It is quite possible that you did not intend the overtones that are conjured when you bring up natural selection and the situation in New Orleans, they are, however, there.
When we look at the bodies and victims of people in New Orleans, what we see are almost invariably black people. When you say "Natural Selection", and there is no way around the racist backdrop of this theory, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism) what can be inferred is plainly clear.
1. The least able to survive in New Orleans died.
2. That determination was arrived at by racial characteristics.
3. The fate of these people was determined by genetics as much as floodwaters.
It's interesting you chose to associate genetics so strongly with race. By that kind of reasoning, you might as well say that only white males can be intelligent. While you can't completely separate genetics and race, race had nothing to do with the point I wanted to make.

Natural selection encompasses more than just who's genes happen to be resistant to the flu. What's the difference between evolution favoring the success of whichever tribe discovered fire and favoring the "tribe" that's smart enough to get the fuck outta dodge when town's below sea level and flooding?

Of course there's a random aspect to evolution. Even Darwin stated that, right off the bat. The smartest, strongest guy might get clocked in the head by a meteor through no stupidity of his own, but a situation like NOLA is far from that. Even if you accept that the remaining population had no possible way to get out of town before the storm, the number of them that died during the actual storm is probably a tiny minority of the total death toll.

Most of the people who died did so through their own choices before, during, and after the storm. If that isn't natural selection, I don't know what is.

Natural Selection, as I understand it, pretains to people being genetically disposed to survival or not. in that sense, the species best able to survive will in the end dominate and eventually destroy the other, i.e. Cro Magon and Neanderthal.
Diamond is saying the opposite. It is in fact the controllable and man made forces in an individuals life that determine his fate. In this sense the dooming factors of the people who died in NOLA were not inadequecies in DNA but in failures of a society to allow for equal opportunity of development of its citizens.
Diamond went into some detail about the evidence of natural selection's effects on indigenous tribal cultures. In those types of situations, the weak aren't paid extra money to have kids. The lazy aren't fed. There aren't any free rides. As a result, they are not only stronger than us in a physical sense, but also more intelligent in aspects that aren't culturally dependent.

Diametrically opposed to that, we coddle the unproductive. We give incentive to perpetuate those cycles of dependency. We feed the lazy.

As a species, I can't think of any time in history that we've stunted our potential growth as much as we currently do.

What's the difference between evolution favoring the success of whichever tribe discovered fire and favoring the "tribe" that's smart enough to get the fuck outta dodge when town's below sea level and flooding?It's interesting to note that the tribe with fire would probably keep more people alive during a cold night, the old, the weak or the ill would survive, while other tribe without fire would get "bettered" with natural selection of the toughest to resist cold and smartest to cover themselves. Now which one would be considered as successful... ;)

Most of the people who died did so through their own choices before, during, and after the storm. If that isn't natural selection, I don't know what is.Natural selection isn't a question of choice. Flu comes, and nature selection keeps strongest alive (exagerating on purpose). Storm comes, and people choose to take the risk to stay. You can say that people surviving in those conditions were naturally selected, but I think imho that people who died because they made that choice weren't naturally "unselected".

As a species, I can't think of any time in history that we've stunted our potential growth as much as we currently do.Because we can.
In a village-size society where hunters are the only source of food and preys were lacking this month, of course only the hunters will eat to be able to hunt again and bring more food.
But when a country can feed for 2 billions people with its food production each year... More people will eat, even unproductive ones.
Now to say which one is the most successful... Not to mention that average life must be quite shorter in those "small" societies. What happens if you break your leg during the hunt? Bad luck, "lazy".

Thats not the case when talking about welfare. You wouldn't encourage a hunter to break his leg so he couldn't hunt but we encourage people to not work when they can get a welfare check. Worse yet encourage them to stay in a geograpahical location that has no work resources (or they are simply tapped out) because they can get government checks each month. Take that away and its time to find some work. I'll say it again..how can people come all the way from Mexico to work in Wisconsin yet we have american citizens who can't even move 50 miles away to find work or a possible better living situation?

Giving this line of discourse its own thread.
Most of the people who died did so through their own choices before, during, and after the storm. If that isn't natural selection, I don't know what is.
Natural selection obtains for those populations whose genetic traits make them less likely to pass those traits onto future generations than rival populations. As Anterak indicated, personal choice has only a tenuous relationship with evolution (which is based in the biology of populations). Natural selection in the scientific sense doesn't apply to Katrina (though it might have, if a full population had been slain).

I think the first sentence requires further explication and qualification; it intersects a wide variety of issues (race, nature vs. nurture, class, etc.).
In those types of situations, the weak aren't paid extra money to have kids. The lazy aren't fed.
These are social incentives unrelated to biology (excepting of course the need to eat). Now, if the unable aren't fed (specifically, those handicapped by genetic conditions), then natural selection applies over generations. Perhaps Diamond is using a less rigorous definition of natural selection -- I haven't gotten around to reading GGS.
Diametrically opposed to that, we coddle the unproductive. We give incentive to perpetuate those cycles of dependency. We feed the lazy.
If you can call living in squalor an incentive. By my standards, it's a free ride in the sense of being dragged along the tracks by a locomotive. The question is, what do we do about it? Simply stop welfare altogether? Sink or swim? Apply funds to organizations that can alleviate the situation on a wide enough scale to have an impact? That's another threadful of potential discussion.

In the strictest sense, I suppose you could say that natural selection only applies to basic genetic traits. I suppose you could also say that the traits that determine who makes good survival choices aren't genetic. I don't agree with that line of reasoning though. As Thor pointed out earlier, Wells came up with the same ideas as Darwin and boiled them down "to the survival of the fittest".

1. IF there are organisms that reproduce, and
2. IF offspring inherit traits from their progenitor(s), and
3. IF there is variability of traits, and
4. IF the environment cannot support all members of a growing population,
5. THEN those members of the population with less-adaptive traits (determined by the environment) will die out, and
6. THEN those members with more-adaptive traits (determined by the environment) will thrive
Adaptive traits, as determined by the environment.

At one point in time, those traits for us were as simple as opposable thumbs and walking upright. As we progress, I don't think it makes sense to limit those traits to purely anatomical features. Some people clearly have better gut instincts than others, when it comes to surviving in our present day environment. Is that not exactly the idea that Darwin and Wells are trying to describe, when applied to present day?

Yet, we completely reverse the situation by giving incentives to the poor who reproduce and we fund that by taxing the more productive. In turn, we're insuring that the productive portion of the population continually decreases in size, compared to the ones being carried.

Why? How does that benefit anyone in the long run?

In a village-size society where hunters are the only source of food and preys were lacking this month, of course only the hunters will eat to be able to hunt again and bring more food.
But when a country can feed for 2 billions people with its food production each year... More people will eat, even unproductive ones.
Now to say which one is the most successful... Not to mention that average life must be quite shorter in those "small" societies. What happens if you break your leg during the hunt? Bad luck, "lazy".
Even in nomadic hunter gatherer cultures, the weak and sick were cared for, as long as that was beneficial to the whole. If Ogg the Hunter broke his leg, he might be on skinning duty for a few weeks while he healed. The medicine man might be weaker than most and not able hunt at all, but be fed because he strengthened the group nonetheless.

