Belief in fairytales, apparently, increases with age.
(media.conspiracies.win)
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Sir,
Evolution: There are three issues.
Compare this to the number of seconds in the universe -- about 13 billion billion, or 10^19, and then factor in the number of life-forms on the earth -- say 10e30 (there's an upper bound of 10e81, because that's the number of protons in the observable universe).
So, if every life form on the planet mutated every second for the entire age of the universe, you would only have a total of 10e50 mutations -- compare that to the 10e500 possibilities of even a small gene, and you'll see that the probability of evolution happening is... zero.
A lot of evolutionary mechanisms really don't make sense. Consider: a dog will flop on the floor if you drop it, whereas a cat will land on its feet. But how do you go from flopping to a graceful landing? Small changes, such as a slightly more dexterous dog, won't change the death rate, which is what evolution is predicated upon.
Outside of very vague evidence based on bacteria experiments (at Michigan State U) there is nothing that indicates speciation -- unless one just reads an abstract of a paper without reading the methodology.
(etc -- this sort of discussion is better face-to-face).
Microscopes: We can capture bacteria on a light-microscope, which has a resolving power of about 500nm. Viruses require electron microscopes which (I think) can resolve into angstroms (so 0.1nm).
BUT: no one has ever (EVER) seen a virus in a sample of a sick human. EVER. What they do is mix the sample in with monkey kidney cells and anti-biotics etc, and then they observe cell-break-down, and some of the break-down products look like viruses.
Caveat: The 'tobacco mosaic virus' and 'bacteriophages' are slightly odd. The tobacco virus can be seen but not transmitted via experiment. Bacteriophages can be seen -- and they're awesome -- but they're not really viruses, as such -- ie, they're not transmitted from person to person.
Also, there are no studies that demonstrate the transmissibility of respiratory viruses/hiv/measles/polio etc. None. Again, you have to read the methodology, not the abstract/conclusions.
Aerotrain
Nice response. Thanks. A few observations:
Genetic mutations are, by and large point mutations, which is why I 'assumed' that. Your example of down syndrome is a bit off the mark -- it's not a mutation of the genome, but a sort of egg-sperm error. The extra chromosome is, I believe, not a new chromosome, but an extra copy of one. I guess this leads to errors in gene expression.
Children aren't copies of their parents because they're getting disparate information from each parent - remember, it's sexual reproduction, not asexual. This is why brothers are often wildly dissimilar.
Your example with the dogs is the standard lore of adaption, and I completely agree with what you said. The point I was making, though, was a bit different, and probably not amenable to an internet post.
Well, at this point I suspect that common sense always trumps studies! But remember that 'common sense' was always -- wear a scarf dear, because you don't want to catch cold.
The idea of contagion is a top-down construct promoted by doctors with no evidence. I know you think that there are tons of papers proving infection.... but there are none. It's astonishing. There are many doctors doing massive literature searches looking for these 'infection studies' -- and they welcome contributions from virus-believers.
Sadly, there are two classes of studies:
Clean experiments, like the Rosenau study during the Spanish Flu, that show no sign of infection.
Standard virology experiments where they inject 'viruses' into the brains or spines or lungs of monkeys and say -- look, they got sick!
As for your Grandparents -- I hope they're doing well. A discussion of your illness, though, requires you to understand the points above about 'infection'. It's up to you to decide if you want to look into it or not. But if you do, you'll figure out pretty quickly why you're getting sick.
Aerotrain
Sir: The issue here is that a mutation brings in new genetic information. A mutation within a gene will lead to a completely new protein being expressed.
With down syndrome, the extra chromosome doesn't have any new genetic information -- as far as I know... it's just an extra copy of the same information that then impedes gene expression.
It's an interesting topic, though. In French it's usually called Trisomie-21, because it appears on the 21st site. There are also things like Klinefelter's syndrome where there are three copies of the sex-chromosomes -- so chromosomal aberrations are rare but relatively common in large populations.
As far as I know, there are no advantageous extra-chromosome syndromes, unless you really torture the definition of 'advantageous'. (Castor Semenya, for example, wins gold medals in women's running, despite having the testosterone of a boy; and downies almost always seem happy).
Aerotrain