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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Re: Population control & Freedom
Message-ID: <1167@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Sep-86 10:56:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.1167
Posted: Tue Sep 30 10:56:30 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Oct-86 08:25:41 EDT
References: <564@gargoyle.UUCP> <26500108@inmet>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 61

In article <26500108@inmet> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes:
> >>Genetic diversity can be increased very fast by creating
> >>*artificial* habitats, by genetic engineering and cross-breeding.
> >>[janw]
> >
> >Utter nonsense.  Jan, please provide one shred of scientific support
> >for your claims.  (This means:  document your statements by
> >references to a scientific author or journal with authority to speak
> >in this area, e.g., E.O. Wilson.  Quotes from *National Review*,
> >*Time*, or *Gung-Ho For Freedom* do not count.)  [Richard Carnes]
> 
> ... you have argued from authority and then
> attempted to bolster this conduct by ducking the issue of whether
> Jan was right or not and requiring Jan to give   "scientific" support
> (where you incorrectly define the term "scientific"!).

If you and Jan weren't so abysmally ignorant of biology, you wouldn't bother
defending Jan's nonsensical position with a (perhaps technically valid)
charge of argument from authority.  And I do think it funny that you are
criticizing Richard for offering Jan a relaxed standard of proof, to give
him the benefit of the doubt.

The kind of genetic diversity that we are destroying now (through extinction)
cannot be "increased very fast" by any of the methods Jan lists, nor any
methods I know of.  Here's why.

Cross breeding:  Very simply, cross breeding reassorts genes; it doesn't
produce any new ones.  The benefits of cross breeding are only possible
if you have genetic diversity of parent stocks.  Here Jan has put the
cart in front of the horse.

Artificial habitats:  No habitat creates genetic diversity: a habitat can
only select among diversity from parent stock or mutation.  While we might
be able to speed mutation and selection rates artificially, it's not
likely either that the results will be qualitatively comparable to those
of millions of years of natural evolution, or that the process can be speeded
enough to be economically feasible.

Genetic engineering:  We're not there yet, and it's not clear that we'll
be there in the next 100 years.  What's "there"?  Being able to redesign the
development of an organism.  Being able to create a suite of adaptations
that work together to fit an organism into a special habitat.  Being able to
design enzymes to perform important biochemical functions.  There are
several million different sets of solutions to these problems, different in
ways we're only beginning to understand.  But they are being destroyed
before we have the tools and knowledge to understand how they work: from
that standpoint alone, extinctions will retard or prevent whole fields of
genetic engineering from developing.  Many biochemical phenomena will never
be studied because the organisms died out first.

> When the facts are on your side, argue the facts.

Is the above satisfactory?
--

"To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage
to proclaim what reason shows to be true."
	Bertrand Russell in "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization".
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh