I am very grateful to the NYT for this weekly column, but also to its readers for their erudite comments.
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This post dives into the adaptation aspect of our world. I wonder why these scientists do not fully believe that these aquatic animals could have simply developed different genes as defense. Clearly throughout history these mammals have proven that they adapt to the aquatic area they inhabit to survive. Although organophosphates are polluting the oceans and seas, these researchers are neglecting the evolution portion of the system. These toxic chemicals might be harmless or have to rearrange their chemical compounds to survive in an aquatic environment. Which means either these marine mammals are immune/unaffected by the chemicals or could have developed genes that fight against a new, different type of toxic chemical. Even if the toxins are still dangerous, the mammals have been evolving to all forms of aquatic life. So they could have adapted genes that are unique to them that help prevent the toxics from doing damage. A solution to the problem though would be to prevent these toxic chemicals from reaching the coastal waters in the first place. By having a regulation system that leads to a dirt pit or underground, the chemicals from the fields can flow there and dissipate. Or if farms would stop using pesticides and harmful chemicals to help grow "richer" crops and protect their plants that would decrease the toxins in general. There are more eco friendly solutions to help their lands without destroying other parts of the environment.
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@Mei Eutsler, although mammals adapt, their reproduction cycle (gestation, birth, breeding cycle) may not be long enough to quickly adapt and change in order to survive? I'm guessing..
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Evolution and the appearance of new species or varieties of viruses, bacteria, plants and animals from older lineages is well documented in the paleontologic record. This speciation can be gradual or quite punctuated.
Punctuated events, call them game changers for life on this planet, come in the form of rapid alterations in the environment. They have been physical: extreme vulcanism, changes in sea levels, alterations of the atmosphere and cosmic cataclysm.
Punctuated events can also be produced by living organisms. Imagine an earth without plenty of oxygen but plenty of carbon dioxide. Enter plants ability to metabolize carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Enter animals utilizing plant waste products to run their own metabolisms.
Humans are game changers in more ways than we can count. First you have to accept that evolution has occurred and will continue to occur with or without us. RAW
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@richard wiesner
I don't accept that though, Richard; at least not the sense you are talking about. I accept evolution in the sense that Charles Darwin originally observed, which is minute changes within a species. The finches beak changed depending on its environmental conditions.
Mr Darwin then postulated that all life descended from a common ancestor, based on that observation. There was no actual evidence to support his theory at that time, of course. But it sounded good to many, and soon, despite the lack of evidence, it was embraced by the scientific community as fact.
Since then, the situation hasn't changed. We have not found the transitional forms that Darwin predicted would be there. Instead we have theories to explain why the evidence isn't there. Punctuated equilibrium is the theory which says that sometimes evolution happens really fast and leaves no evidence. Kind of like those shell games where you see the ball go under the nut but it isn't there.
A theory with better explanatory power for the evidence is not a common ancestor, but a common designer. If you pry open the hood of any two motor vehicles on the planet you are going to find a lot of the same parts but they aren't going to be the same location or have the same features. Yet, there is a similarity between them all. That's the situation we observe today.
Evolution is true as it was discovered, but the rest is due to fanciful imagination, and the desire for a secular creation story.
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@Josh G
My point was that humans are game changers in the course of evolution. The least among us (viruses and bacteria) have the capability to produce ever more virulent forms of themselves in response to human interventions. Humans produce Roundup ready corn. It doesn't take a giant leap of "faith" to imagine Roundup ready farmworkers. I don't call that fanciful thinking. I just call it thinking.
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@Josh Yes we have found transition species- ambulocetus, pakicetus etc. for whales 4 legged mammals with whale like ears. Or tikaalik the fish’s pod that has a neck and can do pushups. The list goes on and on....
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This issue didn't start with Rick Scott, it started when Castro came to power in 1959. Most sugar cane supplied to the United States was grown in Cuba, that changed when the Fanjul family moved operations from Cuba to the Lake Okachobee area. Land was cheap but limestone soil is inhospitable to sugar cane. The Fanjul family purchased several thousand acres, resurfaced the area with hospitable soil, drained swamps and rerouted water in the area to make the landscape fit for cane growing. Sugar Cane does not grow naturally in FL, it requires tons of fertilizer. Developers & farming corporations pump most of the water that used to flow into the swamps either east through the St. Lucie River or west through the Caloosahatchee River. Untreated by nature's filtration system, ALL the water flowing into the lake and south of it is filled with Big Ag runoff & human detritus (you need cheap labor to live close to the cane fields). The same fertilizer and super soil that makes crops grow in places they shouldn't also makes algae grow in quantities it shouldn't. Under the right circumstances all that water flowing into the swamps and those two rivers turns green and slushy. Which is not good for the surrounding area, animals, humans and sea life included. If you keep doing that year after year after decade after decade, you pump enough foreign matter into the ocean and the sea and the gulf and you'll have a huge over bloom of toxic algae. Hence, all the dead sea life.
