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Member (Idle past 4960 days) Posts: 2703 From: melbourne, australia Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Viagra & Evolution | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Peg Member (Idle past 4960 days) Posts: 2703 From: melbourne, australia Joined: |
If evolution is the propagation of the species by survival of the fittest and natural selection
how are erectile problems to be explained? there are many couples who need ivf treatment to conceive these days, men are becoming impotent, sterility issues... how does evolutionary science explain this phenomenon???
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Admin Director Posts: 13046 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.7 |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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Granny Magda Member Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.1 |
Hi Peg,
This is really pretty simple. People living in the modern day are able to get incredibly old. Our ancestors, both pre-human hominids and early humans, lived a very different lives to us. They had to live on their wits, hunting and gathering, making shelter, moving over great distances and avoiding predators. Their lives were very hard. The upshot of this is that they tended to live shorter lives, compared to us. Forty years old would be pretty venerable for an early human. Erectile dysfunction is one of the many effects of ageing. It tends to happen to older men. Early humans and hominids would be unlikely to survive to such a ripe old age that they need worry about such things. Thus, natural selection would not select strongly against them. For an organism to claim evolutionary success, it need only breed and pass on its genes. It need only breed successfully once to do this. Erectile dysfunction doesn't kick in until late in life, so the chances are that any individual will have already bred successfully before it ever becomes an issue. From an evolutionary point of view, it doesn't matter if Granpa can't get it up; he has already done everything that evolution needed him to do in having children. Example. An allele that caused erectile dysfunction at the age of ten and up would be disastrous to the individual's chances of reproducing. It would destroy the man's chance of reproducing before he even reached sexual maturity. Natural selection would select very strongly against such an allele. An allele that caused erectile dysfunction at the age of sixty however would be pretty harmless to the man's chance of reproducing. He could reproduce before the dysfunction struck and pass on his genes (including the erectile dysfunction allele) without hindrance, only to die when it was past breeding age anyway. There is nothing for natural selection to work on here and the allele would likely persist in the population. It may be frustrating for Granpa, but it is not a problem for the theory of evolution. This is actually the kind of process that is thought to lie behind the ageing process itself. Genes that cause problems in old age just aren't very strongly selected against, so they accumulate. I hope this helps. Mutate and Survive Edited by Granny Magda, : Typo in title. In the word "title" appropriately enough. "The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
I promoted the topic because it mentions the relatively recent phenomenon of decreasing fertility among young men.
--Percy
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2325 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined: |
I'll give the same answer here as I did in the viagra spam mail thread.
Peg writes:
I don't see how this is a problem for evolution. If these individuals can't reproduce, there gense will simply dissapear from the species. Where's the problem here?
If evolution is the propagation of the species by survival of the fittest and natural selectionhow are erectile problems to be explained? there are many couples who need ivf treatment to conceive these days, men are becoming impotent, sterility issues... how does evolutionary science explain this phenomenon???
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
As noted by others this is not a problem at all for the evolutionary model.
On a purely speculative note there is another possibility: If the environment changes too quickly a species may no longer be well suited to it. If it doesn't evolve fast enough then extinction is the result. This is what will happen to all species, us included. Perhaps we are changing the environment too quickly with a chemical stew and we are seeing the very earliest signs of this.
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Blue Jay Member (Idle past 2728 days) Posts: 2843 From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts Joined: |
Hi, Peg.