Survival of the fittest doesn't necessarily mean that it's swim or sink on an individual level.

I think I deserve rep points for braving the biological jihad that Nydia's about the declare on my posts. This will hurt.

At one point in time, those traits for us were as simple as opposable thumbs and walking upright. As we progress, I don't think it makes sense to limit those traits to purely anatomical features. Some people clearly have better gut instincts than others, when it comes to surviving in our present day environment.
But is that "gut instinct" a product of heritable characteristics? While I think that genetics provides an individual with a possible range of expression for a given trait, environment plays a major roll in determining the level of expression for that trait. Given the urban ghetto/rural poor settings for our discussion, environmental factors cannot be ignored (and may play a much greater role than other social environments).

But as I noted, unless a natural disaster wipes out the vast majority of breeders in a given population or otherwise creates an environment in which a given population cannot survive, then natural selection really doesn't come into play (and, in any case, needs a lot of generations and other evolutionary effects -- such as genetic drift -- for change to manifest).

So we're really dealing with two separate issues: evolution in a Katrina situation (nil, if my above assessment is correct), and evolution with regard to poverty and welfare, which seems to be the main thrust of your point.
Yet, we completely reverse the situation by giving incentives to the poor who reproduce and we fund that by taxing the more productive. In turn, we're insuring that the productive portion of the population continually decreases in size, compared to the ones being carried.

Why? How does that benefit anyone in the long run?
If we take your statements in isolation -- that we subsidize 'laziness' by removing funds from the productive -- then obviously it only benefits the 'lazy' (as much as a life in squalor can be construed as a benefit). But this question has been asked and answered a thousand times -- the real question is: what do you do about it?

To change behaviors you need to change the incentives that guide those behaviors. Do you go the sink or swim route? Do you focus on training programs for the poor (which require those same taxes from the productive, but presumably create more productive citizens)? What is the differential between giving out welfare checks and making people work for a living that produces the most incentive (that is, how much more do you have to ensure people will make before they stop being 'lazy')?

Complex questions, but which have little to do with evolution.

while other tribe without fire would get "bettered" with natural selection of the toughest to resist cold and smartest to cover themselves

But of course there are only 3 of them left.....

Dear Sanchek:

(quit squirming, you haven't been affixed on a pin... yet :) )

Question number 1: Were you vaccinated in your youth against what we now call 'childhood diseases' (measles, mumps, rubella, and the like)?

Question 2: Have you ever received antibiotics, or any other sort of therapy or surgery for a condition that would have been life-threatening prior to these innovations?

If you answered 'yes' to either of these, then congratulations :); you've been the beneficiary of genetic 'welfare', that is to say that you've made it to reproductive age largely or solely due to the intervention of the society that you live in and its largesse. You may well owe your life (I know that I do, several times over) to the fact that *someone*, somewhere, decided that it would be a good idea to spend the money on research for, produce, and distribute said welfare without any foreknowledge as to whether you personally would be a boon or a drain on society as a result of having received it.

Why did certain governments decide we needed a World Health Organization, and its activities? Because at some point in time the realization was made (and a decision and subsequent investment followed) that humanity benefits as a whole by ensuring that everyone, even the poorest and most isolated receive immunization against horrible diseases so that, (taking the most cynical possible view), that the rich and powerful don't have to worry about these scourges lurking around every corner waiting to take them down, or to take a less cynical view, that people will not suffer and die unnecessarily and thus will be more productive and able to care for themselves. Thanks to that realization, we *eliminated* smallpox from the wild (although human arrogance may yet doom us here), and nearly eliminated polio (cases were in the single digits worldwide before complacency set in, budgets were cut, and it recrudesced in Africa), saving untold millions of people from suffering, disfigurement, and death in the process; likewise with the widespread distribution of antimalarials and antibiotics, iodization of salt and enrichment of flour, etc.

I find it really interesting that most people understand that things like vaccination and basic medical care benefit society as a whole by enabling citizens to be more productive and not die horribly from preventable causes (as my great-grandmother did, to pueperal (childbed) fever, or my great-uncle of lockjaw (tetanus)), but fail to see that providing for the most *basic* needs of human beings with regards to feeding and educating them also provides benefits (stabilizing, among others) to humanity as a whole as well that far outweigh their cost. I would also like to point out that the welfare system in this country, at the present time, neither 'pays people to have more children' (benefits are no longer increased for children above 2, although family size still affects income levels for public housing), nor is it permitted to be a permanent form of support for those who are not disabled, but I think I'll table the issue of the pros and cons of government welfare (and what shape it should take) for another thread, adding only that a lot of *presumption* seems to be being made, with regards to the folks who were trapped or chose to stay in the Superdome or elsewhere in New Orleans, that the majority of these individuals were welfare recipients, as if that somehow had any bearing (other than strictly economic) on whether they 'chose' properly or were 'worthy' of being rescued in a timely fashion.

But back to the issue of 'natural selection', and the issue of genetics playing a role in making good survival *choices*...

Organic evolution in a species with as long of a generation time as human beings is extremely slow (orders of magnitude slower than social evolution); indeed, many of the societal ills that we witness in this country (and elsewhere in the modern world) are testimony to the disparity between the traits that we as humans possess which were useful as hunter-gatherers, and those which might be beneficial on a planet with 9 billion people (and growing :/) where many people live sedentary lives and patience and organizational skills rule the day (Praise the Lord and Pass the Ritalin, or whatever will make the little pukes sit still in class, eh ;) ). Human beings are good, as has often been said, at recognizing *immediate* dangers, but pretty darned crummy at recognizing, much less acting on, longer-term ones (will this Little Debbie snack cake I'm enjoying be my future heart attack or breast cancer? Mmmm, who cares, cream filling...).

As you yourself indicated in your example, the social contract, as it were, has existed as long as humans have banded together for mutual protection and survival; that is to say, as long as there have been humans. Why *shouldn't* the residents of New Orleans who had no means to leave the city have gone to the Superdome? What made that a 'non-survival' decision from the perspective of someone seeking shelter before the storm? It was built to withstand 200 mph winds, we were all told; it was the 'official' evacuation point for folks trapped in the city, and citizens were assured that they would be provided for once there. Once it became apparent that the place couldn't provide adequate protection from the flood and loss of power and water, and that no aid was forthcoming, what then? Those who tried to leave were forced to stay *at gunpoint* for days in crowded, dangerous conditions; there wasn't much 'choice' in the matter at that point. They were at that point not simply failed by, but betrayed by, the social construct that they had put their trust in.

