From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Nov 29 2002 - 07:44:18 MST
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 06:13:54AM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > i.e. Gilbert's syndrome provides a tiny disadvantage. There might
> > be some anti-ageing component, but I doubt it - that would likely
> > in historic times have made the gene have positive fitness and it
> > would have become even more common.
>
> Anders, I think you have to think this through very carefully
> in terms of antagonistic pliotropy and mate selection.
Having long-lived parents and grandparents likely provides an advantage
to humans (there are theories about human longevity actually having been
selected for by the grandparent effect), so it seems that this selection
effect would promote the syndrome if it really had a reliable
life-extending effect. And I think our Gilbertian friends can attest
that it is not a huge problem for mate selection.
The medical literature only refers to 'normal lifespan' for the syndrome
too. I doubt anybody has looked carefully at the longevity, just whether
it shortens life, but if there were any strong effect (say five years
more than normal) it would likely have been noticed when people checked
the mortality side.
It would bre great if I was wrong. The we could all look forward to the
future with jaundiced eyes :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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