Are humans evolving in response to their increasing urbanisation?
The world around us is changing at an alarming rate. As pollution rockets, allergies and asthma are on the rise and with the thinning ozone layer, skin cancers soar. Shouldn’t evolution allow us to adapt to these new environmental conditions? Allow our skin to become more resistant to the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation, our lungs to cope with air pollutants and our livers to become better at detoxifying pollutants? The problem is that evolution doesn’t quite work like that. Species evolve through survival of the fittest. Individual with positive characteristics survive to breed and pass their genes on to the next generation. A beneficial trait or characteristic like a detoxifying gene doesn’t spring out of nowhere just because we need it. The traits must be present in the gene pool of a population, that is, some individuals must have that gene already. OK, so there are people that seem to cope better with toxins and disease. Couldn’t we have those genes, please? Well no, beca