What about those who stayed in their houses? Why might someone do such a thing? I can think of two primary reasons; first, some individuals, especially the elderly and disabled, know full well that leaving their home may not mean that they are able to find suitable shelter where they end up. As a member of a two-gimp household, my count is up to double digits now as to the number of times that Faervas and I have had to alter or cancel travel plans, sometimes after we got on the road, because promised handicapped accessable accomodations weren't available. Have you ever been in the situation where you didn't know how or where you were going to be able to go to the *bathroom* next? It might be a natural and easily accomplished function for you, but it isn't for everyone... What about people who were in wheelchairs, who had to cart around oxygen tanks or other durable medical devices, who were able to manage quite well around their own (possibly adapted) home, but would be in tenuous circumstances otherwise? The evacuation order was given less than 24 hours before the hurricane hit the city, and evacuees found that the hotels were full for hundreds of miles around. I don't know about you, but if it had been Faervas and I, especially a few years down the road (I'm in the 'bargaining' stage with regards to the loss of the use of my right ankle as I write this, and my ability to drive is strongly influenced by, of all things, barometric pressure changes :) ), our best survival gambit might well have been to fill up the bathtub with water and stay put.

For those who weren't disabled, the overwhelming 'survival' instinct might have been to stay put guarding the only asset they have, their home. My maternal grandmother spent 50 years living a block from the beach on the northeast Florida coast and despite decades of hurricanes coming and going, could not ever be persuaded to budge from it. Dora in 1964 brought waist-deep water in the street, but she stayed high and dry (and thankfully, unharmed) in her little elevated cinderblock and wood house. Having been widowed as a young woman, raising two children on her own, and being literally as poor as a church mouse (she worked as a church secretary and lived in a garage apartment for several years when she first came, saving to build her house), that house and her beat up VW were all that she had.

Getting back to the 'imminent danger' thing, most people who live in hurricane zones are used to them coming and going, and only rarely are they the sort that cause widespread damage or loss of life. Remember also that the evacuation order and potential threat from Katrina was very late (from the locals) and downplayed (by FEMA). Finally, consider the well founded fears that citizens have/had with regards to looting, both by random thugs and of the 'officially sanctioned' variety, and that citizens have been asked to stay away from their homes for weeks while the city is drained, etc, and I too might find that my best bet would be to guard whatever was left of my house. Again, I don't know about you, but if I were that couple that I saw on CNBC the other night who snuck past a checkpoint to check on their Garden District home (damaged, but dry, as was most of that neighborhood), I'd be videotaping/photographing every square inch of the place, and if a so much as hair was out of place when I returned, someone would be hearing from my lawyer...
Can you say that, if it were you, that you *wouldn't* have to fight an overwhelming desire to protect your property, if it were all you had?

This has gone far afield, but the overall points I wanted to make were that 1) yes, people would have been better off evacuating in the vast majority of cases, but that some did not does not automatically make them 'stupid', or their decisions unsound, from a survival perspective; 2) that some of those individual decisions might have had positive survival value; 3) that the social contract, not 'bad' survival instincts, *failed* individuals who followed instructions and evacuated to the Superdome before or after the hurricane hit. As far as the race issue goes, I do believe that, sadly, yes, race (disguised by the euphemism, fear of 'troublemakers' :) ) was a consideration as to why evacuees were kept (kept, they were in many cases prisoners) in appalling conditions for so long - the boogeyman in our culture still overwhelmingly has a brown or black face - despite the fact that yes, whites were trapped by Katrina as well.

Finally, back to the genetics angle. As Thor indicated, Katrina wasn't a bottlenecking event (it didn't wipe out the majority of the breeding population of a reproductively isolated group), so the value of the hurricane as an instrument of natural selection was effectively nil, but it *does* appear that it will be an arbiter of future gene flow in the south, given how many of the evacuees have indicated that they intend not to return to New Orleans :).

I have a *lot* more to say (I can hear the groans now) about genetic 'fitness' (remember, genetic fitness in its purest sense is defined simply by how many offspring you raise successfully compared to the average for your species) and human behavior, but it'll have to wait for now. Thor said it consisely enough that the issues you have raised have very little to do with genetic evolution (which proceeds very slowly) and much more with social management given the reality of our genetic constraints.

Regards,
Nydia

P.S. I hope that this horrible tragedy has brought into focus to everyone the simple fact that something similar *can* happen to you. If you haven't already, make sure you have a plan, and a backup, if the major disaster threat in your area looms. Consider taking a First Aid/CPR course from thr Red Cross. Keep a supply of water, a working flashlight and batteries, lighters, and even possibly an alternate cooking source (propane stove or the like) in your house and car (don't keep propane bottles in the car in warm areas :) ), and keep a first aid kit, water, and canned goods around, as well as some good quality dry *socks* and a good pair of shoes. For those who live in hurricane/tornado/blizzard/earthquake/wildfire/blackout prone areas (in other words, about everyone :) )I personally recommend Tom Browns Field Guide to Urban and Suburban Survival and Field Guide to Wildnerness Survival; they're both written in a very accessable style from a civilian perspective, not for the Soldier of Fortune crowd.

P.P.S. (You want to talk about bottlenecking? Take a look at the poor cheetah - the animal might be beautiful and fast, but it's a piss-poor predator, at least with regards to its ability to compete successfully against other large mammalian predators in the habitat where it lives. It only consumes one prey species (Thompsons' gazelle), it doesn't have retractable claws, much of an energy reserve to sustain it though lean times (due to the demands of its build), and about 2/3 of its kills get stolen by other cats or hyenas. As a result, its population has bottlenecked to near extinction so many times throughout its genetic history that cheetahs, as a species, have less genetic diversity than many deliberately inbred strains of mice! Should we let this beautiful, but poorly adapted, animal to survive, or let it fulfil its destiny and vanish from the face of the earth? But I've opened up a whole other can of worms here, as this debate can be opened for many species that we are currently in competition with for resources...)

Good lord Nydia. I'm reading along, becoming mildly interested in the conversation when WHAM! Huge-Block-O-Text!

I'm sure it was informational and added much to the coversation but damn, I sure didn't read it :o

anyway, ignore me, continue on . . .

Nydia is, quite possibly, even more long-winded than I am, but if you don't read her posts you're missing out on solid information.

Nydia, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Those vaccines, etc. weren't created and distributed by what Sanchek is referring to as "the lazy people."

One small interesting point, though. By your definition of "genetic fitness" (which I don't agree with) people under the poverty line may be more "genetically fit" than people above the poverty line. Which is weird.


Can you say that, if it were you, that you *wouldn't* have to fight an overwhelming desire to protect your property, if it were all you had?

This is a key point. THe point being that this is the MODERN world. Not a world of hundreds of years ago. Your well being and property are protected by the law and through vehicles like insurance. They are not protected by you sitting in front of your hut with a shotgun praying someone with a bigger shotgun doesn't try to grab your hut. While I place a huge intrinsic value on my house, and I have considered and am ready for both scenarios (modern vs. shotgun), when the big tsunami comes off Lake Michigan, I'm not going to be sitting in my house hoping everything will turn out ok.

This is the modern world. You prepare. You insure the safety of your family by moving out of harms way (please, no arguments about public transportation being shut down before the hurricane landed). You come back when the coast is clear.

