ifriit said:
Ah, but the issue of endogenous retroviruses has nothing to do with the evolutionary relationship of humans to the viruses, but rather that the viruses tag organisms in a statistically unique fashion. All humans share certain viral tags. Furthermore, all humans and chimpanzees share some of those viral tags.
Dr. Mae Wan Ho & Professor Malcolm Hooper
Most HERVs and retrotransposons are defective, having lost one or more gene functions; but can nevertheless multiply and move with the help of other elements or infecting viruses.
HERVs are flanked by 'long terminal repeats' that contain strong promoters for gene expression. Promoters are stretches of DNA with binding sites for transcription factors of the host cell that boosts transcription, effectively saying to the cell, "make many copies of the message following". HERVs and retrotransposons are regulated by the cell, and ultimately, by the organism as a whole, which stops most of them from being expressed.
(The one's that are expressed would involve a loss of information not a gain-hence the term retro-Therefore, we would evolve backwords not forwards)
In a comprehensive review published in 1996, virologists Howard Urnovitz and William Murphy raised the possibility that many chronic debilitating diseases may be linked to HERVs. These include leukaemia and other cancers, B-cell immunoglobulin diseases, inflammatory diseases of the nervous system, autoimmune rheumatic and connective tissue disease and chronic fatigue syndrome.
One way in which endogenous viruses can cause disease is for them to move and insert itself next to certain genes, that, when over-expressed, results in uncontrolled cell division, or cancer. This mechanism may be involved in mouse and human leukaemia, breast cancer and teratocarcinoma. This is also the mechanism that causes cancer in gene therapy, when viral vectors integrate next to these same genes.
Another way in which disease may arise is when HERV encoded proteins are expressed. This provokes antibodies against the body's own cells, giving rise to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus erythematosus, Sjögren's syndrome, mixed connective tissue diseases and inflammatory neurologic disease. The inflammatory response could be the most important trigger for the development of autoimmune disease, as infecting viruses can strongly activate HERVs to express, resulting in production of HERV protein antigens.
In his view, "there appears to be a limit on how much foreign material to which the human body can be exposed before some level of genetic damage occurs and a chronic disease initiates".
Further support to this similarity has been provided by the ability of the env-like gene of DmeGypV (the Gypsy endogenous retrovirus of Drosophila melanogaster) to promote infection of Drosophila cells by a pseudotyped vertebrate retrovirus vector.
Song SU, Gerasimova T, Kurkulos M, Boeke JD, Corces VG: An env-like protein encoded by a Drosophila retroelement: evidence that gypsy is an infectious retrovirus.
Genes Dev 1994, 8:2046-57.
Endogeneous viruses debilitate the cells and destroy the structure of the genetic code. They do NOT improve the code but DESTROY and change it, not into something not superior but into something inferior. The bodies reaction to these changes in the genetic structure causes a variety of diseases that plague mankind. They do not help man to evolve into a "better" species but damage the structure already there. It is a loss of information not a gain.
This is again an evolutionist attempt to "grasp at straws" in order to back up their theory.
The proof of intelligent design stares everyone in the face and they just close their eyes. They'd rather bet not only their lives but also their eternal destiny on the least probable (Godless evolution) instead of the most obvious (intelligent design).
