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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (66223)	12/16/2004 11:55:14 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Tim, I am going to guess right now that there are more people dying today before the age of 30 than at any time in human history. AND remember that being 30 years old was never the end of human breeding. <The additional factor that has been removed is the survival factor. True some people still die before they are old enough to have a reasonable chance to have had kids but the percentage is much lower. ... it should have a slowing effect on human evolution. > True, the proportion is much, much lower. But it's the absolute numbers which matter. Therefore, death selection is going at a faster rate than ever. During particular episodes, such as the plague which reduced Europe's population by 30%, there were probably more people dying. But given the low population then and the rural nature of most lives at that time, I doubt even that. Bear in mind that AIDS is not exactly being kind to people now and malaria is marauding. Plus there are millions of other ways of dying for young people and they are all being tried out regularly. As you say, being sexually selected OUT is also a BIG driver [maybe the biggest]. That process is more dramatic today than ever too. Especially with pregnancy being optional and single lifestyles easy to do. Do I have to prove it? My guess is that genetic engineering will be the cause of a leap to a new punctuated equilibrium in the near future. A combination of women selected breeding males [as always] and cleaning up the genome at the same time [ditching all the destructive mutations such as cystic fibrosis, oncogenes and other junk] will turbo-charge human evolution on a colossal scale. Superstitious ignorant religious cranks with mutant babies will start to look like harbingers of cruelty and evil. They will probably be banned from producing defective people. Cruelty to children is considered horrible by most people. Creating children with hideous problems is cruelty. Mqurice