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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (703698)	9/23/2005 9:06:09 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

"but it still smacks of eugenics to me." Nah, not at all. Science should not be prostituted to political aims. Life is diverse, get used to it. That's one of it's great strengths, diversity confers a broader ability to survive on a species, a garden of but a single cultivar is at risk of being totally wiped out if a pathogen targets it, or an environment change puts it at risk.... The "dairy man expansion" in pre-history, from the Middle East into Europe & other parts... conferred the ability to digest milk past puberty, giving populations of animal herders a survival advantage in tough climatic times over those who did not have the gene. Pale skin (in humans nearer the poles, in polar bears, etc., etc.) allows more UV radiation to penetrate deep enough in the skin to produce vitamin D --- staving off what would otherwise be a fatal case of rickets, allowing colonization by early humans of the cold polar regions. (Solar radiation at the poles is about 1/50th. as strong as it is at the equator.) However, that same pale skin nearer the equatorial regions (where solar radiation is much more intense) could produce dangerous amounts of D... and also be vulnerable to skin cancer formation, etc. A larger amount of skin pigments protects the skin from damage from solar radiation in sunny, tropical climes. So does a 'frizzy-er' hair... which protects the scalp from too much sunlight. It is theorized that the sickle cell mutation in red blood cells provides some protection from malaria parasites --- allowing the individual to usually live long enough to procreate (which is mostly all evolution cares about....) Although an illness, often fatal, it is but a young mutation... not yet a 'perfect' adaptation, but likely only a 'snapshot' of a mutation not yet perfectly adapted.... Some believe that the 'eye fold' found in populations in China, Korea, Mongolia, etc., is a genetic change conferring the ability to better survive very cold winds found in the central Asian continent. I have no doubts that the one part of our bodies that is under the MOST evolutionary pressure for change is our brains --- just think of how complicated our world has become... just how HARD it is to compete with other humans in civilization. Likely that slow old boat called 'evolution' is running at about as fast a pace at it can in our species... of course, with our scientific advances, we are rapidly taking our evolution into our own hands. Nature is far to slow for human needs these days.