Is evolution still happening in the human race?

Question: Is evolution still happening in the human race?
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Asked by 267catf38 to John, Laura, Luke, Rob, Ruth on 16 Jun 2016.
- Laura Finney answered on 16 Jun 2016:
  
  This is quite difficult to answer since Natural Selection does not happen so much these days. Modern medicine means we can cure many people/keep them alive so they are able to reproduce and pass on their genes, therefore evolution isn’t happening as much in that way anymore like it used to since unfavourable genes can now be passed on. However, we are definitely still developing but I think it must be at a much slower rate due to the reasons above.
- John Fossey answered on 16 Jun 2016:
  
  Evolution happens with every generation of an organism. Some selection pressure or criteria is always applied.
  
  Evolution is a continuum apparent change can be slow but sometimes there can be big pressures on change – such as climate or disease in the food chain, resulting in more rapid dramatic changes.
- Luke Williams answered on 16 Jun 2016:
  
  In a manner of speaking yes. I believe that current thinking is that evolution is occurring, but due to medicine as Laura mentioned, we are reducing the selection pressure in some ways.
  
  Some examples of current evolution are:
  
  1) Drinking milk – a relatively recent event and many around the world are unable to drink milk still because culturally they never drunk it. Most often Asia, for example.
  2) Wisdom teeth – due to our recent invention of knives and forks we have less need for these teeth and so our jaws are getting slightly too small for these teeth.
  3) We are still evolving in pace with diseases, despite medicine. We have the ability to resist diseases today that we would not have done in the past. As long as we continue to be exposed to new diseases, we will gain the ability to resist them. Medicine may help to overcome them, but the body has to have some ability to resist.
  
  Also we still have things from our past that we may well lose over the next years such as the appendix and the coccyx or tailbone.
- Robert Williams answered on 16 Jun 2016:
  
  Evolution is happening to Humans, but we have such short timespans in the grand scheme of things we may not notice it.
  Fossil records have found about 10 distinct ancestors for Humans going back to the dawn of the apes.
- Ruth Patchett answered on 16 Jun 2016:
  
  I’d say a little bit but not much as Laura says modern medicine and technology means that e don’t tend to die out from things we may have before. I have terrible eyesight that I would possibly pass on to my kids if people with bad eyesight died out the populations eyesight would probably be slightly better…I am pretty glad for my sake we don’t though.

Question: Is evolution still happening in the human race?

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