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It's hubris to say we've outgrown evolution

21 October 2009

MODERN medicine is sometimes said to have freed humans from the constraints of evolution because vaccines, drugs and surgery allow weaker genes and individuals to survive and reproduce instead of being culled by natural selection. This is a long-standing concern with important social implications: similar worries about the survival of the unfittest helped usher in the eugenics movement in the early 20th century.

So it is good to see yet more evidence that we are still evolving (see “Meet future woman: shorter, plumper, more fertile”). In fact, researchers have made the first scientific prediction of what humanity – or…

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