122 réponses à ce sujet

[Elite Midget]

If that was the case, for eggs, than why are FERTILE Krogan woman so sought after? Simple, they're the only ones that can 'ever' give birth to live young. As for the babies... It means that they developed enough to reach that form but than just die before finishing development. Which is where the meaning of the 'mountains of stillborns' comes from.



Mordin was saying what he wantd to believe when in truth he knows that the Genophage is a Baby Killing Virus.

[ooglatjama]

The threat of the krogans is so great that even if we KILLED all of the babies it would be strategically wise.

[Elite Midget]

That's a very prejudice statement to make. We've seen many passive Krogan in our travels. Should they be wiped out too because of the sins of their ancestors when they weren't even alive at the time?

[OBakaSama]

Interesting topic.



You know, if it's true that the genophage actually renders certain females unable to reproduce then wouldn't this limit the gene pool of the species?

[wookieeassassin]

I'd like for Bioware to clear this up eventually. Whether there are stillbirths or not drastically affects the morality of the genophage. The game expects way too much of us if we are to decide that Mordin is just twisting words to make himself feel better. There is really no way to tell between if he is telling the truth or not since he is considered to be a reputable source on the matter. That and we don't know if the Codex is considered "canon" in every situation or not, it certainly isn't canon for the mass relays and the Reapers. It wasn't canon for the founder of the Blue Suns either, at least until Zaeed told you what really happened.

[Rekkampum]

I concur with Wookieassassin.



I think the very definition of what qualifies a Krogan fetus or any fetus as "alive" is also in question in determining the exact nature of the genophage's effect. As for reproduction in general, it is most likely that Krogan give birth to live young - plenty of reptiles do this - and not eggs, as those that give live birth have higher paternal and maternal instincts.

[docthe12th]

Mordin says that it is "commonly, and incorrectly, called a sterility plague". In reality it adjusts the rate of viable births to pre-contact numbers by inducing massive mutation in the unborn krogan. 999 out of 1000 births are unsuccessful. Whether or not there are "fertile females" that can bypass these effects (doubtful, as Edi remarks that even Grunt carries the markers of the genophage "present in all krogan"), the krogan want to protect their clan's females to increase chances of the group survival. Even if the krogan believe such fertile females exist, they are desparate enough to be blind to the truth- remember the krogan testicle discussion from ME1?

Modifié par docthe12th, 21 novembre 2010 - 07:46 .

[ReluctantMind]

I think we just have to accept that words are being used in inexact ways. The writers may use improper wording for a character or codex entry due to manipulation, mistake, or because they like the way it sounded as dialog. Clutch, fertility, still born, etc. may all be used incorrectly and I hope Bioware will clarify.



Regarding the genophage, it is worth recognizing that the arguments and explanations are coming from different places within each person/character. Mordin explains/justifies the genophage in rational, scientific, non-emotional terms. He visited Tuchanka a few times to follow up on the genophage results and patted himself on the back for his willingness to face the work that he did. The Krogan likely experience the genophage in very emotional ways and deal or fail to deal that emotion every day of their lives until they flee their planet and take their anger out on everyone they can. Whether they would normally have live births(as I believe) or eggs, they know that the vast majority of their efforts to reproduce result in failure. Whether that means a still born child, a dead egg, or a failed pregnancy ceases to really be that important morally in my opinion. As a result, many Krogan will never be a mother or a father which cannot help but affect them individually and as a species. Speaking as someone whose spouse had multiple miscarriages I can assure you that the experience fuels a significant amount of anger at the universe.



For the record, no dead baby jokes, please.

[Zulu_DFA]

docthe12th wrote
Mordin says that it is "commonly, and incorrectly, called a sterility plague". In reality it adjusts the rate of viable births to pre-contact numbers by inducing massive mutation in the unborn krogan. 999 out of 1000 births are unsuccessful. Whether or not there are "fertile females" that can bypass these effects (doubtful, as Edi remarks that even Grunt carries the markers of the genophage "present in all krogan"), the krogan want to protect their clan's females to increase chances of the group survival. Even if the krogan believe such fertile females exist, they are desparate enough to be blind to the truth- remember the krogan testicle discussion from ME1?

