From: Alan McGowen <alanm@igc.org>
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Date: 11 Apr 92 02:19 PDT
Subject: Re: A Technomaniac Position (was: W
Nf-ID: #R:STEINLY.92Apr9120258@topaz.ucsc.:-53738941:cdp:1466601319:000:2954
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!alanm    Apr 11 02:19:00 1992



/* Written  4:02 am  Apr  9, 1992 by steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu in cdp:sci.environmen */
/* ---------- "Re: A Technomaniac Position (was: W" ---------- */
>thus human haemoglobin
>is distinct from animal haemoglobin but I know of no proof that some
>variation on some other species haemoglobin would not work in humans,

Ha! We share several blood groups with both gorillas and chimps. 
We diverged  from them only some 5-7 million years ago.

[Do I want to start this in sci.env? Yes, I do.]

It is not clear that we could not be interfertile with them, to 
some degree, though if any viable offspring were produced, it 
would be sterile because of inversions of chromosome sequences 
between the parents, which whould interfere with meiosis in the 
offspring, [E.g. this is the cause of sterility in mules.] At the 
very least, a significant amount of embryonic development would 
take place before fetal death.

But I'll bet that a viable baby could be produced, at least 
occasionally, in a cross between a chimp or a gorilla and a 
human. We probably aren't all that different.
'
I hope that this drives home, once and for all, the fact that 
reproductive isolation is not identical with lack of 
interfertility. Humans are obviously repoductivly isolated from 
chimps and gorillas. But interferility is a thing of varying 
degrees.  
 
>	Further, for ecological purposes, you need particular
>functionality, not a phenotype or a genotype,

A phenotype includes all "particular functionality" -- i.e. all 
proteins --  and a genotype all the genetic information which 
encodes it."

> and while the
>functionality certainly arises in nature by coevolution, a designed
>species might be squeezed into a particular niche, although this is
>most likely to lead to "unforeseen side-effects" :-) 

The speciation process, which is terribly random in outcome, 
needs to be considered here. Sigurdsson simply assumes that it 
will be trivial to produce "a designed species". But a species is 
a genotype which persists through time. The "cohesion of the 
genotype" is the magic that the "designed" species has to 
accomplish in order to be a species at all, its genetic 
equilibrium in the face of the world it encounters. And it is 
clear that  Sigurdsson has no idea of how to do that, or even 
that it needs to be done. After all, he couldn't follow an 
equilibrium analysis of the sustainance and culture  of a hunter-
gatherer society -- why should he be able to grasp a 
coevolutionary stable state?  Let alone the accidents that 
produce real ones.

>Yup, still, speculation about the impossible can be fun ;-)
>at least for those of us with a sense of humour...

Or for those with no intellectual capacity to appreciate what  is 
being  lost.  A  sense of joy at what evolution has  produced  is 
understandable,  but  Sigurdsson is advocating a "sense of humor" 
about  the destruction of the biosphere.  This  is  obscene.  

--------
Alan McGowen.