I sympathize with the people who felt the need to stay. ANd I understand that they are poor and circumstances often work against them. That doesn't change the fact that, IMO, they screwed up.

Good lord Nydia. I'm reading along, becoming mildly interested in the conversation when WHAM! Huge-Block-O-Text!
Good lord is right. I'm gone a few hours and now I've got a few days worth of reading before I can reply.

I enjoy reading Nydia's posts, as they always educate me in some way, and entertain at the same time.

It is a pleasure having someone who puts that much thought and time into sharing infromation; and, there are not that many who still do.

Dear Mirdorr:

By your definition of "genetic fitness" (which I don't agree with)

Just fyi, it's not 'my' definition of genetic fitness in the previous post (feel free to dust off one of your old biology textbooks and verify for yourself), but the other standard definition of genetic fitness (in a biological sense) refers to the ratio of success of a given allele for a specific trait being passed on on a generation-to-generation basis compared to that of the dominant (most prevalent in this sense, not in the Mendelian sense) allele for that gene, and being measured as the proportion of the population you are looking at who carry that allele).

As far as the relevance of 'ye old block of text' to Sanchek's argument that people who did not leave the city (or people on welfare, take your pick) were *lazy*, it can be summed up in two phrases: 1) Just as we didn't leave those 'lazy' people to die (we *did* rescue them, eventually) because rescuing them serves the *common* good, just as vaccinations, iodization of salt, etc, serve the common good; and 2) Individuals who chose to stay in the city didn't necessarily make a 'bad' survival decision but that factors related to the failure of their social construct may have contributed to making it so (failure to maintain the levees, failure to send help in a timely fashion).

You are confusing the nature of the comparison in this case; Sanchek's question/contention was: should we help the *lazy* (or helpless) even though they may be inferior in some way; and my reply was: "Yes, we should help the 'lazy', because it serves the common good, and here is another example of a public effort serving the common good, which you have benefitted from (despite, arguably, being 'lazy' with regards to which deadly diseases you may have exposed yourself to - why didn't you practice better hygiene or live in a bubble! ;) ).... Hope that clears that up.

Or were you referring to FEMA, et al, as being 'lazy' immediately before and after the disaster? because that *is* a valid comparison to the vaccine example and one to which I would agree ;)....

As far your last contention goes, you are quite correct, assuming you have data supporting your hypothesis that completed family size for those currently living below the poverty line in this country is larger for that above the poverty line. What 'matters', in a biological 'success story' sense, is only thus: what is the prevalence of given alleles compared to what they were in the previous generation?

Urp, late for my night class. Have a good evening, all...

Regards,
Nydia

Uh, her definition of "genetic fitness" is absolutely correct. I'd probably phrase it as an organism's ability to both reproduce and survive, but the idea is the same. With regards to evolution, reproduction is the single most important thing any life form can do to speciate - it is in fact, 100% neccessary.

Adaptations that make a species better at reproduction are very very very very advantageous - why do you think fucking is so much fun?

Adaptations that make a species better at reproduction are very very very very advantageous - why do you think fucking is so much fun?

I agree with you too a point, but humans are one of only 2 known species that have sex for other reasons than reproduction(i.e. for pleasure), the other being dolphins, so using it as a basis for an argument is full of falsities.

The Darwin theory also is a scientific theory brought forth by a human about the animal kingdom. Classifying those that died as genetically inferior to you because you happened to live in a place that didn't get hit by a hurricane is pretty fucking disguisting.

Only if I were to say that all species had fun fucking. There are thousands of other adaptations species have gained to make them better at reproduction: things like a deer's antlers, the bright markings of male birds in some species, etc.

She (Nydia) may be long winded but it's refreshing and quite educational and I enjoy her posts.

Chimps don't reproduce for pleasure?

This argument of Natrual Selection has been going on in email format between me and my siblings and some friends all week. It seems I have a brother (one who by my standards is very well off financially) who feels precisely the same way as Sanchek.

I think what some may be missing is that just because these people are less fortunate or poor in your eyes what makes you believe they are unhappy or even care to better themselves? Maybe they don't want to? I have a brother who by my standards is pretty much a worthless leech who sloths through his existence. He has no desire to better himself but he's happy and just doesn't want to. It's kind of like people who are obese or overweight. They know it, they know it's not healthy, it can be reversed and yet they do not. Why? Who knows, or perhaps they are happy or don't care to change.

I'm not saying everyone feels this way but I am saying that by using your own beliefs and convictions to try to surmise this situation you may be missing part of the equation. The history of welfare and public help is rather long and convuluted (sp) this didn't happen over night. Dare I say that in some cases it's like family tradition?

Oh and last time I looked it was more than just the poor who were affected by this tragedy; it wasn't just them who died or who are suffering. I'd be more inclined to believe the notion that Mother Nature fought back for years and years of man's industry and the affects on that part of the country rather than Darwinism.

In the end of a week long debate this was the last thing my other brother had to say.

"Seven Blunders of the World"

1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle

—Mahatma Gandhi

But is that "gut instinct" a product of heritable characteristics? While I think that genetics provides an individual with a possible range of expression for a given trait, environment plays a major roll in determining the level of expression for that trait. Given the urban ghetto/rural poor settings for our discussion, environmental factors cannot be ignored (and may play a much greater role than other social environments).

But as I noted, unless a natural disaster wipes out the vast majority of breeders in a given population or otherwise creates an environment in which a given population cannot survive, then natural selection really doesn't come into play (and, in any case, needs a lot of generations and other evolutionary effects -- such as genetic drift -- for change to manifest).

So we're really dealing with two separate issues: evolution in a Katrina situation (nil, if my above assessment is correct), and evolution with regard to poverty and welfare, which seems to be the main thrust of your point.
I don't agree that you can separate the environment, individual choice, and natural selection. It seems clear if you break natural selection down into its primary components: environmental selection and sexual selection.

As L2 pointed out before the split, man has mastered the majority of our ecological environment. If it's too cold where I live, it doesn't really matter to me since I'm going to live and work in the same climate controlled temperature anyway. If it's sunny and dry, well I'm eating food from thousands of miles away and the agricultural impact doesn't affect me. Almost all of the environmental factors in early evolution are becoming irrelevant to man now. Does that mean we stop evolving? Once heaters are invented, we pass go and collect our last $200?

Or, does that mean the prevalent environmental influence on our development isn't nature anymore, but is the particular man-made environment that we choose to live in?

As far as individual choice being an evolutionary factor or not, just look at sexual selection. Take two genetically similar males. One of them chooses to bathe and groom himself, while the other spends that time watching TV. Which one is more likely to find a suitable mate?

(As an aside, none of this thread has anything to do with anyone saying "I'm genetically superior to someone else, thus have more money, thus deserve to live, thus I'm a raging jackass." Don't make it into that.)

If they're "genetically similar," it doesn't matter who will find a mate (from a biological standpoint). If their genes are the same, the same genes will get passed down to their offspring. The behavior of the bathed and groomed fellow will likely be passed to his children, but that's not biological evolution, and it's not an example of natural selection in that sense, and thus would not have an impact on biological adaptation or speciation. I think the only way to imply otherwise is proving that those behaviors are based on inherited (or mutated) physiological differences.

