On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 08:15:55 GMT, Tim Tyler posted:

In sci.med.nutrition Jim Webster wrote:
: "Walter Epp" wrote in message
: "Moosh:]" wrote:

: Mutations and cross pollinations go on constantly every minute in
: every corn field in the world.
:
: So? Natural populations have millions of generations of experience doing
: this and figured out how to maintain their genetic integrity and minimize
: unpleasant surprises long before human beings came into existence.

: anthropomorphic rubbish. Did they hold committee meetings while they did
: this figuring out, or just hold a township meeting?

Such language is common is biology.

In my experience, the authors scrupulously avoid it, but I obviously
haven't read them all.

Biologists refer to genes as selfish - for example.

Because they are. That's not anthropomorphism.

They /could/ constantly explain that yes, this is a metaphor - and no, they
don't mean it literally - but after a little while that gets pretty tedious.

Well Dawkins means it literally, I believe.

Mutations that arise in nature tend to be systematically different from
taking genes from one organisms and transferring them into an unrelated one.

Different in what way?

The latter technique is more powerful.

More accurate, and gives a quicker result.

As a consequence of the greater power, there is more scope for things going
wrong.

Why? The conventional slow methods have had millions of years to get
into trouble, and they've sampled every trouble imaginable. Afterall,
an amoeba gene is intrinsically the same as a human gene, just
possibly a different sequence, but not necessarily.