[adorno]

Sounds like you've done the research already to come up with your conclusions.

Reality is, by most accounts, weird enough. Our immune system introducing DNA into bacteria is weird, but not weird enough - because it wouldn’t work.

So, according to your research or understanding, DNA introduced by a host into an invader is doomed to fail in changing the characteristics of the invader because the invader is "too smart" or has it's own defensive mechanism. But, genetic material that "invades" an intruder might be "intended" as a defense mechanism by the host as an attempt to render the invader "harmless" by changing the dangerous characteristics of that invader. According to you, DNA exchange is a one way street, where the Gonorrhea bacteria are the ones "taking" from the host, and it's not the host attempting to defend itself by "introducing" it's own DNA into the invader.

The way I see it, most of how a body's defense mechanism works is still to be discovered, and we don't know the entire picture yet.

[allmendream]

Wow, does reality intrude much into your world, do you actually read my responses, or just read what you want to read in them?

I never said a bacteria was “too smart”. That is your own misconception.

Evolution would work against your proposed mechanism, there is no “smart” required.

A change in the dangerous characteristics of an invading pathogen through introduction of new DNA into its genome would not work for the three reasons I already outlined, and there was no “smart” required from the bacteria in either....

1) unknown mechanism completely removed from anything observed in how the immune system works. This is obviously the weakest objection because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But it presupposes a rather complex and bizarre mechanism that has never been observed, Occum’s razor precludes taking this assumption seriously without any evidence. This MIGHT be evidence of what you suggest, but first we will have to see what the human DNA element is doing in the bacteria and if having it is advantageous or disadvantageous for the bacteria.

2) Even if the mechanism existed and was highly effective at introducing human DNA into the bacteria, natural selection would favor any that were not affected until they dominated each subsequent generation.

3) Selective pressure would work towards elimination or mutation of the foreign DNA sequence if it conferred a disadvantage.

It might be easier to deal with the arguments I didn't make, but it isn't exactly logical discourse at that point, is it? Can you deal with the arguments I actually DID make?