The synthesis of the physiological, genetic and population aspects of research led to an update of the methodological base of anthropology, to the rejection of many concepts and traditional views, to new fundamental generalizations, for example, to a change in views on the role of natural selection in human society. This problem went through many stages in its solution and was discussed with extreme urgency, attracting the attention of people far from science. The exceptional progressiveness of Charles Darwin's main work on the origin of man was that he showed the limited role of natural selection in human society and believed that sexual selection played the main role here.
The work of Charles Darwin compared favorably with the previously published books of T. Huxley and K. Vogt, in which the animal origin of man was defended on the basis of Darwinism, but the specifics of the processes of anthropogenesis were not discovered. However, Charles Darwin's cautious approach was not taken up by his followers, primarily E. Haeckel, who believed in the infallibility and universality of Darwin's teaching, but did not take into account the restrictions imposed on humans by society. In reports, articles, and books, he examined the origin of many purely human institutions through the prism of the patterns established by Charles Darwin, and primarily through the prism of natural selection. Innocent in creating concepts that absolutized the role of natural selection in human society. Haeckel, however, gave birth to a whole galaxy of followers who created and propagated social Darwinism.
The fascination with social Darwinism could have been stopped if F. Engels’s work “Dialectics of Nature”, in particular the article “The Role of Labor in the Process of Transformation of Ape into Man”, written in 1873-1876, had been immediately published. The labor theory of anthropogenesis outlined in this chapter was precisely based on limiting biological and emphasizing social patterns in human evolution, primarily labor activity. Natural selection was placed in a subordinate place both in the process of anthropogenesis and in human society in general.
Unfortunately, Engels's work was published 50 years after it was written and therefore could not influence the followers of Social Darwinism. This teaching frightened many with its openly chauvinistic, anti-humanistic orientation, but to one degree or another it was shared by almost all major anthropologists at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. It seemed natural that man, a product of the animal world, should obey all the laws prevailing in this world. True, man gave birth to a culture that animals do not have; culture seems to develop according to its own laws that have nothing to do with natural selection, but such reservations were half-hearted and did not seriously change anything.
The vulgar social Darwinist approach did not satisfy scientists, and against its background a concept was formed according to which the role of natural selection should be limited only to its action on the physical characteristics of man. Since man is basically an animal, his morphology and physiology are determined by natural historical laws, of which selection is the most important. This concept is distinguished by scientific rigor and consistency and has nothing to do with social Darwinism. It is currently shared by all or almost all progressive American and Western European scientists. Naturally, the recognition of the action of selection automatically predetermines the answer to the question about the present and future evolution of man: yes, it is going on now, it will continue to go on in the future, and the modern species of man will give way to another, more progressive species that will be formed on its basis.
Soviet anthropological literature notes that many social factors soften the action of natural selection. On this basis, a concept was formulated according to which selection operates in human society in a weakened form and has lost its formative role. Man, having gone through macroevolution, the formation of a new species, entered the period of microevolution, when changes of a fundamental nature appear only at the population level. Unfortunately, this concept, shared by many Soviet anthropologists and philosophers, was vulgarized in individual philosophical articles in which, with direct disregard for the facts, natural selection in human society was generally denied.
Physiological and genetic observations made it possible to make significant additions to this concept: the selection processes taking place in human society were revealed, and their intensity was shown using specific examples. Processes occur according to the blood groups of the ABO system, whose carriers are resistant or, conversely, prone to various diseases - infectious (plague, smallpox), stomach and duodenal cancer. It is possible that other blood groups also reflect resistance to various diseases. The presence of abnormal hemoglobins in the tropical zone, in particular the so-called hemoglobin S, leads in homozygous form to severe anemia with a fatal outcome in early childhood. In such a situation, the gene for abnormal hemoglobin should quickly disappear, but it is maintained at a fairly high level in its concentration due to the fact that the heterozygote is apparently more resistant to malaria, widespread in tropical areas, than the carrier of normal hemoglobin
This indicates the activity of selection processes in human society, that selection in many cases acts no less intensely than in the animal world. However, selection in humans operates in a different form. Man is practically the only cosmopolitan species inhabiting the entire planet. The natural diversity of his life environment is complemented by an artificial one - the complexity of the social environment that society creates. Under these conditions, the main direction of natural selection, in which its action is carried out in relation to all species of plants and animals, splits into several directions. This means that some morphophysiological feature, useful in some cases, becomes indifferent or even harmful in others. In humans, selection acts not as a catalyst for development, but as a crusher. The stabilizing form of selection, established by I. I. Shmalhausen, is replaced by a dispersing one. Intensive selection in human society ensures and enhances not the biological unity of the human species achieved during previous evolution, but its diversity. And since the living environment of people is extremely unstable, mobile, and the directions of selection are rapidly changing, it does not stimulate the unified evolutionary development of man, does not lead to species restructuring and, therefore, to macroevolution.
