Genetic Depletion, is it real?

I have heard creos like Faith and Randman talk about genetic depletion. There seems to be a notion that somehow creatures have a limited genome that is being depleted as time passes.I have heard the term "Genetic Depletion" used by biologists to talk about lack of genetic diversity in a population (often concerning endangered species). I have yet to hear it applied to individuals.My question is two fold:1)Is genetic depletion something measurable and observable at the level of the individual? Is there evidence?2) if the notion that we are all somehow depleting genetically were/is true, what are the long term consequences of this? Are we all going to evolve into puddles of goo one day?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Genetic depletion at the level of individual is pure nonsense. At the population at best it is a diminution of allelic variants due to founder effects or genetic drift. Not due to degradation of the genomes of the individuals in the population. The complete opposite is also observed. An example of an increase in the genome (at the species level) can be found in this article where a lineage of retrotransposons has been increasing (not depleting) in the chimp genome. There is a related element (HML-2 of the HERV-K family of endogenous retroviruses) which is expanding similarly in humans.Yohn CT, Jiang Z, McGrath SD, Hayden KE, Khaitovich P, Johnson ME, Eichler MY, McPherson JD, Zhao S, Paabo S, Eichler EE. Lineage-specific expansions of retroviral insertions within the genomes of African great apes but not humans and orangutans.
PLoS Biol. 2005 Apr;3(4):e110. Epub 2005 Mar 1.Note, the paper is open access so anyone can download it and read it.

Cool! Where do I go to read the papers? Pubmed? Linky linky!

Here it ishttp://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-doc...