In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 13:36:39 +0100, "Jim Webster"
wrote:


"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
.. .

Organims including humans have learned to coexist.

Now we have to learn new lessons very fast.

Lettuce can take up E coli from soil and have it reside in the
edible portion. That E coli can have multiple drug resistance,
because of current practices.

Bacteria can exchange DNA within human cells, protected from
antibiotics, too.

so what

what has this got to do with the childish anthropomorphism of nature. It
makes as much sense as saying that Gravity has a sense of humour.

Course it does, Jim.
It is the mainstay of slapstick comedy

Indeed!

Linkname: UC Research: The life and times of the undead
URL: http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/publish/research/97/A12.htm
Last Mod: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 19:48:29 GMT
size: 108 lines


The life and times of the undead

[...]
How can our genes reproduce faster than us? When subsets of genes can
be 'swapped' between neighbouring organisms ('horizontal'
reproduction), rather than just passed to offspring ('vertical'
reproduction), they can reproduce faster than the gene sets passed
vertically. Microbes are host to an unsuspectedly enormous flux of
genes through swapping and probably so are we.

That most reproduction in the world might be horizontal rather than
vertical was not anticipated by observing reproduction of plants and
animals. This difference in reproductive styles is more than esoteric,
because by imposing an anthropomorphic bias on evolutionary mechanisms
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
humans have made an enormous medical blunder. The medical association
of disease-causing and antibiotic resistance traits of microbes with
their reproductive success, a reflection of our own biology, has been
counterproductive to attempts to cure disease. If the associations
were accurate, then making certain microbes extinct should
simultaneously remove disease and the source of resistance genes. The
spread and success of the genetic creatures despite our use of
antibiotics is evidence for a reproductive strategy that reveals ours
(vertical) as only the exception to the rule.
[...]