No, I'm saying they ARE adaptions. We rely less on the appendix, head size is smaller at birth, our little fingers are shorter and less useful, same with our little toe. All these gradual changes over the course of the last 100,000 years. Not slow at all. And some of those are major adaptions.
Oh ok, I understand now. Thanks.
In my original comment, I
did say the past 100,000 years, not before that.
Also, we have not yet found the evolutionary link that separates us from our nearest relative, so the jury is out on how much we have evolved exactly in the past 200,000 years or so.
Your comments do bring up another good point though. What we consider "useful" or "useless" now is highly subjective, and we should not be seeking to modify our genes without knowing just how crucial those adaptations are. Nature tends to know better than us.
The appendix, it turns out, has lymphatic-immune and gut flora modulating properties. Wisdom teeth have a harder time growing in now because our modern diet does not sufficiently allow for jaw size to develop and accommodate all teeth. Native people who still consume a paleo diet don't have the problem of jaw narrowing that modern people do.
A lot of modern diseases are the result of our own ignorance as we haphazardly consume or are exposed to unnatural chemical compounds. The average American is lacking in most of the major vitamins and minerals required for a healthy body to be free of disease.
Constantly looking for genetic explanations to the most common diseases, like cancer, heart disease, and neuro-degenerative disease, is a cop out from addressing the root causes, which can be found in the way modern humans are living.
We may have eliminated some diseases through modernization, but we have invited a host of others because of our mode of living. Based on how health issues continue to cascade the more we move away from the basic necessities of life, it's my opinion that genetic engineering will just invite more technological-based health problems that we will in turn need more technology to solve.
Why can't we just be satisfied with the way nature made us? There is nothing inherently wrong with being human as we are. The problem lies in always
creating problems that need solutions, or trying to invite crazy technological interventions for problems that have simple cures.
Genetic engineering will just be another profit-based, class stratified technology that people will have to compete for access to, when the cures to problems lie all around us and potentially in other systems of medicine. I mean, we're decimating the Amazon basin right now, which contains untolled and yet undiscovered medicines that could provide hope for humanity.
I think electively engineering our children is a disaster waiting to happen, based on our sheer child-like ignorance and fascination with the concept of superman.
The world does not need super humans. It needs humans, as they are, to change their priorities.
