If we are "evolving" as a species why are there so many more....?

Question

mental illnesses? Why are people more depressed & schizophrenic? Why are we seeing bi-polar disorders & malfunctioning thyroids, osteoperosis, acid reflux, Chron's disease, Alzheimers, anxiety attacks, narcolepsy, as well as an increase in autism & ADHD in our children? Why is our cancer rate climbing? Why is AIDS wiping out so many people? Why do we have thousands of new medications on the market each year to combat the newest & latest malfunction of our bodies and/or our brains?

It seems to me like we are degenerating rather than evolving.

Your thoughts?

Some people in the Bible lived to be 900+ years old.

Answer 1

1) We stopped evolving when we started to control our environment. Evolution only occurs as a result of natural selection due to environmental pressures. In this day and age, favorable human mutations would be never make it into the gene pool before they were seized by authorities and people in positions of power.

2) Your "perceptions" are entirely subjective. They're all opinion. This is the negative impact of media and pop-culture. Humans are far more numerous, healthy and long-lived today than at any other point in history, and life-spans continue to increase. Study some statistics before you make silly, biased claims.

3) The reason there SEEMS to be more disease today is simply because a) technology is able to clearly identify health problems that were misunderstood, or ignored for thousands of years, and b) TV, Radio, Internet, Magazines and Newspapers allow people to be INFORMED of current information all the time. This was unheard of a hundred years ago. If avian flu outbreaks occur in China, you know about them the next day. Similar outbreaks have occurred for thousands of years, but people simply didn't know they were happening unless they lived in that part of the world. For most of human history, you only knew about things that happened within a couple of dozen miles of where you lived, and then only what the smartest person in town knew.

Are you beginning to understand?

Answer 2

Part of evolution is about population diversity. Think of the old line, "There's a fine line between genius and madness." It's true. A little too much imagination and you lose reality; too little and there no innovation. A classic example is John Nash ("A Beautiful Mind"), a genius mathematician with schizophenia. Medications dulled him so that he couldn't innovate.

The attention system, located in the reticular activating formation of the brain, controls concentration. Some people are able to concentrate extremely well, some can hear every twig snap. Beyond these functional levels lie autism and ADHD respectively.

Many people are dying of AIDS. Some have had the virus for more than 25 years and have not converted. Why? We have variability in tissue types and other cellular proteins, so no one virus can wipe out the whole population.

Many diseases are a result of evolution being unable to catch up with our innovations in sanitation. Our immune systems are too strong because, for the first time, we have fairly reliable access to uncontaminated food and water. Some people's immune systems turn on themselves.

Lastly, we have unprecedented longevity. Without diseases killing us at early age, we die of other things, including cancer and Alzheimers. We live longer than evolution has accounted for.

Answer 3

Our science is evolving creating diagnosis's for conditions that have always been with us, just undiagnosed.

I am ADHD as was my mother & my grandmother but I was the only one diagnosed because the condition was not acknowleged until the 60s. Before then, they were just called brats.

I have rosatia. 50 years ago, people would just say my face was always flushed.

Schizophrenics & those with bi-polar disorder or anxiety attacks, were just called odd. "Ol Johnny doesn't have both oars in the water."
My great grandmother took in a homeless boy who was always "not quite right." When I hear stories about him - no eye contact, no social skills, voice was almost robotic-like, loved small detailed stuff like fixing watches - I am about 90% sure he had Asperger's Syndrome, a high function form of autism not known in America until the 80s.

Not many people lived long enough to develop osteoperosis, Alzheimers, & other conditions.

The only way you would be right is that because the medical field has improved so dramatically, children who would have died of an inherited condition live relatively normal lives, including having children, thereby passing those genes along.

Answer 4

you shouldn't make the assumption that everything has a genetic root and thus "evolved." people did not evolve to have high blood pressure and heart disease. these problems develop largely becuase people evolved to live in a very different environment than they do now. so, for example, we evolved to like fatty and sugary foods so that we would have excess body fat to rely on during lean times, but in modern culture, food is plentiful. But people still like to eat these foods, thus they become obese and suffer from heart disease. Many mental illnesses likely have similar causes. Modern society is very fractured, and not at all like the close communal society's that humans evolved in. Because we likely evolved to have some social drives, the fracturing of society, with everybody cut off from meaningful contact with others the meaning that we would otherwise have found in others must be found elsewhere, and often this is not accomplished.

As for the problems caused by viruses, don't forget that all organisms face the pressure of natural selection. If humans evolved an immune system to resist all viruses, human viruses would have to evolve a way past that immune system or else go extinct. AIDS didn't appear in humans until the 20th century. Less than a hundred years is not enough time for humans to evolve a defense against it.

Answer 5

I could threat a wager that Wollen is from the U.S. I disagree that we're a dull species, however I can agree that preferred western tradition has plenty of downfalls and brief sighted beliefs. Specifically although, why must you obey best folks you believe? we might have a lovely rocky society if we requested for a private reference of each site visitors warden. Buying matters we do not want? Well, consumerism is a hard beast, however is restricted to a minority if the arena's populace. Money we do not have. Yeah, there have been relatively inherent disorders with the barter approach and gold is heavy. argue towards paper cash earlier than you get onto credit score, as one us simply an extension if the opposite. Why must gratification final? All the high-quality matters are fleeting, from blossoms within the spring to orgasms. I defy any animal at the meals chain to say hatred for it is fundamental meals supply. Silly. Pleasures that do not fulfill. Learn to cook dinner then. Seriously, that is simply getting subjective now, as is dreaming of existence we do not deserve. Bitter a lot? Me thinks any one is preserving a grudge. Who says we do not deserve our desires? Praying for an afterlife that does not exist? Oh, you imply if I are not able to turn out heaven, I need to believe your premis Mr Wollen? That's simply deficient arguing. No, we don't seem to be a dull species, although I will admit many americans are very dull, however that is now not information to anybody.

