Benificial Mutations?

Evolutionists say that genetic mutations are what drive the supposed Macro-Evolution that Evolutionary Theory is designed to promote.

Creationists and Evolutionists all agree that mutations happen. We've all watched, cataloged and studied them. We've each even theorized on what might happen if this or that mutation did occur . What's really interesting though is this. Studying what actually has happened!

The True Origin Archive has an interesting article on Mutations. It's semi technical.

Here's a quote;

In order to locate all alleged examples of beneficial mutations, I carried out a computer search of the literature. My review covered all published scientific studies that dealt with beneficial mutations. The definition of beneficial mutation used was a mutation that was regarded as beneficial by the authors surveyed. Key words used in the computer search included synonyms of beneficial, such as “favorable, helpful, usable, valuable, adaptive, good, advantageous, supportive, positive,” etc. The search of two data bases totaling 18.8 million records found that, of all articles discussing mutations, only 0.04 percent, or 4 in 10,000 articles on mutations, were located that discussed beneficial or favorable mutations. Some overlap exists in the data bases searched, consequently the actual total number of records searched was less than 18.8 million. The overlap in the search was estimated by extrapolating from the records found. Assuming that the same level of overlap exists in the entire database, a total of approximately 16 million records was searched. These searches may have missed some relevant articles but are useful to indicate trends.

All of the 126 examples located were then reviewed, focusing on evidence for information-gaining beneficial mutations. It was found that none of them contained clear, empirically supported examples of information-gaining, beneficial mutations. Most “examples” of actual, beneficial mutations were loss mutations in which a gene was disabled or damaged, all of which were beneficial only in a limited situation.

A review of both textbooks and journal articles on evolution demonstrated that the most common examples of beneficial mutations were sickle cell anemia, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, Ancon short legged sheep, viral/bacterial immunity, and a “putative beneficial mutation for lipid transport” (Galton, et. al., 1996; Strickburger, 2000).

An example of a mutation that was beneficial in specific situations was damage to the Chemokine receptor 5, (CCR5), the principle co-receptor in T-cells that causes cells with CD4 receptors (primarily T-cells) to be unable to take the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) into the cell. As a result, a person with this mutation has an abnormally high immunity to HIV infection (Huang, 1996; Wilkinson, 1998).