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It sounds as if evolution is working as it should . . .
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Did any of you dissect this story? put any thought into the many claims. ask where is the evidence that a dog(mammal), bear [Mammal] walked back into the ocean or even existed?
that a nose moved from the snout to it backside?
that they had the enzyme in the first place?
We use organic means to control pests at home.
Any living creature that comes into contact with chemicals are permanently harmed. how much depend on the dosage.
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@Uncle
Same, I was always led to believe that land mammals evolved from the sea not the other way around.
@Uncle I'm attempting to dissect your comment, not sure how it's going though.
Firstly, there is substantial evidence supporting the evolutionary claims purported in this article. Enough that it's not even necessary for the author to validate the claims. Perhaps some research on your part, I'd suggest starting with Evolution of cetaceans on Wikipedia, will solve that issue for you.
Secondly, the scale of mass commercial farming is incomparable to a home garden. While I agree that the use of toxic chemicals is not a preferable solution, the scalability of alternatives has been lackluster, to my knowledge.
Thirdly, everything in your body is a chemical, so exposure to chemicals does not harm all living things. Exposure to toxins can, and you're correct in stating that dosage is essential for determining toxicity. Toxicity, however, is largely dependent on species, as different species process these toxins at different rates and efficiencies.
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@Uncle
cmon uncle, no regular person has access to all the information needed to know all that stuff for sure. even science claims these things as theory, and truth is always evolving just like the rest of the universe. unless youre a creationist? obviously creatures have evolved in crazy and extreme ways to continue living.
We need birth control to lower the human population to a manageable 1.5-2 billion in order for other species to survive. And yet I see that China is encouraging more births. Just what we need...
@Ocean Blue Overpopulation is a -symptom- of poverty and oppression. How many Chinese people does it take to maintain the lifestyle of one American? 50? If we shut down the imperial mentality of a privileged minority continually squandering resources generated by the hard labor of a vast majority, then the world's population will drop rapidly.
The planet can no longer afford Americans driving around in huge vehicles, alone, for hours every day, while using dozens of single-use, single-serving plastic containers.
The PRC has had to implement decades of draconian population controls to get its people out of poverty and to end the practice of female infanticide that is -still- common in India and SE Asia. Letting up (slightly) on those controls is a reward that the Chinese people have -earned-.
As of this year the PRC is refusing to recycle any more of our trash-- -exactly- the type of responsible thinking that we need in the West.
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@Ocean Blue
i agree about overpop, but birth control is a little much. more and more regulations, laws, control. is this really the path you think is best? seems like we already have our freedom pretty restricted, and what your talking about goes too far. this is what happens when we look to society and government to tell us(others really) how to live and expect to be able to go on without changing ourselves and our own lives.
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@Crow Just as God created tiny organisms to gobble up oil spills, He also created systems which have cleaned up Chernobyl and other radiation spills. Animals are thriving in those areas in which the public have been shut out for health concerns. God takes care of the planet. You need only to take care to love other humans, not wish them death.
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Although it would be great to just eliminate the organophosphate pesticides in the environements of these mammals (those without the enzyme), this is not likely to happen any time soon.
Does anyone know of any zoo, or other science, breeding programs that are trying to replace this missing enzyme in populations of these threatened animals? Obviously they are already doing so in laboratory rodents, so it may be possible, and currently ongoing.
Anyone?
@Betsy: We do a lot of genetic engineering in my lab. The clear problems are 1) the life cycle of rodents is much shorter than those of larger mammals, 2) there's no guarantee that we can get genes into larger mammals like we do in rodents (more an issue of numbers and reproductive biology than molecular genetics), 3) You'd have to do hundreds of aquatic mammal species, though granted you could start with the most vulnerable species, presumably littoral, and 4) the article states that the enzyme was probably lost to facilitate longer dives, which you would then reverse (or worse, make longer dives more dangerous - emboli? infarcts? hemorrhage? stroke?). The law of unintended consequences argues that we would fail.
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Being interested subjects like marine biology, I became concerned when I read the title of this article. If underwater mammals like dolphins, whales, manatees, and more are harmed by these chemicals and pesticides, it could lead to dramatic changes in the underwater food chain, and at the very worst, extinction. This could even affect land mammals and humans. Pesticides are the reason for these adaptations. Maybe growing more organic foods would stop any further negative adaptations on this sea mammals, but it would still take a long time to reverse the adaptations that have already occurred. This is no surprise because pesticides have been a problem for years now. They are more harmful for us than organic foods, which is why stopping the use of pesticides once and for all may be a good option to save marine life and stop any further negative adaptations,
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While this is sad, what are the implications of the way we abuse pesticides and chemicals for us as humans? Are the spikes we see over the past decades in things such as depression, some cancers, autoimmune diseases, and the like just coincidence?
