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Are Humans Still Evolving Essay

609 Words3 Pages

Evolution is the development and change within heritable traits of different populations over generations. Over the years, humans have begun to invent things and change around their environment (the world) to suit their needs. With this is mind, we humans have not been paying attention to how these changes are affecting our evolution as a species. We are cheating natural selection with the design of medicines and medical procedures that allow us to live longer.

Since as long as human life has been recorded, humans have been creating and inventing countless things to suit each need. Whether that be how we shelter ourselves, to how we hunt, or now in day, how we can provide a cure to live a little longer. Or as some people call it- medicine. …show more content…

But when it comes to us evolving, many scientists believe that we have stopped. They claim we are close to the end of human evolution because of all the genetic engineering and medicinal use, that is causing us now not to evolve naturally by natural selection, and survival of the fittest but by our own means. But at the same time, with all the evidence that scientists like Elisabeth Bolund of Uppsala University in Sweden show, one could argue that we are still evolving.

This evidence being that between 4 and 18 percent of the variations among individuals in lifespan, family size and ages of the first and the last childbirth are influenced by genes. This means that if genes were to affect the differences in all of these traits, they could also react to changes in natural selection. So we humans could still be evolving, because of all the genetic differences in the population, putting aside medicine and all advancements. Also, like the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal says, “...human cultural evolution did not stop human populations from adapting to infectious diseases but rather most likely intensified human adaptive evolution to infectious

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