Caesarean births 'affecting human evolution'

Post by Noseshine » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 8:57 AM UTC

3chelon wrote: post #3

It is blindingly obvious from an evolutionary standpoint that this is happening. I have thought about it a fair bit, as it has directly impacted my own family, and I've no doubt it will continue to do so in subsequent generations. I don't think it's something to worry much about, as the much broader benefits of modern medicine (namely, antibiotics) have had so much impact on our survival rate that this would pale int…

  > 3% to 3.3% or 3.6% in 50-60 years - is that statistically significant? 

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 8:58 AM UTC

3chelon wrote: post #6

tn13 wrote: post #2

Main stream journalists can not get science right. In the normal course of evolution women with narrower pelvis die a painful death while delivering a baby (or the baby dies). Thus the genes that give women a narrower pelvis do not get passed on. We can not let these women die this horrible death. This is a good outcome.

To be fair, aside from the preschool formatting of the article (one sentence per paragraph, a concerning recent BBC trend), the journalist didn't actually say anything incorrect. But she did not answer the main question that was asked: why the human pelvis has not grown wider over the years? She said that there were two opposing forces, one for larger babies (they have more chance of survival), and the other was natu…

Post by qb45 » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 8:58 AM UTC

Grangar wrote: post #16

SocratesV wrote: post #14

Going to potentially be controversial, but we need (might be a strong word here) genetic manipulation with strong ethical and humanist values attached to it (and a lot more knowledge). If we are to deny natural selection its role, then we might want to still prevent people from passing on genes which effectively handicap them when they don't have access to certain facilities and technology. Prevention in this case is…

I'm no evolutionary scientist, but haven't we as a species already denied natural selection long ago? For evolution you need physical separation. With our level of globalisation that's not going to work.

Post by dharma1 » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 8:59 AM UTC

SocratesV wrote: post #14

Going to potentially be controversial, but we need (might be a strong word here) genetic manipulation with strong ethical and humanist values attached to it (and a lot more knowledge). If we are to deny natural selection its role, then we might want to still prevent people from passing on genes which effectively handicap them when they don't have access to certain facilities and technology. Prevention in this case is…

Post by ominous » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 9:06 AM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #18

throwawygybj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two sides to this coin. By allowing normally lethal genes to be passed on were likely to cause more death in the future. This is definitely something that should be screened and prevented, whether through gene editing, surrogacy, or just selecting for embryos that are either male or lack the undesired trait. Nobody has to die to voluntarily select this out of the population. The Jewish community has been on t…

Why should we avoid those genes? We have the technology to deal with the situation when it arises. What would be the problem with, eventually, all women giving birth by Caesarean? There are plenty of other instances where our advancements have likely influenced our evolution. For one, the ease at which we can today travel between continents means that there's far more breeding between different races than we've ever…