SA: Humans only to reproduce with medical help in future: expert

AAP General News (Australia)
04-02-2001
SA: Humans only to reproduce with medical help in future: expert

ADELAIDE, April 2 AAP - Humans will eventually reproduce only with medical help, according
to an Adelaide evolutionary biologist.

Professor Maciej Henneberg also said the most common human in the future would be a
woman of dark skin and brown eyes.

Prof Henneberg, the head of Adelaide University's Department of Anatomical Sciences,
made a series of predictions for the future for a Greek journal.

In his paper, Prof Henneberg said a trend towards humans assuming almost complete control
of fertility would continue.

But he warned a variety of assisted reproduction techniques for infertile people would
have a major impact on humans' ability to reproduce.

"If the full genomes of infertile parents are used in those techniques to produce babies,
then there is a distinct possibility that children so produced will inherit infertility,"

he said.

"The only way they will be able to have their own babies will be through assisted reproduction.

"Thus we are faced with a possibility that the number of infertile people will be increasing
in the future and that eventually humans will only be able to reproduce with medical help."

Prof Henneberg said due to the domination of western culture, the average human being
was thought as a `white' male but this would not always be the case.

"The most common form of human being will be the female form of rather dark skin and
brown eyes," he said.

This was due to populations in western countries growing at slower rates.

"With travel becoming progressively easier, there will be more mixing of people from
various populations," Prof Henneberg said.

"Therefore each one of us in our city or country will be encountering people who do
not look like the members of our family or like members of our nation in previous generations.

"Yet culturally they will be as much our compatriots as anyone else."

Prof Henneberg said there was no reason to expect substantial increases in human life
span but said the growth in size of humans would slow.

He said an increase in stature could not continue indefinitely because there was a
limit to the functional size of the human body.

Prof Henneberg said the recently published human genome map highlighted how much humans
still needed to learn about their bodies.

"It is like having in front of us a single book printed in a foreign language of which
we only know about 20 per cent of the words," he said of the human genome map.

"No-one in their right mind would claim they understand the entire literature published
in this language, nor would they know what this particular book is about.

"Eventually we will be able to manipulate all our genes to our advantage but we need
to do much more work before it will be possible."

AAP sl/mg/bwl

KEYWORD: EVOLUTION

2001 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.