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Hi all,
I just joined this list recently and have been
lurking. I am a science writer with a strong
interest in public science education, especially
evolution. I am working on a science education
project related to evolution.
I don't think it's possible to stop evolution of
natural populations, whether human or otherwise.
Even if small populations of humans reproduced
through cloning--and really why go to all that
trouble?--the rest of the world would carry on as
usual. As far as humans not evolving, the most
you could ever see is very strong stabilizing
selection, which is typical of highly specialized
species--the opposite of what we are. I think
geneticists will continue to find lots of signs
of recent evolution in human populations. In
humans, as in all organisms, evolution is a
dynamic, ongoing process, not something that
"happened a long time ago."
Cheers,
Jennie Dusheck
MA Zoology
Science Writing & Editing
Santa Cruz, CA
At 9:31 AM -0400 7/20/10, Beryl Rosenthal wrote:
>Very cool! Just as an fyi, immediately after
>Dolly The Sheep came to light, I heard a talk by
>a geneticist who suggested that human cloning
>could conceivably stop evolution in its tracks.
>HmmŠ
>Beryl
>
>On Jul 20, 2010, at 9:00 AM, martin weiss wrote:
>
>> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science
>>museums and related institutions.
>>
>>*****************************************************************************
>>
>>
>>
>> Many have assumed that humans ceased to evolve
>>in the distant past, perhaps when people first
>>learned to protect themselves against cold,
>>famine and other harsh agents of natural
>>selection. But in the last few years,
>>biologists peering into the human genome
>>sequences now available from around the world
>>have found increasing evidence of natural
>>selection at work in the last few thousand
>>years, leading many to assume that human
>>evolution is still in progress.
>>
>> "I don't think there is any reason to suppose
>>that the rate has slowed down or decreased,"
>>says Mark Stoneking, a population geneticist at
>>the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
>>Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
>>
>>
>> Read more in :
>>
>> New York Times, Science Times, July 20, 2010
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html?_r=1&ref=evolution
>>
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> __________________
>> __________________
>> Martin Weiss, PhD
>> Science Interpretation Consultant
>> mweiss at nyscience dot org
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>Beryl Rosenthal
>Executive Director, Waterworks Museum
>[log in to unmask]
>617.277.0065
>
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