Leading geneticist Steve Jones says human evolution is over
Julia Belluz
Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of a shortage of older fathers in the West, according to a leading genetics expert.
Fathers over the age of 35 are more likely to pass on mutations, according to Professor Steve Jones, of University College London.
Speaking today at a UCL lecture entitled “Human evolution is over” Professor Jones will argue that there were three components to evolution – natural selection, mutation and random change. “Quite unexpectedly, we have dropped the human mutation rate because of a change in reproductive patterns,” Professor Jones told The Times.
“Human social change often changes our genetic future,” he said, citing marriage patterns and contraception as examples. Although chemicals and radioactive pollution could alter genetics, one of the most important mutation triggers is advanced age in men.
This is because cell divisions in males increase with age. “Every time there is a cell division, there is a chance of a mistake, a mutation, an error,” he said. “For a 29-year old father [the mean age of reproduction in the West] there are around 300 divisions between the sperm that made him and the one he passes on – each one with an opportunity to make mistakes.
“For a 50-year-old father, the figure is well over a thousand. A drop in the number of older fathers will thus have a major effect on the rate of mutation.”
Professor Jones added: “In the old days, you would find one powerful man having hundreds of children.” He cites the fecund Moulay Ismail of Morocco, who died in the 18th century, and is reputed to have fathered 888 children. To achieve this feat, Ismail is thought to have copulated with an average of about 1.2 women a day over 60 years.
Another factor is the weakening of natural selection. “In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of 20. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to 21.”
Decreasing randomness is another contributing factor. “Humans are 10,000 times more common than we should be, according to the rules of the animal kingdom, and we have agriculture to thank for that. Without farming, the world population would probably have reached half a million by now – about the size of the population of Glasgow.
“Small populations which are isolated can evolve at random as genes are accidentally lost. World-wide, all populations are becoming connected and the opportunity for random change is dwindling. History is made in bed, but nowadays the beds are getting closer together. We are mixing into a glo-bal mass, and the future is brown.”
HOME Resources Steve Jones
BLTC Research Liberal Eugenics
Superhappiness?
Utopian Surgery?
The End of Suffering
Wirehead Hedonism
The Good Drug Guide
The Abolitionist Project
The Hedonistic Imperative The Reproductive Revolution
MDMA: Utopian Pharmacology
Critique of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
"'I'll make old vases for you if you want them—will make them just as I made these.' He had visions of a room full of golden brown beard. It was the most appalling thing he had ever witnessed, and there was no trickery about it. The beard had actually grown before his eyes, and it had now reached to the second button of the Clockwork man's waistcoat. And, at any moment, Mrs. Masters might return! "Worth stealing," a Society journalist lounging by remarked. "I could write a novel, only I can never think of a plot. Your old housekeeper is asleep long ago. Where do you carry your latchkey?" "Never lose your temper," he said. "It leads to apoplexy. Ah, my fine madam, you thought to pinch me, but I have pinched you instead." How does that strike you, Mr. Smith? Fancy Jerusha Abbott, (individually) ever pat me on the head, Daddy? I don't believe so-- The confusion was partly inherited from Aristotle. When discussing the psychology of that philosopher, we showed that his active Nous is no other than the idea of which we are at any moment actually conscious. Our own reason is the passive Nous, whose identity is lost in the multiplicity of objects with which it becomes identified in turn. But Aristotle was careful not to let the personality of God, or the supreme Nous, be endangered by resolving it into the totality of substantial forms which constitute Nature. God is self-conscious in the strictest sense. He thinks nothing but himself. Again, the subjective starting-point of305 Plotinus may have affected his conception of the universal Nous. A single individual may isolate himself from his fellows in so far as he is a sentient being; he cannot do so in so far as he is a rational being. His reason always addresses itself to the reason of some one else—a fact nowhere brought out so clearly as in the dialectic philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Then, when an agreement has been established, their minds, before so sharply divided, seem to be, after all, only different personifications of the same universal spirit. Hence reason, no less than its objects, comes to be conceived as both many and one. And this synthesis of contradictories meets us in modern German as well as in ancient Greek philosophy. 216 "I shall be mighty glad when we git this outfit to Chattanoogy," sighed Si. "I'm gittin' older every minute that I have 'em on my hands." "What was his name?" inquired Monty Scruggs. "Wot's worth while?" "Rose, Rose—my dear, my liddle dear—you d?an't mean——" "I'm out of practice, or I shouldn't have skinned myself like this—ah, here's Coalbran's trap. Perhaps he'll give you a lift, ma'am, into Peasmarsh." Chapter 18 "The Fair-pl?ace." "Yes," replied Black Jack, "here they are," drawing a parchment from his pocket. "This is the handwriting of a retainer called Oakley." HoME大桥未久AV手机在线观看
ENTER NUMBET 0016www.eedilo.com.cn lpjqyo.com.cn ezbama.com.cn qiang1122.net.cn uberbank.com.cn www.pt957.com.cn sukkhi.com.cn www.samuji.com.cn www.vdprr.net.cn www.railbj.com.cn