The role of biological adaptation in humans is also great. In the study of this problem, modern anthropology is closely linked with medical geography. Adaptive adaptations manifest themselves to many elements of the environment: to elements of dead nature, to the geographical envelope in the narrow sense of the word, and to the biosphere. Climatic and natural zonality is reflected in variations in body size and proportions, pigmentation, and nose width. Populations with such features as dark pigmentation, wide nose, dolichomorphic (elongated) body proportions are concentrated in the tropical zone, while in temperate and cold zones - with the opposite. When comparing the anthropological characteristics of the Eskimos and Fuegians, an attempt was made to prove the existence of bipolar races, such local racial combinations that are similar and formed under the influence of adaptation to the same conditions of one zone in the northern and southern hemispheres.
The adaptive connections of humanity with the biosphere can be divided into two channels - a direct influence on humans and, at the same time, partial transmission through it of the influence of inert nature. The last channel is called the transmission function of the biosphere. The direct formative influence of the biosphere on the human body is visible in many physiological adaptations, in the different immunological resistance of racial types, in the formation of many of their morphological properties, at least partially as a result of adaptation to the nutritional regime. The transmission function of the biosphere is most clearly revealed in the transmission through the biotic factor of a deficiency or excess of microelements, as well as in their concentration within normal limits. The mineral saturation of the skeleton is determined by X-ray photometry and is in close connection with the corresponding concentrations of micro- and macroelements in the natural environment. Through the biotic food factor, these concentrations are reflected in morphogenesis, affecting the growth and size of the head.
These connections demonstrate the dependence of the human body on its living environment, the complexity and diversity of adaptive adaptations to it, and the role of these adaptations in race formation and differentiation of populations. The development of the ecumene by man and his settlement were not a painless process; they were accompanied by a painful restructuring of the body upon contact with new, unaccustomed conditions.
Medical geography, which, together with anthropology, predicts the prospects for settling new and poorly developed areas, is based on the past experience of biological adaptation of mankind, and prevents too much damage that could be caused to the human body by unfamiliar environmental conditions.
On this day:
- 0079 The eruption of Vesuvius destroyed Roman cities Pompeii and Herculaneum.
- Days of death
- 1942 Died Mikhail Vasilievich Talitsky, Soviet archaeologist, discoverer of the site named after M.V. Talitsky.
- 1978 Died Kathleen Kenyon, English specialist in biblical archaeology, researcher of Jericho.
- 1993 Died Vasily Filippovich Kakhovsky- Soviet and Russian historian and archaeologist, researcher of Chuvashia.
The main purpose of man is, with the help of our Imagination, to further expand the Universe, conducting into it the corresponding vibrations or energy that we have developed.
The purpose is both the same for each soul and different. The difference is in exactly how Imagination is realized in the world: someone draws, someone designs, someone builds, sings, cooks, teaches children, cares for animals, etc. The main goal of a person is to be needed by people! The meaning of life for each of us is to turn our entire life, every moment of it, into a unique act of creativity! After all, in each of us there is a piece of the Creator himself, therefore we are essentially co-creators, and not servants of God.
You need to fill your every day with Imagination - be it cleaning the house, washing dishes, peeling potatoes, traveling in public transport, talking with others, etc., through all this you can increase and expand the Divine essence. The main thing is to create everything with your soul and in any business you must go from creation, not from destruction!
Any human action must be spiritualized, that is, it must be based on spiritual and moral principles, and not evil! The greatest goal of life is to live every moment not automatically, half asleep, but with Imagination, with love for what you do!
