Chapter 49 - Clearing a Misconception: Life does not adapt!

Neil set me straight here and helped me better explain what value the Walking Dead universe has provided Gothic.

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“The changes in your DNA are very minor, but so are the genetic differences between a chimpanzee and a human. Even a minor genetic change can have profound and unknowable effects as a whole, which is why we so often see unintended consequences when parents genetically enhance their children,” she said with a shrug. “Genetically, we believe that your DNA has become more adaptable, more ‘accepting’, if you will, on an individual level, of rapid beneficial adaptations or improvements and Dr. Crusher had already speculated that you might be capable of that to a degree already. Now, that level of active adaptation, again, on an individual level, is unnatural, artificial, and exactly what this likely extremely advanced race intended to change in their people. No individual lifeform naturally adapted to anything. As a species we might, though, over time.”

“I don’t fully understand,” I admitted.

“Active adaption implies that you’re in one environment and then you go to another one, maybe a hostile one, that you then physiologically adapt to it,” the doctor was gesturing widely with her hands. “That does not happen naturally! What happens is in the genetic variation of any generation, some people have certain properties that others don’t. You go into a new environment, this new hostile one, and everyone who does not have that particular and favorable genetic variation necessary to survive, well, they die. They are summarily removed from the gene pool and the one person who had that property, in advance, survives, hopefully long enough, to pass on that beneficial genetic variation to the next generation. Therefore they did not actively adapt, they were already fit to survive in that new environment. They were the fittest to survive those particular circumstances and thus pass on those desirable genetic characteristics to the next generation. Adaptation is true in the broad sense of a species, over time, but there is no active adaptation, on an individual level, ever going on.”