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.
evolution¾a 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 (see Order Sheet). 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."¾*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 169.

Later still, fruit flies began to be used in mutational research. What
that research revealed¾settled 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 was 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."¾*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."¾*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."¾Norman
Macbeth, Darwin Retried (1971), p. 33.

A thousand known fruit-fly mutations placed in one individual¾would
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."¾*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."¾*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 was done, are almost without exception
inferior to wild-type flies in viability, fertility,
longevity."¾*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."¾*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."¾*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 world¾flies which produce a new generation every eleven days¾they have
never yet seen the emergence of a new species or even a new
enzyme."¾*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."¾*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 flies¾even 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.

"And¾more importantly¾they 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."¾"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
Back to MUTATIONS.
It has the topic list to related data on this general subject
Back
to the INDEX
PAGE. It has a master table of contents to topics in many
fields of science which disprove evolution
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