Posted by James on 10/18/2007, 12:09 pm, in reply to "Re: Infection Worse than AIDS" Such accretion requires many intermediate variant forms, which are lacking in the geologic record." Wrong. There is a considerable amount of intermediate forms found within the geological record. Besides, the variation seen within the genetic pool of both the fruit flies and this bacterium is evidence that the allele frequencies for traits (resistance to specific antibiotics) is a response to changes in the environment. If the trait is beneficial (meaning that those organisms with the trait survive and pass it on), and continues to be beneficial within that environment, then time (meaning multiple generations) will produce a different organism. With this bacterium, you are seeing evolution on a small scale (both in terms of size of organism and time). Of note here is not that the bacteria is forming a new trait, but the population of bacteria is responding because those bacteria in previous generations which had some form of resistance to antibodies survived and passed that trait on. By continuously killing off the members in earlier generations that lacked that trait, humans forced this evolution by altering the environment of the bacteria. Of course, you will deny this till your dying breath because you 1)have an innate misunderstanding of evolutionary theory and 2)have a predetermined conclusion that you only have to make the evidence match. As for the interesting bit about an impending plague or epidemic, humanity has been long overdue, but have managed to stave it off due to several factors. First and foremost, over the past 150 years, hygiene and its role in curbing infectious disease has become very well understood. It is much more difficult for killer bugs to get us when we kill them before they can infect. Secondly, medical improvements have been substantial and have curbed the chances of major epidemics. Finally, as medicine has improved, we have been able to keep the environment sufficiently destructive to the infectious organisms to keep us ahead of their evolution.
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"Evolution theory predicts the gradual accretion of random mutations over millions of years, eventually resulting in a distinctly new gene pool that is not readily compatible with the precedent gene pool from which the new species evolved, nor with other descendant species of the same ancestor.
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