Okay, then say they're similar, but guy B has inherited male pattern baldness from his father, while A has a full head of hair. Baldy sprays on some rogaine and is able to get the same quality mate that A does.

His choice to do that directly influences evolution. You could come up with endless examples along those same lines, where people make choices to emulate what others have due to heredity for purposes of sexual selection.

Just a side note for ya.

The gene that affects male pattern baldness is carried by the mother... I think.

Otherwise, good discussion.

Fandros

That's not a logical parallel to what you had originally stated, though:

Most of the people who died did so through their own choices before, during, and after the storm. If that isn't natural selection, I don't know what is.

The only way that this would propogate biological evolution is if the reasons people made those choices were genetically inherited OR their genetic material was different in such a way that their removal from sexual selection caused a change in our evolution. Since their genetic makeup is no better or worse than a population living in Iowa, their being wiped out doesn't really further us along as a species - it has no effect on our gene pool.

That's not a logical parallel to what you had originally stated, though:



The only way that this would propogate biological evolution is if the reasons people made those choices were genetically inherited OR their genetic material was different in such a way that their removal from sexual selection caused a change in our evolution. Since their genetic makeup is no better or worse than a population living in Iowa, their being wiped out doesn't really further us along as a species - it has no effect on our gene pool.

It is possible that making bad choices is something that is influenced by genentics. So by nmaking the choices they did that caused them to die before having any/any more children they are being naturally selected out of the gene pole.

Dear Roliel:

Even then, it would be highly unlikely to propagate biological evolution - simply because the number of those who chose to stay *and were removed from the gene pool as a result* was very small compared to the total population of 'sitters' as it were. In order to have an effect, as was indicated, the allele for 'staying put' (assuming there is one, although some species have a genetically hardwired 'freeze' reaction when being threatened by predators) would have to undergo a major change in prevalence, and even there's no guarantee, as something interesting happens as the frequently of an allele gets very low; namely that the rarer an allele gets, the harder it is to eliminate from a population due to the fact that we are diploid (carry two of each chromosome, excepting the y) organisms. It's our 'insurance' against changing environmental conditions, of putting traits away in case we need them, as it were...

In order for this event to have any selective effect on the local population, it would also require that the population in downtown New Orleans be genetically unique in some way and that that population was reproductively isolated, i.e. no gene flow in or out was occurring. (It is quite possible, btw, that this was the case for certain subpopulations within the city; my own current hometown saw negligible gene flow for nigh on 250 years until the mid 1990s, and even though that is a drop in the bucket in evolutionary time, there was a very distinct 'Laredo look', and strange things happen in genetic distribution land when populations are very small and isolated).

Indeed, you folks are looking the at this issue completely backwards; there *will* be a net evolutionary effect from Katrina, and it will not be because any alleles were eliminated, but rather that new combinations of alleles will be *generated* due to the outward migration of the (formerly reproductively isolated) evacuees...

Sanchek: Fandros is correct that the gene for male pattern baldness is carried on the 'X' chromosome and thus can only be inherited in males from the mother. That hairy ear thing though (pinna) is all Y... ;) But to get to your point, yes, females, of ours and many other species, evaluate potential mates based on their *perceived* fitness. Characteristics that are *sexually* selected on (that is to say, are preferred when choosing a mate) may become exaggerated as a result of this process, but these traits are not necessarily ones that promote survival in a given organism, as your male pattern baldness example indicates. And besides, possessing the gene means you make *more* androgen receptors than your nonbalding neighbor, and so a bald head is, paradoxically enough for the Rogaine and hairweave crowd, a visible symbol to prospective mates of *virility*... :).

The sexual selection 'arms race' is one that is ongoing (and selecting on both sexes), but you'd do well to be mindful that unlike in birds (which are often used in such comparisons), male mammals are the heterogametic (possess two different sex chromosomes), and females the homogametic, sex. In other words, in humans, it is males who are more visually oriented, and more likely to be selecting directly on visible indicators of youth and strength, than females; male secondary sex chararacteristics in mammals are more often artifacts resulting from hormonally induced necessary musculoskeletal changes needed to produce adequate size and strength for mate competition, guarding, etc (although these too are selected on by females).

Regards,
Nydia

I might be mistaken here, but I thought that social behavior was thought to be related to natural selection:
ie- certain animals developed into social animals while others remain largely solitary because that gives them the best chance to survive.

Ants do well in a colony, dolphins to well in a pod while tigers and praying manti do better on their own.

The social structures of the former give them a leg up in natural selection- the same could be said for humans, could it not?

Dear Esbat:

You are correct in your assumption, and humans are unquestionably a species for which natural selection *towards* being social has operated for a long time (since before we were Homo sapiens :) ). We function very poorly as individuals from the standpoint of genetic success, and our social structures, from the tribal/extended family level on up, exist primarily, if not exclusively, as an aid to ensure survival. Differing family/social/racial groups can, and have, eliminated or absorbed their competition as well, as has been amply demonstrated throughout history (and the history of warfare :) ), and 'culture', as it is defined in humans, can be not unreasonably viewed as an outgrowth or artifact of our genetically dictated social cohesiveness and need for a group or tribal shared 'vision' for the purpose of enhanced survival and reproductive success.

Regards,
Nydia

Uh, her definition of "genetic fitness" is absolutely correct.We should get her a job teaching biology and genetics or something.

Hah - I just got home from work and mentioned this thread to Faervas, including a synopsis of my last and Esbat's posts. His reply was (and mind you, he is a fine artist):

"Well of course, culture exists so you can impress people... so they will have sex with you... and join/produce more members of your culture" :). And there you have it, much more cleanly and consisely than I could have possibly put it...

Regards,
Nydia

P.S. I had intended to post something in my last bit about gender and sex selection that one of the reasons human females (and mammals) ended up with both full sized sex chromosomes, and have all that cross-hemispheric wiring in our brains that you males are sadly deficient in, is because female choice requires more than just finding a good *body*, it requires finding a good provider and caretaker while said female is encumbered with offspring. In other words, females make use of their superior hemispheric integration and discernment to judge less tangible aspects of your fitness (like, your culture, so we can decide whether to have sex with you... and join your culture ;) )

Ugh.
So much here.. Im going to try to pop a reply on Sat Morning.
but.. as far as a reinforcement of Nydias post on the benefit of society v. individualism, I thought this was pretty good
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

Well, I'm coming into this way late.

The early mortality rate of our society is statistically insignificant and natural selection in Darwin's terms has not applied in Western society in centuries. Probably the last time you had massive enough population culling to be noticable in genetic drift was the WWI/II period, but even that was a barely a passing blip on the genetic radar. Based on current US population you'd need approximately 6 million people a year dying before procreating to have any sort of selection pressure.

We're at something like 0.8% annual mortality with less than 2% of total deaths happening before age 25, by which time most people have had the opportunity to procreate, and only up to 6% by 40, by when nearly everyone who is going to have children has had more than one. So even if we had Katrina level events with idiots staying behind in it *every day*, it would still not kill enough people to create a selection pressure against any genetic predisposition to dying in hurricanes.


