X-Message-Number: 12806
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 11:41:38 -0400
From: Rand Simberg <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #12791 - #12796

At 05:00 AM 11/19/99 -0500, John Clark wrote:

>He can
>not find any down side to the mice at all but he speculates there must be
>one someplace because otherwise evolution would already have found
>this fix; 

I would conclude from this statement that he doesn't understand evolution.
From the standpoint of evolution, there is nothing broken to "fix."  There
is no obvious benefit to the mouse genotype from in having the phenotypes
live longer than they already do, which is already sufficiently long to
create viable offspring.  Perhaps the downside would be that longer-lived
mice would compete with their descendants for resources.  Not a problem for
me.   :-)

Fortunately, he (and we) have other priorities than does evolution (i.e.,
our genes)...

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