You’ve stopped making any sense at all, and you’re literally both contradicting yourself, and not understanding Sanford.
Stop, just stop. Remember the fist law of holes!
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And yet Sanford thinks H1N1, a mere virus, went extinct due to Genetic Entropy. So which one is it, are “simple” organisms suffering Genetic Entropy or not? What is the relationship between simplicity and Genetic Entropy? To what degree does simplicty (measured how?) affect the rate of decay due to GE? And what IS the rate of decay in “simple” organisms anyway?
I emplore you to read Sanford really really carefully so that you can discover that he answers none of such questions anywhere.
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You have or have not read the book? Just wanting to verify so I don’t accuse you of not having done so if you have. We can discuss what you wrote when I finish it.
Why? Sanford says ALL species are degrading due to Genetic Entropy and rapidly heading for extinction, not just humans. What is special about birds or horses or every other species which lets them avoid GE?
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I have not read the book, I have had it’s contents thrown at me at length innumerable times over the last 5-8 years, among others by people who make a living (get paid to) advertising what is says. I’ve read Sanford’s papers, and the blog posts and websites that defend GE on sites such as AIG and CMI. So far you have not said anything about what the book contains I’ve not heard before.
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Probably the most relevant parameter for assessing the sensitivity of an organism to GE is the number of mutations that occur in the genome at each reproduction, the more mutations, the more the organism will suffer GE. This number being much higher in RNA viruses such as H1N1 than in bacteria such as E.coli, the former will suffer GE much more than the latter.
It seems to me you should be trying to convince @thoughtful of this, since she’s the one who claimed viruses can survive in “natural reservoirs” due to negative selection against harmful mutations. She says this is Sanford’s idea:
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Have you read the book?
I was referencing birds as a reservoir for H1N1. Birds themselves degrade due to GE, so the discussion has been if viruses and bacteria also degrade due to GE, how are they still around? Sanford has suggested they exist in a more stable form in natural reservoirs. I’d have to pull up the paper to give a more exact quote.
Yes! One of my favorite one. A real nugget!
Birds have existed for over 130 million years, since the Mesozoic era.
Fossil of world’s earliest modern bird could help us understand the extinction of dinosaurs
Tell me again why they haven’t all gone extinct? Oh, if you want to put on the big red nose tell me again maybe they were created by space aliens only 20,000 years ago.
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You misspelled merde.
That is a disingenuous claim made by Sanford, devoid of evidence, and impeaching his academic integrity.
Natural reservoirs are not cryogenic pods. They are ecologies of living, breathing animals. Such die, and their lifespans are generally shorter than humans. Virus cannot survive and reproduce on their own, to get from mortal duck A to duck B there is no other path than cellular infection to do what virus’s do, followed by transmission to new hosts. As such, they would be fully exposed to the vagaries of genetic entropy over the course of history.
The facts refute Sanford.
The science refutes Sanford.
Most of all, Sanford refutes Sanford.
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!!!
Then I think you may want to reread based on your comment about GE in viruses and bacteria. I think he makes a different argument. I’ve just started to read myself, but it struck me as not being quite what he says, based on what I last read.
How do RNA viruses stay stable in those natural reservoirs? RNA viruses have to be continually infecting new hosts in order to be maintained in those natural reservoirs, so why isn’t H1N1 degrading just as fast in bird populations as it is in human populations?
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Let’s come back to it when I finish the book. I’ll tag this. Otherwise we’ll be continuing a thread on GE again.
I invite you to read objection 1 of Appendix 5 and you will see that I am saying exactly the same thing than Sanford.
Thanks. I skipped over to that since I haven’t finished the book - this part in the first picture, left hand column is important as well (selection mostly keeps up with the rate of deleterious mutations) and the second picture answers what @T_aquaticus was asking,
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That’s hilarious. The “natural reservoirs” Sanford talks about there appears to be bacteria and fungi employing survival strategies to survive in dormant states in the soil, but he’s inventing that explanation to try to account for how viruses can continue to exist. But viruses don’t make spores, and normally decay in a matter of hours to days outside the body (@Mercer take a look at this shirt!). That’s the worst excuse I’ve seen in a long time.
Bacteria or fungi =/= viruses
A “natural reservoir” for a virus is another living population of organisms that it infects. It’s not “dormant” there just laying around doing nothing. It only survives by continuing to infect new individuals.
Oh and also, microbiologists don’t let their continuously growing strains “go extinct”. They autoclave them to death and send them to incineration or similar kind of disposal. And they don’t continue to grow their cultures because they’re “genetically unstable” in the sense Sanford appears to suggest*, they don’t continue to grow them because it costs money and takes a lot of work.
*What a deceptive choice of words honestly, that can’t be a forking accident. One might naively think Sanford is here suggesting that microbiologists stop growing their cultures because they’re afraid they’ll go extinct due to genetic entropy, and that’s probably the impression those words leave you with, but in reality the problem is merely that microbiologists perform experiments with their microbes, and they don’t want them to evolve and change too much from their ancestors, because then it becomes very difficult to compare the results of those experiments if the organisms have changed too much. Then you don’t know whether the drug or antibiotic you’re testing is working or not because there’s something wrong or differenth with your chemicals, or if the bacteria managed to evolve higher or lower resistance.
Holy shirt batman, that is one excessively deceptive segment of words. This guy is a total fraud.
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