Re: [GSAS-Member]Inbreeding

[haika@drizzle.com]

Depends on how you define 'culling' or 'weeding out'. If the individuals
involved are prevented from contributing their gametes to future
generation, you've accomplished your goal of removing deleterious
recessives, and that doesn't bother me. It doesn't have to involve killing
the animal. Heck, it happens all the time in the dog-world. Our
pet-quality (non-breeding stock) animals are simply neutered and they live
long, happy lives (for the most part). Same could happen with fishes,
although I admit that the Endler's in my population show occasional spinal
deformities and those get fed to a Jack Dempsey down the hall (shrug).

Betty Goetz

> Steev,
> Good point about the need to make evidence-based statements.
>
> As an animal lover, I'm very uncomfortable with Ahmer's cavalier
> statement about
> "weeding out" animals. Maybe it's just me, but it evokes images of
> eugenics. Of course,
> I go out of of my way to let even weeds grow in my garden. Then again,
> I do weed out
> grass. I could not cull any fish.
>
> Maybe I'll send you more comments off-list.
>
> By the way, if someone sent a 9 mb article to the listserve, I cannot
> accept anything that
> large. Could you re-send, minus any photos, or better yet, reducing the
> size of the photos?
>
> Thank you,
> John
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 29, 2005, at 7:05 PM, steev ward wrote:
>
> John Ruhland wrote:
> "In researching some fish I recently got, the literature clearly states
> that
> this inbreeding has caused certain fish lines to be unhealthy."
>
> John-
>
> The expression that many lines of fish are unhealthy due to inbreeding
> is
> mostly just "something we say" in the fish hobby. As far as I know
> there has
> never been any good evidence of such. Be careful when you refer to such
> information as coming from "the literature" (especially if this
> information
> comes from a fish magazine or from the web) because that implies that
> there
> is some kind of standard for accuracy, which there probably is not.
> Just as
> with human health everyone is free to make whatever statement they want,
> regardless of truth. In both cases there are a lot of things that we
> state
> as if they were true, when really there is no good evidence. If it
> seems to
> make sense then we repeat it. If enough people repeat it we accept it.
> After
> we have accepted it for a long time it becomes common knowledge. Then
> if you
> write it down or put it on the web it becomes fact.
>
> I am reminded of an article I read a few years ago called "Inbreeding
> is a
> Good Thing."  By Brian Ahmer, Ph.D.  I believe it may have been
> published in
> Flare, the publication of the International Betta Congress.
> The genetic principles in question are very interesting. They involve
> LOSING
> either beneficial traits or deleterious ones. The GAINING of a
> detrimental
> gene is not all that much of a threat. The other point, that inbreeding
> produces more fish with more than one copy of a detrimental gene, is
> something that Mr. Ahmer sees as a GOOD thing, because such fish can be
> weeded out.
>
> Steev
>
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>
>
>
>
> Dr. John F. Ruhland
> The Natural Health Medical Clinic
> 4002 - 25th Avenue S, Seattle, WA 98108
> 206-723-4891
> www.drruhland.com
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