Spring Break
Evolution may serve as danger to living organisms
Tyler Will
Issue date: 10/15/08 Section: News
10/15/08 - Judith Swift will remember Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008 for the rest of her life. And so will the audience at the Fall 2008 Honors Colloquium.
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has one flaw - that it can happen very quickly, as proven by diseases - and it will be required of about 25 percent of the world's mammal population to survive, said Dr. Stephen Palumbi, a professor at Stanford University.
At last night's Honors Colloquium, Palumbi said organisms with shorter generations and large populations will be the most likely to survive climate change, and organisms with large generations and smaller populations will be most prone to extinction.
"There is an alternative for species who can't [survive on their own], and that's us," Palumbi said. "For those species in particular, it is time now to find habitats for them to survive for the next 50 or 60 years."
After the speech, Palumbi said even human life will be subject to climate change, but its demographic will help prevent extinction.
"We have a prettåy big population size, we're spread in all kinds of environments, and the 6 billion of us, we're a lot less on the chopping block than anyone else in the mammalian world," Palumbi said.
Palumbi began his lecture with a list of antibiotics, beginning with penicillin. Penicillin, Palumbi said, was commercially available in 1943, and the first resistance to the drug was reported in 1947. A new antibiotic was invented, which created "evolutionary pressure" on the disease, creating resistance, and eventually the need for an even stronger drug.
In 2000, a drug called linezolid was invented, which was a stronger drug acting as a sequel to Penicillin, Palumbi said. It was available in 2004, and two years later, the first resistance to the drug was reported. Palumbi called the cycle an "arms race," and now there is a race to develop a new drug of last resort.
"You do not want to be on the drug of last resort," Palumbi said. "Why? Because where do you go from there? This was a set of developments we can see in the pages of every medical journal."
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has one flaw - that it can happen very quickly, as proven by diseases - and it will be required of about 25 percent of the world's mammal population to survive, said Dr. Stephen Palumbi, a professor at Stanford University.
At last night's Honors Colloquium, Palumbi said organisms with shorter generations and large populations will be the most likely to survive climate change, and organisms with large generations and smaller populations will be most prone to extinction.
"There is an alternative for species who can't [survive on their own], and that's us," Palumbi said. "For those species in particular, it is time now to find habitats for them to survive for the next 50 or 60 years."
After the speech, Palumbi said even human life will be subject to climate change, but its demographic will help prevent extinction.
"We have a prettåy big population size, we're spread in all kinds of environments, and the 6 billion of us, we're a lot less on the chopping block than anyone else in the mammalian world," Palumbi said.
Palumbi began his lecture with a list of antibiotics, beginning with penicillin. Penicillin, Palumbi said, was commercially available in 1943, and the first resistance to the drug was reported in 1947. A new antibiotic was invented, which created "evolutionary pressure" on the disease, creating resistance, and eventually the need for an even stronger drug.
In 2000, a drug called linezolid was invented, which was a stronger drug acting as a sequel to Penicillin, Palumbi said. It was available in 2004, and two years later, the first resistance to the drug was reported. Palumbi called the cycle an "arms race," and now there is a race to develop a new drug of last resort.
"You do not want to be on the drug of last resort," Palumbi said. "Why? Because where do you go from there? This was a set of developments we can see in the pages of every medical journal."
