Stupid Tabloid Articles...

[Sam Slater]

My sister came around last week and I remember reading this stupid article....

[quote]Evolution expert Dr Oliver Curry of the Darwin@LSE research centre at the London School of Economics embarked on a two-month project to investigate the impact of technological, biological and environmental factors on the future evolution of man over the next 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 years.

The report, commissioned by leading men?s television channel Bravo to celebrate their 21st anniversary, predicts that the human species is set to reach its peak in the year 3000, growing taller and living longer thanks to improved nutrition, lifestyles and increased medical knowledge. They will also modify themselves ? through technology or otherwise - to attract partners and will therefore be better looking. ?Race? will also be a thing of the past - by the year 3000 all humans will have ?coffee? coloured skin.

However, the research also predicts that after 10,000 years mankind?s reliance on technology will allow genes to degenerate; for example, the immune system will deteriorate through an over-reliance on medicine. Looking further into the future, 100,000 years from now, thousands of years of mate choice and sexual selection will create greater and greater genetic inequality, which could see humans diverge into two separate sub-species ? a genetic upper class and a genetic underclass.

1,000 years from now

The Bravo Evolution Report indicates that people of the year 3000 will have reached the peak of human enhancement, leading the longest, healthiest and most accomplished lives in the entire history of the human race. Improved nutrition and understanding of the human body will see people grow taller, with men reaching an average height of between six and seven feet, while life spans will also be far greater, with humans living for up to 120 years.

Physical features will be driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility that men and women have evolved to look for in potential mates, the accomplishment of which will be aided by cosmetic surgery and advanced body modifying techniques. As a result, men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, athleticism and the classic signs of high testosterone such as a square jaw, deeper voice and a bigger penis. Meanwhile, women will exhibit lighter-coloured skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, symmetrical features and smooth hairless skin.

Across both sexes, regional variations in skin tone are also expected to be smoothed out as humans move towards having a uniform ?coffee? coloured skin tone. However, eating processed foods means that there is less chewing to do, so future humans will have less developed jaws and shorter chins.

10,000 years from now

While mankind reaches a peak in 1,000 year?s time, further in the future the outlook for mankind is bleak and as the report predicts that the human species will pay the genetic price for its overwhelming reliance on technology. Spoilt by the gadgets around them, the research predicts that humans may come to resemble domesticated animals. Many key skills such as communicating and interacting with others will be degraded, and emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect are predicted to diminish leaving humans less able to care for others or perform in teams.

Far away from the peak experienced in the year 3000, humans will look more juvenile. This might make women look younger and more attractive, but it would be yet another factor, following on from the impact of human losing their jaw structure due to a lack of chewing, in men becoming ?chinless wonders?.

There is also a very real danger the human reliance on technology leading to defects in genetic make-up and diseases - such as cancer not being weeded out of the gene pool. The increasing obsession with hygiene and reliance on medicine are also likely to lead to deterioration in the immune system.

As the size of infants continues to rise, natural mothers will also be forced to resort to caesarian sections. A rise in genetic engineering may allow humans to replace faulty stretches of DNA and may also lead to more genetic uniformity as humanity strives for perfection.

100,000 years from now

Much further in the future it is predicted that sexual selection ? that is, being choosy about with whom one mates - will create more and more genetic inequality. With the genetic elite moving in ever more exclusive circles and losing contact with the rest of society, it is expected that new varieties of human will be created.

Mankind may be divided into two distinct sub-species ? the ?gracile? descendents of a genetic upper class and the ?robust? descendents of a genetic underclass. The genetic ?haves? will be tall, thin, symmetrical, clean, healthy, intelligent and creative. The genetic ?have-nots? will be short, stocky, asymmetrical, grubby, unhealthy and less intelligent.

The Bravo Evolution Report was researched and prepared by Dr Oliver Curry, of the Darwin@LSE research centre at the London School of Economics.

Dr Curry comments: ?The Bravo Evolution Report suggests that the future of man will be a story of the good, the bad and the ugly. While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is the possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other. After that, things could get ugly, with the possible emergence of genetic ?haves? and ?have-nots?.?

Johnny Webb, Director of Programmes at Bravo says, ?The Bravo Evolution report makes fascinating and rather uncomfortable reading, and it is amazing to think that in just one thousand years time away everything will be so different.? [/quote]


However they came up with these theories is baffling. Now 'growing taller' and 'living longer' due to better diet and medical advancement, I can agree with, but how will our immune systems degenerate exactly? I fear they've misunderstood the scientists. Surely they meant that bacteria would get stronger due to adapting to medicine, while our immune system halts adapting to the 'adapting' bacteria due to the medicine doing most of the work? The war between disease and immune systems are hundreds of millons of years old. Bacteria get one step ahead until immune systems catch up, and then take the lead....and around it goes. Thats why history has had times of disease ravaging populations, and then years of calm. It's a cycle that we've started to meddle with after finding the benefits of penicillin. Bacteria are still under pressure to adapt and immunise themselves from our immune systems 'and' medicine. One day, medicine won't be able to keep up, and our immune systems who haven't adapted to bacterial pressures, won't be able to cope.

