New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | November 24, 2004

Ron Bailey visits the Island of Dr. Moreau, and comes back smilin'!

Comments

|11.24.04 @ 2:25PM|#

This is an idea that occurred to me a while back. Say that cows are used to produce children for infertile parents. This would eliminate the evolutionary limit on child specifications imposed by the female reproductive system. How would this nudge the direction a homosapien evolutionary developement? Assuming that designer genes don't derail the process long before that (or how would it affect the marketability of certian designer genes that might have had an adverse effect on the human female reproductive system?)

|11.24.04 @ 2:37PM|#

Captain:

The short answer is that we aren't evolving anymore. Evolution requires consistent environmental pressures over many, many generations. The pressures on humanity these days are dynamic rather than consistent and are largely products of technology and society rather than nature per-se.

Mostly, we are putting ourselves in a position of being able to select our future to some extent. Putting this in the context of some larger evolutionary direction for homo sapiens is probably an inaccurate way of looking at it.

Jesse Walker|11.24.04 @ 2:40PM|#

Bart: How would I go about creating a half-man, half-monkey type creature?

Ms. Krabappel: I'm sorry, that would be playing God.

Bart: God, schmod -- I want my monkeyman!

|11.24.04 @ 2:51PM|#

Jason Ligon,

I'm having a hard time understanding how man (and man's cultures, etc.) isn't part of nature?

|11.24.04 @ 2:52PM|#

Jesse Walker,

Don't forget all the South Park that concern genetic tinkering.

The Owner's Manual|11.24.04 @ 3:09PM|#

Indeed, Jason. When a beaver dams a stream, it's nature. When a human does, it isn't? What I find unnatural is an article in Reason about science "diminishing humanity."

|11.24.04 @ 3:14PM|#

Far from having any in depth understanding of biology or evolution, the one thing I did pick up on was that evolution is more about the death of the non fittest, than the survival of the fittest.

Therefore we have no evolution in modern humans. We have essentially the same physiology as we have for around 100,000 years.

|11.24.04 @ 3:18PM|#

Souls are a rare commodity. Instead of letting price determine who gets one, God has taken to rationing. Only she decides which quivering hunk o' flesh is eligible to receive one.

|11.24.04 @ 3:28PM|#

JB and Owner:

I may have misrepresented myself there. I don't believe and didn't mean to suggest that man's actions are outside of nature. I meant to suggest that there are two types of pressures on the species - one set that is in line with environmental pressures felt by every species in history and one set that is self inflicted. In terms of measurable impact to our populations, the man made pressures are orders of magnitude more significant than any posed by the environment per se. The environmental concerns that are sufficiently consistent over time to produce an environmentally advantaged population are currently being 'washed out' by highly dynamic, man made concerns. With dynamic population pressures dominating, there is insufficient oomph in any one direction to cause biological evolution to occur.

Short version. Alaskans won't grow fur because they have grocery stores and central heat.

I am a lazy poster, and sometimes don't make my intended points as a result ...

|11.24.04 @ 3:34PM|#

Jason Ligon,
Humans continue to evolve, however.
For example, they are evolving larger heads because there are more Caesarian births.

|11.24.04 @ 3:44PM|#

Ruthless:

I hadn't heard that. I can see that C-sections permit larger headed babies to be born, but I don't see the advantage of large headedness that would, in this day and age, correspond to a reproductive advantage to the cranially gifted.

|11.24.04 @ 3:48PM|#

Jason Ligon,

They make better football, [insert sport here that favors those with big heads here], etc. players. :)

I understand your distinction now. Thanks. :)

|11.24.04 @ 3:57PM|#

Fat head mean more room for cerebrum/ cerebral cortex, whatever.
Yassir.
Not to brag, but I wear an extra-large cap myself.

|11.24.04 @ 3:58PM|#

They make better football, [insert sport here that favors those with big heads here], etc. players. :)

Chess?

|11.24.04 @ 4:00PM|#

Sorry, Philip. It has to be a reproductive advantage. Chess definitely doesn't qualify ...