One small interesting point, though ... people under the poverty line may be more "genetically fit" than people above the poverty line. Which is weird.

There is something of a historical trend that has played out in many successful societies in history, including nearly every Western power of today, of the affluent, educated portions of the population drastically reducing their reproductive rate. This crops up from time to time as popularly as the notion that the darkies are eventually going to breed the whitefolk out of America. There is no chance of that happening anytime soon but does represent a serious event in the lifecycle of our civilization if the trend does not reverse. In that specific case, natural selection is in fact working against the interest of the society in question.

I have some comments to make about L2's quote, as well as the last paragraph of Malse's post, which I'll get to when I get home from work, but I found this snippet of Malse's post interesting, because of what it immediately brought to mind:

Based on current US population you'd need approximately 6 million people a year dying before procreating to have any sort of selection pressure.

The current selection pressure from HIV/AIDS in *all* of Sub-Saharan Africa now exceeds this; the overall prevalence of HIV in South Africa in 2000 was 36% (and has risen since then), with 6 nations in southern Africa exceeding 20% prevalence and nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa exceeding 10% prevalance (that's of the *entire* population, the percentages are higher when you limit it to those folks of reproductive age). Prevalance of HIV-1 among sex workers in Kisumu, Kenya and Ndola, Zambia (both major metropolitan centers and trucking hubs) were 75% and 69%, respectively, in 2001. This event *will* exert brutal selective pressure, both from the perspective of immunological fitness (we still don't know what makes some individuals less susceptible to the disease) and, of course, on any genetically hard-wired tendency towards promiscuity, in those populations. I expect it will exert effects of a similar magnitude on culture on the subcontinent, and not necessarily in a positive/productive way in the short term, as well (intercourse with a virgin is widely believed by some groups to be one way to cure HIV infection, for example).

Sorry for the hijack, but thought it was interesting...

We're still evolving, but it's no lie that we're not under as great a pressure as many other species. In truth, it's not so much the lack of selective pressure that's limiting speciation as lack of isolation (something with is almost universally present when a major change occurs in the lineage of a particular organism).

My understanding of evolution is largely based on an interest in zoology and taxonomy, so I'm probably more biased towards more noticable (physiological) differences than Nydia when I think of evolution. If I'm not mistaken, we share about half of our genetic code with grass, so she's probably taking a much more directed look at the issue. You usually have to sprout legs or grow eyeballs to impress fossil dorks like myself. :)

From a laymens perspective there are perceiveable changes in our evolution.

1) Length of life, tho that could be argued it's solely quality of life that affects this rather than evolution.
2) I know this sounds silly, but I read somewhere the change in our dental plates is a very noticable change.

It's late and I'm way out of my depth here. But I'll do a lil research and thank you all for an educational discussion.

Fandros

Dear Fandros:

Nobody's arguing that human beings aren't evolving; but what we have been saying is that what has happened in New Orleans is way too small of a drop in the gigantic bucket of humanity to have much of an impact since it's highly unlikely that any rare alleles got wiped out during the tragedy (and we can be reasonably sure that no new and exotic ones were created during it, unless someone births something amazing as a result of exposure to the contaminated water ;) ). Also, actual *adaptive*, *directional* changes in human physiology, as opposed to mere fluctuations in existing allele frequencies, happen very slowly (on a scale of tens of millenia), because of our long generation time and the time it takes for a novel allele to get fixed in the population, and as Roliel indicated, isolation, or the lack thereof among modern humans with regards to their breeding habits, also slows/negates what might be potential speciation events (but not necessarily genetic drift).

But to address your two points:

The increase in our average lifespan (in general, but since the beginning of 'modern' civilization in particular) is completely independent of 'evolutionary' forces, for one very obvious reason (which malse already pointed out); by age 40, all but a tiny portion of the population has already completed their families (and most did so historically in their late teens and early 20s). Therefore, there is no selective pressure to reduce the prevalence of alleles which code for diseases which manifest later in life (Huntington's disease is a classic example of this, as a *dominant*, always fatal, disorder whose symptoms first manifest about age 45, but you could lump the defective cholesterol receptor gene, genes encoding susceptibility to breast or colon cancer, Parkinson's disease, Rheumatoid arthritis, or a myriad of other late blooming nasties into this). Also, you have to realize that the low *average* lifespans that are often quoted from decades to millenia ago are just that: averages, and most of the reduction was coming from folks who died in either 1) early childhood or 2) childbirth, from infectious diseases; folks who made it past those two hazards (and weren't killed in war or by a plague) generally could expect to live a life about as long as we enjoy today. Yes, our lifespan has increased, but that in itself hasn't affected allele frequencies per se unless you include the genetic makeup folks who *would* have died from the above causes but were saved due to antibiotics etc *and* those folks happened to possess some suceptibility genes that influenced their demise.

As to the second statement, yes, our jaws are getting smaller *very* slowly due to the fact that for the past 15,000 or so years, we don't die of starvation so much anymore if we can't adequately chew raw plant and animal foods (gogo fire and cereals); there's no selective pressure to retain a larger jaw. This is happening pretty quickly by evolutionary standards, but so far it's only amounted to the beginnings of the loss of one set of molars in that 15,000 years time, and atrophy of structures happens much more quickly than the development of novel ones...

I did read an interesting study the other day that puts the beginnings of regular *shoe* use in humans at about 60,000 BCE, based on the point at which our smallest toe began to atrophy...

Regards,
Nydia

Dear L2:

[But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

The author is missing the target here. In the case of Katrina, community *did* show up (other states, the Red Cross, Wal-Mart, thousands of private citizens, other countries, all begged to help, but our inept government ignored or spurned their requests initially), sacrifice showed up, pulling together showed up, etc.

What this crisis *did* do was pull the veil off of a perfectly miserable ideology and displayed it to all as something that we, as Americans, conservative, liberal, or independant, were *ashamed* of once its results, along with the bodies and the cries of the suffering were forced into our view in living color on our TVs. What's to like about a culture that promotes elitism, cronyism, and kleptocracy? Some of the most disgusted and outraged people I spoke to last week (my father among them) were old school conservatives, not just because those were *Americans* suffering and dying in New Orleans and Gulfport, but because the whole *idea* behind the American dream of true freedom of opportunity was supposed to mean that we would live in a meritocracy, where the *best* qualified were chosen to do their jobs, and instead we found out that the whole top tier at FEMA received their jobs because they were someone's college or drinking buddy once upon a time, and people *died* as a result, not only because of ineptitude, but because of that scourge of lovers-of-small efficient government, bureaucracy.

I don't know why we should have expected anything else from this President. He has, after all, been the beneficiary of a series of shameless entitlement programs over his whole life, right up to his candidacy for the Presidency, why would he imagine operating any differently?