In this way, we will begin to repay our debt to the world. After all, as much as we took from life, we must return the same amount in the form of physical or intellectual labor, otherwise our behavior will be subject to correction through various diseases, troubles and misfortunes.
Any event that happens to us is a sign! Therefore, we must always stop and try to comprehend what is happening to us, because there are no accidents in life.
The main test of our wrong behavior or action is the observed inhibition in the implementation of our goals and plans. At this time, Nature itself seems to give us a pause to understand that we are going in the wrong direction and doing the wrong thing!
You need to understand and realize the possible reasons for your failures. If this continues, then the natural principles of natural selection of biological species are activated, and, due to various circumstances, a person finds himself on the side of the road of life, ending it as a degenerate homeless person, a drunkard, a drug addict, a chronic loser and suicide!
A person goes through three stages of development in his life:
Animal stage;
The stage of a rational animal, when in its life it is guided by natural instincts;
And the stage of man himself, when he consciously continues his development.
A person who is not motivated to develop is subject to slow extinction! He becomes unable to fulfill his mission on Earth, and therefore leaves as unnecessary.
The change in value orientation after the collapse of the USSR led to the fact that money began to play a dominant role in people’s lives, rather than spiritual and moral principles, which represent the basis for the development of all human civilization on Earth. Today we do not have a single law defining the principles of spiritual and moral development of man and society. All laws are aimed only at satisfying the needs of the body and there is not a single law concerning the human soul. And this cannot develop in our youth the proper respect for their parents and older people. There is a good folk wisdom: “Whoever does not honor his parents and elders does not walk in goodness!” Since young people cannot imagine themselves in old age, they automatically program themselves for a short-term life, which is why they do not live to old age, but die young. There's a lot to think about here!
Today, the majority of our population lives only by instincts of self-preservation, stuck in its development at the stage of a “reasonable animal”, not reaching the actual human being. So what do we want from each other - what feelings, what justice, what love and what kind of human relationships? After all, under capitalism, “Man is a wolf to man!” We were taught this in Soviet school!
A person must have a long-term goal in life, divided into stages, in order to achieve which he must realize himself more fully and be in demand by people. Since the goal is energetically secured “from above,” a person is given certain strengths and opportunities for its subsequent implementation. For successful step-by-step implementation of a goal, a person determines what he lacks for this: what knowledge, abilities, skills, professionalism, etc., striving to acquire and master all this. The Universe will always help him in this, it is only necessary that the person’s thoughts be pure.
Currently, there is an unfavorable economic situation in the country, and in the world as a whole. People lose their minds, their jobs, they begin to behave inappropriately, the space is saturated with human aggression, manifested in various forms. There is a formation of resonance of social evil due to the social disorder of people. People who, due to various circumstances, are thrown to the margins of society today are ready material for protests.
To survive in such conditions, you must try to develop strong-willed qualities, the ability to flexibly adapt to a rapidly changing environment, and this cannot be learned while sitting at a computer. You need to gain life experience, as well as practice real, not virtual, communication with people, not shy away from any work, but consider all this as a kind of training for your endurance and gaining experience. You must approach any work with soul, develop your personal and business qualities, otherwise you will fall under the millstone of natural selection. We must learn to structure ourselves from the inside and accustom ourselves to order in everything! After all, “God helps those who strive for order!” - so says popular wisdom.
It’s high time we realized that no one but ourselves can solve our problems for us! If you don’t have your own brains, then you can’t add someone else’s! Such people simply do not have an inner core, and over time, if they do not work on themselves, they will fall under natural culling.
And it’s good if such people have their own corner and those who can support them in old age? Otherwise, there is only one road - to where souls rest.
No need to be lazy today! Just think about it now - what will you live on in old age? Pull yourself together and go ahead! Acquire new specialties, take care of your health, because no one needs you in our hospitals! Seek and you will find! And everyone will be rewarded according to his deeds - this seems to be written in the Gospel.
Compiled by B. Ratnikov
Natural selection increases the chances of survival and continuation of the entire species; it is on the same level as mutations, migrations and transformations in genes. The basic mechanism of evolution operates flawlessly, but on condition that no one interferes with its work.
