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On Elves And Cancer; to have or not to have
Topic Started: Dec 4 2006, 03:55 AM (254 Views)
Cooker the Mighty
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http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?t...22&sp=0#4622186
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Dumble Dwarf
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I only read the first sentence of that post but I'm read to answer the question..

In the world of reality, sharks almost never get cancers and have lifespans of 30-50 years (a relatively long lifespan for a fish).

So sure, if Elves actually existed it's conceivable their biology naturally resists cancer.

Got any other hypothetical questions?
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Cooker the Mighty
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sharks are not immure to it, they just have an elaborate defense against it.
Our minds will be the blades drawn against the darkness!
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Dumble Dwarf
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I didn't say sharks were immune, I just said they had a natural resistance to it.

It stands to reason that if a species has already developed a long lifespan that the problem of disease was overcome either through biology or technology.

So if Elves live for hundreds of years, somehow they must be able to deal with whatever health issues the environment poses.
If they didn't, they wouldn't live so long.
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
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Alfryd
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I'd say elves boast longevity partly through good healthcare and livign standards, but yes, they would need some elaborate biological mechanism to prevent disease- most likely at the expense of fertility, metabolism and/or growth rate. Everything's a trade-off. The reason we eventually die of cancer is that, historically, we were so likely to die of something else first that the reproductive advantage of cancer protection and longevity genes were negligible. Elves may have lived under very different environmental conditions.
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Alfryd
Jan 14 2007, 09:28 AM
Elves may have lived under very different environmental conditions.

Or perhaps they are merely better adapted to the environmental conditions.

Take the case of Pinus longaeva:
It's perfectly adapted to it's environment and can survive conditions that would kill a lesser species. Though it grows very slowly, it's able to survive for millenia and still remain fertile. In fact, unless acted upon by some outside force (like some schmuck with a chainsaw) it could possibly live forever (if you discount the possibility of sudden radical shifts in the climate like extinction events caused by meteor impacts, etc.).
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
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Alfryd
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Quote:
 
Or perhaps they are merely better adapted to the environmental conditions.

Well, given that elves only arrived in Ardania en-masse a few centuries back, it seems unlikely they've doen a great deal of physical adaptation to the local environment. Also, there may be multiple strategies for dealing with a given set of ecological circumstances, all perfectly viable. What might be more interesting to consider is what kind of environment would select for longevity and immunities over fertility and growth rate- and perhaps might explain why elves come across as lascivious, calculating slackards, assuming it's not an exclusively cultural thing, or that that the two spring from a common root.

Disclaimer:
Strictly speaking, no two species ever compete directly over the same ecological niche for very long- since this inevitably results in the extinction of one or the other- so, in most cases it doesn't make sense to argue which is 'better adapted' to their environment. Earthworms and humans frequently occupy the same environments, but they don't directly compete and each survives perfectly well, so it's absurd to argue that one is 'better adapted.' We have greater longevity and tool use, but earthworms reproduce a few hundred times faster, so guess which will still be around in two million years.
A secondary factor is Stephen J. Gould's 'punctuated equilibrium' theory, which states that most evolution takes place over relatively short time scales- a few hundred thousand years- after which species' relationships and stable climate conditions enter a sort of gridlock where no particular evolutionary change is advantageous until some external factor tips the balance and the process starts over again. A cheetah, for instance, can't evolve to run much faster without sacrificing claws fit to grapple quarry. In this sense, again, every surviving species is already 'best adapted.'
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Dumble Dwarf
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Alfryd
Jan 17 2007, 03:25 AM
Well, given that elves only arrived in Ardania en-masse a few centuries back...

I think the original bioware forum posting wasn't directed at Ardanian elves.
I haven't seen any evidence that Ardanian elves are any more perennial than other Ardanian species (which is just fine IMO).

Quote:
 
In this sense, again, every surviving species is already 'best adapted.'

I would have to qualify the "best adapted" as "best adapted among currently existing species".
I can't see that there is ever true 'equilibrium'. It seems to me, one species or another is constantly making progress while another is on the decline. This back and forth motion is constantly altering species populations until there is a critical point where a particular species becomes extinct (a state from which it can not recover).
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