Does all life on earth degenerate?
Yes, plants, animals and humans not excepted. Degeneration goes faster in little isolated populations than in big ones. That is because within small populations a high level of inbreeding appears, which increases the risk of outbreak of hidden deviation. In bigger non-isolated populations it takes much longer before good functional genes will be completely lost within the total population. Beside that, there is natural selection, which keeps a population healthy and decreases the chance of the deviation passing on its wrong genes. Every species degenerates, because every gene of a species is in risk of being terminated by mutations. In fact that means that only those genes that are essential to survive in a specific environment will hold out within a population. (That is something different than being essential for viability!).