What is natural selection?
The meaning of this term was given by the English scientist Charles Darwin. He established that natural selection is a process that determines the survival and reproduction of only individuals adapted to environmental conditions. According to Darwin's theory, random hereditary changes play the most important role in evolution.
- recombination of genotypes;
- mutations and their combinations.
Natural selection in humans
In times of underdeveloped medicine and other sciences, only a person with a strong immune system and a stable healthy body survived. They did not know how to care for premature newborn babies, they did not use antibiotics in treatment, they did not perform operations, and they had to cope with their illnesses on their own. Natural selection among people selected the strongest representatives of humanity for further reproduction.
In the civilized world, it is not customary to have numerous offspring and in most families there are no more than two children, who, thanks to modern living conditions and medicine, may well live to a ripe old age. Previously, families had 12 or more children, and no more than four survived under favorable conditions. Natural selection in humans has led to the fact that for the most part, hardened, exceptionally healthy and strong people survived. Thanks to their gene pool, humanity still lives on earth.
Reasons for natural selection
All life on earth developed gradually, from the simplest organisms to the most complex. Representatives of certain forms of life that were unable to adapt to the environment did not survive and did not reproduce; their genes were not passed on to subsequent generations. The role of natural selection in evolution has led to the emergence of the ability at the cellular level to adapt to the environment and quickly respond to its changes. The causes of natural selection are influenced by a number of simple factors:
- Natural selection works when more offspring are produced than can survive.
- There is hereditary variability in the genes of an organism.
- Genetic differences dictate survival and reproductive ability in different environments.
Signs of natural selection
The evolution of any living organism is the creativity of nature itself and is not her whim, but a necessity. Operating in different environmental conditions, it is not difficult to guess what traits natural selection preserves; all of them are aimed at the evolution of the species, increasing its resistance to external influences:
- The selecting factor plays an important role. If in artificial selection a person chooses which characteristics of a species to preserve and which not (for example, when breeding a new breed of dog), then with natural selection the strongest wins in the struggle for its existence.
- Material for selection are hereditary changes, the signs of which can help in adaptation to new living conditions or for specific purposes.
- The result is another stage of natural selection, as a result of which new species with characteristics that are beneficial in certain environmental conditions were formed.
- Speed of action - Mother Nature is in no hurry, she thinks about every step, and therefore natural selection is characterized by a low rate of change, while artificial selection is characterized by a fast rate.
What is the result of natural selection?
All organisms have their own degree of adaptability and it is impossible to say with certainty how a particular species will behave in unfamiliar environmental conditions. The struggle for survival and hereditary variability are the essence of natural selection. There are many examples of plants and animals that were brought from other continents, and which have taken root better in new living conditions. The result of natural selection is a whole set of acquired changes.
- adaptation - adaptation to new conditions;
- variety of forms of organisms - arise from a common ancestor;
- evolutionary progress – increasing complexity of species.
How does natural selection differ from artificial selection?
It is safe to say that almost everything that is consumed by humans has sooner or later been subjected to artificial selection. The only fundamental difference is that when conducting “his” selection, a person pursues his own benefit. Thanks to selection, he obtained selected products and developed new breeds of animals. Natural selection is not oriented toward the benefit of humanity; it pursues only the interests of this particular organism.
Natural and artificial selection equally influence the lives of all people. They fight for the life of a premature baby, just like for the life of a healthy one, but at the same time, natural selection kills drunkards frozen to death on the streets, fatal diseases take the lives of ordinary people, mentally unstable people commit suicide, natural disasters strike the earth.
Types of natural selection
Why are only certain representatives of species able to survive in different environmental conditions? Forms of natural selection are not written rules of nature:
- Driving selection occurs when environmental conditions change and species have to adapt; it preserves the genetic heritage in certain directions.
- Stabilizing selection is aimed at individuals with deviations from the average statistical norm in favor of average individuals of the same species.
- Disruptive selection is when individuals with extreme indicators survive, and not with average ones. As a result of such selection, two new species can be formed at once. More often found in plants.
- Sexual selection is based on reproduction, when the key role is played not by the ability to survive, but by attractiveness. Females, without thinking about the reasons for their behavior, choose beautiful, bright males.
