Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Are Humans Still Evolving?

Has access to modern medical care thrown a wrench into the 'survival of the fittest' basis of evolution? New research says no -- we're still evolving. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that humans seem to be evolving at about the same rates as other organisms.

"The take-home message is that humans are currently evolving," said Stephen Stearns, one of the authors of the report. "Natural selection is still operating." using years of data from the Framingham Heart Study, Stearns and colleagues say they've been able to tease out the effects of natural selection at work in humans -- and that may mean shorter, rounder women in the future. We'll talk with him about the work, and about the forces that work to drive evolution in the modern world.