>From: "John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>
>Subject: Re: Cornering the causes of aging
>Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 15:49:55 -0400
>
>phil osborn <philosborn@hotmail.com> Wrote:
>
> >Let's imagine a species - of bacteria, >
>Yes but has evolution every been able to produced a bacteria or anything
>else that works
>that way, something that doesn't just go dormant, something that still has
>an active
>metabolism and eats up lots of resources but can not reproduce? >I think
>the struggle for existence is fought at the gene level. Mostly.
>
>As for aging, it seems to me it's always a negative, it's just not negative
>enough for
>evolution to change. A bug will probably get eaten within a year anyway so
>there's
>little point in maintaining the organism so well it could live longer than
>that, better to reduce
>the maintenance budget and increase the reproduction budget and have lots
>of offspring. John K Clark jonkc@att.net
>
Yes, but in my further examples - the alpha male mountain gorila - or
primitive homo-sapiens, it is clear that a non-aging or very slowly aging -
relative to what exists - animal could dominate a gene pool for a very long
time relative to the generation rate by means of learned skills and learned
immunities, to the ultimate detriment of the entire gene pool in the case of
a major environmental stressor that selectively effected the young.
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