Why is man able to weaken the influence of natural selection?
Progress in medicine has stepped far forward. People who were supposed to die survive, develop, and have their own children. By passing on their genetics to them, they give birth to a weak race. Natural selection and the struggle for existence collide hourly. Nature comes up with more and more sophisticated ways to control people, and humans try to keep up with it, thereby preventing natural selection. Human humanitarianism leads to weak-looking people.
Scientists have long debated whether natural selection acts on humans. In order for evolution to continue, it is necessary, firstly, to experience environmental pressure, and secondly, to produce enough offspring - so that evolution has plenty to choose from.
The biological evolution of humanity has not ended. Despite the technical achievements of civilization and the almost complete victory of monogamy, we, like other higher animals, continue to evolve under the influence of natural and sexual selection, European biologists state.
Among biologists, as well as sociologists and evolutionary psychologists who study the behavior of Homo sapiens over long periods of time, one can find diametrically opposed opinions about whether natural selection continues to operate in the modern human population - a random and undirected process of selection of traits leading to the survival of individuals, the most adapted to given environmental conditions.
Some believe that with the onset of the Holocene era, the transition to a stable productive economy and a monogamous family, that is, the last approximately 10 thousand years, the action of natural selection came to naught and the biological evolution of man stopped, giving way to social, cultural, and in the future, as they believe supporters of the theory of technological singularity, and purely informational ultra-fast evolution with the transfer of consciousness to non-biological media.
Others believe that productive economy, monogamy and non-genetic transmission of information to descendants do not in any way abolish natural and sexual selection and people continue to evolve biologically along with other organisms.
Although the natural mechanism of selection has been well studied in animals, the process of natural selection in the modern human population is comically poorly understood.
The fact that the most evolutionarily successful species of mammals has somehow fallen out of sight of biologists studying natural selection is partly explained by the difficulty in collecting statistics. But this statistics is enough to follow the evolution of a territorially isolated group of people over a fairly large period of time, covering many generations (compared to most mammals, humans are a real long-liver, which greatly lengthens the observation period, if, of course, they are carried out in real time).
However, the ideological dogma that removes sapiens, who are able to transmit information non-genetically, from the influence of selection, has also worked here, although its reputation has recently been greatly shaken.
Thus, there is more and more evidence that some animals (monkeys, whales, dolphins) also know how to transmit information to their descendants through social learning, or memes. An interesting conclusion follows from this that the flourishing and dominance of our sapiens culture is associated with the gradual selection of more effective ways of accumulating and transmitting memes than other higher animals, despite the fact that the very nature of this phenomenon is non-genetic transfer of information - in higher animals and in person is the same.
At the same time that the phenomenon of "culture" began to be considered more broadly, ceasing to be the exclusive monopoly of Homo sapiens, biologists finally began to study the question of whether natural selection, this undisputed "monopoly of animals", continued to operate within the human population after the Neolithic revolution, when humanity passed from a “wild” appropriating economy to a “cultural” producing and accumulating economy, which gave rise to modern technological civilization with its developed infosphere.
The results of one such study, carried out by Finnish biologists together with their colleagues from the University of Sheffield (UK), published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To find out whether the effect of natural and sexual selection on the human population decreased as a result of demographic, cultural and technological innovations caused by the Neolithic revolution, the authors of the article analyzed data from parish books, where records were made about the baptism, wedding, death and property status of 5923 men, women and children - residents of several Finnish villages, born between 1760 and 1849.
Using these data, the researchers tried to find out whether the process of natural selection had an impact on the life cycle of these individuals and their descendants, covering four key (for assessing the action of selection) points: reaching reproductive age (survival to adulthood), access to choice of a marriage partner ( access), successful selection of a marriage partner (mating success) and fertility level.
For each of the nearly 6 thousand Finns, the main milestones of whose lives were dispassionately recorded in the books of four Lutheran parishes, these positions were realized in different ways.
Some did not live to adulthood, some did, but remained stubby, and some, having acquired a dozen offspring, turned out to be more successful in passing on their genes to the next generations than the one who acquired two, or the one who got married, but died without heirs.
All of these milestones mark different levels of reproductive success—the ability of individuals to pass on their genes to offspring.
