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it is an important metric if it has substance, but according to the above it has very little variance. Knowing how many pregnancies failed versus how many faile

it is an important metric if it has substance, but according to the above it has very little variance. Knowing how many pregnancies failed versus how many failed prior to the event could give us a better indicator of the damage caused.

sitkack 6y ago
I think the question I feel the hive mind wants to answer is, "How much radiation can the species live with and not go extinct". If the birth rates are lower and mortality right is higher we can 'make up' for that. But if the offspring accrue hereditary damage, any amount is too much. We will have many many tough decisions to make due to the climate crisis.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  And it's not just a matter of how much radiation either. Zap a bunch of fruit flies with a dose of x-rays all at once and see the next generation come out horribly mutated. Give them that same dose of radiation over the course of a month and see a perfectly healthy next generation.
  - ipaddr 6y ago
    Has that happened flies or animals that are immune to high radiation? I could see the next generation having horrible mutations, I could see the genes correcting some of this in the 3rd generation. I could see some of mutations living on but resistance to radiation would be so extremely useful we would build materials out of them which we are not doing today.
betterunix2 6y ago
That was my first thought when I saw the title. IIRC roughly 1/3 of pregnancies end within weeks, often before a woman is aware that she is pregnant, almost always because of a genetic mutation. Given that, if the miscarriage rate is higher, that would indicate that there is indeed an impact, but that our genome is very good at preventing dangerous mutations from propagating. Another possibility is that error-correcting mechanisms are good enough to deal with whatever impact exposure to that level of radiation had. One hypothesis about meiosis and genetic recombination is that it serves as an error correcting process, where damaged genes on one chromosome can be repaired using corresponding genes from the other chromosome.

sitkack 6y ago

I think the question I feel the hive mind wants to answer is, "How much radiation can the species live with and not go extinct". If the birth rates are lower and mortality right is higher we can 'make up' for that. But if the offspring accrue hereditary damage, any amount is too much. We will have many many tough decisions to make due to the climate crisis.

Symmetry 6y ago
And it's not just a matter of how much radiation either. Zap a bunch of fruit flies with a dose of x-rays all at once and see the next generation come out horribly mutated. Give them that same dose of radiation over the course of a month and see a perfectly healthy next generation.
- ipaddr 6y ago
  Has that happened flies or animals that are immune to high radiation? I could see the next generation having horrible mutations, I could see the genes correcting some of this in the 3rd generation. I could see some of mutations living on but resistance to radiation would be so extremely useful we would build materials out of them which we are not doing today.

betterunix2 6y ago

That was my first thought when I saw the title. IIRC roughly 1/3 of pregnancies end within weeks, often before a woman is aware that she is pregnant, almost always because of a genetic mutation. Given that, if the miscarriage rate is higher, that would indicate that there is indeed an impact, but that our genome is very good at preventing dangerous mutations from propagating. Another possibility is that error-correcting mechanisms are good enough to deal with whatever impact exposure to that level of radiation had. One hypothesis about meiosis and genetic recombination is that it serves as an error correcting process, where damaged genes on one chromosome can be repaired using corresponding genes from the other chromosome.