Alzheimer disease evolved alongside human intelligence, says Nature article

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 24, 2015

Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience, News}

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In this way, the researchers looked back at selection events that occurred up to 500,000 years ago, revealing the evolutionary forces that shaped the dawn of modern humans, thought to be around 200,000 years ago. Most previous methods for uncovering such changes reach back only about 30,000 years, says Stephen Schaffner, a computational biologist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The analytical approach that Tang’s team used is promising, he adds. “It’s treating all kinds of selection in a uniform framework, and it’s also treating different eras of selection in a more or less uniform way.” But Schaffner says that further research is needed to confirm that the method is broadly applicable.

Still, even the most powerful genomic-analysis methods can be limited by the vagaries of history. Asian and European people descended from a small number of people who left Africa around 60,000 years ago …

The article is a classic in that it is replete with Darwinbabble which gets more annoying as its gets more obviously useless.

For one thing, Alzheimer is probably mainly noticed in humans. If an alpha wolf or bull moose gets a little ditzy, he is probably just replaced by an ambitious subordinate.

That’s not quite what happens when we must, often with considerable reluctance, accept that a loved one is experiencing long term brain challenges. For example, a typical checklist might include:

Moderate Alzheimer’s is typically the longest stage and can last for many years. As the disease progresses, the person with Alzheimer’s will require a greater level of care.

You may notice the person with Alzheimer’s confusing words, getting frustrated or angry, or acting in unexpected ways, such as refusing to bathe. Damage to nerve cells in the brain can make it difficult to express thoughts and perform routine tasks.

At this point, symptoms will be noticeable to others and may include:

– Forgetfulness of events or about one’s own personal history

– Feeling moody or withdrawn, especially in socially or mentally challenging situations

– Being unable to recall their own address or telephone number or the high school or college from which they graduated

One must already be a human being to have these kinds of problems. Where is the evolution, exactly?

