A Trust Building Exercise on Genetic Entropy

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

I’m not asking you to summarize the thread. I’m suggesting you clarify in your own head what the outstanding gaps are that you’d like clarified. What are your questions?

For example:

@PDPrice

That makes a crystal-clear, falsifiable, empirical prediction: that we will never find any evidence for a pre-1918 outbreak.

Pass the popcorn…

Yeah, if you mean specifically H1N1. I think that would be a prediction, if I understand everything correctly. Dr. Carter & Sanford would have to say for sure if that would be something they’d predict.

What does the data show on this prediction?

@PDPrice

This is where my understanding gets fuzzy, but I think he’s saying the virus is something that is beneficial in the waterfowl and the waterfowl have natural regulatory mechanisms in place to keep the virus in check and mutations low:

However, when it jumps to pigs and people, it burns like wildfire because we do not have the natural regulatory mechanisms that aquatic waterfowl apparently do.
(From creation.com/fitness)

Is there any known mechanisms that fit the bill here? What does the data show?

@PDPrice

Those inactive and benign viruses would still be mutating and reproducing. So why hasn’t GE taken them out?

As I said to Dr Swamidass, it was my understanding that in the benign state they were not mutating as much, though I don’t understand all the reasons. This is an interesting topic for sure.

EDIT:
I should have realized this, but Dr Carter did already address this question in the box at the bottom of creation.com/fitness (he wrote that box part!); he is saying that the waterfowl apparently have regulatory mechanisms in place to maintain the integrity of the virus, which is beneficial for them.

Is this really true? None of us think this is true. Perhaps a good question from you could help enlighten things.

@PDPrice

That still doesn’t explain how they are so well preserved in the pigs. The mutation rates are similarly high.

That’s a question I don’t have an answer for. It was my understanding that the mutation rates in the benign state (in the animal host) were not as high as in the pathogenic state. If that is not true, then I personally don’t know the answer. Dr. Carter might, but I know this is a very mysterious topic where more research is needed.

What is known about this?

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These are all examples of things that could be turned into questions by you. Of course, you know what is in your own mind. From reading just a small part of that thread, there has to be many questions going through your head that I don’t even know about.