Salarian scientists Mordin and Maleon confirm that there are "fertile" and "infertile" Krogan females. Which means that the ratio is the same: 1 "fertile" in 1000 females. But it's not too low for the Krogans who can live for over a thousand years.

"Infertile" females are not "sterile" since they still can conceive. But their hormonal response is probably too strong thanks to the genophage, so it kills the fetuses in the womb.

Thus Mordin has all the reason he needs to say that calling the genophage a "sterility plague" is incorrect. Still, he tries to mislead Shepard here.

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 21 novembre 2010 - 08:10 .

[achwas]

Googlesaurus wrote...

achwas wrote...
As for "vocabulary" - I'd rather stick with Mordin than with Wrex on this, since for one he is a scientist as was directly involved in the project (while Wrex is a layman ) and is himself rather critical  and conscious of its effects, wishing there having been a better alternative. So I don't think there is a clash - just layman's terms versus statements from on of the guys who designed the second series genophage.

I'm referring to Okeer's use of the word "clutch", which distinctly means a collection of eggs in a single place. 

Well the Oxford Advanced Dictionary of Current English disagrees with you there - a clutch - according to it - is simply a synonym for a group, typically but not exclucively used for groups of eggs

Same for the Google dictionary (and a number of others)

clutches
plural

A group of eggs fertilized at the same time, typically laid in a single session and (in birds) incubated together

A small group of people or things

a clutch of young girls on roller skates

[/list]Which somehow makes much more sense than the slightly insane image of Krogan females incubating their fragile, immobile and very vulnerable young.

......and to quote, from the Mass Effect Wiki (as accurate as that may be...)

http://masseffect.wi...com/wiki/Krogan

"The genophage's modus operandi is not to reduce the fertility of krogan  females, but rather the probability of viable pregnancies: many krogan die in stillbirth, with most foetuses never even reaching this stage of development. "
Please take note of the term "pregancies", which indicates the female carrying the unborn life to term, as also confirmed  here
"The few remaining fertile females who can carry young to term are treated as prizes of war, to be seized, bartered or fought over."
"Mordin states that both the original and new genophage were designed to stabilise the krogan birth rate at pre-industrial levels—one viable birth per thousand."
Again the use of the term "birth" (not hatching) .

Pregancies simply become far less viable due to the genophage, resulting in fewer pregancies and less krogan infants.

Modifié par achwas, 22 novembre 2010 - 12:15 .

[wookieeassassin]

Only Bioware can clarify this. Not really much else we can discuss.

[Elite Midget]

They don't need to clarify it anymore. It's obvious that the Genophage was always planned to be a Baby Killing Virus. Mordin's facts contradict what everyone else in the ME Universe says and the visit to the Krogan Home World further contradicts Mordin.

[Rekkampum]

Elite Midget wrote...

They don't need to clarify it anymore. It's obvious that the Genophage was always planned to be a Baby Killing Virus. Mordin's facts contradict what everyone else in the ME Universe says and the visit to the Krogan Home World further contradicts Mordin.

Mordin is most certainly naive.

[Elite Midget]

He believes that he wants to believe since it helps to justify what he feels must be done. You can't blame him for taking emotion out and going by pure logic and statistics. Whether the second Genophage was required or other options could have been pursued depends on who you ask.

[cos1ne]

As to the egg live birth debate, I think it's both. In that krogan are like some sharks who lay eggs internally. Thus they lay a clutch of eggs internally and give birth to live young.



The way the genophage works IIRC is it attacks the part of the dna that produces gametes, so that when a female's eggs are fertilized it causes birth defects that lead to spontaneous abortion. I don't quite agree with zulu that only 1/1000 females is fertile, what I think is that certain females are affected more or less. I think that fertile females still have stillbirths, it's just far less common than infertile females. In real world scenarios it's hard to deal in absolutes like that. So you'll have a percentage of females who can reproduce 90% of the time a percentage who can reproduce 50% of the time and a percentage who can reproduce 5% of the time. Average it all out and it becomes 1/1000 while still maintaining "fertile" females that need to be segregated.



