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Deprive us of natural selection in the form of wolves and bears and snakes and routine starvation-which is another description of "cheating"--and our genome will spread in every direction, regardless of the maladaption resulting.

Codswallop. First of all, having the largest possible genetic diversity is an advantage to any species when disaster strikes. The more directions in which a genome spreads, the more likely it is that some obscure corner of it will contain something to help it live through the trial. Today's "maladaption" is tomorrow's key to survival.

Second, it's ridiculous to believe that because wolves and bears and snakes no longer have us on the menu, we are therefore under no genetic selection pressure. It's just that the pressures have changed. In the past century, the Tasmanians were wiped out, segments of the Bantu, Hottentot and Siamese populations were dealt serious blows from the AIDS epidemic (along with any genes responsible for male homosexuality in the West), and white Caucasians decided to stop replacing their numbers through breeding. I'm sure you can come up with many more examples, besides.

I hasten to demure. You do not suddenly decide one day to stop being a slow-breeding, large social predator, in lockstep with a slow-changing prey environment, and take up work as a fast-breeding bacteria, that gets wiped out in-masse by external events, but makes up in volume of reproduction what it loses in catastropies. Human wombs, and the human 16 year weaning schedule are not able to make the leap--they are stuck in large social predator mode.

Unless, a' la Aldous Huxley, you plan to re-design the human program to be more in keeping with that of the bumblebee or the ant, this dog won't hunt.

And if you do think that's a good option--than my sypathies lie with the volutary human extinction program. Depending on genocide to keep the human genome humming along is sort of outside my palatability zone.

Second, it's ridiculous to believe that because wolves and bears and snakes no longer have us on the menu, we are therefore under no genetic selection pressure. It's just that the pressures have changed. In the past century, the Tasmanians were wiped out, segments of the Bantu, Hottentot and Siamese populations were dealt serious blows from the AIDS epidemic (along with any genes responsible for male homosexuality in the West), and white Caucasians decided to stop replacing their numbers through breeding. I'm sure you can come up with many more examples, besides.

He is right to a point. Physical defects that would otherwise result in death are now compensated for. Bad heart - get a pacemaker. Bad eyes? Surgery. Bad kidney - get a transplant.