As the analysis showed, in this group of people living in four compact territories in pre-industrial Finland (in the villages of Hyttinen, Kustavi, Rymaattylaa and the island of Ikaalinen), the same natural selection of characteristics that allowed some individuals to go through this cycle occurred as in animal populations more successfully than other tribesmen.
Neither strict monogamy, nor the possession of cultural skills, nor property and social inequality had any influence on this process - it proceeded exactly the same as in the wild among animals.
Thus, despite monogamy, which prohibits changing mates, the reproductive success of men varied over a wider range than that of women, in full accordance with the rule of sexual selection, according to which females carrying b O greater reproductive risks, subject to less evolutionary variability than males. Ultimately, in accordance with the main principle of natural selection, the most successful members of the study group were those who managed to live longer and become more fertile, that is, managed to pass on their genes to the greatest number of descendants, who, in turn, were distinguished by greater vitality and greater fertility than their fellow countrymen from the same generation.
Interestingly, the level of “socio-cultural efficiency” (the difference in property and social status) had no effect on the natural evolutionary filter of biologically more successful individuals: regardless of whether they were landowners controlling vital resources or tenants, the filter of natural selection worked in the same way, cutting off those who are biologically less adapted, regardless of how much “non-genetic” information (skills, property, social role) they possessed.
Moreover, the natural selection of fitter Finns turned out to be statistically more pronounced than previously measured by American researchers studying data on early settlers in the Wild West and several isolated coastal villages of the northeastern United States.
This suggests that the action of natural selection in the human population is universal and does not depend on geographical, cultural and economic factors.
“We have shown that cultural advances have not changed the fact that our species continued to evolve into the Holocene, like all other creatures living “in the wild.” The point of view that human biological evolution took place once upon a time, during the era of hunter-gatherers, and has now ended, is a common misconception,” sums up biologist Virpi Lummaa, who led the study.
“We showed that natural selection took place in a group of people who lived relatively recently, and, most likely, it continues to this day,” adds Lummaa.
Despite the fact that over the past 200 years the standard of living has increased, and a real revolution has taken place in medicine, reducing infant mortality and female mortality during childbirth, technological advances and a different quality of life do not change the fact that people are preserved as a species thanks to a biological mechanism that arose long before the emergence of civilization. It is possible that information transmitted non-genetically influences the process of natural selection of the fittest, but the extent of this influence (vanishingly small, according to this study, which dealt with pre-industrial society) remains to be established.
Be that as it may, the non-genetic transfer of cultural memes of the essence of biological processes does not change, therefore the spontaneous biological evolution of Homo sapiens, like all other animals, continues, and we cannot predict its course in any way: natural selection is a blind uncontrolled process, absolutely indifferent to someone's wishes, claims and beliefs.
Ekaterina Anufrieva about why the health of humanity is deteriorating and whether there are humane ways to get out of the situation
At the dawn of civilization, physically weak individuals did not survive. Humanity has evolved thanks to the action of natural selection, which formed a healthy population adapted to environmental conditions. Life expectancy was short, but sufficient to leave offspring. In the last two centuries, the progress of medicine has changed things significantly. Many diseases have ceased to be fatal, and life expectancy has increased. There is no doubt that we are acting humanely and ethically by keeping unhealthy members of society alive through modern treatment methods. But doesn't this lead to the genetic degradation of humanity and gradual extinction? Let's figure it out.
Balance of power
Sergey Konstantinovich Bogolepov
psychotherapist, former cardiac resuscitator, Novosibirsk
Modern society has no choice — to save or not to save children with congenital heart disease, if possible. Whether this is good or bad for future generations is an ambiguous question. A weighty argument for salvation: these children can grow up to be talented, wonderful, grateful people who will benefit greater than the possible costs to society from giving birth to the same disadvantaged children.
Currently, a philosophical doctrine has become widespread, from whose adherents we often hear that in connection with social progress and the development of medicine, natural selection in human society has almost ceased. Adherents of this concept avoid antibiotics and do not vaccinate their children.
Charles Darwin defined natural selection as the basic evolutionary process by which the number of individuals with beneficial individual variations increases in a population and the number of those with harmful individual variations decreases. The fittest survive and pass on their genes to their descendants.
