Nasa - "Genetic load, is the loss of information.......The increase in mutations causing death."
I'm not very well versed on the subject, but I've heard of genetic load before and I'm pretty sure it's not a loss of genetic information.
Here's my basic understanding of the concept. Anybody correct me if I am off. Genetic load (also called genetic burden) is the total number of recessive lethal genes that a species tends to carry.
Imagine I have the genes Xx. (little x recessive) x mutates so it is less fit. Now xx will cause some bad thing like down syndrome. I pass x on to some of my kids. They pass it on to their kids. At first it can only cause down syndrome if we mate with close relatives, since they are the only ones with x. But as more time passes, the x gene permeates more and more of society making it an increasingly more common problem.
I don't think there is much research on the topic yet, but it is being researched by the NHGRI.
Here's a web site about animals that has a little info. on it.
Netpets.com
As to its implications for creation vs evolution, the theory goes that since these genes damaged by mutations are recessive, survival of the fittest will have a minimal impact on them, so the whole species will tend to have an increased genetic load over time. For every good mutation it would already have an overwhelming number of recessive bad mutations. In other words - De-evolution would happen faster than any evolution could.
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