ED. COM. (Responding to articles from the BBC and New Scientist.)
So, number one: these mutations cause disease. The mutations that have occurred in this tumour have turned what was once useful tissue into a source of misery and death. Number two: The process that spreads it is the result of Devilish violent behaviour. Number three: The “selective sweep in one geographical area” simply means that one variation of the tumour was able to survive long enough to spread further and cause more disease. Altogether, the changes found in the facial tumour cells remind us that we are not looking at evolution here – we are looking at what mutations do best: the destruction of life. Mutation and natural selection are real processes, but they are part of the overall degeneration or devolution of the world brought about following man’s rebellion against his Creator. We can confidently say this disease would not have occurred in the original good world that God made. Even if only for the fact that ‘In the beginning’ all animals ate plants, so there was no struggle for existence, and no fighting for food or mates. The fossil record shows the Devils were once much larger and more robust, and lived all over Australia. Now they are confined to one island, and as a result are severely inbred, which has decreased their size, and increased their mutational load which has undoubtedly increased their susceptibility to disease in general. For more on the devolution of the Devil see Tasmanian Devils Evolving Early Motherhood Evidence News 24 Sept 2008. (Ref. marsupials, carnivores, carcinogenesis)
