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To: muawiyah
""Genetic meltdown" depends on where you live and what you eat."

No, error catastrophe is definable and the human genome is very close if not in reproductive error catastrophe.

"If the offspring have on the average one harmful mutation each, then the population will degenerate; this is called "error catastrophe." This puts a bound on how many non-neutral mutations can occur per generation. It cannot be much more than about one per generation, and in fact, it must be significantly less, since most non-neutral mutations are harmful."

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/genetics.html

"In man, the mutation rate per generation is high, the variability generated in the population is comparatively low, and most mutations are fixed by drift rather than selection. The variants of a gene are in general more deleterious than in E. coli. There is a discrepancy in the published mutation rates: the rate of mutation fixations in human populations is twice or four times higher than the individual rate of mutation production, a feature which is not consistent with current population genetics models."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/jn3m132k451w1974/

"Observation suggests mutation rates are actually alarmingly high. Since mutations are harmful this means that error catastrophe is probably approaching for many species. One of the signs of genetic deterioration is infertility. Several studies have suggested that human infertility is increasing at 1.5% per annum. Infertility in some creatures (such as the Everglades alligator, and the Florida panther) is close to crisis point. If observed mutation rates are extrapolated back into the past one reaches the conclusion that life cannot have existed on earth for very long. If observed rates are projected into the future one must conclude that life does not have many centuries left. Observed mutation rates suggest that life is a short-term phenomenon."

http://www.refcm.org/RICDiscussions/Science-Scripture/X%20Evolution/introduction_to_evolutionary_bio.htm

158 posted on 12/11/2006 7:37:46 PM PST by GourmetDan
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To: GourmetDan
Theory.

A mutation is harmful or not harmful depending on how you look at it.

159 posted on 12/11/2006 7:52:45 PM PST by muawiyah
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