(I forgot the scientists name now, but when one journalist asked him about the affects of a superior alien race landing on Earth, here told the guy not to worry, as because we've had millions of years dealing with bacteria/viruses attacking body cells every second of our lives, the aliens bodies would be eaten by these organisms within hours of landing!)

Men will apparently have bigger penises, and women, pert breasts. Again, this could only happen if 'small willied' men & 'saggy breasted' women stopped copulating & producing children. Sexual selection may favour big penises or pert breasts, but not to the extent whereby 'big willy' & 'pert breasts' genes dominate the gene pool!

Also guys will be 'chinless wonders' due to thousands of years of consuming proccessed food. I can't see the external pressures upon having a square jaw effect that man passing his 'square jaw' genes on, can you?

Only external pressures that affect an organisms survival, or it's chances of successful copulation will stop certain genes being passed on, and dna is quite a good copy machine! It worries me that people actually read tabloids still....

[Arginald Valleywater]

Today's headlines are tomorrows chip wrappers and Budgie cage carpets!

[diplodocus]

this was also in the times the other week

[Steve R]

Sam Slater wrote:

> My sister came around last week and I remember reading this
> stupid article....


Curious source.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]The mating preferences of the rich, highly educated and well-nourished could ultimately drive their separation into a genetically distinct group that no longer interbreeds with less fortunate human beings, according to Oliver Curry.[/quote]

Aboriginal people hadn't bred with any other human race for over 10,000 years, and yet an Aboriginal woman could easily be impregnated by a white Nordic Finnish guy without any problems, (or vice versa).

Rich guys will always have easy sex with poorer women and thus: this state of affairs is unlikely to occur.

[quote]Dr Curry also said that today?s concept of race would be gone by the year 3000, relationships between people with different skin colours producing a ?coffee-colour? across all populations.[/quote]

Hmmmm............maybe, maybe not. Brazil is very cosmopolitan, with most people being White/Spanish/Black/South American Indian descent, and yet not all Brazilians are one colour. Different races might become closer, but I think genetic mutation will stop just one race appearing.

[quote]Genetic modification, cosmetic surgery and sexual selection ? whereby mate preferences drive evolution ? meant that people would tend to be better-looking than today.[/quote]

What's goodlooking for one generation is average looking for another. From the futures point of view, they'll view themselves as better looking. From our point of view, maybe not.

[quote]Otherwise, humans will look much as they do now, with one exception: Dr Curry also suggested that increased reliance on processed food would make chewing less important, possibly resulting in less developed jaws and shorter chins[/quote]

Complete poppycock! There would have to be some sort of dissadvantage for having a sqaure jaw for lesser developed jaws to overwhelm a gene pool. Though proccessed food may not require the jaw strength our ancestors needed, the genetic make-up of producing people with square jaws has no concept of this, and DNA will keep producing people with square jaws regardless! The only other way is for sexual selection to take a drastic affect where square-jawed males are concidered too ugly to copulate with! We all know, women 'prefer' square jaws! A square jaw can eat proccessed food just as well as a lesser developed jaw. How the scientists came up with proccessed food effecting how our DNA is coded is beyond me. They're obviously thinking in cellular terms, rather than genetic terms, which is like always listening to Mozart backwards and coming to the conclusion he was a shit composer!

[quote]Dr Curry raised the worrying possibility that reliance on technology could erode social skills and even health. As deaths from genetic diseases such as cancer are prevented, the genes themselves might become more common, no longer being ?weeded out? of the gene pool.[/quote]

I agree with this. However they're now thinking in genetic terms which they should have done for the above quotes!

The reason more 50 year olds die of cancer than 5 year olds is that genes that caused the body to develope cancer at an early age never had the chance of entering the gene pool, due to the fact that children with cancer died before being old enough to copulate, so those genes never got passed on, and were slowly weeded out.

[quote]Increased use of medicine as a means of treating disease could lead to the deterioration of the body?s immune system.[/quote]

Wrong. They probably mean, bacteria & viruses will get stronger but our immune sytems aren't adapting because medicine is taking over their work. If doctors had only prescribed penicillin to patients who whould have otherwise died, then many strings of bacteria would still be unable to cope with penicillin. 95% of all bacteria is now immune to penicillin due to doctors prescribing it to people for stupid things like a common cold (which is usually a virus and penicillin has no affect anyway).

Luckily for us, some bacteria consumes certain viruses for dinner, while leaving us alone, while some viruses infect certain bacteria, while aren't threatening to us. Pitching the two against eachother is the way forward or we're all doomed! !wink!

My father still thinks I'm crazy when I tell him germs can catch a virus !laugh!

[diplodocus]

I wouldn't take this article too seriously, look at who it was commissioned by!
they've just asked to put some wild hypotheses together that sound fun, it's not really a scientific article, more a piece of sci-fi

[Sam Slater]

Lol.......I forgot to mention it was her tabloid newspaper. Can't remember which one........