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Since my wife is preparing for a procto and she regularly sets records for strange and numerous things found in her colon I decided to work off some stress by writing an article, actually I’ve written several articles to work off the stress. This one is about genetic fitness and politics.
My qualifications: my wife is technical supervisor of a dept. in the Mayo Jax campus lab so when I met her I started reading up on biology so I could follow her shop talk. My own background is in finance. While reading I learned that geneticists also deal with discounted income flows. Reading up on how superbright people reinvent the wheel because they don’t know that they could spend time in their college’s undergraduate business school and save themselves months or even years of research proving something that was proven in the 1700s bond market fills me with delight. “The Red Queen” by Matt Ridley is a good example of this. Geneticists have discovered that birds and other animals in the mate market buy formerly “Distressed” genetic properties that are on the upswing. But the real fun comes when the reinventors of the wheel dumb things down for politicians.
Political actions change the environment and therefore what is the fittest under changed circumstances. Combine this with a misunderstood idea of what fitness is and the Marx brothers have nothing on politicians. This is especially damaging when it comes to genetic fitness because it is a more complicated subject than what politicians normally deal with.
Take Climate Change/Global Warming. All of the suppositions of GW were disproven in 1961 by Edward N. Lorenz of the MIT meteorology department. The argument is that adequately detailed data cannot be collected for longrun weather predictions because of limits on the detail of measurement available from the instruments used to measure the data. So instead of saying “pollution bad! stop it!” politicians are busy making themselves look like idiots. Genetic fitness like weather or the economy is also a Chaotic system of boom and bust only attempts at smoothing seem more reasonable when it comes to genetic fitness. With GW BS at least pollution, which is bad for us, is likely to be reduced. In the economy central banking and the welfare state (more so in the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, France and Japan than in the US) caused the 1930s depression and will likely be abandoned in the next great depression they cause. But when it comes to Genetic fitness the stakes are higher.
First a few definitions:
Fitness is having more than the average number of great-grandchildren. Nothing else matters but that one goal from a genetic viewpoint. Sperm or ova donation; abandoning children to adoption or foster care or any other technique that amplifies genetic success is automatically rewarded. Going to school, making more money and anything else that distracts from this goal is automatically punished by the genes that lead to such behavior being flushed from the gene pool.
“Desirable” genes that do not spread do not spread for a reason. Promoting such genes will lead to the discovery of the reason why they haven’t spread.
“Undesirable” genes that spread do so for a reason. Suppression of such genes will also lead to discovery as to why they have spread.
Savings account interest rates are listed to 1/100th of a per cent. While it has not been proven it is highly unlikely that genetic returns are not measured to the nearest 1/10,000th per cent. It is also likely that voters will get 100 times more angry over medical advice from government entities that lead to reduced genetic returns.
Given those definitions the FDA, NCI and other medical advice dispensing agencies are a political catastrophe waiting for a time to blow up the federal government. Proposed health agencies such as Universal Healthcare are quite interesting and astonishingly stupid. Given the anti-vaccine movement, the raw foods movement, holistic healthcare and various religious objections to different parts of the existing nanny state health system the Dems in particular seem to have a deathwish. Obama and Hillary are proposing more of the same failed nanny knows best policies. Take immunizations while heavy metal poisoning has been has been partly addressed what about reduced fitness from other causes?
Allergic reaction to the antibiotics used to prevent infection from the contaminants in the injections.
And there are quite a long list of contaminants starting with the hypodermic syrenge that makes the injection, the vaccine bottle and the vaccine cocktail. The current hepatitis C epidemic got a huge boost from the pneumatic hypodermic injection guns used by the military during the Vietnam war. I lucked out and didn’t get hepatitis but many didn’t luck out from that half-assed experiment.
There are nearly 30 identified sources of contamination per injection and their effects can be cumulative, subtle and longterm. One reaction per contaminate/100,000 injections is considered a safe vaccine but a three shot series per disease and immunization against 50 diseases = 0.15% reactions. In other words there is a very high likelihood that you know of a child taken out of the genetic sweepstakes due to immunization although you may not realize that this is the cause of the infantile diabetes or other autoimmune disease you observe.
When it comes to immunization the questions that are not answered are:
Efficacy: does the vaccine work? Who knows? determination of who has natural or acquired immunity prior to immunization and subtracting out that fraction of the population either is not done or is not properly advertised. The next PDA that I hear that says the placebo worked 20% of the time and the vaccine worked 80% of the time so the vaccine works 75% of the time and the injection reaction rate was only 3 cases/10,000 vs. 1/10,000 for the placebo will be a first.
probability of infection: not given.
And this situation can be multiplied times the recommended vaccines and that in turn by the number of dubious recommendations put out by all federal agencies. This will cause a big blow up.
2 Comments
Nice article.
The Santa Fe Institute is a shining example of experts in many fields coming together to share knowledge and solve problems. Murray Gell-Mann is a prime example.
Fitness is having more than the average number of great-grandchildren. Nothing else matters but that one goal from a genetic viewpoint. Sperm or ova donation; abandoning children to adoption or foster care or any other technique that amplifies genetic success is automatically rewarded. Going to school, making more money and anything else that distracts from this goal is automatically punished by the genes that lead to such behavior being flushed from the gene pool.
Allergic reaction to the antibiotics used to prevent infection from the contaminants in the injections.
And there are quite a long list of contaminants starting with the hypodermic syrenge that makes the injection, the vaccine bottle and the vaccine cocktail. The current hepatitis C epidemic got a huge boost from the pneumatic hypodermic injection guns used by the military during the Vietnam war. I lucked out and didn't get hepatitis but many didn't luck out from that half-assed experiment.
There are nearly 30 identified sources of contamination per injection and their effects can be cumulative, subtle and longterm. One reaction per contaminate/100,000 injections is considered a safe vaccine but a three shot series per disease and immunization against 50 diseases = 0.15% reactions. In other words there is a very high likelihood that you know of a child taken out of the genetic sweepstakes due to immunization although you may not realize that this is the cause of the infantile diabetes or other autoimmune disease you observe.
I agree with your conclusions, but I don't necessarily think they follow from your argument. Maybe I am missing something.
Efficacy: does the vaccine work? Who knows? determination of who has natural or acquired immunity prior to immunization and subtracting out that fraction of the population either is not done or is not properly advertised. The next PDA that I hear that says the placebo worked 20% of the time and the vaccine worked 80% of the time so the vaccine works 75% of the time and the injection reaction rate was only 3 cases/10,000 vs. 1/10,000 for the placebo will be a first.
probability of infection: not given.
And this situation can be multiplied times the recommended vaccines and that in turn by the number of dubious recommendations put out by all federal agencies. This will cause a big blow up.
Anyway, a very interesting post. And if you are interested in talking more about these points, I'd be happy to do so.
It's not about politics, it is more about applicability. Taking the situation aside from your spouse's predicament, most of these researches are very expensive and immunization is a complex field of research. Primarily because while the solution may work today, it may not tomorrow. And also, support depends on the kind of research, it should be in priority.