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Comments

If Darwinian evolution had a bucket to spit in, genetic diseases would simply not exist. Heck, we would be immortal because people find it easier to procreate when they're not dead. This is the kind of crap one can expect from a dirt-did-it theory ducttaped together with stupidity?Mapou_{May 24, 2015
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Certainly one of us is confused... If some observed data is unlikely to arise under neutrality (i.e. by drift alone) then it is likely that selection was involved in generating that data. Isn't it?wd400_{May 24, 2015
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Mung: How did they rule out genetic drift? wd400:
You can read the paper for yourself. But, basically, they find the distribution of time to most recent common ancestor for all pairs of samples in their samples across the genome. Because we know what that distribution should look like under neutrality, you make a statistical test for non-neutral patterns like selection.
You're confusing neutral evolution with drift. As you know, the two are not the same. I'm asking specifically about genetic drift. How does one distinguish genetic drift as a cause from selection as a cause?Mung_{May 24, 2015
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Of note: Neo-Darwinism is excellent at explaining the degeneration of already existent, fantastically complex, organs and is atrocious at demonstrating, or even explaining, how even a single protein of those fantastically complex organs could possibly arise by unguided material processes:
“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Getting There First: An Evolutionary Rate Advantage for Adaptive Loss-of-Function Mutations Michael J. Behe - 2013 http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0020 Biological Information - Loss-of-Function Mutations by Paul Giem 2015 - video playlist (Behe - Loss of function mutations are far more likely to fix in a population than gain of function mutations) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzD3hhvepK8&index=20&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUUhiC9VwPnhl-ymuObyTWJ Using Numerical Simulation to Test the Validity of Neo-Darwinian Theory - 2008 Abstract: Evolutionary genetic theory has a series of apparent “fatal flaws” which are well known to population geneticists, but which have not been effectively communicated to other scientists or the public. These fatal flaws have been recognized by leaders in the field for many decades—based upon logic and mathematical formulations. However population geneticists have generally been very reluctant to openly acknowledge these theoretical problems, and a cloud of confusion has come to surround each issue. Numerical simulation provides a definitive tool for empirically testing the reality of these fatal flaws and can resolve the confusion. The program Mendel’s Accountant (Mendel) was developed for this purpose, and it is the first biologically-realistic forward-time population genetics numerical simulation program. This new program is a powerful research and teaching tool. When any reasonable set of biological parameters are used, Mendel provides overwhelming empirical evidence that all of the “fatal flaws” inherent in evolutionary genetic theory are real. This leaves evolutionary genetic theory effectively falsified—with a degree of certainty which should satisfy any reasonable and open-minded person. http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Using-Numerical-Simulation-to-Test-the-Validity-of-Neo-Darwinian-Theory.pdf Biological Information - Mutation Count & Synergistic Epistasis (mutation accumulation) 1-17-2015 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gdoZk_NbmU
bornagain77_{May 24, 2015
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Mung, How did they rule out genetic drift? You can read the paper for yourself. But, basically, they find the distribution of time to most recent common ancestor for all pairs of samples in their samples across the genome. Because we know what that distribution should look like under neutrality, you make a statistical test for non-neutral patterns like selection.wd400_{May 24, 2015
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Absent any way of determining how Alzheimer would affect a non-human, it’ not clear what “evolution” has to do with it.
You will have to explain why you think this. If genes that cause Alzheimer's were fixed/maintained by selection then evolution has rather a lot to do with it, whether animals get the disease or not.
First, the human evolution claims are vague (*”Still, even the most powerful genomic-analysis methods can be limited by the vagaries of history.” = It’s rubbish).
No. That comment is about the fact it's much easier to see these ancient patterns in African rather than other populations. Not a great surprise given the low diversity of non-African populations. The point of the post is that Alzheimer is a problem for human intelligence. We simply don’t know how it would affect grizzly bears, if they suffer from it. Again, I am left wondering how this is mean to relate to anything to do with the research. (And it hardly matters, but there are some pretty good animal models of Alzheimers)wd400_{May 24, 2015
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Alzheimer's is a disease of VERY old human beings. Most humans for most of our history died before they were 35. Many other people parts also wear out if we live to be 60 years old. Is anyone suggesting that at any point in human development we had perfect (non-corruptible) bodies and only died when we were stepped on by dinosaurs or kicked by a mammoth or something? Most animals live MUCH longer in captivity than they do in the wild. In the wild, it doesn't matter that a horse's teeth wear down to nubs because the horse is going to die of something else LONG before it dies of starvation. It's much more significant, from a species continuity point of view, that human females stop menstruating and human males become impotent. Or that our knee joints and hip joints wear out, and we develop back problems.mahuna_{May 24, 2015
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wd400:
The paper shows that genes associated with alzheimers in humans show a population-genetic signal expected from natural selection. That’s pretty obviously evolution, isn’t it?
How did they rule out genetic drift?Mung_{May 24, 2015
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News: "One must already be a human being to have these kinds of problems." apparently 5 and 6 don't apply. Perhaps you would like to tell us where the human brain came from?
