http://discovermagazine.com/2003/aug/breakddt/?searchterm=Estrogen
A lot of chemicals find their way into water supplies that we drink...some may have long term repercussions. Some of the chemicals not only have an effect upon the person who consumes them, but their children and their children's children...
What are we moving towards?
(Please try and refrain from politics and religion. We will try to keep it towards the science spectrum)
What are we moving towards?
(Please try and refrain from politics and religion. We will try to keep it towards the science spectrum)
I have no clue and probably couldn't speculate on it without considerably more information than I currently have.
(A good goal, but you're talking evolution and that means you'll get all sorts of flames over it.)
What are we moving towards?
IMO, technology advances, giving more solutions to our problems, but at the same time we work ourself into deeper/other problems ...
So ... status quo, downward spiral or upward spiral ... IMO roll a 1d3.
The studies showed correlation with phtalates (the estrogen like molecule used in most plastic) ingestion by pregnant mothers. Seems most of the damage happens before birth.
So, not really evolution... rather we are destroying our fertility and the fertility of the animals.
We have a long way to go until we can produce our own applied nanotechnology (Read: cellular life). A great deal of information is exchanged chemically, and the full effects are so complex we still have little to no understanding of it. The variance of one chemical is used in at least hundreds of systems and can effect thousands.
Not to mention that estrogen like compounds have a great influence on the human male fetility. Recent studies have showed that the sperm quality in european men (probably in every continent but the studies where european so...) has greatly decreased in the last 50 years. The sperm count has lost 50% when comparing the sperm from today to the sperm stocked in banks for 50 years (difformed sperm count as doubled also).
The studies showed correlation with phtalates (the estrogen like molecule used in most plastic) ingestion by pregnant mothers. Seems most of the damage happens before birth.
So, not really evolution... rather we are destroying our fertility and the fertility of the animals.
To put it another way: We are slowly poisoning ourselves. Go us.
To put it another way: We are slowly poisoning ourselves. Go us.
Between things like chemical treatments for cattle, fertilizers and pesticides on crops, bisphenol-A leeching out of water bottles, Bahamut-knows-what being released into the air via vehicles, power plants, heating systems and whatnot, we're probably screwed as a species.
It was a good run. I just hope my kids don't have compound eyes at this point.
It was a good run. I just hope my kids don't have compound eyes at this point.
As long as they have less than 5.
That all being said, the jury is still out on DNA methylation and whether such epigenetic changes might be inherited. Still, the idea that we as a race are substantially poisoning our genome seems misguided and alarmist.
With this much mutation, we need more natural selection to compensate. I say we have another world war and deregulate the economy.
I'd rather we just crank up the biotechnology to the point where we can just tell our DNA what we want it to be.
Scientifically speaking, our DNA has a remarkable capacity for self-repair
I would think the opposite, as the ends of the chromosomes die off as the older a cell gets ...
What are we moving towards?
(Please try and refrain from politics and religion. We will try to keep it towards the science spectrum)
Well, I'm not sure, but...
The answer to why this is is simple. Modern Western medicine allows people with defects to survive to procreate - their defects survive on into the next generation. Similarly, a person in today's world with myopia can survive and have children who also have myopia. In a hunter-gatherer world, such a person may not survive to his teens.
With this much mutation, we need more natural selection to compensate. I say we have another world war and deregulate the economy.
Must... not... make... political joke...
So.. hard... Must.. resist...
Developed countries have already changed their DNA pool. For instance, there are more people with diabetes in the US than in the jungles of the Amazon, even adjusted for population sizes.
Just wanted to comment that the example is ill-chosen. The high count of diabetes in the US is mainly due to eating habits and not to genes. Many studies have already demonstrated this. Just search any medical journal.
I also want to tell SteelMirror I tend to agree with him on the subject. The loss of fertility is not inherited, but due to the increase of estrogenic compounds in the environnement (ingested stuff) of the individuals. Estrogenic compounds are in our drinking water (even in lakes in the complet North of Canada) in high amounts, in plastics (phtalates) and probably other sources I can think of right now. Most water treating plants don't even address this problems. I remember attending a conference that showed that the quantity of estrogenic compounds was the same at the entrance and the exit of a water treating plants in Québec. Most of the estrogenic compounds come from birth control pills (if I remember correctly 70% is rejected in the urine) and fertilizers/pesticides.
