Population Wars Quotes

“No empire or force for “good” has ever successfully eliminated a population of “evildoers.” The populations we claim to have vanquished are still with us today and contributing to our society in ways that are usually unacknowledged. Perhaps the real “hell” of war is that you can never really win one.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence

“Vaccinations are the application of evolutionary principles in action. If we can control the contact made between pathogen and lymphocyte populations, we can go a long way toward eliminating disease.108 It doesn’t require total annihilation but rather a control on population dynamics. Vaccines are the way we use selective cloning to keep a pathogenic population in a state of benign coexistence. The process is based on evolution, as pointed out by Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa: “Genes can mutate and recombine. These dynamic characteristics of genetic material are essential elements of evolution. Do they also play an important role during the development of a single multicellular organism? Our results strongly suggest that this is the case for the immune system.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence

“There is no “grand designer” who orchestrates infections, plagues, or pandemics or engineered our defenses to them. All these mechanisms that we attribute to a battle between good and evil are in actuality biological traits that we have inherited from preexisting populations. Therefore the interactions we are witnessing (infection, inflammation, phagocytosis) are based on previously established conditions of coexistence, and we should not expect to find any sort of unique perfection in our immune system. After all, these systems are not at some end point of evolution; they are still evolving. Rather we should expect to find ancient cellular systems from distant ancestors that have come together to work synergistically.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence

“The recognition that our atmosphere and oceans are being fouled by our own industry means that we are not only unscientific but supremely stupid if we don't do everything in our power to clean them up.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence

“A famous case involved U2 guitarist “The Edge,” who purchased 156 acres of wild chaparral but wanted to build five mansions on it. Needless to say there was going to be a significant disruption of the fragile habitat, and his building plans were rejected. The executive director of the Coastal Commission called it “one of the three worst projects that I’ve seen in terms of environmental devastation.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence

“Instead of total destruction, which evolutionary history has shown is impossible (pathogens have been around since the beginning), vaccines demonstrate the more reasonable approach: Control the degree to which populations coexist, and you can preserve the necessary diversity of life. We don’t tear down old cathedrals, we repurpose them. Our organs aren’t created de novo for each new species; they have been inherited and reworked to perform new functions, even if sometimes less efficient than what an engineer might design. It’s the persistence of coexisting diverse populations, cellular and organismic, that is a recurring phenomenon in the pageant of life. This is the message we need to use to educate people about their world, not the tired, outdated metaphor of victors and vanquished in some imaginary “war of nature.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence

“Evolution doesn’t invent new cells or organs very often. In the same sense, once organ systems have been established by natural selection, they don’t go extinct (though some organs lose their function—for instance the human appendix, which was originally larger in our ancestors, as seen in other mammals, and used to digest cellulose at an earlier stage of mammalian evolution). Through the long course of evolution, organs have retained their physiological functions, even if sometimes they get used in new ways. It’s not at all uncommon to find ancient organs co-opted, or perhaps “improved upon” by more recent taxa, while at the same time retaining their basic functions under new environmental circumstances.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence

“A famous case involved U2 guitarist “The Edge,” who purchased 156 acres of wild chaparral but wanted to build five mansions on it. Needless to say there was going to be a significant disruption of the fragile habitat, and his building plans were rejected. The executive director of the Coastal Commission called it “one of the three worst projects that I’ve seen in terms of environmental devastation.” Their refusal to rubber-stamp projects is proof that local government can indeed protect the habitats and species of ecologically fragile areas.”
― Greg Graffin, Population Wars: A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence