[Jess Kitting]

Here's an evolutionary theory for ya:

Women were originally the tougher sex, mean ugly b!tches who always demanded and got their own way. To demonstrate their superiority, they fought off all potential male suitors. Men were afraid to challenge or even approach them. The women who managed to get pregnant killed their offspring in order to pursue their own selfish goals.

These types of women died off after a generation, lonely, bitter and cold.

Somehow, a few of the more docile, cooperative, family-friendly females managed to survive, reproduce, and nurture their offspring to adulthood. Their legacy and progeny survives to this day, and society owes everything to them.

History has a way of repeating itself. The combative, family-hating females have made a comeback in modern times. Their genes probably won't be here in the next generation, but their anti-family philosophy could prove devastating in the short run.

[huldah1776]

When it’s based on evolution - garbage in, garbage out.

[dhs12345]

Even if a woman can get pregnant at a later age, the fetus has a lot less chance of being viable and without birth defects. A hardship and a stresser even when a woman is young and healthy. So why waste the resources. Why not just close up shop.

[Senator_Blutarski]

Menopause actually lines up pretty well with life expectancy 200 to 300 years ago.

[Pontiac]

What is totally ignored apparently in this theory is not that women can not have children till they die but that woman die.

Other primates mature much more quickly than homo sapiens.

A female gorilla will begin ovulating at 6 years old. Female Homo sapiens begin ovulating at about 12. This is a significant difference.

The point being that there is necessarily a great deal more time invested in bringing the young to maturity in humans. There for an older woman may stop being able to bare children because her chances of bringing that child to maturity (independent survivability) significantly decreases as age advances. Also as age advances the chances of a woman surviving pregnancy decreases.

It could be the excessively long childhood of humans caused the evolution of menopause.

[C19fan]

The study also doesn't account for the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth in older women. That is a huge flaw. Before modern medicine getting pregnant after 40 was a potential death sentence.

[Wuli]

I think they are grasping at straws (or ovariea).

Growing old, functions slowing down, functions losing their vitality seems to be part of the human condition, so why would it not apply to our reproductive system?

Maybe, with equal evidence I would think, that “growing old” in every other sense triggered the evolution to menopause and its infertility, as pregnancy & childbirth have been known for ages to be more of a difficulty for the woman as she ages.

But no, let’s blame men. It’s like blaming Bush I think.

[Trod Upon]

"How do you evolve infertility? It is contrary to the whole notion of natural selection. Natural selection selects for fertility, for reproduction -- not for stopping it," Singh said.

What a crock of Barack. Singh seems to be quite the dingbat. If we're talking about grandmothers helping to rear grandchildren, then late life infertility would be a favored trait if it in fact contributed to greater survival among grandchildren with infertile grandmothers. This is not hard to reason out.

[1010RD]

Menopause has bewildered evolutionary biologists

I've had the chance to speak with 'scientists' about their subjects and consistently the biologists seem dumb as rocks. They 'study' things, but if you ask them their procedure, baselines and how they test they clam up or get defensive. Why is that?

I suspect they are less than scientists and more like parrots. As long as they parrot the party line, which may be government or professor or institution driven, but is most certainly a political process, they get funding and gigs. Any real science would end all that.

When confronted by well informed amateurs who won't toe the party line, they get frustrated. It's why it's so great to be a conservitive in America's North Korea. You're constantly challenged to come up with solid, irrefutable evidence for your theories. Something few scientists face today.

[DCBryan1]

"I'm still fertile! Come and get it boys!"