The Problem with Evolution

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chever
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29 Aug 2008, 6:22 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Human ability to observe is irrelevant when it comes to evolution anyway

I guess inference counts for nothing

At any rate viri can't become 'sentient' because being sentient apparently requires a complex neural computer like our own. They're not even cells for crying out loud.

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Last edited by chever on 29 Aug 2008, 6:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Orwell
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29 Aug 2008, 6:22 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Human ability to observe is irrelevant when it comes to evolution anyway, so why should that even be a criterion to say it wouldn't happen? Also, how complex is bacteriophage compared to a protocell anyway?

A virus is less complex than a protocell. It is nucleic acid in a protein coat. That's pretty much it. Viruses are far simpler than any other organism.

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LKL
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29 Aug 2008, 8:54 pm

Orwell wrote:

As far as the cocktail idea: a guy I know, who's starting his grad work at Harvard immunology this fall, did some cool stuff as an undergraduate involving T-even bacteriophage to fight infection. The reason this is better than antibiotics is because T-even bacteriophage, as a virus, will rapidly evolve along with the bacteria it is targeting, meaning that the adaptations of bacteria won't quickly confer resistance, if at all. It's an evolutionarily sound medication because it automatically adjusts to new bacterial mutations without anyone having to sit in a lab and invent a new drug. His plan is to use a double cocktail of different antibiotics and multiple strains of bacteriophage to do a really thorough job of wiping out a bacterial infection and practically eliminating the possibility of resistance developing.

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I've heard of this! They used it in the Soviet Union when they couldn't afford antibiotics, and it's gaining more and more respect. The logistics of it is daunting - as populations of both bacteria and phages evolved, one would need potentially dozens or hundreds of strains of phages to treat them all - but it's the one thing that gives me hope over the rising rates of antibiotic resistance in medically significant bacteria.

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29 Aug 2008, 8:56 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

Who's to say, based on the premises of evolution, that the Bacteriophage virus won't mutate and become nondiscriminatory of cell type?

It's remotely possible, but bacterial chromosomes and bacterial DNA are vastly different from eukaryotic DNA. Most bacteriophages are not only specific to bacteria, but specific to certain types of bacteria.

Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites. The cannot exist without cells to hijack; cells have to be capable of reproduction on their own.

iamnotaparakeet
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29 Aug 2008, 10:18 pm

chever wrote:

I guess inference counts for nothing

Quote:

Inference
Noun. A truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted or supposed to be true; a conclusion. Inferences result from reasoning, as when the mind perceives such a connection between ideas, as that, if certain propositions called premises are true, the conclusions or propositions deduced from them must also be true.

Given the other conditions, an inference is sound.

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29 Aug 2008, 10:32 pm

LKL wrote:

Orwell wrote:

Yeah, it was mostly in the thirties, and there weren't good studies on it because penicillin was so amazing. The thing is, though, that the phage will adapt to the bacteria on its own, so you can pretty much let nature do the work of creating new drugs for you.

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PunkyKat
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29 Aug 2008, 11:58 pm

Evolution and creationism go hand in hand I think.

iamnotaparakeet
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30 Aug 2008, 12:04 am

PunkyKat wrote:

Evolution and creationism go hand in hand I think.

Yes, the processes of evolution and the doctrine of Creation are fine together.
Just not the timescale. I'm sure I'll get hateful comments now. Yay.

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30 Aug 2008, 12:12 am

How exactly would those two go hand in hand - not without ignoring several key arguments from both!
They are two opposing views.

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iamnotaparakeet
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30 Aug 2008, 12:29 am

Ishmael wrote:

How exactly would those two go hand in hand - not without ignoring several key arguments from both!
They are two opposing views.

I already gave the qualification after the the first period.
As for "common ancestor versus common Designer":

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7lnLCatp64[/youtube]

Ishmael
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30 Aug 2008, 12:34 am

Whats on the video? Not in 3g area; can't view it.

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iamnotaparakeet
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30 Aug 2008, 12:40 am

Ishmael wrote:

Whats on the video? Not in 3g area; can't view it.

3g area?

Video is basically about having a common designer as a paradigm.

I think it would work better for study of DNA. Right now and from the
start of the research into DNA, things that aren't yet understood
have been classified as junk and heaped in a pile of vestigial ignorance.
If you assume a common designer, then you'd look for the functions
of the code you haven't uncoded yet rather than calling it junk.

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30 Aug 2008, 12:48 am

Ah - something like what I do, but wherin that suggests common design by conscious intelligence; mine is the assumption of common design by natural law.

BTW, 3g is "third generation" mobile phone network - broadband speed Internet on the iPhone.
Can't view YouTube movies without getting 3g reception.

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LKL
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30 Aug 2008, 1:18 am

Orwell wrote:

The thing is, though, that the phage will adapt to the bacteria on its own, so you can pretty much let nature do the work of creating new drugs for you.

Ah, yes: but different populations of bacteria will co-evolve with different strains of virus, leading to balanced populations (parasites, including disease parasites, generally evolve into non-lethal symbiosis with their hosts). Even this would be helpful in many infections, because it could slow a bacterial population down long enough for a human immune system to figure out a good antibody to fight it with. But a disease parasite that totally wipes out its host population usually needs to be an accidental crossover from another species (a la ebola) or moving from a co-evolved population to a naive one (a la smallpox and native Americans). So mixing and matching different strains of virus would provide a higher bacterial kill rate than allowing the viruses to evolve into less virulence.

Also, it would probably make sense to re-harvest viral stock from infections that are clearing up more rapidly than normal, as that particular viral sub-population might have a higher lethal rate than normal. I wonder how patients would feel about having their viruses harvested for posterity?

Ishmael
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30 Aug 2008, 2:45 am

The ultimate "goal" of viruses is not to kill the host; that would be self-destructive.
Instead, those that do die do so because the virus is not adapted to that particular system - an example, more modern-era would be the concerns of bird flu.

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slowmutant
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30 Aug 2008, 8:58 am

PunkyKat wrote:

Evolution and creationism go hand in hand I think.

Evolution is the How, and Creationism is the Why.

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