An Evolution Revolution

I think about human evolution. Sometimes I think that it has ground to a halt because of modern medicine. Natural selection has to do more with who dies than who lives, and thanks to advances in medicine no one dies anymore. Ted Kennedy died this week at seventy-seven years old, and my first thought was that he was so young. Centenarians are the fastest growing segment of the population. LMJ and baby girls born the same year she was have life expectancies of a hundred and twelve. Diseases that used to keep the population strong have been wiped out. There’s a website that chronicles twelve deadly diseases that were cured during the 20th century. People that weren’t supposed to grow up at all are now reproducing and passing on their weak genes, effectively ending natural selection.

At the other end of the evolutionary spectrum, and what prompted this post, is the increase in size of humans. I was looking at Florida State’s football roster and getting frustrated because they have two freshman defensive ends under 270lbs. I’m upset because a 6’5” 255lb. eighteen year old isn’t big enough. That’s insane. The size of football players has gone up almost thirty percent in the last twenty years. That’s 1989. The Redskins had the Hogs. They were by far the largest offensive line in the history of football. Only two of them weighed more than 300lbs. Now, in 2009, you won’t find an offensive lineman in the NFL that weighs less than 320lbs., and they’re a lot more agile than the lineman were twenty years ago. They not only got bigger, they got stronger and faster. Good nutrition is part of it but not all of it. We may be changing the way evolution works. We may be on our way to becoming giants, but giants with managed ailments. A thousand years from now everyone may be eight feet tall and run thirty-five miles an hour, but we’ll all have type 1 diabetes. Damned high fructose corn syrup.