selection.
That's just the beginning.
Let's, for the sake of argument, say his experiments with flies
can, eventually, show a case of organic selection. Even so, his conclusions stated on
the CBC do not show that flies change due to organic selection, nor even is change demonstraited to
be due to artificial selection.
Organically, the fly's eggs being stolen at one point cannot connect to the future
offspring of that fly. Selection
based on reproduction is not happening here and cannot happen based on past, disconected events.
Artificially, no one has supposedly selected the flies that live longer and
had their eggs removed.
Where is the connection between a fly's laid eggs, their destruction and, later, the offspring
fly's genetic makeup? Where is the organic
selection happening? Where is even Rose's selection happening? Neither are happening.
Random mutation is not what is happening or masses of mutations must be
happening in huge packets. If 20 percent of flies get older the next generation then
that effect must be in 20 percent of the individuals, just for the hell of it, waiting
for a systematic egg thief to show up. Considering the nearly infinite kinds of random mutations possible,
to find that mutation ready to go at a moments notice would indicate millions and millions of
mutations are made and are ready to go for any contingency. It is like using an A-bomb to kill a flea.
What is happening? really?
The eggs are removed after
they are laid by the fly. The fly is finished its work and has no physical part left to play.
A thousand generations of watching and the only
variable factor will be is the fly's knowledge that
her babies are nowhere to be seen. Sexual
selection would not matter. The flies are still getting sex
and giving 'birth'. Their work is done.
It is the flies' knowledge that there are no progeny that is the one variable.
With that one variable, a fly knowing she has no offspring, a whole theory is given a longer life.
Self-Directed Mutation says the conscious assessing
of one's own experience informs an unconscious process which can change the inheritable genetic makeup
of life. It is like the lioness who will switch on its reproduction factory only when it consciously knows
its last batch of cubs is grown up or dead. In the fly's case it switches on its gene factory to make corrections
for future generations.
This theory answers Rose's unasked question. How did the egg theft get from here to their genetic
makeup? And it answers it like this: The fly noticed her eggs were 'failing' until she got older.
Something in her mind
triggered a redesign of her genes in the exact (or nearly exact) location where it was needed. This redesign was
used in the next generation specifically in the hopes it could prolong the
life of the new fly and so it could get around the nasty
egg thief. Each time the thief stole the eggs later and later, later and later in each generation
the redesign happened.
Now this only
happened in some flies because not all of them cared to change, some couldn't change that way
and others just misunderstood
the name of the game was age. The result of self directed mutation is change that is much faster
than chance, more efficient and successful,
(if that's your thing), and makes more sense all round. Now it's time to adjust evolution, or get rid of it.
GRH
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