Are we still EVOLVING??

I think YES! We are still evolving!!

But then it's NOT in the purest Darwinian form- The Survival of the Fittest!

WE are indeed transferring our genes of better qualities and efficiency to the future generations but, as opposed to what would have been the Natural Selection in true sense, not losing the genes for weaknesses or traits usually are detrimental for our survival!
For example, Myopia- a condition which renders individual a poor hunter because one is unable to sight the hunt from a distance... and had we been living like our great ancestors of pre-historic era used to live i.e. 'Naturally', the gene for myopia must have got extinct from the population... but again how much 'natural' are we!! We have visual aids and that make surviving with such a trait possible! Plus we have a well developed society and food security etc which also play as confounding in Natural Selection process!

Scientists have predicted that in another 10 generations our systolic BP is going to fall from current baseline by 1.9%, avg. age at menopause is going to increase by 1.7%, avg age of bearing the first child is going to come down by 1.6%, serum cholesterol level's gonna come down by 3.6%, height gonna decrease by 1.3% of current baseline.... that's too much of scientific blah-blah... Here is some thing from our day today life...

I myself have experienced such things in day to day life: 

First, since I started my journey as an MBBS student, I have read it several times- the developmental mile stones of children...  gross motor skills, fine motor skills etc... Almost all books says at 4 years of age child can copy a square and at age 5 copies triangle... My cousin's daughter is 3 years 4 months old and she can copy them both! She is also defying the Goodenough-Harris Drawing test.. in which a child is asked to draw a person and points are given for each body parts drawn with pairs (e.g. legs, hands, ears eyes etc...) Book says at the avg age of 4 years 9 months child draws person with 3 pairs... and she drew it few days back when I asked her to draw her father! Three pairs in her drawing were hands ears and eyes... and the image certainly had a combined head and a torso, a pair of hands, face with eyes ears nose and mouth! (though the proportion of different parts were not very good in fact it was more like a 'humpty-dumpty' like thing, but I was able to make out what it was!) She didn't drew legs but when I asked where is papa's leg in the image she looked at it and then laughed and then drew two slanting away lines from the lower end of torso!! I was amazed! but what amazed me more was there were many similar kids in the locality (where I am living these days) who have achieved the milestones of development quite earlier... though the no. of observation is too small to comment any thing... but still, has the time come to revise those books??

Second, answer me this: How many instances till today, do you recall when you heard that a dropper has topped certain exam?? I bet, all your efforts are going to be in vain... So, why does it is so that 99.9% of time its a fresher who tops an entrance exam??

When I was leaving college recently, one of my senior advised me to go for the PG entrances soon and what he told me I find it coincidently rhyming with whatever I am trying to say in this post so far... He plainly said, "...newer batches are becoming more intelligent, when we came we were ahead than our seniors, you are ahead than us and trust me 2 years juniors than you are going to be way ahead than you!" So, competition is going to get tougher and tougher as time passes...

What explains all these? I guess its the Evolution, in one way or the other...!!
What else it could be??

Dr. Virat Kuntalam @viraat_k on twitter.
MBBS, IGMC, Shimla

(+91) 999-022-7677

dr.viraat@gmail.com


Click Here for My other Blog Posts!

Wanna say something to me anonymously CLICK HERE