Geneticists will object: there will always be selection, if only because it begins to act already during the formation of germ cells, rejecting gametes with meiosis disorders, anomalies of the chromosome set and genetic damage. Next comes selection for the viability and mobility of sperm, for their survival in the reproductive tract of the female body, and for the ability of a fertilized egg to implant. Rejection of an implanted embryo in the early stages of pregnancy, fetal death, and stillbirths still remain selection factors in human society.
Having subjugated the environment and gotten rid of many diseases, people nevertheless have not created and are unlikely to be able to create an environment in which none of the selection mechanisms would operate.
Vladimir Nikolaevich Maksimov
Doctor of Medicine, Head Laboratory of Molecular Genetic Research of Therapeutic Diseases, Federal State Budgetary Institution "Research Institute of Therapy and Preventive Medicine", Novosibirsk
Undoubtedly, there will be more and more genetic diseases, especially autosomal recessive ones, in the next generations. A striking example is phenylketonuria. Previously, homozygotes did not leave offspring because they grew up with severe mental retardation. But now, early diagnosis and diet allow children with phenylketonuria to develop completely normally and have heterozygous children. This will gradually lead to an increase in the frequency of heterozygotes in the population, and, accordingly, an increase in the likelihood of meeting spouses who carry mutations. Science constantly sets itself new problems and solves them. This is fine. I think we will learn to live in a world with common genetic pathology.
About 20% of marriages do not produce children due to male and female infertility and other reasons. Some families deliberately refuse to have children, so genes associated with underdeveloped parental instincts will not be passed on.
But we can still conclude that natural selection, as the main and guiding force, today is sharply weakening its effect on the human population and ceases to be the only evolutionary factor.
Medicine measures its strength against the laws of nature.
After us there might be a flood
Advances in modern medicine are encouraging, but what are the possible genetic consequences of this? It turns out that many young people — those who would have died without high-tech medicine — are now able to pass on their genes to future generations. And with each generation, the burden of genetic defects will increase. And the more drugs are created, the more advanced medical technology and operational approaches, the heavier this burden will be.
In the process of speciation, natural selection transforms random individual variation into biologically useful population variation. The stabilizing form of selection preserves successful combinations of alleles from previous stages of evolution. Selection also maintains the state of genetic polymorphism
A clear example is the statistics on the inheritance of congenital heart defects (CHD). Thus, with monogenic defects (this is a small part of all congenital heart defects, 8 %), the risk of inheritance is 50 % for the autosomal dominant type and 25 % for the autosomal recessive type.
With other types of inheritance, the risk is much less — from 0 to 22 %. If both parents of the unborn child have a congenital heart defect, the risk of congenital heart disease increases approximately threefold. Congenital heart defects in genetic diseases do not develop in isolation, but in combination with damage to other organs and systems, but often it is the severity of damage to the cardiovascular system and its timely correction that determine the survival of patients.
It turns out that successful surgical treatment of congenital heart disease leads in the next generation to a slow increase in the percentage of people in need of serious medical treatment. Thus, the progress of medicine negatively affects the state of the gene pool of humanity. That is why there is a scientific worldview, whose supporters advocate the need for artificial selection, the methods of which may seem inhumane.
Artificial instead of natural
Homo sapiens is a very young link in the chain of evolution, but it is the only species that can influence the course of natural selection.
American scientist John Glad, an adherent of eugenics, wrote in his book “The Future Evolution of Man. Eugenics of the XXI century":
“Very soon, society will no longer be able to avoid the real choice that will face humanity - either to maintain the policy of permissiveness in the war against natural selection, or to manage it by applying the principles of eugenics. The alternative here is the gradual degeneration of the species. And here the task of those responsible is to consider humanity not just as a collection of people living on the planet, but as a community of all people who will ever be born.”
Humanity, according to Glad, can use modern medicine to create a new, more humane selection—positive eugenics, which aims to increase fertility among those endowed with genetic advantages, for example, through financial incentives, targeted demographic tests, in vitro fertilization, egg transplants.
The scientist brings us back to thoughts about eugenics and substantiates the need for artificial selection in the human population. In the words of the “father” of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton: “What nature does blindly, slowly and pitilessly, man can do cautiously, quickly and humanely.”
