Cannot ignore evolution


The opinion page in the Aug. 17 issue of The Acorn offers several contributions worthy of comment.

Ron Adler complains that the weekly crosswords are too hard for him and lays the blame directly on puzzle compilers, while Danielle Loveall has taken up the fight to ban dogs from public places and proposes enforcement of this proscription, presumably by an official Poop Patrol.

As tempting as it is to respond to these suggestions, the prize goes to the editorial cartoon. The young student depicted asks, “If we evolved from something else, how come we haven’t evolved in to something else? Why has it stopped?”

The simple answer, of course, is that evolution has not stopped. The classic example of that is the way in which bacteria continue to evolve a resistance to specific antibiotics.

On the human side, our young “scholar” might ponder how human groups have evolved strategies such as different skin pigmentation and eye color to contend with varied environments. Or how some groups developed a lactose tolerance after the domestication of cattle while others did not.

He might learn how some groups living at higher elevations have an evolved capability to absorb higher oxygen levels into their blood to counter the lower oxygen concentrations at altitude. That’s why runners from the Ethiopian highlands always seem to do so well at marathons

These are only a few examples of how the principles of natural selection (evolution) continue to operate. One simply has to be open to the science to appreciate them.

Phillip Gold
Westlake Village