Matt Shultz|11.24.04 @ 4:02PM|#

just scrolled through the comment list, and seems that everyone here is making some fundamental mistakes regarding evolution.

First, it's no more about the non-survival of the least-fit than it is about the survival of the fittest. It's about reproduction; whether or not someone lives a hundred years, if they don't have any kids, they're an evolutionary dead end. There's lots of people out there who don't reproduce (catholic priests, bums, etc); evolution acts through them.

Also, the idea that humans aren't evolving is a good example of an old idea in desperate need of re-evaluation. Sure, all sorts of things in our man-made environments are highly dynamic. The same, however, can be said of any other environment: many selective pressures (such as competition from alien species, droughts, etc) can appear quite suddenly. Similarly, there are selective pressures in urban environments that have been relatively stable for 10,000 years: population density, for instance, makes it imperitive to function in the midst of a large number of total strangers, while also putting increased stress on the immune system. Then there's alcohol, to which many human groups have evolved a high tolerance, while others (aboriginal peoples, mostly) haven't, simply because they've been exposed to it for only a few hudnred years. Another example relates to agriculture: farmers who don't stay put and work their asses off all year round are more likely to starve, thus introducing a selective pressure against laziness (which, like all personality traits, is probably at least partly genetic.) We've had both agriculture and urbanization for almost ten thousand years, which works out to about five hundred generations; evolution has been observed to work over similar generational spans in insects and birds, and there's no reason to assume we're any different.

Finally, there's absolutely no reason not to consider genetic engineering part of the evolutionary continuum. It's just another method of genetic recombination, the only (admittedly huge) difference being that generational differences are under conscious control. Sexual reproduction is simply the form we're used to, but evolution predates it by a good three billion years.

s.m. koppelman|11.24.04 @ 4:05PM|#

If I recall, xenotransplantation with organs grown in pigs presents the problem of endogenous retroviruses carried in every pig and capable of infecting the human recipients of the transplant. Are there similar problems with cows and sheep?

I suppose the problem of creating new cross-species viruses via xenotransplantation can eventually be solved someday, but for the moment, this sort of research needs to be conducted with extreme care and control, notwithstanding Mr. Bailey's industry-backed blithely sunny outlook.

I continue to wonder why Reason runs Mr. Bailey's advertorials. Does he bring in lots of revenue for the Reason Foundation?

|11.24.04 @ 4:09PM|#

Matt,

I think this may be an adaptation vs. evolution question. I'll think some more on it on the drive to see the folks.

Happy Turkey everyone!

Highway|11.24.04 @ 4:16PM|#

I don't know if things like 'more large-headed babies' are really evolution. I think it's more of a REMOVAL of a condition that had previously limited a genetic line. In that case, I agree more with kwais that we are not evolving, and are instead finding ways to allow increasing definitions of 'non-fit' specimens to survive. Maybe it's anti-evolution.

|11.24.04 @ 4:23PM|#

Highway,
Evolving simply means changing.
We are too close to the trees (vs. the forest) and the evolutionary clock to be sure how to define "fit."

|11.24.04 @ 4:25PM|#

WHAT IS THE LAW?

|11.24.04 @ 4:42PM|#

The short answer is that we aren't evolving anymore. Evolution requires consistent environmental pressures over many, many generations.

Evolution happens in response to both environmental and human influences (and, for that matter, takes only a single generation -- it's large-scale changes that take time).

For example, the human race is currently evolving towards darker skin, simply because caucasians around the world reproduce less non-caucasians and non-asians do.

Our medical and agricultural technology has virtually removed the negative effects of high fertility in the developed world, and will soon do the same for the rest of the world. An American or European woman can have any number of children and be assured that they are all virtually guaranteed to reach reproductive age. Higher natural fertility is, therefore, being selected for.

Some women are unable, for genetic reasons, to use many commonly-available birth control technologies. These women are more likely to have children; those genetic traits are selected for.

