The Selection Shadow - Why we still age

"However, ageing and cancer are fundamentally problems evolution has not provided us with a solution with.

Ageing can be said to be a root cause for all diseases. However, our biological defence against it is arguably lacking due to our lack of evolution in this regard. Using the theory of natural selection, for us to effectively evolve to protect ourselves against such a disease, we have to die with that disease as the cause. However, given that humans, for most of our existence, died young and to causes not related to ageing and cancer, we never developed a mechanism of protection against them that could last past our past mediocre life expectancy (most can expect to live to 40)."

Reading time: 3.5 min

In this post I wrote long ago, I discussed how evolution has fundamentally not provided humans with an answer to non-infectious, chronic diseases and ageing.

A correction I should make on the life expectancy of 40 is that I did not consider how infant mortality was very high in the past. Once past a certain infant/toddler age, a person could reasonably expect to live into their 60s.

Source

This phenomenon of natural selection exerting less of an effect on our bodies as we age