>>...since they inherit defective copies of the gene from both parents. So both copies are defective and it doesn't matter what the specific allele is, right?

Hi Vinny,

"Defective" is not the right term. All the evolutionary changes that have occurred in plants and animals are the result of this sort of genetic variation. Three examples:

1) People are inches taller today than their grandparents. Defect?
2) In Australia, the colorful Gouldian finch exists in three head-color morphs: red, black, and yellow. Which are the results of "defective" genes? The two that are less common in the wild? The two that occurred most recently? (Hint: the two "twos" are not the same)
3) Louis Porras theorizes hondurans at high altitudes have evolved to be darker--to have that typical melanin-gain over time, that turns tricolors into black-and-red "bicolors" because being darker, they're better able to thermoregulate in higher (colder) environments. Is that shift toward melanism a defect?

Love your Darwin quote, which i think supports the idea that "defect" isn't an appropriate term. (btw--another aside!--there's a multi-million dollar "Creation Museum" in the Greater Cincinnati area that has displays and argues several controversial ideas, among them that the earth is only several thousand years old and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. The founder just released a book blaming Darwin for racism, or for promoting racist views, because--i'm simplifying here--Darwin's theory said different races could evolve differently. The creationist-author argued that Darwin was responsible for the rise of governments like Hitler's. In an article here about the book, a reporter interviewed some other scientists, one of whom observed that ironically, Hitler used God to support his theory of Aryan supremacy. A low-budget "evolution farm", which, like the museum, allows visits from schoolkids, sprung up to counter the Creation Museum.)

peace
terry
>>-----
>>“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859
>>
>> Natural Selection Reptiles

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