We're also probably evolving towards having larger breasts (for women), more muscles (for men) and lower natural fat content (for everybody), because sexual selection favors those traits throughout the world and the one-time evolutionary advantage of small, compact frames that store lots of fat no longer exists.

Even after technological solutions appear to handle those problems, selection will still occur unless either (a) the technology is essentially free or (b) the technology is paid for by humanity as a whole, rather than by individuals or groups. A woman who has to pay to be sexually attractive is less likely to attract a mate than one who is naturally beautiful, because there is a chance that she won't be willing or able to pay.

Etc, etc. Evolution is simply the change in the frequency of various genetic traits over time. It never stops, nor can it, unless we start reproducing via random cloning from a fixed gene bank (whereupon we'll be wiped out, some centuries later, by the various viruses and bacteria that *haven't* stopped evolving).

|11.24.04 @ 4:55PM|#

"Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

"Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

"Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

"Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

"Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?"

|11.24.04 @ 4:56PM|#

walk on two feet?

|11.24.04 @ 4:59PM|#

Hey, Stevo, that was my line! - Sayer of the Law

|11.24.04 @ 5:58PM|#

Well, one commute later, it looks like this thread has taken off.

I don't think that evolution simply implies only the survival of the fittest (be it physical fitness, reproductive fitness, etc.) Like sexual selection our environment altering abilities, and concious gene selection are another part of the equation. New technology makes a previously unfit line fit, greater increasing genetic diversity to tackle the new problems of fitness. It's the possibility for direct gene selection that fascinates me (seen "Gattica" lateley?) It seems that may breed a new form of accelerated evolution. Parents choose smart children, smart children develope smarter genes for their children (not unlike a biological version of a technological singularity, or at least accelerated linear progression). Also, human-human competition for nitches, and human nitch creation are other valid parts of the environment that modern humanity faces in its evolution. Dynamic environments that man creates and then subjects himself to perhaps make flexability genes more prevalent or desirable, or not if fast-past hipsters elect not to have children enough.

No matter what way it's sliced it's an interesting and likely irrelevant topic, especially given I'm not smart enough to build the genes and likely not wealthy enough to afford them.

|11.24.04 @ 7:07PM|#

One defintion of evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time. Under that definition, humans are still evolving.

Even if we were under no selective pressures, neurtal/random variation in allele frequiencies -- e.g. drift -- would occur.

|11.24.04 @ 7:17PM|#

What I find unnatural is an article in Reason about science "diminishing humanity."

Indeed, it's hard to see how creating a non-human person, such as a human-brained monkey-man, would diminish humanity in general. It sound like the argument that gay marriage would diminish marriage -- interpret that loosely please.

Maybe you could argue that you've diminished a particular "human", but that would depend on the details of the particular monkey-man.

|11.24.04 @ 8:13PM|#

The "diminished humans" thing wasn't saying that this type of research would diminish other humans or humans in general. It was saying that a problem could arise if you created an organism that was intellectualy the equivelent of a mentally retarded human being. At least thats what it looked like he was saying.

|11.24.04 @ 8:16PM|#

I concur, Bruce.

|11.24.04 @ 8:33PM|#

I think you're right.

There's a pretty fine line to distinguish between for example accidently created a diminished human and when it occurs thru "natural" sexual reproduction.

The real hard point would be if you created a human-based animal that wanted to do what ever you designed it for. If it were happy, then who's to say that's wrong?

|11.24.04 @ 8:34PM|#

Indeed. There was no sweeping statement about diminishing humanity as a whole, merely a concern for certain forms of potential hybrids.

|11.24.04 @ 10:15PM|#

Charles Laughton,
Just because your comment was uncommented upon doesn't mean it wasn't well-received and the cause of much whipper-snapper head-scritchin'.

