Sandford's Response to "Beneficial Mutations"
" I also insist that beneficials must be very rare compared to deleterious mutations (as do nearly all geneticists). The critical question is “how rare?” Genomes are the genetic specifications that allow life to exist. Specifications are obviously inherently SPECIFIC. This means that random changes in specifications will disrupt information with a very high degree of certainty. This has become especially clear ever since the publication of the ENCODE results, which show that very little of our genome is actually ‘junk DNA’.10 The ENCODE project also shows that most nucleotides play a role in multiple overlapping codes, making any beneficial mutations which are not deleterious at some level vanishingly rare (in preparation)...unless beneficial mutations are extremely common, they are not sufficient to compensate for accumulating deleterious mutations.... The bottom line is that selection removes only the worst deleterious mutations and amplifies only the best beneficial mutations. This means that the accumulating damage is largely invisible (like rust on a car), while adaptations tend to be highly visible (e.g., antibiotic resistance)...Where are the beneficial mutations in man? It is very well documented that there are thousands of deleterious Mendelian mutations accumulating in the human gene pool, even though there is strong selection against such mutations. Yet such easily recognized deleterious mutations are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of deleterious mutations will not display any clear phenotype at all. There is a very high rate of visible birth defects, all of which appear deleterious. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Why are no beneficial birth anomalies being seen?" See section on Issues in Creation and Evolution section on Mutations this website for reference. Also: http://creation.com/genetic-entropy.
" I also insist that beneficials must be very rare compared to deleterious mutations (as do nearly all geneticists). The critical question is “how rare?” Genomes are the genetic specifications that allow life to exist. Specifications are obviously inherently SPECIFIC. This means that random changes in specifications will disrupt information with a very high degree of certainty. This has become especially clear ever since the publication of the ENCODE results, which show that very little of our genome is actually ‘junk DNA’.10 The ENCODE project also shows that most nucleotides play a role in multiple overlapping codes, making any beneficial mutations which are not deleterious at some level vanishingly rare (in preparation)...unless beneficial mutations are extremely common, they are not sufficient to compensate for accumulating deleterious mutations.... The bottom line is that selection removes only the worst deleterious mutations and amplifies only the best beneficial mutations. This means that the accumulating damage is largely invisible (like rust on a car), while adaptations tend to be highly visible (e.g., antibiotic resistance)...Where are the beneficial mutations in man? It is very well documented that there are thousands of deleterious Mendelian mutations accumulating in the human gene pool, even though there is strong selection against such mutations. Yet such easily recognized deleterious mutations are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of deleterious mutations will not display any clear phenotype at all. There is a very high rate of visible birth defects, all of which appear deleterious. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Why are no beneficial birth anomalies being seen?" See section on Issues in Creation and Evolution section on Mutations this website for reference. Also: http://creation.com/genetic-entropy.
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