Answer 6

I think maybe you should study some evolution before you form ideas like this.

As we evolve, we are getting more complex. If you consider that microbes are evolving and changing, and viruses are mutating, then we are always going to be getting new diseases.

Another aspect of this is not evolution, but science and medicine discovering these diseases. 200 years ago, we just didn't know about cancer and other diseases and people died at much earlier ages of assumed "natural causes." Others could say the instances of ADHD are being exaggerated and that our increased consumption of processed foods could be effecting our bodies.

As for the hundreds of new medications ... Because it makes people money.

Other people also could say that viruses and disease are what keep the human population in check. We are well overpopulated and destroying much of the world. These "new" (they're not new) illnesses are what are trying to stablize the human population and make life on Earth better.

... we're not degenerating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degeneration

(Added): I'm pretty sure it is impossible for a person to live 900 years, ever. The human body isn't made for that kind of thing.

Answer 7

All species evolve, but I think we may be counteracting the process.
We are introducing so many toxins into our environment that there are bound to be results. On top of that, in our modern and civilized society we are doing everything possible to counteract natural selection. As a compassionate species we find it necessary to do everything within our considerable poiwer to keep the weakest and the sickest of our species alive. Evolutionary paradox. The more powerful and the more control over our environment that we exert, the more we eventually dilute the gene pool.

This goes beyond diseases, it extends to intelligence and general motivation as well. With the wellfare and social services provided by most advanced nations run directly counter to natural selection. Convenience and equality may be the ultimate disservice we do to our species.

There is nothing wrong with our tendencies to protect the weak, but you asked for my thoughts on human evolution. Evolution occurs most quickly when changing environmental factors favor one particular trait over another. As a social species, we respond to and overcome those factors on a community level. It doesn't matter that it only takes one great scientist or inventor to solve the world's problems, everyone gets the benefit.

But to be fair, many if not most of the problems that you have identified have been around for generations, and it is only now that we as a society have developed the tools to counter those problems that they receive the attention that they do.

Answer 8

This question shows you know nothing about evolution. Sorry, it's true. Those diseases that you listed are more prevelant now simply because our environment is changing. For example, people are living on average something like 30 years longer than they did even 60 years ago. Many cancers are common in people when they are older than 60. Since most people live after 60 (more than before) more people get cancer. That is just one example.

Bottom line, we are evolving, you just don't have enough perspective to see it. But look at the human genome and the fossil record. You'll see it.

Answer 9

I beleive we are evolving TECHNOLOGICALLY speaking, but at a price!
In my opinion...
Any of these problems/ illnesses you mention could be on the rise do due stressers such as poor air quality, questionable drinking water, medications, mercury levels in fish, radio active microw waved foods, stress, bacteria in raw meats and vegies, pestcides, and many other so called technological advances.
My feeling on ADHD/ ADD is that kids are kept indoors so much more now than yester- year when we stayed out playing kick the can and riding bikes, now days kids are in day care, they're told to sit down, be quiet, we were told go play til the street lights come on. Kids need an outlet! Todays parents use Riddalin, parents used to use out door play, but that's just not as safe as it used to be.
Alzheimers has been determined to have a connection to aluminum (in case anyones wondering why buy Natural deoderant, there's no aluminum content)
Cancer... Microw waved foods, artificial colors, sedendary lifestyles, high fat, sugar and carb intake (fast food industry, and every wher you go, another fast food place is opening up) Why the h*ll hasnt there been more information put out to the public on something as every day common as microw waving food in plastic? It is completley harmful, leaching toxins into our food, and studies are showing links to Cancer. Even BBQ food causes cancer due to the carcinogens produced, but we all still do it.
Aids, well because they havent found a cure, and it's already so widespread.
Medications...$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ the Pharmacutical Mongers
with their big advertising bucks, would have you beleive you can cure ANYTHING with a pill. It's the side effects and there are many, that we better be concerned with, they are lowering our immune systems leaving us suseptable to more illness, it's a vicoius cycle. I could go on all night, I think we all need to be more savvy when it comes to what we put in our bodies. Peace...

Answer 10

I don't know how many times this issue has to be raised for people to get what evolution is. Evolution is not directional, or for improvement. There are even some instances of an "outlaw gene" that will increase one's reproductive success but decrease something good about life- but it would be selected for because it's just a matter of how many kids one has, and what their success is.
AIDS does NOT have ANYTHING to do with human evolution, but everything with the retrovirus's own evolution. One saying I like is that natural selection is a passive process that acts on genetic material, like gravity on an object. Gravity didn't create the object. Natural Selection would select for people resistant to HIV infection but it is SLOW, GRADUAL change over generations, but if there's a chance some people just won't catch HIV, they'll pass their genes on too.