"I like this concept . It seems to do a good job of explaining how microbes adapt so quickly to antibiotics , for example . Our blood cells multiply fairly quickly , but the genetic makeup does not change from one lymphocyte `` generation `` to the next . Yet we know that over our lifetimes they `` learn `` to produce new types of defenses against diseases . These adaptations are clearly not genetic , but they are a form of micro-evolution ."
"Actually , they are genetic . Our cells have receptors which are triggered by exposure to pathogens ; that 's how we `` learn `` to fight off a disease . And not everyone has the same receptors , which ones you posses is a genetic trait . It 's one of the reasons that Native Americans were so vulnerable to European diseases , they had n't evolved the receptors that would have enabled them to build up defences against the diseases the Europeans had lived with for generations . If your hypothesis was correct we would n't see different populations having different reactions to the same disease ."
"It seems to do a good job of explaining how microbes adapt so quickly to antibiotics , for example . Our blood cells multiply fairly quickly , but the genetic makeup does not change from one lymphocyte `` generation `` to the next ."
"Actually , they are genetic . Our cells have receptors which are triggered by exposure to pathogens ;"