FRUIT FLIES SPEAK UP
Yes, fruit flies speak up! They want to tell you that they, and their ancestors for nearly a century, have given their health and very lives to the cause of disproving evolutionary theory. The facts are in. Evolution is a fake. The fruit flies tell you so. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.
CONTENT: Fruit Flies Speak Up
The Great Mutation Research Project: Nearly a century in progress
Speeding Up the Evolutionary Process: Their generations have been studied longer than the presumed time man has been on earth
A New Species Is Never Produced: The fruit flies always remain fruit flies
What Happens to the Mutated Fruit Flies?: We have had opportunity to clearly learn what mutations do to a physical organism
Summary: Once a fruit fly, always a fruit fly
This material is excerpted from the book, MUTATIONS. An asterisk ( * ) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over 4,000 quotations in the books this Encyclopedia is based on, only 164 statements are by creationists. You will have a better understanding of the following statements by scientists if you will also read the web page, Mutations.
Well, they may not say much, but at least those who have spent years observing them surely have something to say. The humble fruit fly will speak to us through the researchers who have spent countless hours studying the varied ways in which mutations have damaged those flies:
THE GREAT MUTATION RESEARCH PROJECT
Nearly a century in progress.
In 1904, Walter S. Sutton, an American cytologist, decided there might be some connection between Gregor Mendel's 1860s research and the newly discovered chromosomes with their genes. A major breakthrough came in 1906, when Thomas Hunt Morgan, a Columbia University zoologist, conceived the idea of using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) for genetic research. This was due to the fact that they breed so very rapidly, require little food, have scores of easily observed characteristics and only a few chromosomes per cell.
"The fly could be bred by the thousands in milk bottles. It cost nothing but a few bananas to feed all the experimental animals; their entire life cycle lasts 10 days and they have only four chromosomes."—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 169.
Later still, fruit flies began to be used in mutational research. What that research revealed—settled the question for all time as to whether evolution could successfully result from mutations. And those little creatures should be able to settle the matter, for it takes only days for a fruit fly to reach maturity; after that it steadily reproduces young. Each of its offspring matures in a few days, and the generations multiply rapidly. What it would take mammals tens of thousands of years to accomplish, the humble fruit flies can do within a very short time.
We have heard about "the rocks crying out" (Luke 19:40). The fossil rocks surely are. Well, the little fruit flies have a testimony to give also.
SPEEDING UP THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
Fruit fly generations have been studied longer than the presumed time man has been on earth.
According to evolution, man has lived on the earth for a little over a million years. Yet experiments on fruit flies have already exceeded the equivalent of a million years of people living on earth. Here is a clear statement of the problem: "The fruit fly has long been the favorite object of mutational experiments because of its fast gestation period [twelve days]. X rays have been used to increase the mutation rate in the fruit fly by 15,000 percent. All in all, scientists have been able to "catalyze the fruit fly evolutionary process, such that what has been seen to occur in Drosophila is the equivalent of the many millions of years of normal mutations and evolution."
"Even with this tremendous speedup of mutations, scientists have not been able to come up with anything other than another fruit fly. Most important, what all these experiments demonstrate is that the fruit fly can vary within certain upper and lower limits but will never go beyond them. For example, Ernst Mayr reported on two experiments performed on the fruit fly back in 1948.
"In the first experiment, the fly was selected for a decrease in bristles and, in the second experiment, for an increase in bristles. Starting with a parent stock averaging 36 bristles, it is possible after thirty generations to lower the average to 25 bristles, "but then the line became sterile and died out." In the second experiment, the average number of bristles were increased from 36 to 56; then sterility set in. Mayr concluded with the following observation: Obviously any drastic improvement under selection must seriously deplete the store of genetic variability . . The most frequent correlated response of one-sided selection is a drop in general fitness. This plagues virtually every breeding experiment."—*Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny (1983), p. 134.
A NEW SPECIES IS NEVER PRODUCED
The fruit flies always remain fruit flies.
After decades of study, without immediately killing or sterilizing them, 400 different mutational features have been identified in fruit flies. But none of these changes the fruit fly to a different species.
"Out of 400 mutations that have been provided by Drosophila melanogaster, there is not one that can be called a new species. It does not seem, therefore, that the central problem of evolution can be solved by mutations."—*Maurice Caullery, Genetics and Heredity (1964), p. 119.
*"Richard Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he lamented, were so hopelessly micro [insignificant] that if a thousand mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species."—Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried (1971), p. 33.
A thousand known fruit-fly mutations placed in one individual—would still not produce a new species!
"In the best-known organisms, like Drosophila, innumerable mutants are known. If we were able to combine a thousand or more of such mutants in a single individual, this still would have no resemblance whatsoever to any type known as a [new] species in nature."—*Richard B. Goldschmidt, "Evolution, As Viewed by One Geneticist," American Scientist, January 1952, p. 94.