Needless to say, as an anarchist, I stand with you--or as near as anarchists stand with other human-kind--agin' the LAW.

|11.24.04 @ 11:55PM|#

33 posts and nobody's made a "sheeple" reference yet? You guys are falling down on the job.

|11.25.04 @ 2:46AM|#

Dan,
I don't think bigger boobs will likely be a direction of evolution, because we have implants. Therefore a genetically flat chested female would have the same reproductive attractiveness as a genetically big breasted chic.

And really no other sexually attractive genes are an edge. Have you ever been to a trailor park? You would see with your own eyes proof that sexually attractive people if anything are less likely to reproduce.

|11.25.04 @ 4:49AM|#

I just re-read my statement and it is not well written.

What I am trying to say is that today increased sexual attractiveness doesn't give your genes an advantage, increased adaption to the modern world doesn't give your genes an advantage.

The only thing that gives human genes more likelyhood of representing the genes of the future of the human race, is whether or not they are disposed to produce babies.

Decendants of Mormons will be big. Descendants of welfare moms will be big. Descendants of deadbeat dads will be big. Descendants of super attractive well adapted, phisically fit, smart people, that use birth control. They will be under represented.

But they will still be there.

There is no evolution taking place, because there is no trait that is being breeded out. There is no common trait that I can think of that prevents humans from breeding.

|11.25.04 @ 6:15AM|#

kwais,

Unless plastic surgery becomes (a) perfect, (b) free, and (c) convenient, naturally attractive traits will retain their breeding advantage. It may be reduced, but it will continue to exist, because not everyone will take advantage of plastic surgery. And I think you're confused if you think that poor, ignorant, and irresponsible people are genetically predisposed to be ugly. You find them less attractive because they're poor, ignorant, and irresponsible; nevertheless, within that group, the ones that are more attractive ones are more likely to reproduce.

Any trait which has the direct or indirect effect of causing more copies of itself to be produced is selected for -- attractiveness, fertility, intelligence, etc.

There is no evolution taking place, because there is no trait that is being breeded out.

If a trait becomes less (or more) common within a population, that's an example of evolution in action. The trait doesn't have to be bred out of the population before we say "see, evolution has occured".

|11.25.04 @ 8:02AM|#

Dan

"within that group, the ones that are more attractive ones are more likely to reproduce."

I totally disagree. The ones that want babies or are too careless to prevent having babies are more likely to reproduce.

As Seinfeld once said (paraphrasing) 95% of the population is undatable, why are their so many babies?... Alcohol of course."

Also, my hungry eyes don't care about wealth, status, intelligence or education. I am talking about the people you see with a whole grip of rug rats running around, and you say to yourself "who would have been the willing participant to make that happen?"

Oh, I also don't buy the free part either. Every other commercial on tv is trying to tell you that you will be more sexually desirable if you buy their product.

|11.25.04 @ 8:14AM|#

There was an episode of Picket Fences back in 1994 that dealt a fertility clinic using live cows to carry human fetuses to term.

|11.25.04 @ 8:24AM|#

Go back and read Greg Benford's article "The Biological Century" in the November 1995 issue of Reason.

Human Categories

Intention is the crux of the moral issues we will face. The abortion battles of our day will pale compared with the far more intimate and intricate capabilities that yawn just a decade or two away. In the United States, abortion hasn't gone away as an issueand the issue is essentially unchanged. The nature of biotech is change. What will happen, then, when changes come thick and fast, as they are already starting to?

Consider: Brahmins in India use amniocentesis to determine the sex of a fetus early on in pregnancy--and then preferentially abort the girls, because sons are more prized. This "genetic counseling" frames a typical conflict between our easy categories. Where does "reproductive choice" end when it systematically acts against females? If allowed to go on, we could produce harrowing population differences far from the near-50/50 balance of sexes, a testosterone-steeped society with ever-more crime and war. The questions can only get tougher.

And more subtle, as well. The first genetic tuneups will be for the elimination of inheritable diseaseskidney disorders, hemophilia, and the like. Such single-gene tailoring could appear by 2000. The pope will oppose it as the opening wedge, and the battle will be joined.

