Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
Download 2.71 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Through natural selection and the growth in population the world can outrun disease. Orlow, 05
- Disease spread won’t cause extinction Peters and Chrystal 03
Ext #1 – NO ExtinctionDisease won’t kill us- humans are evolving faster to resist them. Clover, 08,Charles Clover, Daily Telegraph Environment Editor 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/05/scievol105.xml A major genetic survey shows how we are changing, reports Roger Highfield Evidence that humans will evolve to shrug off diseases such as type 2 diabetes and obesity has emerged. - Humans 'evolving to have children later' - Dmanisi fossil sheds new light on human evolution - Language development mirrors species evolution A survey of the human genetic code has shown that our resistance to malaria, diabetes and other diseases is changing in response to our environment. Dr Lluís Quintana-Murci of the Institut Pasteur, Paris, and colleagues analysed more than 2.8 million single letter spelling mistakes in the human genetic code to distinguish the usual random changes over the last 60,000 years from those that seem to be occurring in response to the environment, when a genetic mutation gives people an advantage over their peers. People are surprisingly similar at the DNA level and the work "abolishes the idea of race" he says. But when it comes to the few differences, those showing the strongest signature of this effect, called positive selection, are involved in skin pigmentation and hair development, as is already obvious from how white people live in darker climates. "You do not need genetics to know this, but it shows our method works." In the journal Nature Genetics the team reports that several traits are sometimes linked to the same gene, so that when people in the Far East evolved a different version of a gene called EDAR to sweat differently, the same gene gave them much denser hair and changed their teeth too, an effect he calls "hitchhiking." Genes that protect against disease are also evolving. For example, one called CR1 helps to cut the severity of malaria attacks and is now present in eight Africans in every ten, yet is absent elsewhere, a novel finding. Several genes, such as ENPP1, are involved in the regulation of the hormone insulin and in metabolic syndrome - a combination of adult diabetes and obesity. These are present in 90 per cent of non-Africans and their relative absence could explain why African Americans are particularly at risk of obesity and high blood pressure. The work suggests they are adapted to an African environment and have not adapted to an American lifestyle. "They have not had the time to readapt," says Dr Quintana-Murci. Prof Steve Jones of University College London comments: "They have shown that man was once more like other animals than we might like to imagine, for Nature imposed her rules on us in the same way as she did on rats or flies. "There are three great eras of history; the age of disaster, when we were killed by cold or sabre-toothed tigers, the age of disease - the epidemics which began with farming - and the age of decay, in which most of the developed world now lives, and dies of old age. "DNA now shows how much we were moulded by the force of natural selection during first two; but my guess is that in future, now that we nearly all survive for long enough to pass on our genes, much less will happen. Perhaps you can ask me again in ten thousand years." An earlier study by a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist Prof John Hawks suggested that humankind has evolved more rapidly in the past 5,000 years, at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution. This work counters a common theory that human evolution has slowed to a crawl or even stopped in modern humans, since in modern society the survivors no longer have to be the fittest. Through natural selection and the growth in population the world can outrun disease. Orlow, 05 Elizabeth Orlow, Millersville University, Summer 2005, http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/papers/orlow-e.html The origin of disease in the New World and the Old World is very different. In the Old World, Europeans had already come in contact with various types of infectious disease and acquired immunity. The European’s genes also became resistant overtime. Through natural selection the relative frequency of a gene appears to change over generations. For an example, people who have acquired resistant genes over generations are more likely to survive various types of diseases. Also, when the human population becomes larger a disease is sustained better. One of the reasons why the Europeans acquired immunity to various diseases was due to domesticated animals. Disease spread won’t cause extinction Peters and Chrystal 03, (Dr. Clarence, Director of Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases @ UT, and Dr. Ronald, Chairman of Genetics Medicine @ Cornell, FDCH Political Transcripts, “U.S. REPRESENTATIVE CHRISTOPHER COX (R-CA) HOLDS HEARING ON COUNTERING THE BIOTERRORISM THREAT”, 3-15, L/N) PETERS: I think we have one example from the movement of the Conquistadors to the New World. They brought measles, smallpox and a variety of other diseases with them. They didn't wipe out the Indians, but they destroyed their civilization and were instrumental in the Spaniards being able to conquer the New World with relatively few people. I think we have something going on right now with SARS that we don't know exactly what the end of it's going to be, but we already know that Asian economies are suffering tremendously. My prediction is that they will not be able to control it in China. If that's true, then we will be dealing with repeated introductions in this country for the indefinite future so that we may see a change in our way of life where we are taking temperatures in airports, in addition to taking your shoes off and putting them through the X-ray machine. And we may see emergency rooms rebuilt so that if you have a cough you go in one entrance and go into a negative pressure cubicle until your SARS test comes back. So I think that while wiping out human life is extremely unlikely, we have unengineered examples of bugs that have made great impacts on civilizations. COX: Dr. Crystal? CRYSTAL: The natural examples of what you suggested were, as hundreds of years ago, with smallpox and also with the plague. The plague wiped out one-third of the civilization. We now have treatments for ordinances (ph) like the plague because they were engineered to be resistant. And if they infected a number of people and had the capability of being spread rapidly from individual to individual, it would cause enormous havoc. I agree with the panel -- I don't think it would wipe out civilization, but the consequences to our society would be enormous. Directory: files -> documents documents -> North Mankato Taylor Library documents -> In the Red and Brown Water documents -> - documents -> I. Disaster Summary Sheet II. Tropical Cyclones documents -> Cbp and Trade Automated Interface Requirements Appendix: pga december 22, 2015 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> Cartographic Concepts for Realizing a Location Based umts service documents -> 1/ Background Statistics Human development index rank Download 2.71 Mb. Share with your friends:
|