disability, disease or death. Look at spinabifida and thalidomide. Just think about that for a minute. If mutation causes evolution, why don’t we see evolution when people are exposed to gamma rays or radioactive substances? The answer is that the mutations caused either make ill or kill. They don’t cause improvement. Evolution has assumed that the majority of mutations are successful. In fact, the vast majority are highly unsuccessful.
Damage to DNA can lead to cellular dysfunction, cancer, ageing, cell death and other diseases. There is cystic fibrosis, hypothyroidism, colon cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and sickle cell disease, one of the most common genetic diseases in the USA.
Fortunately, most of us have functioning DNA repair pathways that survey the DNA and fix the errors. Not bad for a happy accident is it?
Mutation by UV causes skin ageing and in excess can cause burns or cancer. In an extreme case, there is a whole family whose repair gene has been turned off through mutation. They blister and burn in sunlight and there is a high incidence of cancers in the family.
So, mutation is not a viable means for evolution.
DNA is such a huge program that what is possible is adaptation within a species. In fact the evidence of adaptation infers that this facility has been programmed in. That is all that Darwin observed with his finches – adaptation – they remained finches of about the same size but they had different beaks, which were adapted to different food sources.
Another player in evolution is Nature. Darwin puts amazing faith in the omnipotence and wisdom of Nature. He really believed in
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