But it won't be settled, only broadened. Then will come genetic cosmetics: tailoring for eye and hair color, skin tint, maybe breast size (look at the implant industry today), and height. We do not know if these are controlled by single genes, but probably some are, and the others will prove to have only a few loci.

We're already familiar with the yuppie competition to get Junior into the very best kindergarten. What expense will parents spare if, a decade or two into the next century, they can tailor their children for beauty? A firm jaw for men, firm breasts for women? We all know that good-looking people do well. What parent could resist the argument that they were giving their child a powerful leg up (maybe literally) in a brave new competitive world?

This will outrage many. Science is being perverted, they will say. From the noble elimination of a hideous disorder, like hemophilia, we will descend to the mere pursuit of transient appearances.

Somewhere, law (excruciatingly arrived at), or fashion (often underestimated, never absent), or deeper arguments (heard only by an elite) will draw the line. There will remain the familiar problem of oversubscription. Just as a bachelor's degree was once a proud emblem and is now tarnished by being commonplace, beautyand, lest we grow smug, maybe even brainswill come to be so. Indeed, since beauty is another form of fashion, generations may sport characteristic, trendy noses and thighs, just as we currently see passing fads in children's names. But names can be changed with the stroke of a pen.

Of course, the first genetic editing and rewriting will be done for the rich. When F. Scott Fitzgerald told Ernest Hemingway that the rich were different, Hemingway could confidently reply, "Sure, they have more money." No longer will that be strictly true. Rancor arising from built-in superiority, by right of inheritance, could soar.

One of our challenges will be to spread the benefit, or else see growing class separations of frightful complexity and depth. We could reach the stage in which one could spot the rich by their looks, or even their smarts. Or their mates. Classical liberalism holds that information is good. If you can afford it, that is.

Why, then, should a prospective bride not know the precise genetic endowment she would get from a candidate swain? We are just beginning to consider whether a genetic propensity for disease should be made known to insurance companies or employers.

Those legal battles can be settled in the context of privacy rights. But how about something as intensely personal as marriage? People care deeply about their children. It seems plausible that they would want to know what they are getting before going to the altar.

.....

The battles will begin in earnest with conceivable but startling capabilities. The list is long. Big changes in our own genome. Harnessing natural behaviors to new tasks (the acacia antcorn harvesting marriage). Designer animals, like a green Siamese cat to match your furniture, or even a talking collie (and what would it say?). These may preoccupy the middle of the next century.

Even further out would be major alterations in the biosphere, and in us. Adapting ourselves to live in a vacuum or beneath the sea, or to convert sunlight directly into energy, would alter the human prospect beyond recognition. Changing homo sapiens to something beyond will be a step fraught with emotion and peril. Such issues will loom large as the Biological Century runs out. And what could lurk beyond that horizon? The mind boggles.

.....

|11.25.04 @ 8:37AM|#

Sound Judgment

Does curing deafness really mean cultural genocide?

By Cathy Young
Reason: April 2002


Even the least reactionary among us may sometimes agree that the celebration of difference and pluralism has brought modern Western culture to the brink of lunacy. One such occasion was the recent broadcast on public television of a documentary, Sound and Fury, examining the controversy over a technology that can enable a deaf person to gain near-normal hearing: the cochlear implant, a device that is surgically inserted into the inner ear. The controversy is not about how well the implant works or whether it poses health risks; it's about whether such a technology is a boon or a bane for the deaf.

Sound and Fury focuses on the conflicts in one Long Island, New York, family: A deaf couple, Peter and Nita Artinian, refuse to let their 5-year-old daughter, Heather, get an implant -- much to the dismay of Peter's hearing parents. "If somebody gave me a pill that would make me hearing, would I take it? No way," Peter Artinian asserts in sign language. "I'd want to go to a hospital and throw it up and go back to being deaf. I want to be deaf....If the technology progresses, maybe it's true deaf people will become extinct, and my heart will be broken. Deaf culture is something to value and cherish. It's my culture." Other deaf people in the film echo his views, praising "deaf culture" and deriding attempts to cure deafness.

