Brett,
About the IQ tests, I'm not sure that they're correct or represent the whole of our species, not only because I've heard that they don't accurately represent intelligence, but because only a minority of people in a small part of the world have taken them. There's a lot more humanity out there, in Africa and Asia (and Australia heheh
) that haven't acquired the same access to western medicine as we people in the west have.
But there are significantly noticeably effects
of western medicine itself. For one, I believe that at the turn of the century there was a major population explosion all around the world, because people usually gave birth to large families of 10-12 children. They did this to ensure their families' survival, to combat various diseases and the etc. When medicine arrived, suddenly everyone was surviving the plagues and epidemics that would ravish the world. I'm not condeming modern medicine in any way, we're only experiencing a temporary problem with the explosion of humans, it won't be long before we leave our cradle and head for the stars.
But back to the subject at hand.
Are humans still evolving?
Yes, I'd say that they are, but evolution itself, without genetic manipulation (of which we're starting to dab in) takes millions of years to "be noticeable," that is, larger or smaller organs, different bone structure, you get the idea. We've only had the idea of evolution around for a little over a century (I think?), that's 1/100 of the blink of the eye in evolutionary terms. It doesn't really matter though, give it a few decades before people are augmenting their bodies with technology beyond our wildest dreams.
BTW paulsamuel,
I watched a special on hermaphrodites in my Bio class a few days ago (we're going through early devolopment) that had been taped on PBS, it was about this "craze" in the fifties or sixties started by a man who I think was called Doctor Money...or something similar. Anyway, one of your colleagues at the University of Hawaii (I'm assuming), a Martin Diamond I think, immediately went against what this guy was saying, that boys who had lost their testicles could be raised as girls and then develop female organs with the proper hormones and family support. Eventually Money was disproved by Diamond.
So just on the off-chance that you two know each other, tell him I say Hi.