Oh right, like climate change, this is all a conspiracy by the deep state to hurt business. And it is definitely not a coincidence that big manufacturers of agricultural chemicals have found a huge friend in Donald Trump.
As one example, Trump's EPA (Environmental Pollution Administration) under its former genius Scott Pruitt was looking to overturn and Obama administration effort to ban the use the use of Chlorpyrifos.
Sound science for years showed the chemical, first developed as a nerve gas in World War II, caused lasting damage to children who had been exposed to low doses of it before birth.
Fortunately, this week a court ordered the Trump administration that it could not overturn the ban.
If it isn't obvious by now, we can't kill the natural world around us without killing ourselves.
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@JHM: there are actually different paraoxonase alleles in human populations that dictate in part resistance to organophosphate pesticides. Some individuals are very susceptible. And this varies like eye color, except it is invisible: hard to know unless you actually sequence the gene or had a parent that died in response to organophosphates. This work dates back to the 80s. Very solid.
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People must insist on organic food.
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Most pesticides are toxic and harmful to all forms of life. So maybe it's time we learned how to grow food without using chemical pesticides. As for lawn pesticides, it time we banned them. And I just don't get Monsanto. Basically we let them destroy our agricultural industry, because most countries no longer want to import our products. I certainly don't want to eat them, either. Most other countries ban the chemicals we use here, not just agricultural pesticides, but BPA, etc. The US has become a toxic waste dump.
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This habitual condemnation of Humans is becoming tiresome. As I write this, there are 20 comments on this article and many of them focus on the 'sinfulness' of the human species.
We are, for good and bad, a part of nature. And our nature is what it is.
If we are to make better use of our intelligence (as many of us propose) then lets start by finding a more intelligent approach to solving the problem.
Where is the evidence to show that this habitual, knee-jerk whining about 'humans' does any good? My hunch is that it actually does more harm than good.
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@iain mackenzie
Any deep and lasting change in human beings that I have ever seen starts with acceptance and compassion: Not condemnation.
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Oh please stop the complaining. People have every right to complain because they are frustrated by the utter lack of leadership. The world needs a leader to get us out of this mess.
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@Boga
the world doesnt need a leader, people need to understand that change starts with their own behavior, and if you cant live a better live as an example to others than you probably wont make a difference or ever live in a perfect world. stop trying to change what others do and just live life the way you feel is right.
The most prudent and stable solution would be to reduce the use of these chemicals but to save the species, this is an instance where gene editing to repair the nonfunctional enzyme might be worthwhile considering.
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@Jim Tokuhisa
If this were possible , it would be amazing. I have to laud the scientists who discovered this problem, and the future scientists who might be able to help solve it.
It's a shame that our short-sighted farming methods makes it necessary.
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Thes aquatic mammals will surely die out. I love to read and watch videos on these types of animals. Numerous manatees are being injured by boat engines, causing much harm to the population. Whales and dolphins are being relocated out of populated waters. Animals need space and the right habitat. Moving animals from one location to another is just not right. While reading and doing research the enzyme lost is done by some of these environmental disasters. If the human race would be more kind to the environment then problems like this wouldn't occur.
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Slowly but surely, and entirely stupidly, the greed and power driven class of the human race are destroying all life on the planet, including their own. And they know it. They just don't care. So long as they can enjoy their own lives they could care less about the lives of anyone else. It helps if you have a bunch of money to start with. You know, like the most caring and considerate human being in the world. His Royal Magnificence, Mr. Trump.
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This article appeared in the NYT on the same day that another article appeared about a court order forcing EPA to ban Chlorpyrifos, one pesticide in the organophosphorus (OP) group. Scott Pruitt refused to ban Chlorpyrifos in 2017, as the Pruitt article points out.
Hopefully this article on sea mammals, or the research behind it, will be expanded in the future to consider other OP compounds, including some flame retardants, used in building materials and other industrial substances.
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Flame retardants in furniture and clothing have caused thyroid problems in cats. No doubt in humans, too. I've had lots of cats with thyroid problems. Eventually they die of kidney failure or cancer. My parents had thyroid problems, and they developed, and died of, complications of diabetes (kidney failure) and dementia. Time to ban a lot of these toxic chemicals.