.....

Notably, while deaf activists insist on redefining deafness as difference rather than disability, they are in no hurry to give up disability-based legal protections and government funding.

.....

At the end of a 1994 essay in The New York Times Magazine, Andrew Solomon made this astounding statement: "Perhaps, like the search for a cure to gayness, the search for a cure for the deaf will be dropped by respectable institutions -- which would be both a bad and a good thing."

.....

The increasing popularity of cochlear implants, available since 1985 and approved for use in children in 1990, has added urgency to the issue. About 4,000 Americans now receive the implant every year, and the numbers are rising steadily, particularly among young children in their primary speech-learning years: From 1995 to 2000, the annual number of implantations performed in children under 3 grew sevenfold. Deaf activists, meanwhile, have railed against the procedure, comparing it to Nazi medical experiments.

.....

|11.25.04 @ 1:30PM|#

Gentlemen,

Although you will neither read nor heed this, the human race now is devolving. Not in the sense of becoming monkeys again but in the sense of becoming less fit to survive.

Many of those who would have died as children from their defects, all those who would have died of disease because of weaker immune systems, all those who would have died from starvation or poverty or accident due to their limited intelligence, now survive to reproduce. Their children, in the aggregrate slightly less fit than their parents, will survive at even greater rates to be slightly less fit and so on through the generations.

This is not an argument for eugenics or genetic engineering, but simply a statement of fact.

|11.25.04 @ 2:04PM|#

kwais,

I totally disagree. The ones that want babies or are too careless to prevent having babies are more likely to reproduce.

Yes, they're more likely to reproduce too. But you're acting like there is exactly 1 trait that affects your chances of breeding: the "white trash gene". There are numerous biological traits that affect the chance of reproductive success.

Sure, people who want kids are more likely to have kids than people who don't. But "attractive people who want kids", as a group, are more likely to have kids than "ugly people who want kids". "Attractive careless women" are more likely to wind up pregnant than "ugly careless women". Etc, etc. So even if there's a "white trash gene", and even if that gene makes a person more likely to have more kids -- so what? That doesn't change the fact that the genes that govern how naturally attractive a person is *also* make that person more likely to have kids.

Every other commercial on tv is trying to tell you that you will be more sexually desirable if you buy their product.

Yes, and the overwhelming majority of humanity doesn't buy the overwhelming majority of them. There are millions of women in America who would like bigger breasts or slimmer waistlines or whatever. Why don't they all run out and buy them? Answer: because the technology's not as good as the real thing, and it's expensive, and it's painful. So women who possess natural beauty retain an evolutionary advantage, and will continue to do so until such time as our cosmetic technology becomes so effective, cheap, and convenient that it is effectively costless.

Mr Mothersbaugh,

This is not an argument for eugenics or genetic engineering, but simply a statement of fact.

No, it's not a statement of fact; it's completely wrong. What is true is that humans are becoming less able to survive *without technology* than they used to be -- but the human race has been "devolving" in that manner for as long as we've been a tool-using animal.

Humans have evolved a dependence on technology in much the same manner that remoras evolved a dependence on sharks. We evolved this dependence because using technology is, for large organisms, the single greatest survival trait imaginable, dwarfing all others. The human race isn't becoming, as you suggest, "less fit" or more vulnerable to disease or whatever -- we're becoming dramatically *more* fit, and more resistant, with each passing generation, because we've rendered many genetic weaknesses largely irrelevant. You can't judge humanity as distinct from its knowledge base -- that's like evaluating a fish's survival chances after removing it from the water.

|11.25.04 @ 2:37PM|#

Dan,

I fail to see how becoming more reliant on the conditions of your physical environment (technology in this case) is a development that makes an organism better at survival. Change the environment and what happens?

It seems to me that the major benefits of our technology (for survival and longevity purposes) were long ago won. Hygeine being the main one, although I also like cotton underwear (one could put that under hygeine, I suppose) and central heating and cooling.