The obstinate, stubborn little creatures!
"Fruit flies refuse to become anything but fruit flies under any circumstances yet devised."—*Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong (1982), p. 61.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MUTATED FRUIT FLIES?
We have had opportunity to clearly learn what mutations do to a physical organism.
Fruit flies which receive mutations are always weakened in one way or another.
"The clear-cut mutants of Drosophila, with which so much of the classical research in genetics were done, are almost without exception inferior to wild-type flies in viability, fertility, longevity."—*Theodosius Dobzhansky, Heredity and the Nature of Man (1964), p. 126.
The mutated creatures die out, when placed out in nature with normal hardy specimens.
"A review of known facts about their ability to survive has led to no other conclusion than that they [the mutated offspring] are always constitutionally weaker than their parent form or species, and in a population with free competition they are eliminated . . Therefore they are never found in nature (e.g. not a single one of the several hundred [types] of Drosophila mutation), and therefore, they are able to appear only in the favorable environment of the experimental field or laboratory."—*H. Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildng (1957), p. 1186.
The classical example of the damaging effects of mutations is to be found in what scientists have done to fruit flies by inducing mutations in them.
"Most mutants which arise in any organism are more or less disadvantageous to their possessors. The classical mutants obtained in Drosophila usually show deterioration, breakdown, or disappearance of some organs. Mutants are known which diminish the quantity or destroy the pigment in the eyes, and in the body reduce the wings, eyes, bristles, legs. Many mutants are, in fact lethal to their possessors. Mutants which equal the normal fly in vigor are a minority, and mutants that would make a major improvement of the normal organization in the normal environments are unknown."—*Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man (1955), p. 105.
No new-species fruit flies have ever resulted from sixty years of irradiation the poor creatures.
"It is a striking, but not much mentioned fact that, though geneticists have been breeding fruit flies for sixty years or more in labs all round the world—flies which produce a new generation every eleven days—they have never yet seen the emergence of a new species or even a new enzyme."—*Gordon R. Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 48.
Pitman says the experiments have only produced geneticists' monsters.
"Take the example of fruit flies (Drosophila). Morgan, Goldschmidt, Muller, and other geneticists have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat, cold, light, dark, and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: Few of the geneticists' monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In practice mutants die, are sterile, or tend to revert to the wild type."—*Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984), p. 70.
SUMMARY
Once a fruit fly, always a fruit fly.
The following news article sums it all up. Notice the fact that, in those instances in which damaged fruit flies survive long enough, they change back into regular fruit flies—even those without eyes!
"For 80 years scientists have been experimenting with the lowly fruit fly (Drosophila), trying to prove that all life on planet earth is the result of a series of `good accidents.'
"Evolutionists, through a marvelous leap of faith, believe that the almost endless variety and complexity of plants and animals `evolved' from an ancient pool of `primordial soup.'
"How do they believe this is possible? By millions and billions of accidents. For example, an early fish might accidentally grow a new kind of fin which helped him swim faster and escape his enemies. Then his fins might accidentally turn to legs he could use to walk on land, and so on.
"All this is based on a faith by the evolutionists that somehow, somewhere a gene changed to give this higher life form. It has to be faith, because there is yet no evidence that when genes have accidents (called mutations), that is for the better.
"The evidence is overwhelming that such accidents either make the gene worse or, at best, no better than the original.
"After all, how often do you see a car run faster and more smoothly after a head-on collision?
"Well, back to fruit flies. Because fruit flies reproduce many generations in a very short time, scientists picked them for the experiment hoping to compress thousands of years of `evolution' into a few years of lab work.
"After 80 years and millions of generations of fruit flies subjected to X rays and chemicals which cause mutations, all they have been able to produce are more of the same: fruit flies.
"And—more importantly—they have all been no better or stronger, and many have been weaker. All the changes eventually reached limits that, when approached, the strains of the fruit flies grew progressively weaker and died.
"And when the mutated strains were allowed to breed for several generations, they gradually changed back to the original form.
"One experiment produced fruit flies without eyes. Yet, after a few life cycles, flies with eyes began to appear. Some kind of genetic repair mechanism took over and blocked any possibility of evolution.
"God was very careful in Genesis to state that each of the animals were created `after his kind.' After 80 years and millions of generations, God was proven right: A fruit fly will always be a fruit fly."—"Evolutionists Still Looking for a `Good Accident,' " Battle Cry, July-August, 1990.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
To the next topic in this series:
AN EVOLUTIONIST'S PARADISE: Paradise, for an evolutionist, is where he can go and see evolutionary changes occurring. Well, we've found the places where he should go.