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Martin,
It sounds like a great exhibition. Cancer should be added to the list, as well as aging itself. Almost all individuals have inherent obsolesce. In the words of Steve, Death may be life's greatest invention."
C
On Feb 26, 2013, at 1:49 PM, Martin Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
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> *****************************************************************************
>
> The exhibition Evolution Health Connection, at The New York hall of
> Science, explores the proximate and the ultimate causes of some of our
> health issues and the trade offs that occurred over the millions of years
> of our evolution. It covers issues of:
>
> upright posture and structural difficulties that we I've with because of
> our evolution from quadrupeds to bipeds, evolution of our huge brain and
> the effects this has on our birthing;
>
> obesity and the results of the feast or famine live we led many, many years
> ago and the super abundance of high fat, high sugar foods (and the
> addictive nature of these foods (
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all
> ,);
>
> lactose tolerance and the rise of animal domestication; and
> the loss of skin pigmentation due to migration to areas of Earth will less
> UV radiation and risks of severe sunburn and skin cancer as well as vitamin
> D deprivation. The impetuous for this exhibition funded by NIH was Why We
> get Sick by Randolph Nesse and George Williams.
>
> This month at the annual AAAS meeting in Boston there was a session
> entitled the Scars of Evolution alluding to these "detrimental"
> evolutionary advances. See Human Evolution: Gain with Pain
> http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/02/human-evolution-gain-came-with-p.html
> .
>
> *Humans are the most successful primates on the planet, but our bodies
> wouldn’t win many awards for good design. That was the consensus of a panel
> of anthropologists who described in often-painful (and sometimes personal)
> detail just how poor a job evolution has done sculpting the human
> form<http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2013/webprogram/Session5714.html> at
> the annual meeting of AAAS. Using props and examples from the fossil
> record, the scientists showed how the very adaptations that have made
> humans so successful—such as upright walking and our big, complex
> brains—have been the result of constant remodeling of an ancient ape body
> plan that was originally used for life in the trees. “This anatomy isn’t
> what you’d design from scratch," said anthropologist Jeremy DeSilva of
> Boston University. "Evolution works with duct tape and paper clips."*
>
> The session was based on an influential 1951 article by Wilton Krogman,
> titled, "The Scars of Human
> Evolution"<http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v185/n6/pdf/scientificamerican1251-54.pdf>.
> In honor of the session, *Scientific American* has made the article available
> for download<http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v185/n6/pdf/scientificamerican1251-54.pdf>
> for
> a short time. In fact Bruce Latimore a leading scientist in elucidating the
> evolution of upright posture literally limped to the podium after back
> surgery. He remarked that our bodies (i.e. our backs) are good for 40 -50
> years and then . . .
>
> Martin
> --
> –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
> Martin Weiss, PhD
> Senior Scientist
> New York Hall of Science
> mweiss at nyscience.org
> cell 347-460-1858
> desk 718 595 9516
>
> --
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The opinions and thoughts expressed here are my own and should in no way be construed or attributed to the Exploratorium or related organization, and do not represent an institutional position.
Charles Carlson
http://blogs.exploratorium.edu/whyintercept/
Twitter: @charliec53
email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 415-528-4319
Fax: 415-885-6011
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For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.
Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.
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