    29

    he

    owning a dog or a cat diminishes the odds of a second attack.)

    Science would be well served to retain individual and kin

    selection's insights, admit their limitations, and move on.  The fact is, if

    individual selection's survival instinct is our ruling force, then self-

    destruct mechanisms should not exist.  Or, at best, their action should

    be limited to aiding those who carry genes nearly identical to our own.

    But animals of all kinds are born with a virtual arsenal of built-in

    poison pills.  And a range of evidence even wider than that which I've

    had the space to present here indicates that these biological circuits are

    linked to the interests of a coagulation of fellow creatures who are not

    necessarily kin.

    The concept of the social organism is more than just a literary

    metaphor.  It is closer to the comparison between a wave of water and

    a ray of light, two radically different phenomena subject to many of the

    same  natural laws.  For example, cyclic AMP acts as an intra-cellular

    messenger nearly everywhere in your body.  It is also the alarm

    substance slime mold amoebas sensing starvation send to rally their

    solitary fellows into a consolidated, slug-like beast.68   The gene NM-23,

    which controls the clustering or dispersion of cancerous cells in

    humans, also handles congregation and dispersion among the cells of

    the slime mold.69  Contrary to contemporary theory, evolution is not

    built solely on competition between self-interested loners.  It also relies

    heavily on contests between teams of individuals striving for group

    survival.  As a result, physiological feedback loops often call upon the

    individual to sacrifice his health--or even his life--for the sake of a

    larger whole.   We have inherited much of our biology (including that

    involved in behavior) from the cellular ancestors who first learned to

    form communities.  As a consequence, innumerable organismic

    mechanisms operate within assemblies of human beings.  In coming

    chapters, we'll encounter quite a few of them.

      alth is no whimsy.  Studies of heart attack victims have shown that

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