Cafe Scientifique May 17, 2005

http://www.cafe-scientifique-brighton.org.uk/

Will modern medicine kill us? Adam Eyre-Walker

Modern medicine and the benign conditions under which we live in the west have relaxed the power of natural selection; this will lead to the accumulation of mutations that will decrease our longevity and fertility. But how fast will this occur? And will it really lead to the degeneration of the human species and our eventual extinction? Big questions, undoubtedly, but questions that Adam will be tacking at this month?s café.

Adam Eyre-Walker is a Reader at the Centre for the Study of Evolution at the University of Sussex. He has studied at the Universities of Nottingham,
Edinburgh and Rutgers, in the USA. His main interests are the rates and fitness effects of mutations, which he studies using statistical analyses of DNA
sequences in a variety of species, including our own.