Women are still evolving, according to article in ScienceDaily 20 October 2009. Stephen Stearns of Yale University and colleagues have analysed data from the Framingham Heart Study, a long term study of human health that has been going for 60 years, and have concluded that human beings are still evolving at a “medium-to-slow rate”. The researchers measured the effects of a number of traits important to human health on the number of children born to women involved in the study and used this to estimate the strength of selection and predict how each trait might evolve in the future. They predict “the descendants of these women will be slightly shorter and heavier, will have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, will have their first child at a younger age, and will reach menopause later in life.” According to Stearns, “The take-home message is that humans are currently evolving. Natural selection is still operating.” He went on to say: “The evolution that’s going on in the Framingham women is like average rates of evolution measured in other plants and animals.”
Editorial Comment: These small changes are unlikely to convince University College of London biology professor, Steve Jones, an evolutionist who believes humans have stopped evolving, and they certainly don’t convince us. Changes in height and weight and birth rate do occur from one generation to the next, but they are not evolution. They are just normal variation of traits already present. When you add their conclusion that “The evolution that’s going on in the Framingham women is like average rates of evolution measured in other plants and animals”, you now know the truth of our claim that evolution has not been observed at all in any kind of living organism – ever! The report is just another example of the overuse of the word “evolution” designed to bluff people into believing that all change is evolution. (Ref. anthropology, physiology, generations)
Evidence News, 28 April 2010