Lactose intolerance is normal, not a disease, according to a report in New Scientist, 19 January 2002.
Lactose intolerance is not an allergy. It is the lack of lactase, an enzyme that digests the sugar lactose contained in milk. Bacteria in the intestines then eat undigested lactose and produce gas and other substances that upset the digestive system. Lactose intolerant people have the gene for lactase but it is turned off early in life. After this they can continue to eat processed dairy products such as cheese and yoghurt, but not fresh milk.
Lactose intolerance is the norm throughout Asia, and in most Africans and southern Europeans. It is only in populations mostly Western European that have a tradition of dairy farming that lactase production persists into adult life. In the vast majority of human beings lactase production ceases soon after weaning. “I find it ironic that a so-called disease actually represents the original condition,” says Leena Peltonen who led the gene study. The gene study supports a theory that all adult humans were once lactose intolerant.
Editorial Comment: It’s nice to see evolutionists catching up with what Creation Research pointed out many years ago in our video The History of Man and in John Mackay’s earlier article “Did Adam Drink Milk?”.
The fact that most of the world’s population cease to digest fresh milk after childhood also fits the Biblical history of diets. Humans were originally designed by God to eat plants (Genesis 1:29-31). There were originally no pregnant cows in the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve to try animal milk. Following Noah’s flood the environment degenerated and plant life declined, mankind needed to eat animal products (Genesis 9:1-6). Some obviously chose to try animal milk even though they were not originally designed to do this as adults. Obviously only those whose systems had degenerated to the point of having a mutated dysfunctional lactase switch succeeded. Which means somewhere there is, or was a price to be paid for adult lactose tolerance. Meaning such milk imbibing societies have negatively selected for the normal lactose genes and may have unwittingly killed off all lactose intolerant normal children over three years of age.
The variation in the ability to digest lactose is also one of many small variations that indicate how closely related the different human ethnic groups are. The widespread distribution of lactose intolerance is good evidence that all human races are descended from the people groups who spread out after the Tower of Babel.
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