Dear Science: Isn’t being lactose tolerant after a certain age great supporting evidence of recent evolution in human beings?
To start, I became lactose intolerant many years ago and it was a very difficult transition as I live in a society where dairy products are primarily all the popular foods that I like to eat. Like ice cream. Imagine being at a birthday party faced with delicious looking ice cream cake while young with no magical lactase pills.
As I got older, I found out that a great deal of the world population is lactose intolerant after a certain age. I learned that most cultures that have very low dairy consumption are predominately lactose intolerant while those that, even recently, consume more dairy products become lactose tolerant.
The science of this is that there is a mutation on chromosome 2 gene which eliminates the shutdown in lactase production after the suckling years. While I found this out years ago to help me accept my inferior ability to handle that spicy milk, I always wondered about actual statistics regarding people by region. I found this on Wikipedia to be of interest.
An anecdote here involves my Native American friend mocking me for becoming lactose intolerant only for him to become lactose intolerant after several months of joking about my condition.
After a little thought, isn't lactose tolerance a simple explanation for people regarding recent evolutionary proof in human beings? Why is it that this is never brought up in debates or arguments with those that choose to fail to grasp the idea or ignore evolution? Is this not a stopper in support for evolution during those ridiculous debates?
Mom Gets Trachea Grown From Own Stem Cells
This is quite a breakthrough for the fight for stem cell research. Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world's first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant - using a windpipe made with the patient's own stem cells. A woman was given a trachea that was developed using her very own stem cells. This trachea is rejection proof. It developed its own blood supply a month after the operation.
To those that are against stem cell research for blind religious convictions: the next time you need a 100% chance of not failing life saving transplant, try praying in a church instead of seeing a qualified physician. We'll see if your god delivers.