I heard that he made a good speech tonight (I was at work at the time), and I think he realized that he was talking for his, and his party's, life, as he unveiled his vision for rebuilding New Orleans. I don't want to start speculation about it in this thread (hopefully we can talk about it in the 'New Orleans - is there a future?' thread?), but I am curious as to what percentage of the former residents of that great city will actually be able to afford to live in the 'new' New Orleans once the eminent domain and real estate speculation and redevelopment frenzy has subsided :)...

I'm also a bit surprised that no-one has picked up on this whole 'National Day of Prayer' thing. Last I checked, this was a big no-no, and as much as I feel for the victims of this tragedy, I sure as heck don't want my government using it as an excuse to *promote a particular religion* as it were and the whole thing feels vile to me.

The 'neocon bankruptcy-of-vison moment' for the last couple of weeks for me though, was when Condoleeza Rice, sent to Alabama to reassure victims of Katrina that the appallingly slow rescue of folks trapped (in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf region) was not influenced by racial bias, had the chutzpah to say, to a church full of victims of the hurricane while attending a service there: "The Lord is going to come on time — if we just wait."

(Sanchek or whoever - please feel free to split this back to whatever thread this feels appropriate in...)

Regards,
Nydia

I promise, this is my *last* breath of hot air for the night - how obvious is it that I'm procrastinating a deadline (in this case, I'm avoiding packing for a move this weekend :) )?

There is something of a historical trend that has played out in many successful societies in history, including nearly every Western power of today, of the affluent, educated portions of the population drastically reducing their reproductive rate. This crops up from time to time as popularly as the notion that the darkies are eventually going to breed the whitefolk out of America. There is no chance of that happening anytime soon but does represent a serious event in the lifecycle of our civilization if the trend does not reverse. In that specific case, natural selection is in fact working against the interest of the society in question.


Dear Malse:

Since you used the word 'society', and not 'population', your last statement assumes that the 'founding', or 'dominant' *cultural* group is not capable of absorbing the faster-growing culture and converting its values over to that of the dominant culture. If it can, then it's not necessarily a losing scenario...

Several times over the past couple of decades, I've heard various (always white male, curiously enough :) ) pronatalist think tank guys suggest that if we crackers don't pick up the slack on the breeding end, we are going to lose our country in the gene war. Considering that our planet is arguably already carrying over twice it's *sustainable* load of humanity, wouldn't the more sensible approach be to convince others that, in an information age on a finite planet, that we don't *have* to breed enough farmhands to provide insurance against the 40% that no longer die of childhood diseases?

History has shown us that humans invariably *do* adjust their family size so as to provide for their maximum well-being; but those adjustments usually are delayed for a generation or two after external circumstances (which would favor raising more or fewer children) change as they internalize those changes (realization via squalor and misery that the old paradigm isn't working, usually).

Countries in which the rubber has already met the road, so to speak (China, India), have gone the route of aggressively pushing family planning in order to slow resource degradation and feed their populations. In the West, we find this route distasteful, and yet a realization has seeped into the collective consciousness about the reality of the situation on our finite planet (not necessarily out of some amazing level of enlightenment, although education matters, but also because of the cost of living :) ) and most of Western Europe is below replacement level in terms of completed family size. If history holds, immigrants to those countries *should* make their own demographic transition, but it will be delayed as they absorb their new cultural/economic reality (life is not cheap and plentiful, but expensive and precious).

I live in a heavily Catholic town, much more Mexican than Texan, where I *never* see a completed family size below three children, and five and 6 child families are not uncommon. My genetic fitness, as you all know, is zero. *All* eighteen of my nursing students are parents of at least one child, and only one of them is over twenty-three. I've had to grapple with living in the face of a completely different attitude towards childbearing/rearing here (largely independent of socioeconomic status btw), compared to the WASPier part of the state; here, almost everyone has several children while young, even though there is a realization that there are few jobs and little opportunity for them here and at least half of them will have to leave town in order to find work when they grow up. But I see hope for the demographic transition here as Laredo finally matures; several of my General biology students have expressed a desire to delay childrearing for their careers or other interests, even if it is to care for other family members.

I also see hope in the history of my partner's family. Faervas' mother (immigrated to the US at 18) was the oldest of *twelve* children, her husband the youngest of eight, and they had three children (Mrs Aguilar promptly got snipped upon the birth of her third). Those three children have had, at ages 42, 41, and (deceased at 40)... zero children, leaving that to the numerous cousins. None of the cousins have had more than two children; several of them have only a single child, or are childless at this point, as well. Sure, there's little question that we'll be a little browner when all is said and done here; but we've managed to absorb every other group that has 'invaded' our shores up to this point and I don't see the current situation as being any different.

Most of us have *do* have the biological imperative to procreate (or at least to practice, as Faervas puts it :) ), but most folks seem to be *satisfied*, as far as the parenting urge is concerned, with a small family and will forego having larger families in order to preserve resources for a better quality of life for smaller ones, if their education and rights as far as regulating their fertility permit. Going back to sub-Saharan Africa, a large study done some years ago showed that providing women with just a *third-grade* education resulted in greatly reduced infant mortality, and perhaps more interestingly, a 50% drop in completed family size, as the women quickly converted what education they had received into improving the *quality* of life for their offspring...

I don't think it's going too far to say, however, that managing to save some level of sustainable capacity on our planet depends on us managing to convince more of our fellow-travellers that it's in *all* of our best interests to slow the production of offspring to or below replacement level (even making an immediate change to replacement level takes about 50 years for population growth in a given population to level off due to the geometric nature of population growth) and that we aren't trying to commit 'genocide' on any particular population by suggesting that they slow procreation and/or offer incentives for doing so. Indeed, we should push the message that we want (families, and the world) to be able to adequately *care* for, and provide a future for, every person who *is* here.

/steps off soapbox)

I'm off the wire from tomorrow afternoon until we get moved and hooked up at our new old (built in 1897) house - take care all and enjoy the silence :)...

Regards,
Nydia

My father was the oldest of 9. My mother the oldest of 5. I'm the oldest of 2, and between my brother and I, we've provided my parents with a grand total of one grandchild.

The current selection pressure from HIV/AIDS in *all* of Sub-Saharan Africa now exceeds this; ...

Interesting article here on AIDS resistance:

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/360/15843_AIDS.html (http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/360/15843_AIDS.html)

I’d heard of another genetic barrier to the disease called “SEM-15”, but it appears that some strains of AIDS have already found a way around that one.

The increase in our average lifespan (in general, but since the beginning of 'modern' civilization in particular) is completely independent of 'evolutionary' forces, for one very obvious reason (which malse already pointed out); by age 40, all but a tiny portion of the population has already completed their families (and most did so historically in their late teens and early 20s)

What about the grandparent effect: if parents can leave their babies home, safe with grandma to go tend to their fields or go hunting, they can be more productive and expose their babies to less risk. Having more people available to care for offspring, to retain knowledge, produce food and be generally productive enhances the society as a whole. Odds are good that this society will be more successful (and perhaps have more members in the gene pool) than a society without these advantages. This is still happening today, and it has even spread into a very big industry outside of the family unit: Daycare. The goals are a bit different, but the principle is the same: the burden of constant child care is shifted away from the parents and onto another source so that both parents can work at the same time.



