At 08:58 PM 5/12/1997 -0600, Edward Becerra wrote:

On Mon, 12 May 1997, Mike Noakes wrote:

	I think this topics been taken up multiple times before, but...
	Well, my take would be that it would age.  Damage carried over 
from body to body, right?  Well, heck, aging is just a very, very slow 
form of physical harming of the body, so why wouldn't it carry over, too?

Another related question: since cats and ducks die of old age long before 
humans do....

	-Mike

	I'm not entirely sure of this, Mike... recent research has
indicated that the aging process isn't as much a form of injury or harm,
as it is a self destruct mechanism deliberately evolved by nature.

Deliberately?

	This has been argued by sci-fi writers and gerontologists for
ages, but the theory, currently gaining in acceptance, is that ageing (as
in the downhill slide that results in death) is produced by a gene that is
_programmed_ to disrupt the body's healing factors. The theroy views this
as nature's way of removing a useless person from the gene pool. Useless,
you hear me say? Well, yes. Once you have reproduced (or refused to
reproduce, either way), nature has little use for you. Look at the natural
life span of a human. At 30-40 years, unaided, it's just long enough to
_have_ a child, then have enough time left to raise it to the point where
it can care for itself and no longer needs it's parents. At that point,
the parent becomes redundant. It can even be argued that the parent
becomes a drag, by comsuming resources that the child could use instead. 

Someone did the math and proved that if you're almost at menopause you can 
produce more pounds of healthy baby per 100,000 calories by helping your 
children have your grandchildren (no, not like that, I mean babysitting and 
stuff) than by having more children of your own (a riskier process).

Let's make this relevant.  What happens when Ranma gets menopause?

And should you choose NOT to reproduce.. Well, then. You are most
_definitely_ in the way, evolutionarily speaking. The sooner you're
removed, the better. Long life interferes with rapid evolution. 

Evolution does nothing on purpose.  New genes appear by random mutation from
errors the cells make when copying genes into gametes.  If a gene gets 
passed on, it shows up in the next generation.  If it doesn't get passed on, 
it doesn't.  That's it.  It has nothing to do with "nature's use for bla bla 
bla."

So if you mutate and have a gene that kills you at age two, you can't pass 
it on to your descendants, but if you have a gene that kills you at age 
sixty you've probably already passed it on to your kids and grandkids by the 
time it does anything to you.

The pains of old age are just a big collection of genes that didn't kill off 
our ancestors in time to not appear in our genomes.  It's more like 
appendices and toenails - useless now, but does nothing to stop people from 
passing it on.

In fact, check your neck closely next time you're at a mirror.  Nothing 
stopped us from inheriting the last traces of gill marks....

Also, the above doesn't apply to recessive genes; perfectly healthy parents 
have unkowingly passed Tay-Sachs, etc. to their kids.  While T-S may 
gradually decrease in the population (since the carriers will live but the 
ones with two copies die young), it won't go extinct instantly the way a 
hypothetical dominant Tay-Sachs would.

Immortality interferes even more. Planned obsolesence, on the other hand,
is _ideal_ for speeding up the process.

That would make sense if it was planned in the first place.

	A harsh way of doing things, perhaps... but whoever said that
natural processes were supposed to be kind? Who was it that said `nature,
red in tooth and claw'?

	I'd be happy to hear any thoughts on this, but as it does form a
tangent, perhaps it would be best discussed in private email, no?

	Hope I've sparked a few ideas that might turn into fics, here.

I hope so too.  That's the best thing about these threads!