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Re: Are We Still Evolving?
pete (VINCENT@REG.TRIUMF.CA)
9 Nov 1995 21:10:46 GMT
Julian Treadwell (jay@iprolink.co.nz) sez:
`banerkx@news.infi.net (Kaushik Banerjee) wrote:
`>Are we still evolving? Since we put stress on our
`>environment, rather than vice versa, are we still evolving?
`>
`Because of genetic phenomena such as genetic drift, recombination and
`mutation, evolution is not a process which could ever actually stop. And
`of course breeding selection hasn't stopped either, even if it's no
`longer so much due to 'natural' pressures.
What breeding selection there still exists must be fairly minimal.
Someone here claimed that they had a figure that 34% of affluent
white females (I think that was in the us) didn't get around to
breeding, but in my experience, just about every person who survives
to adulthood, and is physically capable, or can be made so by
medical intervention, except the very few who chose monastic life, and
a subset of the homosexual population, manages to breed. And few of
them have more than three children, regardless of how desirable
they are. Thus in the general population I see almost no
differential reproduction. As far as the 34% figure mentioned above,
I'd want to see the research. I simply don't believe it.
--
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vincent@triumf.ca <== faster % Pete Vincent
vincent@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca % Disclaimer: all I know I
% learned from reading Usenet.
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