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Public Lecture: Is Human Evolution Over?CHAST Distinguished Lecture 20096.30pm 5 February, 2009Eastern Avenue Auditorium,Sydney UniversitySpeaker: Professor J. Steve Jones
Professor of Genetics
University College London
Many people are concerned about what the future might bring and, from Thomas More's Utopia of 1516 to the latest science fiction fantasy, they have made lurid models of what may be to come. Evolution is all about understanding the past; but I will argue that we now know so much about our own biological history that it is possible to make some informed guesses about the Darwinian future. Everything we see around us suggests that, at least for the time being and at least in the modern world, the agents that lead to genetic change - mutation, natural selection, and geographic isolation - are losing their ability to do so and that human evolution is more or less over. There is, as a result, no need to worry what Utopia might be like, for we are living in it now. Steve Jones is a distinguished evolutionary researcher and a leading science communicator.
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