From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Mon Jan 07 2002 - 11:59:24 MST
In a message dated 1/7/02 6:30:27 AM, bradbury@aeiveos.com writes:
>On Mon, 7 Jan 2002 CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Well, aging has significant detrimental consequences.
>
>Not until after you have reproduced (which is all natural selection
>cares about).
Well, yes, but men often never stop having the ability and the
reason women have to stop is - aging. Aging reduces the number
of offspring for any continuously-reproducing organism.
>> The actual process itself needn't be advantageous,
>> it could be an unavoidable side effect of something
>> else (like cancer amelioration).
>Certainly -- but cancer is ameliorated in organisms like
>elephants and whales (who have many more cells that we do)
>and they still manage to live as long or longer than humans.
True - but the same argument applies. Since we lack the
cancer amelioration of elephants and whales either it's
difficult for our genomes to evolve such capabilities or
they carry some disadvantage elephants and whales deal
with better than us.
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