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Re: Are We Still Evolving?
Julian Treadwell (jay@iprolink.co.nz)
19 Nov 1995 17:05:01 GMT
VINCENT@REG.TRIUMF.CA (pete) wrote:
>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.
>
>
I don't think I believe it either. But I think it's still true that
race, socioeconomic class and other factors which are either wholly or
partially inherited traits influence the number of children we have, even
though, as you say, we nearly all have at least one. If I'm right that
surely qualifies as selective breeding; I'd love to see some figures on
this, if anybody has any.
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