As you’ve probably heard, there are two fundamental processes involved in the gestalt effect of evolution: (1) mutation and (2) natural selection. Mutation is a fundamentally undirected process that produces hordes of new information1 without any regard to its usefulness. Natural selection is a "directed" process that filters all the new information by its usefulness to survival and reproduction, and actively prevents any deleterious information from propagating itself, often by simply killing it before it can propagate. In this, natural selection is not an actual force of nature, like gravity, but is simply the combined effect of myriads of environmental influences that can prevent propagation from occurring. It’s more convenient for us to refer to it by its gestalt, rather than by all the thousands of things that lead to it. Please take care to notice that the Theory of Evolution only postulates that mutations occur, not how they occur. It is not a theory designed to explain what causes mutations: those causes can be radiation, pH fluctuations, statistical “typos” by the machinery in the cell, etc.: all of which are explanable by various theories of chemistry and biochemistry. Frankly, it wouldn’t matter if aliens from orbit were using bizarre technology to create mutations in populations: natural selection would still work on these and cause the best of them to outcompete the others. The result of this is that ToE is not responsible for explaining how bad information happens in individuals, but only how bad information effects the population. So, the only thing evolution need explain in this case is how erectile dysfunction can accumulate within a population. And, we can simply say that natural selection would tend to remove erectile dysfunction from a population (except, as Granny Magda mentioned, where it is a post-reproductive effect). But, there’s a catch: humans have learned how to combat the forces of natural selection by learning how to get plants and livestock to produce more food, allowing people to survive fatal diseases and disorders, and, as you’ve noted, reproduce with dysfunctional genitalia. Nature is not choosing who gets to reproduce: individuals are choosing for themselves. So, obviously, this is not an example of “natural selection,” but of “personal selection.” So, the moral of the story is that you shouldn't take anything that happens to humans these days as having anything to do with biological evolution. ----- 1 I personally don’t like the term “information” because of the can of worms it opens for most creationist/IDists, but it’s generally the easiest way to relate, so I sucked it up for this message. -Bluejay Darwin loves you.
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Granny Magda Member Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.1 |
Hi Percy,
I promoted the topic because it mentions the relatively recent phenomenon of decreasing fertility among young men. I was under the impression that the usual explanation for that was the effects of pollutants. Oestrogen, metals and various synthetics from plastics are the usual suspects. Their effect would not be much to do with evolution, but rather environment, especially exposure during embryonic development. Mutate and Survive Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given. "The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade
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rueh Member (Idle past 3692 days) Posts: 382 From: universal city tx Joined: |
Hello Granny Magda
GM writes: Correct me if I am wrong here, but aren't the two linked. Enviroment being the driving mechanism along with selection for evolution. This could be a case where, because of the envirmonetal pollutants that we expose ourselves to. That only the people whose genes are least affected by said enviromental pressure continue to breed. I know this is a stretch of the imagination, but given enough time we may see people who are less affected by the pollutants? Their effect would not be much to do with evolution, but rather environment, 'Qui non intelligit, aut taceat, aut discat' The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open.-FZ The industrial revolution, flipped a bitch on evolution.-NOFX
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Peg Member (Idle past 4960 days) Posts: 2703 From: melbourne, australia Joined: |
=bluejaySo, the moral of the story is that you shouldn't take anything that happens to humans these days as having anything to do with biological evolution. interesting conclusion bluejay i dont really know much about biological evolution so i'll have to read up on it Are you saying that biological evolution doesnt happen anymore, or just that there are too many factors that can cause similar effects??
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Peg Member (Idle past 4960 days) Posts: 2703 From: melbourne, australia Joined: |
GrannyMagda writes: Erectile dysfunction is one of the many effects of ageing. It tends to happen to older men. ...Erectile dysfunction doesn't kick in until late in life, Hi GM, except that its seen in men as young as their early 20's1 australian site says that almost 10% of sufferers are in their 20's
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2325 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined: |
Peg writes:
No. What he is saying is that humans, through our technology, are no longer subjet to the driving force of evolution, natural selection. interesting conclusion bluejay i dont really know much about biological evolution so i'll have to read up on it Are you saying that biological evolution doesnt happen anymore, or just that there are too many factors that can cause similar effects?? And yes, read up on evolution, but please, don't go to creationist websites, go to scientific ones. I hunt for the truth
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Huntard writes: No. What he is saying is that humans, through our technology, are no longer subjet to the driving force of evolution, natural selection. More accurately, those human populations with access to the necessary technology can render themselves immune to some forces of selection. Interestingly, a recent genetic analysis of human populations indicated that Homo sapiens are evolving more rapidly today than in the past. If this finding holds up, one possibly valid implication is that our technologically altered environment is feeding back on our evolution. --Percy
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
One reason for erectile dysfunction is anxiety disorders.
Nothing directly to do with evolution but there you go.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hey Peg, interesting question
except that its seen in men as young as their early 20's 1 australian site says that almost 10% of sufferers are in their 20's That still leaves plenty of males to fertilize females, so evolutionarily speaking it would not normally be a problem. Only if you combine this with a behavior pattern of mating can it result in decreased birth rates. Of course one very simple explanation is that it is a reaction to overpopulation. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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