Also it's quite clear that the genophage causes birth defects that lead to spontaneous abortion, many people here are confusing fertility with fecundity. From wiki:

In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to produce which is termed fecundity.

Therefore Mordin is using the correct term when he says that the genophage affects fertility, it does by causing the deaths of krogan fetuses and embryos.

[Dave of Canada]

I'm curious, is it ever explained how the Genophage spread out amongst all the Krogan? Is it contagious or was it distributed to the Krogan on the homeworld through water supply and food? Just wondering if a Krogan that was off-world (and remained off-world) during the Krogan Rebellions would not be infected.

[Zulu_DFA]

cos1ne wrote...
The way the genophage works IIRC is it attacks the part of the dna that produces gametes, so that when a female's eggs are fertilized it causes birth defects that lead to spontaneous abortion. I don't quite agree with zulu that only 1/1000 females is fertile, what I think is that certain females are affected more or less. I think that fertile females still have stillbirths, it's just far less common than infertile females. In real world scenarios it's hard to deal in absolutes like that. So you'll have a percentage of females who can reproduce 90% of the time a percentage who can reproduce 50% of the time and a percentage who can reproduce 5% of the time. Average it all out and it becomes 1/1000 while still maintaining "fertile" females that need to be segregated.

If it wasn't "either normally fertile or totally infertile" solution, the genophage would not allow the Salarians build fully predictive models. So any such semi-decisive version would have been trashed early in the develoment in favor of any other that's clear cut.

Of course, every fertile female has different "production rate", but taking into account that there are billions of Krogans, there must be millions of fertile females, which allows the statistics to work over any individual fluctuations.

And please, stop repeating with this "DNA" BS. It's OK to say that aliens have "genes" and "genetic material", since the term may refer to any mechanism of coding the informaton that constitutes and distinguishes a species... In fact it was used in biology long befor the exact mechanism common to all terrestrial life was opened. But saying "DNA" while talking abou Krogans... just kills me every time I see it! Come on, they are aliens, from another planet! Turians, Quarians and Volus are confirmed to have totally different biochemistry, Rachni have "genetic memories"...

Dave of Canada wrote...

I'm curious, is it ever explained how the Genophage spread out amongst all the Krogan? Is it contagious or was it distributed to the Krogan on the homeworld through water supply and food? Just wondering if a Krogan that was off-world (and remained off-world) during the Krogan Rebellions would not be infected.

Genophage is some kind of virus compatible with Krogan biology, which is inherited by the offspring. It was distributed locally in the main population centers, thus preventing any new exodus of superfluous population. Pockets of non-affected Krogans were exterminated by the Turians old-fashioned style.

To clarify: The Council was probably always able to contain the Krogans, since they were dumb and no match for the Council races in space warfare. But it was always costly enough to extinguish never stopping waves of the marauding savages. So when the Salarians came up with the idea to neuter them, it was taken without second thought. But the Krogans should really be grateful. The Rachni's fate could be theirs as well.

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 22 novembre 2010 - 08:41 .

[cos1ne]

Zulu you're assuming that a "clear-cut" model must exist to prop up your own argument. The way I always saw it was the Salarians ran a whole lot of simulations of the various scenarios that would occur with the krogan using a bunch of supercomputers. That is what they mean by predictive models, and that is what I believe makes the most sense, after all you would need to compile a ridiculous amount of data to be able to sterilize 99.9 percent of all krogan females exactly, when it would be so much simpler to use within a margin of error that states that 1 out of every 1,000 krogan conceived will come to term. After all that's why the salarians had to re-engineer the genophage, their predictive models were wrong and they needed to alter the genophage to get it back within the margin of error.



Also you know what I totally did not even realize that dna is not specifically mentioned in the codex, my error I was using it colloquially rather than using the specific scientific terminology, still my error though, just assume I meant genetic material.

