Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Evolving Notions of Personhood and Humanity

Nicholas Wade of the NY Times reports that researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years, providing the strongest evidence yet that humans are still evolving.

Traditional notions of personhood usually require humanity, but if we're still evolving then perhaps we should be considering evolving notions of personhood. Which brings us to another interesting question: should be trying to control our evolution (and, in fact, haven't we already have by so many improvements in medical technology and health care, at least in this country) or should we be letting nature takes its course?

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