I can only take this subject half seriously, though, as I do not often use the benefits of modern medicine (every procedure I have ever been subject to was based on technology older than I am - stitches, broken bones, tooth removal) and I am well past the age of being genetically engineered myself.

That being said, I still can't get past the idea that if more people survive to reproduce only because the current technology allows them to that the human organism itself is less fit to survive (not in any moral sense, but in their abilities to resist disease, find food and shelter, get their big ass heads through the birth canal, etc.).

|11.25.04 @ 3:43PM|#

Dan,
Randomly select ten women with a lot of kids and tell me what is the percentage of them that are attractive. I did that a while ago out of curiosity, and 1 out of 10 was, when she first got pregnant. (and she the one had the fewest kids(5) of my selection).

Granted all of this is anecdotal, and is not the greatest scientific method. It could be that I am just around a lot of ugly people. Or that my definition of beauty is higher. You try it if you have some spare time and tell me what you come up with.

And to say that the comercials don't work on most people? Depending on how much a girl makes, 50% to 90% of every penny she spends goes toward beauty products. (that may include some items that are not strictly beauty products but are marketed with sex)

|11.25.04 @ 11:22PM|#

..."Change the environment and what happens?"...

Dan is right on about our fitness. The concept is very context dependent - you can't talk about the fitness of an individual or population without talking about the environment they're in. The fact that we live much longer and are much less likely to die of various diseases at young reproductive ages than our pre-technology ancestors suggests we're doing OK, thank you very much...; but the notion of fitness requires specification of the environment (and the same environment to compare different individuals or populations).

|11.25.04 @ 11:39PM|#

"Many of those who would have died as children from their defects..."

Also, a lot of rare genetic diseases will always be around at low levels, barring regular genetic engineering. Very roughly speaking, their presence is the result of an equilibrium between their negative fitness effects and the rate that they re-occur due to mutation. And a lot of the are simple recessive mutations, meaning a person has to have two copies of the bad gene to be affected; that means someone who only has one copy, and one healthy copy, isn't affected; and as a result selection is much weaker. So weak selection and mutation generally means they'll always be around.

|11.25.04 @ 11:40PM|#

A few thoughts:

In response to the notion that we have evolved traits to help us deal with cities and society, I completely disagree. Quite the opposite, we develop societal structures around the fact that our minds evolved on the plains as foragers.

My general feeling is that the use of the term evololution to describe a single generational birthing advantage that may be washed out or trumped by dominating forces in five generations is a tad excessive. I agree that natural selection is a process that still operates at any given point in time, but we have moved homo sapiens into a place where very, very few (none?)biological traits provide sufficient advantages that they become features of the species in general.

I dispute that big breasts are being selected for in any consistent manner. The world loved Kate Moss in my lifetime. I think it is very hard to argue that intelligence is being selected for, as there is no real penalty in reproductive terms to being less intelligent. Birth control technologies change much more rapidly than natural selection has time to operate, so I can't fathom how resistance to one or more formulations has a chance to be selected for. I don't think the increase in the resistance trait species wide could be measured in the thousandth decimal place since the dawn of The Pill, and alternative formulations may have mitigated that bump in any event. These are dynamic pressures that tend to wash out. High fertility has always been an advantage in any species, but it is less of an advantage now than it ever has been, and that will be more and more the case as time goes on.

I just think about what would constitute a major species impact that is felt generation after generation. Malaria comes to mind. It has always been in the top several of killers of humans. Are we selecting for malaria resistance as a species? Not really, because we don't have to.

|11.25.04 @ 11:41PM|#

I wish I'd used preview on that last post. It's pretty late for me....

Happy Thanksgiving!

Matt Shultz|11.26.04 @ 10:37AM|#

Jason:

Fact is, malaria resistance has been selected for, though not of course as a species-wide trait. To see this, look at a map of the geographic distribution of the sickle cell allele and compare that to a map of malaria distribution.

