Saturday, December 20, 2008

Natural selection usurped.

Today, while Christmas shopping in Jeff City I stood in line behind a woman and her son(obvious physical resemblance). I could not help but notice her impossibly narrow hips and wonder how on earth she manged to give birth. Then it occurred to me that she'd likely had a c-section. Then, whiling away my time in queue, my mind wandered about a bit thinking how she likely would've died in childbirth had she lived in the not-too-distant past. But she didn't, and now she is passing on the small-pelvis gene to who knows how many future descendants, who'll all have to give birth by c-section or die...

As my mind wandered further it occurred to me that all sorts of other modern medical advances have enabled less-than-the-fittest of our species to survive to propagate more less-than-the-fittest offspring. We are screwing with natural selection without realizing it. (Maybe other people realize it, but it is just now dawning on me) What is our civilization going to be like in a few more generations? What happens if we are suddenly forced to survive without modern conveniences and medicines? Will the homo-sapien bloodline be so watered down that none will survive? Surely not. Surely there will be some hardy enough to carry on. I hope.