I don't want to be alarmist. I am only discussing the facts. This issue can be adressed and corrected with better water treatment plants, better control/regulation on the plastics and such. No need to panic. But sometimes spreading facts is a good way to bring about changes that require allot of money.
Those studies are either wrong, or you're reading what they say incorrectly. Diabetes is a disease with a familial component - that means that family inheritance is one of the predisposing factors.
More people surviving with diabetes into child-bearing age and having children directly translates to more copies of the gene being in the gene pool. Eating habits has got nothing to do with that.
It may be true that more people who are predisposed in the US are lapsing into full-blown diabetes because of bad eating habits, but that doesn't suddenly mean that diabetic people in the US have the same chance of survival they would have in the middle of an Amazon rainforest.
If you need insulin for survival and you can't have any, you're dead. No children for you.
What those studies might be saying (I think, I don't have access to those studies) is that the recent increase of diabetes cases in the US may be due to the changes in eating habits, which could very well be true.
Paul_profession_baker:
Those studies are either wrong, or you're reading what they say incorrectly. Diabetes is a disease with a familial component - that means that family inheritance is one of the predisposing factors.
Actually, I taught you where referencing the increase in type 2 diabetes in industrialised country: US, Canada, Japan, Australia and others. Type 2 diabetes is a consequence of bad eating habits and a lack of sports. It also represents 90% of the diabetes cases in the world.
I don't know of any increase in the case of diabetes of type 1 in industrialized/medicalized countries.
I would think the opposite, as the ends of the chromosomes die off as the older a cell gets ...
Yes, telomeres (as the ends of chromosomes are called) degrade over the lifetime of the organism. This degradation is also not inherited, as it is likely a programmed effect that is in part responsible for aging and finite life spans. Telomere degradation happens entirely in somatic cells (which is fortunate, because otherwise after a few generations reproduction would become impossible).
DNA self repair, on the other hand, involves an alphabet soup of proteins and cofactors that comb through every strand of DNA in your body constantly (and particularly during replication) searching for kinks in DNA structure that might signify damage. If you've heard of free radical damage to DNA, that is a specific kind of genetic damage that is actually quite common, and likely occurs thousands of times every day in even the most healthy individuals. Without the remarkably efficient DNA repair mechanisms that we have those mutations would accrue rapidly (though they would cause cancer rather than mutations in offspring). Fortunately the human body is a ridiculously amazing machine, and the vast majority of that damage is detected and repaired almost immediately.
I also want to tell SteelMirror I tend to agree with him on the subject. The loss of fertility is not inherited, but due to the increase of estrogenic compounds in the environnement (ingested stuff) of the individuals. Estrogenic compounds are in our drinking water (even in lakes in the complet North of Canada) in high amounts, in plastics (phtalates) and probably other sources I can think of right now. Most water treating plants don't even address this problems. I remember attending a conference that showed that the quantity of estrogenic compounds was the same at the entrance and the exit of a water treating plants in Québec. Most of the estrogenic compounds come from birth control pills (if I remember correctly 70% is rejected in the urine) and fertilizers/pesticides.
True, and I wasn't really addressing the entire issue of estrogen in drinking water, I was trying to debunk the idea that somehow we are systematically undergoing chemical mutation as a species. In fact while estrogen is not itself a mutagen or affects the genetic sequence in any way, it may have some effects on DNA packing (through methylation) that could be inherited and could theoretically change the phenotype of any offspring. That's all speculative, and I haven't seen the literature to convince me one way or the other.
As for water treatment and prevailing levels of estrogen in municipal water supplies, I have to largely plead ignorance on that subject. ;)
Then you need to read better reports.
Type 1 diabetes is nearly unheard-of in any small-clan society of hunter-gatherers because it's quite deadly. In fact, myopia has a very low incidence as well.
The phenomenon of an increased incidence in diabetes in the population since a remedy for it was discovered is commonplace medical text.
