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Asked by kaurprincess to James, Marcus, Martin, Rob, Suzanne on 19 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by shabbatronic1999, blackbladedragolao64.
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Martin Zaltz Austwick answered on 19 Mar 2012:
I’m not a biologist – but evolution happens very slowly. If there were some mutation that meant some people e.g. were immune to some killer disease, then maybe those humans would be selected, and the rest of us would die off. But it’s likely that would be a small change and not one that would mean we grew wings or Xray vision!
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Marcus Gallagher-Jones answered on 19 Mar 2012:
It’s a tough question but some evolutionary biologists think we have. This is as you mentioned partly due to medecine and it is definitely the reason disease persists in society. The thing is for a trait to convey an evolutionary advantage it needs to extend life to the point of reproduction, after that it doesn’t really matter as the trait will be passed on. For humans now though it is quite easy to be ‘evolutionary’ weak and still pass on your genes. We have a tendency to change out environments to suit us rather than the other way around so it is quite possible we are working outside of natural selection.
I don’t see us growing gills or wings anytime soon I’m afraid.
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Suzanne McEndoo answered on 19 Mar 2012:
*is not a biologist* Possibly? For example, before modern medicine, I would have died at birth, so I would never get a chance to pass on my genes, so the genes that made me dead would be lost from the gene pool.
Luckily for me, I didn’t die (hooray for medicine!) so my genetics can be passed on. Which is good for my good genes, but not so good for my not so good genes.
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