To the best of my knowledge there is no example of any parasite or disease problem being solved in any species of domestic animal as a result of moving the resistance from ferals to domestics.  In fact, in any species other than honey bees the keepers of domestic animals view ferals as rifle or shotgun targets for very good and practical reasons such as not wanting mongrel genetics getting introduced into the highly selected domestics.

I also do not know of a single example of the Bond method being successfully used to solve any disease or parasite problem in any domestic species with only one exception that is really not an exception.  That exception is US honey bees rapidly became resistant to tracheal mites after these mites were introduced into the US.  This rapid evolution was likely because honey bees and tracheal mites have co-existed together for a long time, probably a million years or more.  During that long time there were ample opportunities for bees to mutate and over come that mite and those genetics already existed in a dilute state in US bees.  This is an entirely different situation than exists with Varroa mites which only jumped species to honey bees a bit over 100 years ago.  This is about the same time that HIV jumped species into humans.  Bees have not evolved good ways, and may well never evolve good ways, to deal with Varroa mites just as humans have not evolved any good ways and may well never evolve good ways  to deal with HIV virus.  Trying to get there by Bond has to be just about the most unscientific approach and least likely approach to work that anyone could dream up.  It strikes me as simply incredible that anyone could believe that is a logical approach to solving the varrao problem or the HIV problem.  Almost as incredible as thinking ferals are the solution.

In plants a great deal of work has gone on in going back to wild type to fish out disease resistant traits.  While this is talked about a lot and seems to generate significant academic funding nothing seems to ever get to the farmers seeds.  A great example of why this is the case was the fungi resistant potato developed back in the 1970s by going back to wild type for fungus resistance genes.  The resulting potato was fungi resistant all right.  It was also so loaded with alkaloids that it was too toxic to eat even after cooking.

Dick

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html