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From: sa209@utb.shv.hb.se (Claes Andersson)
Subject: Re: Lamarckian Evolution
Message-ID: <1995Feb11.145813.23462@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se>
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References: <3gs6v7$2og@laplace.ee.latrobe.edu.au> <3gu1cb$3l1@morrow.stanford.edu> <3h9f4g$bff@laplace.ee.latrobe.edu.au>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 21:17:35 GMT
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khorsell@ee.latrobe.edu.au (Kym Horsell) wrote:
>In article <3gu1cb$3l1@morrow.stanford.edu> minch@lotka.stanford.edu writes:
>>Isn't anyone familiar with the credit assignment problem? Or the protein
>>folding problem? A Lamarckian mechanism would have to
>>
>>1) infer the genetic causes of a phenotypic trait (which occupies medical
>>geneticists for years just to trace back a single disease),
>>
>>2) design a sequence or sequences to fix the problem (which is still
>>generally beyond the capabilities of pharmaceutical biochemistry), and
>>
>>3) insert this sequence or these sequences at the appropriate loci in the
>>genome, editing out the previous sequences, *in every germ cell or
>>gamete-forming stem cell*.
>>
>>Now, if you manage to leap the first two hurdles, and you're rearing up
>>for the third, why won't it occur to you to apply the process to *all*
>>somatic cells instead? Wouldn't that be a tremendous advantage? And if it
>>could have been discovered, it most certainly would have been by now.
>
>Same old staw man, I'm afraid.
>
>We don't need A to directly affect B but there might be a C that affects
>both A and B.
>
 When there is something that you don't wish to oppose you simply call
it a strawman. You are using the typical crackpot-methods right now.

Claes Andersson. University of Bors. Sweden

