Human intelligence slowly declining, says leading geneticist
Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber? Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years, some ‘experts’ believe that humans are losing cognitive capabilities and becoming more emotionally unstable. One Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our intellectual decline as a race has much to do with adverse genetic mutations. But there is more to it than that.
According to Crabtree, our cognitive and emotional capabilities are fueled and determined by the combined effort of thousands of genes. If a mutation occurred in any of of these genes, which is quite likely, then intelligence or emotional stability can be negatively impacted.
“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues,” the geneticist began his article in the scientific journal Trends in Genetics.
Further, the geneticist explains that people with specific adverse genetic mutations are more likely than ever to survive and live amongst the ‘strong.’ Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ is less applicable in today’s society, therefore those with better genes will not necessarily dominate in society as they would have in the past.
While this hypothesis does have some merit: are genes really the primary reason for the overall cognitive decline of the human race? If humans really are lacking in intelligence more than before, it’s important to recognize other possible causes. Let’s take a look at how our food system plays a role in all of this.
It’s sad, but true; our food system today is contributing to lower intelligence across the board.
The Water Supply, Fluoride is Lowering Your IQ
Researchers from Harvard have found that a substance rampant in the nation’s water supply, fluoride, is lowering IQ and dumbing down the population. The researchers, who had their findings published in the prominent journal Environmental Health Perspectives, a federal government medical journal stemming from the U.S National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, concluded that ”our results support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children’s neurodevelopment”.
“In this study we found a significant dose-response relation between fluoride level in serum and children’s IQ…This is the 24th study that has found this association”.
One attorney, Paul Beeber, NYSCOF President, weighs in on the research by saying:
“It’s senseless to keep subjecting our children to this ongoing fluoridation experiment to satisfy the political agenda of special-interest groups. Even if fluoridation reduced cavities, is tooth health more important than brain health? It’s time to put politics aside and stop artificial fluoridation everywhere”.
Pesticides are Diminishing Intelligence
One study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that pesticides, which are rampant among the food supply, are creating lasting changes in overall brain structure — changes that have been linked to lower intelligence levels and decreased cognitive function. Specifically, the researchers found that a pesticide known as chlorpyrifos (CPF) has been linked to ”significant abnormalities”. Further, the negative impact was found to occur even at low levels of exposure.
Lead researcher Virginia Rauh, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health, summarized the findings:
“Toxic exposure during this critical period can have far-reaching effects on brain development and behavioral functioning.”
Processed Foods, High Fructose Corn Syrup Making People ‘Stupid’
Following 14,000 children, British researchers uncovered the connection between processed foods and reduced IQ. After recording the children’s’ diets and analyzing questionnaires submitting by the parents, the researchers found that if children were consuming a processed diet at age 3, IQ decline could begin over the next five years. The study found that by age 8, the children had suffered the IQ decline. On the contrary, children who ate a nutrient-rich diet including fruit and vegetables were found to increase their IQ over the 3 year period. The foods considered nutrient-rich by the researchers were most likely conventional fruits and vegetables.
Interestingly, one particular ingredient ubiquitous in processed foods and sugary beverages across the globe -high fructose corn syrup – has been tied to reduced IQ. The UCLA researchers coming to these findings found that HFCS may be damaging the brain functions of consumers worldwide, sabotaging learning and memory. In fact, the official release goes as far to say that high-fructose corn syrup can make you ‘stupid’.
Gene mutations may have something to do with our ongoing decline in intelligence, but let’s stop to think for a moment what we’re doing to ourselves to make this decline even more prominent.
http://naturalsociety.com/leading-geneticist-human-intelligence-slowly-declining/
Human are slowing losing IQ
Humans are slowly losing their cognitive capabilities as adverse genetic mutations fail to be weeded out by evolutionary pressures, according to a bold hypothesis put forward by Dr. Gerald Crabtree of Stanford University.
“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues,” the leading geneticist began his article in the scientific journal Trends in Genetics, adding the same could be said of the “inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India, or the Americas.”
Crabtree explained that human intelligence and emotions relied on thousands of genes, which acted together as links in a chain rather than individual components. A mutation to any of one of these genes can produce intellectual or emotional disability — and research has found that most of these genes are particularly susceptible to mutations.
Under the harsh circumstances that ancient humans endured, even a slight reduction in cognitive abilities could doom an individual. Those with lower cognitive abilities were more likely to die before reproducing, leaving only those with more refined cognitive abilities to pass on their genes.
Based on human’s current intellectual and emotional abilities, Crabtree speculates that our ancestors lived in a world “where every individual was exposed to nature’s raw selective mechanisms on a daily basis.”
The peak of human intelligence occurred 50,000 to 500,000 years ago, says Crabtree, when selective pressures were at their greatest.
But as humans moved from small bands of hunter-gathers to dense agriculture-based societies, the “survival of the fittest” thankfully became less and less of an every-day reality. According to Crabtree, this transition had the side-effect of taming natural selection. The lack of evolutionary pressures prevented adverse genetic mutations that slightly reduced human’s cognitive abilities from being eliminated.
Crabtree’s hypothesis does not predict a future chock-full of dimwitted humans, however. Any noticeable decline in human cognition would likely take hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Human society will probably overcompensate for the problem long before then.
“One does not need to… have visions of the world population docilely watching reruns on televisions they can no longer build,” he concluded. “Remarkably, it seems that although our genomes are fragile, our society is robust almost entirely by virtue of education, which allows strengths to be rapidly distributed to all members.”
Raw Story
Reader comments (814)
You forgot to add the impact of all this man-made RF radiation (wireless technology) is having on man's cognitive abilities.
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The reality is that we are super-saturated with toxins and those toxins have their most egregious effect on the most fragile and important system in the body - the nervous system (which of course includes the brain). In addition, the toxic effects of GMO food is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
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You also seem to forget that hundreds of years ago with whom you bred was as important as anything else. It was the serfs and slaves that spread their seed willy nilly without thought for tomorrow, and seeing as how their lives were brutish and short it didn't matter much. Now, unfortunately, the weakest among us are able to procreate and further deplete the human genome.
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Remember the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland? Madness caused by mercury exposure has been documented for quite a long time .... the dyes used by hatters in the 19th century contributed to their dementia.
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It is funny how some scientists and demographers were hailing the Flynn Effect, " The substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day." As a scientist-professor, I am inclined to believe that we have a better informed population, albeit one that does not necessarily understand the roots of ideas, theories, etc., but one that is declining in abstract and plastic intelligence. The latter term is mine. Plasticity or plastic intelligence is humankind's true intelligence, the real genetic selector, which is the ability to adapt rapidly to changing environments. In the contemporary world this is the ability to learn quickly. If placed in a new environment; i.e. a foreign country, this could be manifested in the ability to adapt by learning the language, even without formal instruction, inter alia. I have seen this many times; some people adapt very quickly and they are they ones who usually do well. Others cannot adapt even with instruction and help. They would have perished in the past and their genes removed from the pool.
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The extremity of the smartest will slowly increase while the average intelligence is pulled toward the low end by the massive numbers of dummies from the low end of the intelligence scale reproducing at a higher rate. Government perverts natural selection by favoring reproduction by dummies thereby decreasing percentage and numbers of intelligent people, who are those that resist the tyranny intrinsic to dummy-favoring government.
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Jim – I am not sure I believe all of this, but something is wrong; for example, autism has skyrocketed. 2002=1:150; 2006=1:110; 2008=1:50. Hint: One finds what one looks for.
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Last updated 20March'13.
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