It's not that different from a multicellular organism. The vast majority of cells in your body are dead-end lineages. They've specialized into sterile forms so

It's not that different from a multicellular organism. The vast majority of cells in your body are dead-end lineages. They've specialized into sterile forms so that a few cells in your gonads actually do have a chance to reproduce. Evolutionarily it works because all the cells have the same (or very similar, in the case of kin selection) genes.