Similarly, I wasn't suggesting that urbanisation has had a chance to produce species-wide changes, or even speciation within those populations that have been heavily urbanized for the maxiumum period (roughly ten millenia.) Any changes due to exclusively cultural factors will only show up at the population level, save of course for such traits as small jaws and teeth (a direct result of using fire to prepare food, something humans have been doing since before the first H. sapiens.)

I often encounter resistance to the idea that our species is still evolving, stemming from the idea that since culture is of such over-riding importance, biological evolution can't keep up. It's all very similar to the whole nature/nurture debate. I'm not arguing, though, that cultural adaptations are of no, or even lesser, importance. That's just silly. BUT, just because culture evolves at a furious pace compared to stick-in-the-mud DNA, that doesn't mean our DNA hasn't been changing too.

I don't think anyone could seriously argue that we haven't evolved stronger immune systems as a direct result of being exposed to increased microbiological predation in population centers. if that hadn't been the case, than the European settlers would have been every bit as devastated by disease as the Native Americans after making contact. Now, given that cities, especially ancient cities, often had a high level of background violence (crime), which may at times have been almost as deadly as disease organisms, is it really that much of a stretch to suggest that populations that have existed in urban environments for long periods of time might have experienced a consistent selective pressure towards being, if not more peaceful, at least less likely to attack someone merely because you don't happen to recognize their face? No research has been done on this, of course, partly because it's a somewhat new idea, and also, I think, because its implications could fly in the face of the 'egalitarian' political correctness that controls academic institutions today.

|11.26.04 @ 11:31AM|#

Matt Shultz,
I share your optimism.
I wish Julian Simon could comment here along the lines of "more people/ greater population density is the answer to evolving in the right direction."
Perhaps your comments (and those of others) will lead Ron Bailey to do some more digging for us so we can continue down this thread.

I'm most optimistic that cyberspace, and, especially Hit & Run, plainly represent evolving away from the meme that leaders are a necessary.
Along the lines of "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" should be "Neither a follower nor a leader be."

Tip for Ron: check out the latest from the Santa Fe Institute.

"Order and 'good' evolving for free"... the peaceful anarchists' and complexity theorists' motto.

|11.26.04 @ 1:54PM|#

Mr. Mothersbaugh,
Well, the beauty of technology is that we can adapt technology to deal with environmental changes faster than biology can. Instead of having to devlop short, squat bodies to live in the Arctic cold, we have high tech materials and portable heating technology. As water becomes more scarce, we can desalinate the water or purify current sources rather than moving or dying. Sure some feeble people can survive now that would have died a century or two ago, but some of them, like Stephen Hawking, are exceptional human beings with frail bodies. It is better that we can help more people survive so they can help add to human greatness.

Oh, and I think my immune system is stronger than any of my ancestors. I have immunities to a whole assortment of poxes, polio, Hepatitis and tetanus. None of my predecesors more than two generations old had that luxury.

|11.26.04 @ 3:37PM|#

Many of the suggestions above about active human evolution make good sense, but consider whether they are genetically or culturally transmitted. Culture can adapt much more quickly than genes can.

|11.26.04 @ 8:14PM|#

Looks like we might have a new meaning for cowboys and cowgirls.

Matt Shultz|11.26.04 @ 10:07PM|#

Human evolution has been sociocultural for a long time now, essentially since the first antelope was crushed with a sharpened rock and burnt. Too many people make the mistake of focusing on the cultural side, it being flasher and faster to evolve, to the point that they assume biology to be irrelevant. Others over-react the other way, to the point that overly broad generalizations are made regarding human nature or the differences between ethnic population groups. Any accurate thinking on humans, though, must take into account both memes and genes.

That said, all that's happening with biotechnology is that genetic replicators are coming more firmly under the control of memetic replicators. Give it some time, and most kids will be consciously designed before conception even begins, with sex relegated to a wholly social context, having nothing whatever to do with reproduction (save, perhaps, that people who have a lot of sex together are more likely to design and raise a child together.)