John C. Sanford
[2] At Cornell, Sanford and colleagues developed the "Biolistic Particle Delivery System" or so-called "gene gun".In 1998 he retired on the proceeds from the sale of his biotech companies and continued at Cornell as a courtesy associate professor.[6][7] In it, he claims that natural selection's being the cause of biological evolution (which he calls the primary axiom) "is essentially indefensible".[9] According to Sanford, Kimura's curve shows that most mutations have a near-neutral effect, and are furthermore slightly deleterious.Based on his research, Sanford holds that the human genome is deteriorating, and therefore could not have evolved through a process of mutation and selection as specified by the modern evolutionary synthesis.