Further notes about the morphostasis concept - split files

(60) Cell senescence, cell shutdown, corpse disposal and its extrapolations into individual and population aging.

We had a rather naive view of cell health and survival some 30 years ago. No one had much appreciation of the sheer volume of cell-death and cell-corpse disposal that goes on in our bodies, "silently", every single day of our lives (particularly the reorganisation that accelerates at night whilst we sleep). The very health of our zygote-derived-colony depends on the wastage and efficient disposal of malfunctioning and senescent "self" cells. Genetic mutations that allow such corpses to persist demonstrate the criticality for this removal. With this death comes renewed life and vigour.

Now, it seems improbable that this mechanism, that has evolved to favour clearing miscreant and failing cells, has escaped Nature's attention and the reiteration of a similar principle in the individual animals that make up the pool of animals that constitute a single species. The very mechanisms that evolved to favour the culling and disposal of failing zygote-derived-cells may have been adapted and extrapolated to favour the "culling" of individual animals. This would be in much the same way, so that the health of a species pool may, equally, be pruned of increasingly malfunctioning inviduals in order to keep the overal pool of animals, that constitute a species, vibrant and successful. Our individual-centred perspectives finds it hard to appreciate the benefit of such a wastage of our single lives (many of our moral and ethical attitudes are aimed at countering this cull). Nature, in the wild, is callous in applying this wastage, because the survival of wild species probably depends upon it. Even up until the end of the 19th century, human life expectancies reflected this massive cull.

This is not a plea to adopt eugenic attitudes. However, it does highlight the point that Homo sapiens is fast becoming the new "vermin" of our planet as we massively and progressively continue fouling up our eco-system. The solution to this problem is hideously problematic and will need to be approached (in my opinion) whilst still preserving ethical standards.