How Human Longevity and Species Survival Could Be Compatible with High Mutation Rates

Abstract

Editor's Note: Anyone who has ever looked at the ease with which DNA is damaged finds the figures frightening. Most of your cells have incurred some DNA damage since you picked up this journal and some of that damage will go unrepaired. When this damage occurs to the germ-cell line, the results are likely to be fatal. Given the length of the human lifespan, it verges on the miraculous that there is a human species. The Gavrilovs offer an explanation of how we manage to survive.