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So, suppose an organism has an "Immortality" mutation, and survives predation, disease, accidents, and natural disasters to pass on the gene to many offspring.
Here is where the "laser beam eyes" comment comes into play. It's pretty unrealistic from an engineering standpoint to propose a complex system which works perfectly forever. Hypothetically, we can propose anything we want, but the rules of reality come into play in this particular instance.
The longer an organism lives, the more of it "wears out", requiring additional regenerative components to fix them, which also cause the organism to become more complex and more prone to problems. Etc. etc. These regenerative systems also have to evolve, but they have to compete with the replacement system of death and birth, which already seems to work really well.
What this means is that with a non hypothetical organism.. at some point it's just easier to start over from scratch every generation.
[This message has been edited by Rationalist, 10-25-2003]