Going to potentially be controversial, but we need (might be a strong word here) genetic manipulation with strong ethical and humanist values attached to it (and a lot more knowledge).<p>If we are to deny natural selection its role, then we might want to still prevent people from passing on genes which effectively handicap them when they don't have access to certain facilities and technology. Prevention in this case is not eugenics, but gene manipulation/therapy.<p>Having said this, what we most certainly don't want is genetic standardisation (good path for extinction) and even the manipulation of genes, that seem to cause "problems" (today's problems might be tomorrow's cure), needs a deep understanding of implications, which at the moment we probably don't have.<p>P.S.: Hold the similar view regarding GMO in food.
The other medical intervention that is affecting evolution is ICSI (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracytoplasmic_sperm_injection" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracytoplasmic_sperm_injecti...</a>) iVF treatment where the man has low quality sperm.<p>I've heard that the doctors who perform this joke that they are breeding future clients for themselves.
Do we really need caveman-capabilities? To be ready for the day we lose our tech and have to start over?<p>In a different context it has been discussed how we have used up our easily accessible energy and may not be able to restart civilization on this planet. So why keep lowtech genes around? Make way for large brains and large heads!
The way we live is very unnatural. That's why it is only logical that also our evolution is unnatural. Since we no longer have any natural enemies, we ourselves set up the rules, that decide over life and death. And these rules are wrong in many ways. You could write a whole book about it.<p>One chapter could be devoted to the resulting overpopulation that causes a variety of problems. Instead of letting politics, medicine and capitalism dictate our evolution, we should give nature more freedom. And if we further succeed in reducing the world population to 3 or 4 billions, a certain equilibrium could be reestablished in this world. I am ready to help.
Humans have been evolving more in the last 50,000 years that in the previous million (by bone records). This is nothing new. Social organizations (tribe/village/town/city) have put new pressures on us to adapt to.<p>Never mind caesarean; why do so many people need glasses? Why do so many get depressed in winter? It may all be ad-hoc sledgehammer adaptations to get (most of) us to settle down in villages and specialize. And use less calories per capita so the village thrives, even at the expense of the comfort of individuals.
Evolution is a ultimate rat race.<p>FYI offtopic: Kid can be mingled in umbilical cord and natural birth is not possibile then. Only way is caesarean. Dont pull the baby by the head.
It is blindingly obvious from an evolutionary standpoint that this is happening. I have thought about it a fair bit, as it has directly impacted my own family, and I've no doubt it will continue to do so in subsequent generations.<p>I don't think it's something to worry much about, as the much broader benefits of modern medicine (namely, antibiotics) have had so much impact on our survival rate that this would pale into insignificance.<p>Which may be borne out (pun intended) by the numbers: 3% to 3.3% or 3.6% in 50-60 years - is that statistically significant? The error there is in the same order as the overall increase, so it's hard to believe it's even measurable at this stage.<p>Because it is so obviously going to happen, I suspect there may be some curve-fitting going on here?
>Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births today.<p>This could easily be explained by doctors being more willing to perform Caesareans than they were previously. No evidence is cited that the average width of women's pelvises has actually changed, so this is all wild speculation as far as I can see.<p>Of course, it is no surprise to see the HN crowd latching on to the idea that we should let more women die in childbirth.
Call me a sceptic.. since the invention of farming women have had little evolutionary pressure to run fast to catch food nor outrun predators. Why then haven't evolution widen the canal to reduce fatalities during childbirth? And this has been going on for much longer than caesarean procedures.
> <i>Historically, these genes would not have been passed from mother to child as both would have died in labour.</i><p>How do we know that? As the name implied, Caesar was born this way, a little over 2000 years ago. It's likely the procedure is much much older, too. So what timeframe are we talking about?<p>What we didn't know how to do 100 years ago was how to save mother and child <i>once birth had begun</i> and the baby's head had started to go into the canal and got stuck. But humanity have known how to do caesarean birth for a very long time (there are even cases of women doing it to themselves).<p>Also, from an evolutionary perspective it doesn't matter if the mother survives birth; it only matters whether the baby lives. So it's at best incorrect to phrase the problem this way:<p>> <i>Women with a very narrow pelvis would not have survived birth 100 years ago. They do now and pass on their genes encoding for a narrow pelvis to their daughters.</i>
Main stream journalists can not get science right.<p>In the normal course of evolution women with narrower pelvis die a painful death while delivering a baby (or the baby dies). Thus the genes that give women a narrower pelvis do not get passed on.<p>We can not let these women die this horrible death. This is a good outcome.