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furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
 Posted - 11/29/2004 : 11:55:43
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The so called "Bird Flu" is an impending health crisis: http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5371743
I was drawn to one line in the article and wanted to point it out.
quote:
"It has gone through huge genetic changes and become more pathogenic. It has affected not only birds, but cats, pigs and tigers ... ducks are now playing a more important role," Omi said.
The virus has mutated and the mutations have been beneficial to it. The fundies are always fond of saying that mutations are bad; this is another case where mutations are very beneficial to an organism. Of course this little bastard of a bug is not going to benefit us at all.
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If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
 Posted - 11/29/2004 : 13:12:52 [Permalink]
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You can convince a creationist with 1 mutation.
Convinced that Satan provided your data.
Convinced that God is the mutator
Convinced that anything a Heathen says is evil, whatever the contents
Convinced that... |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2004 : 02:57:48 [Permalink]
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Bird Flu has been under tremendous pressure recently. We (humans) have been doing our best to wipe it out. This creates environmental pressures on the organism, and only the strains that can adapt to our pressure survive. The large scale extermination of infected birds, multiple vaccinations (which create carriers who are not made sick by the virus), ect...
I think it's only a matter of time before it becomes virulent to humans (i.e. can easily be transmited from one human to another). There have already been some documented instances of the virus being contagious from one human to another. It'll be a bad couple of years to get it under control.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2004 : 05:14:00 [Permalink]
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I don't recall where I read it, so no reference -- sorry, but tuburculosis has returned in a more resistant form as well. Also polio, a childhood affliction of mine, seems to have resurected it's ugly head in Africa.
This sort of thing is really pretty common. The Theory of Evolution tells us that a species will not be destroyed until it can no longer survive in it's enviornment. Off topic a bit, but the coelacanth and the horseshoe crab are prime examples of this. They are species that have survived with only minor changes for hundreds of millions of years because they fit their enviornment(s) so very well.
A species that reproduces with the sheer speed of a virus, and capable of so many random mutations in each generation, is all but unstoppable. The best that can be done, at least currently, is to try and kill off the current version, if possible, and hope the next one is easier to fight.
Somewhere along the line, the virus, or some percentage of it's progeny will no longer even resemble it's original form. Thus: speciation! But of course, Sarfati, et al will sniff and state, "Yeah, but it's still a virus!" 
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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