The Half-Truths of Materialist Evolution - DONALD DeMARCO - 02/06/2015 Excerpt: but I would like to direct attention to the unsupportable notion that the human brain, to focus on a single phenomenon, could possibly have evolved by sheer chance. One of the great stumbling blocks for Darwin and other chance evolutionists is explaining how a multitude of factors simultaneously coalesce to form a unified, functioning system. The human brain could not have evolved as a result of the addition of one factor at a time. Its unity and phantasmagorical complexity defies any explanation that relies on pure chance. It would be an underestimation of the first magnitude to say that today’s neurophysiologists know more about the structure and workings of the brain than did Darwin and his associates. Scientists in the field of brain research now inform us that a single human brain contains more molecular-scale switches than all the computers, routers and Internet connections on the entire planet! According to Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the brain’s complexity is staggering, beyond anything his team of researchers had ever imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief. In the cerebral cortex alone, each neuron has between 1,000 to 10,000 synapses that result, roughly, in a total of 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies! A single synapse may contain 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A synapse, simply stated, is the place where a nerve impulse passes from one nerve cell to another. Phantasmagorical as this level of unified complexity is, it places us merely at the doorway of the brain’s even deeper mind-boggling organization. Glial cells in the brain assist in neuron speed. These cells outnumber neurons 10 times over, with 860 billion cells. All of this activity is monitored by microglia cells that not only clean up damaged cells but also prune dendrites, forming part of the learning process. The cortex alone contains 100,000 miles of myelin-covered, insulated nerve fibers. The process of mapping the brain would indeed be time-consuming. It would entail identifying every synaptic neuron. If it took a mere second to identify each neuron, it would require four billion years to complete the project. http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-half-truths-of-materialist-evolution/
Of note: Alzheimer's is a personal issue for Denyse:
There is a country for old men - DENYSE O'LEARY Excerpt: In January of his 90th year, my father had a stroke. He had been struggling with Alzheimer's for some time. The hospital staff had seen many like him, and they quietly conveyed to us that we should not expect too much. It was even spelled out, not merely hinted, that, beyond what common humanity required, the quality of his care would likely not matter much, and we ought not to spend his estate on it.,,, Circumstances prevented me visiting my father one Friday in January. But I received a phone call that evening from his closest sister, about 93, who lives in an old-age home in a midwestern city. She told me that after sixty years of practical atheism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Christianity, Dad wanted to be reconciled to the Church. He had a dream, she said. His parents appeared and were calling him, urging this course on him, so that he could one day join them in glory. He told her he hoped that I, as a Catholic, could help. Unlike some family members, I did not think his wish proceeded from an addled mind. I recognized its source instinctively. He wanted someone from heaven to forgive him, someone whose word he need never doubt. I lost no time finding a priest. A relative in medicine had warned me that Dad's next stroke would likely be his last contact with normal cognition. By Wednesday afternoon, the priest and I were sitting in the apartment with Dad. The priest was an affable man with an interest in World War II, born perhaps of his vocation to older folk. I distracted my stepmom by asking to see the crafts room, and when we returned, my father said, steadily and with composure, "I have been reconciled to the Catholic Church, and my sins have been forgiven.",,, http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/faith-and-character/faith-and-character/there-is-a-country-for-old-men.html
bornagain77_{May 24, 2015
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wd400 is likely to continue to fail to see the problem: Absent any way of determining how Alzheimer would affect a non-human, it' not clear what "evolution" has to do with it. First, the human evolution claims are vague (*"Still, even the most powerful genomic-analysis methods can be limited by the vagaries of history." = It's rubbish). And second (in this case, far more important), animal models are necessarily lacking. (Animals don't know phone numbers or why they matter, let alone forget them.) The point of the post is that Alzheimer is a problem for human intelligence. We simply don't know how it would affect grizzly bears, if they suffer from it. If this is the best "evolutionary medicine" can do (and it probably is)...News_{May 24, 2015
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... I guess News should specify which definition of evolution she thinks doesn't apply to this result then?wd400_{May 24, 2015
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as to: "That’s pretty obviously evolution, isn’t it?" The Meanings of Evolution - Stephen Meyer Excerpt: Principal Meanings of Evolution in Biology Textbooks 1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature. 2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population. 3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor. 4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations. 5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor. 6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms. ,,, attempts to exclude scientific dissent (from neo-Darwinism) often employ ambiguous or shifting definitions of the term evolution. Many defenders of evolution #5 and/or #6 will offer evidence and argument for evolution in the first four senses of the term and then treat evolution in the latter two senses as equally well established. In the following section, we will show how educational policy statements and advocates for evolution often equivocate (the definitions of evolution) in their discussion of evolution,,, http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=305bornagain77_{May 24, 2015
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The paper is here[pdf] for anyone that wants to read it. I don't quite what "darwinbabble" has to do with it, or understand this question.
One must already be a human being to have these kinds of problems. Where is the evolution, exactly?
The paper shows that genes associated with alzheimers in humans show a population-genetic signal expected from natural selection. That's pretty obviously evolution, isn't it?wd400_{May 24, 2015
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