[Zulu_DFA]

Well, EDI uses the term "Prothean DNA" so it's one of BioWare's fault actually...



OK back to genophage. I understand that supercomputers can be a solution to any problem. Still I insist that using knowledge of Krogan genetics and physiology and tailoring the virus to it to have precise result, rather than relying on some social dynamics or something would be a more reliable option (and therefore the one to be taken).



Genophage must work as some sort of a simple on/off switch, which is set to "on" in precisely 99.9% of pregnancies and triggers a process (perhaps just an overwhelming hormonal response to the condition) which kills the fetus. In 0.1% of cases it's "off" (still present, but inert), which allows for the normal course of the pregnancy.



Moreover, the males have it too, although it natually can't affect them directly in anyway. But it means that the randomisation of genetic material in the course of reproduction does not affect the rate of the still births, which means that the males also carry the "fertile" genetic code in 0.1% of cases. In the course of randomization, their genes mix and match and only 0.1% of the offspring (both male and female) carries the "fertile" genome. It happens when the "fertile" gene is inherited from both parents, as it must be a Krogan analog of a "recessive gene" (if it tells anything to anybody...).

[cos1ne]

Zulu I think the genophage can have the same results using my "sloppy simple" method rather than your "precise complex" method. Simple and Complex meaning that the amount of time and effort that would go into creating the genophage.



My method:

10 females with 90% fertility

100 females with 50% fertility

1,000 females with 5% fertility

100,000 females with 0% fertility

Total number of live births per 1,000 females = 1



Zulu's method in same population:

101 fertile females

101,009 infertile females

Total number of live births per 1,000 females = 1



Which do you think would make more sense in a real world example, where there are too many variables to effectively predict how your completely experimental an untested virus will react outside of laboratory conditions. Also Zulu if we use your example that means in a population of about 200,000 thousand krogan there are only 200 krogan capable of reproducing. Whereas in my example there are ten times that many number of krogan capable of breeding while still keeping the numbers at the same limit, in the same size population.

[AxelBat]

I'm sorry to pop this thread back up but I'm really curious about this topic.  I first played ME2 without playing ME1 and I built an understanding that the genophage was a sterility manipulation.  ME2 seems to reference this several times.  First we have Mordin who claims that it effects sterility, not the fetus, and re-enforces this by examining the dead female krogen and saying she is not fertile and the effert was wasted on her.  If it was JUST Mordin I would think he might be misunderstanding or trying to convince himself, but it's not just him.  Wrex explains that they share fertile females AND when you beat the Thresher Maw EDI lets you know that Grunt has mating requests, indicating that mating request is an honor and would probably be with fertile females, however I will except that I am interpreting that.  It could be a cultural thing, a male has to prove himself to mate at all, but it seems unlikely to me.

ME1 completely contradicts all this.  Wrex specifically says that krogen's are born dead, he says most do not make it far enough to be still born, but thousands are still born. He says that every krogen has the genophage.  Wrex is not a scientist of course, but he's watched his people die, and I'm sure he's seen the still born, why would he say these things if they are not true?  This is a contradiction to the egg theory as well, as eggs cannot be  'still born,' they may never hatch but then Wrex would say that all are still born or don't make it that far, not that some are still born.

Krogen are not reptiles, nor are they mammals, saying they are either indicates they are from earth, and they are not of course.  Everyone talks like Krogen develop inside a womb of some sort, not an egg.  Just because one Krogen mentions a clutch doesn't mean a whole lot, as already pointed out clutch can mean 'group.'  If it was eggs it would most likely be a male sterility problem, not female, but I'm making assumptions again.  In any case I don't see how it can possibly be eggs.

If Bioware has an answer to this I would sure to grateful, it's silly that this bothers me so much but I am very curious.  If nothing else I hope ME3 clears this up, and I really do hope it is a problem of developed children being born dead.  I don't feel a whole lot about a sterility manipulation, in fact it almost seems necessary with the way the Krogens value war so much, but if I'm choosing between dead babies and a possible war I might feel more conflicted.

