Valerie: Questions about TMR4A

Well, common ancestry is obviously true. It’s just how much? What we see in humans is most important. If the current data about human evolution is not compatible with common ancestry with great apes, then front-loaded design and diversity have to be assumed. This is what Sanford has been trying to show.

And it matters a lot to me, because then we also don’t share common ancestry with bacteria and viruses. We can’t assume that evolutionary processes work the exact same way on us.

Both of these things (our genetics and how they evolve and the genetics of diseases and how they evolve) have massive implications for health. At this point, I probably care equally about the origins debate as I do about how much more of jump we could gain in knowledge if we knew more about evolution if we’re understanding it wrong. It looks stalled out to me when I read articles in the news such as this one. Probably studying all the mutations of SARS-CoV-2 will help.