Back in the early days, having a lifespan long enough to have grandparents around would have been a HUGE evolutionary advantage.

Back in the early days, having a lifespan long enough to have grandparents around would have been a HUGE evolutionary advantage.
For those grandparents that survive, of course. As Nydia said, once you got out of childhood and childbirth, longevity became that much easier (but you have to detail the era, too -- ancient Rome vs. homo habilus for instance). As a related aside, a recent Italian study suggests that homosexuality may have developed as an adjunct to the grandparent effect.

Dear Esbat:

You are correct, and I probably shouldn't have used the words *completely* independent in that sentence; but the point I was trying to make was there aren't, and haven't been, any major selective forces pushing humans *towards* longer lifespan in our history. Indeed, degeneracy starts at about the exact moment we would be becoming grandparents throughout most of human history (age 36-40); the loss in flexibility in the lens of the eye and degeneracy of the surrounding muscles comes on very markedly and strikingly in almost all humans right about age 40, for example (my first set of bifocals came at 40 right on the nose :) ). Degenerative changes prior to age 40 *are* selected against because they result in an overall loss of genetic fitness (including, yes, ensuring that one *becomes* a grandparent and helping see the initial offspring through infancy), but by age 50 (the age where we women lose our cardioprotective benefits of estrogen, for example, due to menopause,), one's grandchildren would be nearly grown, so losing grandma to a heart attack or Huntingtons or what-have-you is statistically a non-issue from a selection standpoint at that point, so there's no selective pressure to make us any 'better'. Indeed, it might *decrease* our fitness if a high percentage of the population survived into old age and effectively was competing with their progeny for resources, especially if they're also competing with faster-breeding, shorter-lived neighbors....

Thor: I also have heard something to that effect, with the hypothesis given that childless individuals of whatever stripe in a population (monks/nuns, homosexuals, eunuchs, etc) increase fitness among the offspring of their siblings in proportion to the severity of the environment, and there are cultural examples of adaptation to this (most notably in traditional Tibet, where familial polyandry was practiced as a means to limit population growth, manage limited resources, and provide plenty of nonbreeding 'helpers' to assist with the rearing of children in that very inhospitable environment...). I mentioned a study a couple of months ago, I think, showing a link between X-linked male homosexuality and increased fertility in female *carriers* of the gene, which might provide another means for the fixation of this seemingly negative (from a genetic fitness standpoint) trait in the human population.

Regards,
Nydia

Question number 1: Were you vaccinated in your youth against what we now call 'childhood diseases' (measles, mumps, rubella, and the like)?

Question 2: Have you ever received antibiotics, or any other sort of therapy or surgery for a condition that would have been life-threatening prior to these innovations?

If you answered 'yes' to either of these, then congratulations :); you've been the beneficiary of genetic 'welfare', that is to say that you've made it to reproductive age largely or solely due to the intervention of the society that you live in and its largesse. You may well owe your life (I know that I do, several times over) to the fact that *someone*, somewhere, decided that it would be a good idea to spend the money on research for, produce, and distribute said welfare without any foreknowledge as to whether you personally would be a boon or a drain on society as a result of having received it.
Yes, I've been beneficiary of both those things, but they certainly did not come free of charge. Many people profited from my (perhaps) artificially prolonged lifespan, before I even spoke my first word.

While you could find individual exceptions, I don't think that you could possibly argue that the company who manufactured those vaccinations or antibiotics did so altruistically. The same goes for the companies that researched and licensed those medicines.

Out of curiosity, does the strict biologist school of thought agree that there was a dramatic advance in human development around 50,000 years ago? The point where Neanderthals transitioned to Cro-Magnon man, if I've go the terminology right.

Yes, I'm just now replying to a post from days ago. I need to evolve a third arm to post while I work.

I'm just dashing in to pick up some grading, and will be off-wire for a few days while we move, but I did want to clarify something: Neanderthals did not *transition* to Homo sapiens sapiens - we were separate, and *competing* species from about 230,000 BCE until ~ 30,000 BCE, when our displacement of H. neanderthalis was complete. Homo sapiens sapiens, according to a substantial body of evidence, descended from Homo sapiens idaltu (also called archaicus, arose about 330,000 BCE in africa, and appeared ~200,000 BCE in Asia) and was a completely separate lineage which came began to dominate once planetary temperatures began to warm at the end of the last Ice Age and it was able to migrate more freely. H. neanderthalis arose *later* than H. sapiens, actually possessed a brain about 12% *larger* than modern humans (with no difference in the frontal lobe, as has sometimes been claimed), and had a complex social structure and culture, but was anatomically cold-adapted and non-migratory in nature. They made their last stand as a species in what is now the Pyrenees mountains about 24,500 BCE, have been effectively 'treed' there by the expanding H. sapiens sapiens population (and evidence for direct conflict exists as well). Fully modern humans, as we might think of them, first appeared in the fossil recode about 100,000 BCE; I'm not enough of an anthropologist to tell you at what point they transitioned from Middle Paleolithic to Late Paleolithic, but believe handaxes and microlithic tools (and shoes :) ) first appeared in the fossil record about 60,000 BCE.

I don't think that you could possibly argue that the company who manufactured those vaccinations or antibiotics did so altruistically. The same goes for the companies that researched and licensed those medicines.

I know you may find that contention hard to believe, in this day and age where drug companies are mercenary profit obsessed machines, run by CEOs and boards, not doctors or governments; but yes, as recently as 40 years ago, that is *exactly* what happened. Do some reading on the race to find the polio vaccine (which my grandfather participated in on a largely volunteer basis, as did many others), or on the WHOs campaign to eradicate smallpox, or on iodization of salt, or on the manufacture and distribution of antimalarials in southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa (where noone could afford to *pay* for vaccines or treatment, and yet we vaccinated *every person in the world* anyway) to get a less cynical and self-serving perspective...

Have a good weekend all, I'm out for a few days...

Regards,
Nydia

That's interesting about the Neaderthals and Cro-Magnons. The last book I read about that glossed over it in a way that made it sound like they were more related.

I have no doubt there have been (and continue to be) people in the medical field that exist only out of the desire to help others. When I was writing that post, Marie Curie kept coming to mind for some reason, even though her main contribution was in a different area.

The thing is, I didn't get my vaccinations 40 years ago. The doctor who gave them to me may have cared very much that I grow up strong and healthy, but that didn't stop him from charging a good markup on the medicine, nor did it stop his suppliers from doing the same. And that's fine. That's what capitalism is all about.

So, I still don't buy the genetic welfare bit. It was as much welfare as if my parents had gone out and killed an animal to feed me, had we been hunter-gatherers from thousands of years ago.

As for groups like the WHO, you correctly pointed out in your first post that the only feasible way the wealthy could completely protect themselves from contagious viruses like smallpox and polio is to eradicate them globally. They certainly seem more concerned with the bird flu and polio outbreaks than AIDS in Africa, don't they?