Some video references:
  -  Wrex ME1
  -  Wrex ME2

Modifié par AxelBat, 09 février 2011 - 07:39 .

[Praetor Knight]

AxelBat wrote...

*snip*

Well there, are two more recent threads that touch upon what you want to know.

Clan Leader Wrex and the Genophage cure and Yay the Genophage



But, one issue is that is not known, is whether there are multiple births like in a litter of puppies, or if Krogan only have single births (which might be less likely as a non-predatory species).

So the definition of fertility, post-Genophage, could be having one viable child out of the number of other siblings stillborn in that one pregnancy, as a female Krogan being fertile.

The problem is not actually knowing for sure.

Modifié par Praetor Shepard, 09 février 2011 - 08:01 .

[Zulu_DFA]

cos1ne wrote...

Zulu I think the genophage can have the same results using my "sloppy simple" method rather than your "precise complex" method. Simple and Complex meaning that the amount of time and effort that would go into creating the genophage.

My method:
10 females with 90% fertility
100 females with 50% fertility
1,000 females with 5% fertility
100,000 females with 0% fertility
Total number of live births per 1,000 females = 1

Zulu's method in same population:
101 fertile females
101,009 infertile females
Total number of live births per 1,000 females = 1

Which do you think would make more sense in a real world example, where there are too many variables to effectively predict how your completely experimental an untested virus will react outside of laboratory conditions. Also Zulu if we use your example that means in a population of about 200,000 thousand krogan there are only 200 krogan capable of reproducing. Whereas in my example there are ten times that many number of krogan capable of breeding while still keeping the numbers at the same limit, in the same size population.

Your method is all right, only it's a lot more complex and difficult to put in practice. And there is a lot more possibility for a mistake in statistical predictions for your version (including the mistakes to the "worse" side, which would mean Krogan extinction), which is why Mordin & Co had to go for a simpler, more statistic-friendly option with less risks associated.

How do you think the genophage works? From Mordin's blabbeing we can assume that it's some kind of junk genetic code sequence, basically a virus. How can you make it so that different females are affected differently by it? If there is some form of natural immunity to it, then it'd extremely unstable, as the natural selection would quickly boost the percentage of naturally immune Krogans and the genophage would be rendered ineffective. Hence, it has to be a on/off switch with 100% guaranteed effect. It was only made so that in 0.1% of cases it's renedered inert - by itself, not by Krogan natural immunity. But 100% of Krogan population is infected.

The recent evolutionary adaptation to the Genophage Mk. I, which prompted Mordin to come up with Mk. II, is some kind of new factor, a mutation that took place after Mk. I had been deployed, and therefore could not have been factored in during its development.

However, to correct myself, there is another feasible option. That is, the successful pregnancy depends not only on the female's condition, but also on the male's condition. So, if the general condition condition of all Krogan was "sterile" (or, more precisely, "infertile", since they still can conceive), but ~3% of both male and female were fertile, and provided the pairings were each time fully random, it would make ~0.1% of matings "fertile-fertile", resulting in succesful pregnancies. But that would have been ineffective, since social trends would quite quicky insure that the matings are not random (like "fertile" males creating harems of "fertile" females), thus upsetting the odds. So this 3% "fertile" method can't be the case.

I repeat, 100% of the Krogans are infected, but in 0.1% of them the virus is inert.

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 09 février 2011 - 08:28 .

[aeetos21]

I'll be the first one to admit that this one is way over my head but it seemed like that in ME1 we were told it was more along the lines of stillbirth and miscarriages. In ME2 it seemed that BW changed that and it was more along the lines of sterility - that krogan females can't even get pregnant and with no central nervous system it can be argued that the genophage technically isn't killing anyone. Kind of wish BW would clear that one up.

[AkiKishi]

The intent was that it worked like the pill. The Krogan adapted and it worked more like a chemical abortion.

Clutch only applies to eggs. Krogan don't speak English so "stillborn" is a translation from the word in Krogan for "Egg that never hatched". Yep that fits.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 09 février 2011 - 08:38 .