Two Heretical Evolutionary Thoughts

Food for thought.

Consider “evolutionary herding.”

Drug resistance mediated by clonal evolution is arguably the biggest problem in cancer therapy today. However, evolving resistance to one drug may come at a cost of decreased growth rate or increased sensitivity to another drug due to evolutionary trade-offs. This weakness can be exploited in the clinic using an approach called ‘evolutionary herding’ that aims at controlling the tumour cell population to delay or prevent resistance.

One can imagine a human population that develops certain mental, physical, and/or cultural traits that enable them to survive certain types of environmental challenges – including sociopolitical and cultural challenges – but makes them more vulnerable to another type of challenge. Is this analogous to the pathological altruism of certain (“high trust northern hunter gatherer”) European strains, originally adapted to ancient environmentally challenging yet demographically homogeneous conditions, in today's multiracial and multicultural societal niches?  Alternatively, have today's Western societies created a strain of Jew (or other non-European minority) adapted to the current System, but that has sensitivity to another sociopolitical System due to “evolutionary trade-offs?” By analogy, was the vulnerability of Jews to the National Socialist regime an example of “evolutionary herding” of Jews to the more Jew-friendly conditions of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment secular-liberal Europe?

“Harnessing competition.”

Researchers administer low levels of a drug, enough to kill most, but not all, of the vulnerable cells in the tumor population while favoring the survival of drug-resistant lineages. Once the tumor has shrunk, clinicians stop administering the drug. The drug-sensitive cells, which tend to have a competitive edge over cells that have invested in a costly drug-resistance mechanism, can now begin to grow back. Competition between drug-sensitive and drug-resistant cells for resources in the tumor microenvironment keeps the tumor size in check.

Thus, cycling between “treatment on” and “treatment” off strategies can be of use.  First, you kill off most, but not all, of the drug-sensitive cancer cells, leaving mostly resistant cells. Then you remove the drug, and let the remaining sensitive cells grow back, crowding out the resistant cells via resource competition – under “no drug” conditions the sensitive cells have a growth advantage. Then hit with the drug again, etc.

Let’s take Bowery’s concept of “Jewish virulence” and expand it to this concept. What if more extreme anti-Semitism selects for a more virulent strain of Jew, but one that comes with costs – the same mental and physical traits allowing them to survive extreme anti-Semitism (misanthropy, paranoia, excessive ethnocentrism, and who know what else – perhaps better crypsis and/or greater mobility) makes those same Jews less competitive under conditions of lesser anti-Semitism. Thus, under conditions in which the Jewish infection (or neoplastic growth) cannot be eliminated in a Western society, alternating between greater and lesser levels of anti-Semitism could maintain sufficient numbers of vulnerable Jews so as to prevent the permanent establishment of a fully resistant Jewish strain, and thus keep the infestation under control.