Page 55 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Errors Regarding Mutations

made by evolutionist scientists.
Francisco J. Ayala, of the University of California, Irvine, a pro-
fessor of biological sciences and philosophy:
High energy radiations, such as x-rays, increase the rate of mutation.
Mutations induced by radiation are random in the sense that they
arise independently of their effects on the fitness of the individuals
which carry them. Randomly induced mutations are usually deleteri-
ous. In a precisely organized and complex system like the genome of
an organism, a random change will most frequently decrease, rather
than increase, the orderliness or useful information of the system. 2

James F. Crow, head of the Genetics Department at the
University of Wisconsin and an expert on radiation and mutation:
Almost every mutation is harmful, and it is the individual who pays
the price. Any human activity that tends to increase the mutation rate
must therefore raise serious health and moral problems for man. 3

Arandom change in the highly integrated system of chemical
processes which constitute life is almost certain to impair it—just as
a random interchange of connections in a television set is not likely
to improve the picture. 4
The biologist Dr. Mahlon B. Hoagland:
The information that resides in organisms that are alive today . . . is
far more refined than the work of all the world's great poets com-
bined. The chance that a random change of a letter or word or phrase
would improve the reading is remote; on the other hand, it is very
likely that a random hit would be harmful. It is for this reason that
many biologists view with dismay the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, nuclear power plants, and industrially generated muta-
genic (mutation-producing) chemicals. 5

You'll recall we learned that almost always a change in an organ-
ism's DNA is detrimental to it; that is, it leads to a reduced capacity

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