Paul profession baker:
Then you need to read better reports.
Type 1 diabetes is nearly unheard-of in any small-clan society of hunter-gatherers because it's quite deadly. In fact, myopia has a very low incidence as well.
The phenomenon of an increased incidence in diabetes in the population since a remedy for it was discovered is commonplace medical text.
Wow, no need to get worked up. As I said, I taught you where talking about type 2 diabetes, the illness that as gotten alot of press lately (in science magazines). I am a physicist, not a physician, so I don't have any course in that subject behind my belt. But I like to read reports/papers in published journals. If you want to educate me better, maybe you can help me finding some sources? If not, I will try to find some by my own...
Too, diabetes 2 would have less of a selection bias against it because it's only usually active later, subclinically or with a concommitant condition. That goes a little further from the point, though.
I suppose you could look at the latest medical epidemiological data on Australian Aborigines or Mangyans. Top diseases there are respiratory and gastrointestinal-infectious. Myopia is remarkably low.
As for lower sperm count and such, ehh it won't doom the human race. We can grow sperm from stem cells now, we just need eggs and a womb.
As long as we are speaking speculatively, I predict that we will become technology-biology hybrids much sooner than our biology will undergo any noticeable change, given the mismatch between the rates of scientific progress and biological evolution.
Transhumanism for the win!
Transhumanism for the win!
Oooh, oooh, I call a bionic arm!
Biotech products aid our natural immune systems fight off infection and derive the necessary sustenance from an increasingly hostile world (translation: we've used biotech to adapt to our environment). Artifical add-ons improve our vision and replace our limbs when they're insufficient. Artifical soles guard our feet from the ground and prevent infection and injury. Artifical skin shields us from the sun and its harmful rays.
We even have artificial hearts and artifical blood vessels and artifical sinew.
As long as we are speaking speculatively, I predict that we will become technology-biology hybrids much sooner than our biology will undergo any noticeable change, given the mismatch between the rates of scientific progress and biological evolution.
I completely agree. Once nanotech is a full-blown industry around the world, this will be mind-bogglingly true. Uber-immune systems, full-body-computational power, nano-injected-learning of skills, and nano-enhanced biology in countless other ways for the win.
There was a study a few years ago that discovered that older people would use their index finger to push buttons, whereas people under 35 or so would use their thumbs.
Think about it- at a push button phone (If THOSE are still around), would you push the buttons with your index finger, or your thumb?
Watch older movies and you'll see folks using their index finger more.
Long story short, they commited suicide on a scale that wiped their civilization out.
(I know, I left details out. If you want to know more, go and watch all 11 seasons)
Anyone watch Stargate-SG1? There's a race in there modelled after the Roswell Gray's known as the Asgard. After thousands of years of genetic manipulation, they created a genetic defect in their entire species.
Long story short, they commited suicide on a scale that wiped their civilization out.
(I know, I left details out. If you want to know more, go and watch all 11 seasons)
I'm just watching that show for the first time. I want my next PC to be Colonel O'Neil.
I'm sort of afraid that anti-aging technology is going to do the same thing to human civilization. Human civilization and society is based around the understanding that people age and die on a daily basis - it's as commonplace as births. It's plausible that removing the aging process from people will cause human society to essentially self-destruct.
This really has little to do with your comment, but Orson Scott Card's "The Worthing Saga" is a very original look at some of those concerns, though from a cultural as opposed to a genetic perspective. It's also mind-bending and insane, but I recommend it nonetheless (or maybe because of that).
It's plausible that removing the aging process from people will cause human society to essentially self-destruct.
Stagnate, not self-destruct.
As long as there is an endpoint to consider, human beings will continue to try to make the improvements that advance our technology. Without having to worry about dying, there is no rush to create the technology to make our lives more fulfilling, more productive or easier. Necessity is said to be the mother of invention, I would argue that mortality is likely the father.
Secondly, people who don't age don't need to be replaced by new people. If you stop everyone from aging at the same time, every additional birth would add infinitely more to the effective birth rate than has been for a long time.
You need 2.1 births to replace your population 1 for 1. In order to equal the declining populations most developed countries now have, you'd have to kill people off.