Getting Evolution Up To Speed

Getting Evolution Up To Speed.

New evidence suggests humans are evolving more rapidly -- and more recently -- than most people thought possible. But for some radical evolutionists, Homo sapiens isn't morphing quickly enough.

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Some radical thinkers suggest human evolution needs to move even faster, with a little help from science.

"Biological evolution is too slow for the human species," said Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near. "Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust."

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Trans-humanist pundit James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg, thinks it's time to speed up the evolutionary process.

"You can take what nature gave you, but there's no good reason to take nature as a guide for where you should go in the future," Hughes said.

"People are comforted by the slow pace of biological evolution," said Kurzweil. He predicted that "genetic reprogramming" will soon lead to "dramatic evolutionary changes."

The biotech era is slated for the 2010-2020 timeframe. In that decade, we will likely use drugs to mimic a genetic modification and see how we like the results. Cutting edge technologies such as RNA Interference will help in making that come to pass.

If the mimicked modification works out well, many of us will probably choose to make the genetic modification permanent.

By modifying our genetics, we can solve such things as obesity and baldness. It can be used to make us predisposed to growing muscle tissue. And with any luck, we could all get the genetics to digest anything extremely well, rendering us less susceptible to the negative side effects of things we like to eat and drink.

We could even become super-regenerative.

Our health, our looks and the overall quality of our lives are likely to increase a great deal in the coming years because of gene-mod technology.