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The situation in Florida right now is the end result of deregulation and lies firms on the head of Gov. Rick Scott, now running of Senate, who pulled back necessary regulations, stopped Everglades restoration, and gave big giveaways to Big Sugar, big agriculture, at the expense of the environment.
It s a crime against life itself.
Not only are marine mammals dying in numbers never before seen (a 25 foot whale washed up near Sanibel just the other day), but people living on canals and other waterways are getting sick from toxic algae as a result of runoff and pesticides.
When we cause an assault on the environment, with such disregard, we are also engaging ultimately suicidal behavior. We are poisoning the systems we need to sustain life.
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Dr. Clark might want to test killer whales for this genotype as well. The dwindling non-reproducing resident pod in Puget Sound might owe their status to this mechanism.
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@TS
They're starving to death from lack of salmon.
@TS: A fantastic point. While cetaceans are an independent branch of the evolutionary tree from that of dugongs and manatees, certainly parallel evolution frequently selects for the same "solution" to the same "problem." (Please pardon the anthropomorphism.)
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Walt Kelly via Pogo
Only with the evolution of man did a single species become capable of the elimination of all other life forms, itself included. Even the cockroach is not safe.
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I don't think humans have evolved. I think apes are superior to humans. Some days I think humans are an inferior species that was kicked off another planet. I wish we could toss them off this one. Or sterilize them all and let them die off. That would be the only thing that would save this planet.
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All the more reason to eat organic whenever possible, and avoid using toxic pesticides and herbicides on our lawns and gardens.
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What would stop these mammals from adapting and evolving by regenerating the missing gene? Is that possible, or would the harmful effects outpace any genetic evolution?
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The time necessary for adaptation to evolve is on a scale not compatible with the immediacy of the threat.
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Perhaps I am oversimplifying the notion that for millions of years, marine mammals have been managing effectively well WITHOUT the lost gene/enzyme. Then along comes humans and technology and various pesticides and these creatures will in all likelihood be unable to protect themselves against these poisons.
The biggest downside to Mother Nature are the reckless and arrogant behaviors and actions caused by humans. It's nature and all of its beauty that makes life worth living. At the rate we're going, there will only be concrete, sand, and polluted water left on this planet.
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Is it a given at this point that humans are going to wash excess fertilizer and pesticides into the sea because there is no way to stop doing that? It causes serious damage to the ocean in many ways. It's yet another environmental tragedy caused by humans.
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I wish we could force our politicians to eat pesticides.
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Naturally one has to wonder whether we omnipotent humans can figure out how to re-introduce the paraoxonase enzyme into the somatic makeup of those mammals most at risk, hoping that it will be passed along to offspring, slowly building up once again in the populations.
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Wishful thinking. I'm not familiar with this system, but genes and the proteins they encode often don't function in a vacuum.
Man's war on the environment is the most important war we are fighting. We are losing this war badly because as evolved as our brains are, we are too stupid to figure out what we are doing. As I reach my 60s, I am glad that my family and genetics predicts about 15 to 20 years and then I'm out of this place. A world without wildlife or wilderness is not a world I want to live in.
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@Jay David
Mr. David - your comment is as poignant and touching as it is sad and true. I loved your comment but it almost brought a tear to my eye. The only segment I mildly disagree with is that "we are too stupid to figure out what we are doing." I don't think people are as stupid as they are arrogant, selfish and in complete and utter denial of the irrevocable harm many of our actions are causing this planet.
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@Jay David
I also am grateful that I won't live to endure the planet's degradation, which we seem to be rushing toward at increasing speed. But we still have a responsibility to consider the future of those who will have to endure it. I plan to leave the majority of my estate to organizations that work to save the human race from those who refuse to deal with this fast-encroaching reality. (And I support them in life also.) I hope others who share these concerns will consider this as their best gift to the innocent creatures who will inherit the result of many poor choices.
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@Marge Keller: Let's amend that to "unable to see more than a year or two down the road." Say, the next hunting season, the next growing season, the next quarterly report, or the next election.
Nothing in the election of humans drove us toward long-term thinking. Or, for that matter, thinking outside of our immediate tribe or extended family structure. The tragedy of the commons meets Malthus. And despite what libertarians are frequently fond of saying, Malthus was not wrong, just deferred.
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The real question is whether we humans are going to try to make up for the damages we have caused to the environment by trying to genetically modify animals to rescue them from selection pressures. If we do, we have to ask some ethical questions, including some that are deeply ironic. We get further into the anthropocene, and have the technology to play god. If we can really control the fate of other species, we may not choose to save them all.
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@Ricky
Humans are the only animal species needing genetic modification to rescue all species. We can soon do it. Forget about "ethics". It's about survival.
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