Is the evolution of modern man going to stop

Is evolution in modern man still going on or will it be suppressed by medicine science and our way of life.some interesting traits developed in some humans that will sadly not be selected for.Wim Hof the Iceman, he jogged in shorts in freezing 20 degreez below temperatures us normals would not be able to pull that off, he also holds the record for being submerged in ice for 1 h and 44 minutes we would probably be at a grate risk of death if we tried that and he suffered no ill efectsDaniel Tammet the Brain Man
learned icleandic in 1 weak, knows Pi to the first 22 000 digitsThen you have people with "hercules gens" stronger then us normals and develope muscles fasterWill all of these and other interesting traits be lost because they are not selected for anymore, todays survival depends on making money to feed yourself and if you have bad gens you can get healthcare and pass on your bad gens to the next generation and the good gens have the same amount of chance of being passed on as the bad ones.

Thread copied here from the Is the evolution of modern man going to stop thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hi Fraco.I don't think so, the nature of evolution is always ongoing. True we manipulating it now through medicine in probably many unseen ways as you said...bad genes and all.The traits that are useful now , it seems to me, would be better immune system and intelligence. I read somewhere long time ago, I,ll try and find a reference asap, a theory that man will become smaller in time due to not needing to be strong due to our ever increasing reliance on technology. I disagree with that at least for now, many people choose to be active in health and sports. I feel this somewhat balances that out. Also better nutrition and medicine allows those who have access to it, to grow to their full potential, sadly too many don't though.There are groups of people still living primitive compared to rest of the world and I feel that the traits that make them successful may differ from a more modern group and if they were to continue to live that way, then we might start to see differences in them that are not present in other groups.I wonder what being exposed to all the electromagnetic energy will have on us, and animals, in the long run. I am into amateur radio and have often thought about all the radio signals alone that my body is exposed to 24 hrs a day. Then all the emf fields put off from all our technology in addition to other modern environmental changes, toxins, has to be changing us as well. Many of these things are very new , less that 100 yrs or so, since we have begun being exposed to them. Look at all the wireless devices alone in the last 30 yrs.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Put in the blank lines between paragraphs.

First of all, modern medicine is not available to every human being. People are dying from preventable and curable diseases right now. There is still selective pressure for traits such as hemoglobin variants that prevent or lessen malarial disease. There are also uncurable diseases such as HIV which is actively selecting for CCR-5 mutants. Another way of stating it is that there will always be selective pressures on the human population, it is just a question of which ones. We also know that mutations will continue to occur.I think the larger question is if we will ever take direct control of our own genomes. Will we gain the knowledge to tailor genomes to our liking, and will we apply that knowledge. We already have the technology to do so, although it is a bit unwieldly at the moment. What we lack is the knowledge of which DNA sequences do what, and what effect changes will have. For the Iceman, he has trained extensively to withstand these temps. Also, post-natal development can have very large effects on brain function. There is a very large question of how much is due to DNA and how much is due to environment.

If there is a genetically transferred trait that results in enough people with that trait breeding more than others without it then it will get selected for and ultimately become prevalent in the population.The question here is whether or not modern technology and man's interference in natural processes mean that such a trait can emerge and flourish in this way. Things like AIDS resistance are certainly conceivably able to evolve in the human species in this manner I would have thought?Perhaps more interestingly is whether or not we will develop the technology to manipulate our own genes such that we can bear children with the traits we want them to have. How this could play out and what the wider implications are is maybe not the sort of thing you were intending to discuss here........

I feel it will only be a matter of time before we will be able to effectively manipulate and even add to our DNA..we already made glow in the dark mice... nasty sci-fi type thoughts come to mind... In reality it will probably play out more like stem cells has...
If it is something common place then the movie Gattaca comes to mind. Raises many questions and the politics and religion will muddle it up for years.Though it might be cool to fly...if my wings didn't have to be so big...alas we should start with flying monkeys...LOL JK

Evolution will continue, regardless. Evolution is collective results on the population level of life doing what life does: propagate. Whether there is change or there is no change, that's still evolution at work.Rather, your questions bear more on how the things of modern life, be they medical, environmental, or social, will affect our evolution.

Well sometime in the future it will be, So what kind of mutation would makeyou have more then 1.9 kids compared to your neighburs 1.9 kids? As long as there are creos and other fanaticsout there it will be very hard to impliment, sayascan that will test your childs genome while it is still in the womb and treatment for all his will be genetic faults while it is still possible. I doubt if you train your whole life you would be able to be submerged in ice for 2 hrs.

It is also a matter of how many of those kids have children of their own. It is not survival that ultimately matters. It is how many grandchildren you have.For carriers of the hemoglobin c allele in areas with malaria it will give my children a better chance of having children of their own, and if those grandchildren also carry the allele they will also have a better chance of having children. It could go further than just fixing faults. We could improve the child. How tall do you want your child to be? Do you want them to have more fast twitch or slow twitch muscle fibers? What we are talking about is tailor made genomes. At some point this will not be a question of "how", but "should we". It took a lifetime of training for the Iceman to do it.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

thanks for sharing it with us,we appreciate it very much ,you are so kindly,we will go on look your post ,welcome more new information from you ,thanks again.Edited by DMJY510, : No reason given.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

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I like whale snot

I don't see why you think the traits you mentioned would not be "selected for"? Unless you know for sure that these individual examples will not reproduce (have children)?Humanity will continue to evolve and selection pressures - whether societal or natural will continue to affect our species to greater or lesser degrees.

To paraphrase Hamlet, "No mutation is either good or bad, but the environment makes it so. " Of course that is not strictly true, there are embryonic lethal mutations which will never be passed on, but those aren't being ameliorated by modern medicine any way so are not particularly relevant to your question.Your assumptions of what makes a 'good' or a 'bad' gene are highly subjective. What you describe are rather interesting traits as you yourself put it, there is no reason to think that they are also selectively beneficial traits.We can easily think up just so scenarios where they would be beneficial, but so what?TTFN,WK

When i say selected for i mean that these gens will be passed on with the same frequency as say a gen that makes you susceptible to diabetics.

Why would there be a difference?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

In olden days whitout medicine the people with high risk of diabetiswould have alesser chance of passing on this gen because they would diequite often, and people with gens like the ones above would pass on their gens more frequently because their skills would give them a higher status and more women with whom to make babies with