Eugenics in our lives
For reference
John Glad(December 31, 1941–December 4, 2015), professor of Russian language and literature at several US universities, recognized author of translations of Aksenov, Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn and others. Director of the Kennan Institute for Russian Studies (1982–1983), political translator and, to a lesser extent, analyst. He also studied the problems of eugenics, the author of the book “The Future Evolution of Man. Eugenics of the XXI century".
Adrien Ash(09/17/1946–11/19/2013), bioethicist, founder and director of the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University of New York. She became blind at birth due to retinopathy of prematurity. She studied social psychology and fought for human rights.
Martin Seligman(born 08/12/1942), professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of positive psychology, which studies the character traits and behavioral characteristics of satisfied people.
The desire to have healthy children today entails the voluntary use of eugenic measures. People can consciously avoid having children with certain genetic disorders. Pronatalist countries (those that want to increase the birth rate) already practice positive eugenics in moderate forms. For example, by the mid-1990s, there were four times as many maternity hospitals per capita in Israel as in the United States that subsidized artificial insemination, donor eggs, and in vitro fertilization.
We need to accept our place in the physical world as biological beings. In order to survive as a species, we have no choice but to agree to subordinate our interests to those of future generations and begin to regulate births.
John Glad, The Future of Human Evolution. Eugenics of the XXI century"
In addition, in Israel there is an organization that advises those wishing to enter into legal marriage. If both a man and a woman carry the gene for Tay-Sachs disease, which is unique to Jews and causes the painful death of a child during the first five years of life, they try to dissuade the couple from getting married.
A modern way to identify negative properties of an embryo is genetic screening of the fetus, including pre-implantation diagnostics, which is still in its infancy. For example, more than 90% of women in Europe have an abortion after learning that the child is likely to have Down syndrome.
Proactive steps
Probably, humanity burdened with a genetic burden will be saved by the rapid development of a qualitatively new branch of science - molecular medicine, with its individual approach to the patient depending on genetic uniqueness. Molecular medicine will also make it possible to begin prevention and treatment before a developed picture of the pathological process appears.
Genetic testing allows not only to identify individuals at increased risk of many multifactorial diseases, but also to optimize their treatment strategy. A striking example is the possibility of preventive removal of mammary gland tissue when “oncomutations” are detected in the BRCA1, BRCA2 genes.
Thus, progressive discoveries in medicine create favorable conditions for the existence of the Earth's population, despite the leveling of the influence of natural selection.
Bioethics and humanism
Eugenics is opposed by humanists. Thus, bioethicist Adrienne Asch opposed prenatal testing and related abortions, based on the belief that life is still worth living with disabilities, as well as the belief that any just society must value and protect the lives of all people, regardless depends on what genes they were given in the lottery of nature, because diseases are part of the diversity of the human race.
Humanists are convinced that any human life is of great value. The capabilities of modern medicine, which save the previously hopeless, are necessary for the prosperity of society. Countries where natural selection is raging, that is, where medical care is inaccessible or limited, are the poorest countries in the world, probably with a good genetic fund. But what is the use of genetic well-being with such a low standard of living? Perhaps humanism itself took hold among Homo sapiens thanks to evolution, and we are on the right path. For example, in prosperous Japan, according to our expert Vladimir Maksimov, the approach to prenatal screenings is radically different from the European one: they are carried out quite rarely. The Land of the Rising Sun has chosen a different policy, humane towards unborn children: we will raise everyone who is born.
Perhaps we need to agree with the statement of the American psychologist Martin Seligman that the health of an individual and, as a consequence, society as a whole, directly depends on the environment, in particular, on whether he has to wage a fierce struggle for his existence and resist natural selection . And only in a society where natural selection has been replaced by social selection, a healthy environment favorable for the mental and emotional health of people is created.
Having considered the pros and cons of the eugenic and humanistic approaches, we must recognize that the genetic potential of humanity will decrease. Society’s humane attitude towards people with genetic disorders will not solve this problem, but it will strengthen society in a good sense, making it “accepting” and comfortable for people to live regardless of medical criteria. Well, the role of medicine and doctors in society will only increase. Are we getting ready?
