"The Origin of Specious Nonsense"

Love takes many forms. Members of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea used to believe that when someone died, their loved ones should eat every bit of the body. The daugthers ate the brain and sometimes fed tidbits to their children (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol 363, p 3721).

This tradition led to the spread of degenerative brain disease called kuru. Like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, it is caused by a rogue prion protein that accumulates in the brain. Kuru killed nearly all the young women in some villages. But a few did not succumb. They were the descendants of a person born around 200 years ago with an unusual mutation in the prion protein that stops it going rogue. As kuru became widespread, the mutation rapidly became more common. Half of the women in the areas most affected now carry the mutation, which has not been found anywhere else in the world. If the tradition of cannibalism had not been stopped in the 1950s, it would have become even more common among the Fore (New England Journal of Medicine, vol 361, p 2056).

The emergence of kuru resistance is one of the clearest examples of very rapid human evolution but it is far from the only one. Around 3000 years ago, the ancestors of the Tibetans split from the population that give rise to the Han people of China. As soon as they began living at altitude, the population began to adapt. While some of the adaptations are a result of living in the mountains - a bit like altitude training in athletes - some are genetic.

One variant in a gene controlling the production of red blood cells, for instance, is found in 78 per cent of Tibetans but just 9 per cent of Han people. And the process has not stopped. "We think the selection process is ongoing," says Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study (Science, vol 329, p 75).

More evidence comes from a study of Tibetan women living above 4000 metres. Those with high-levels of oxygen in the blood had 3.6 surviving children on average, whereas those with low oxygen levels had just 1.6 due to much higher infant mortality. That suggests the genetic variant thought to be responsible for higher blood oxygen levels is being passed on in greater numbers and becoming more common (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 101, p 14300).

liamw wrote: »

But they aren't going from one Kind to another Kind!!! :mad::mad::cool::pac::P:(:rolleyes::):D

J C wrote: »

All of these are examples of pre-existing Human genetic diversity manifesting itself and multiplying itself under selection pressure.
Creation Scientists accept that Natural and Sexual Selection occurs ... its the origin of the genetic diversity that is selected that we disagree Materialists on!!!

J C wrote: »

Inbreeding causes genetic diversity to be eliminated ... but outbreeding and cross breeding maintains genetic diversity and vigour.

J C wrote: »

The original Humans were highly diverse genetically ... inbreeding has only become a problem as the genetic diversity of individuals decline.

J C wrote: »

... but we didn't start out with inbred Humans ... Adam and Eve's genomes contained all of the basic genetic diversity of Mankind.