Future Women Will Be Shorter, Healthier, Plumper

A biologist doesn't believe human "evolution" has ceased.

SUMMARY: Women of the future likely will be shorter and plumper and have healthier hearts along with longer reproductive windows, according to predictions that see humans as still "evolving." Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale U., said the idea that modern medical science has overcome natural selection and caused human evolution to cease is "just plain false."

Sterns says that differences in reproduction still can select "fitter" humans and their genes. The question is whether or not women who have more children also have distinguishing traits they can pass on to offspring. To find out, he and his colleagues studied data from a heart study that tracked medical histories of more than 14,000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts since 1948--in some families spanning three generations.

The team studied 2238 women to see if a woman's height, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol or other traits correlated with the number of children she had borne. The scientists discovered that shorter, heavier women on average tended to have more children than taller, lighter ones, an indication to the researchers that natural selection is shaping those traits. Also, women tended to have more children if they had lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, had their first child at a young age, or entered menopause later than usual.

Sterns thinks if these trends continue for 10 generations, the average woman in 2409 will be 2 centimeters shorter and 1 kilogram heavier than she is today. She also will have her first child 5 months earlier and enter menopause 10 months later.

Because he controlled for many social and cultural factors in his study, Sterns believes his findings reflect genetic rather than cultural evolution at work. "It's interesting that the underlying biological framework is still detectable beneath the culture," he says.

To read the entire article click on this link to NEW SCIENTIST.

COMMENT: I'm inclined to believe many scientists will disagree with the conclusions of Mr. Sterns, but one thing is a sure thing. Future women will be 100% human. Readers of articles such as this one that use terms such as "evolve" or "evolution" need to be alert for the context in which those words are used. In this case, if the predicted changes do occur, they are minor and are what creationists call "variation within a kind." The longer lives and healthier lives that average Americans are enjoying today are due to factors other than Darwinian evolution which, since it doesn't exist, doesn't affect anything.

Many people can look forward to a future change in their bodily conditions that is guaranteed and which also has nothing to do with amoeba-to-man evolution. I am referring to the perfect health that people will enjoy in heaven if they have accepted the forgiveness for their sins which Jesus won for them on the cross and which he freely offers to anyone willing to accept it.

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QUESTION OF THE DAY

How many species of microbes are thought to exist?

About 30 million. Of these microbes, only 70 are known to cause disease, but around 1,000 normally live on the surface of human skin.

Source: Discover (September, 2009)

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