On Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 09:39:04AM -0700, John Marlow wrote:
> Yeah but did someone else provide the funding to the Us for these
> particular studies? Seems remotely plausible, assuming b.g. radiation
> used to be higher; could be some sort of evolutionary adaptation.
> sounds all wrong, though.
I seem to recall from a few years ago that animal experiments have
documented this effect; it seems legit.
A simple explanation would be that radiation and other stressors is
especially dangerous to dividing cells; precancer cells are more likely
to be hurt, and hence radiation might provide a very slight advantage
for healthy cells with working DNA repair. Background radiation has
probably little to do with it, since the decrease from natural decay is
on a very slow scale while levels of DNA repair can relatively easily
mutate both up and down, causing fairly quick adaptation.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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