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Modern Humans Far More Robust Than Ancestors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the porky-too dept.

joeljkp writes "The New York Times has an article up discussing how modern humans are 'So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn't Even Know You.' Despite the hyperbole, the article makes several excellent points regarding the impact of antibiotics and modern medicine on humans in their youth. The 'baby boomers' of today have an overall level of health far higher than their parents did in middle age, and reason stands that their children will have even better health to look forward to." From the article: "The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today, according to a federal study that directly measures it. And that is not just because medical treatments like cataract surgery keep people functioning. Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before. Even the human mind seems improved. The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades, and at least one study found that a person's chances of having dementia in old age appeared to have fallen in recent years."

7 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Average IQ increasing? by stonecypher · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sort of. The average IQ scale is shifted on a consistent basis to keep the median at or near 100. That said, the definition of IQ isn't actually for the average 100; that would mean that we couldn't provide a measurement until the year (or month or whatever) had been tallied. The definition of IQ is relative to an offset.

    That said, it's the IQ measurement that's changing; its actual norm value is in fact increasing, and has been for more than a century (basically, since it was formalized under the current system.) If we made a temperature system which was relative to the planetary norm, even though the measurement would have to be shifted downwards year to year to account for Intelligent Warming (sorry, I live in the Republican Religious States of America,) the temperature would indeed still be rising, even though the scale was being modified to keep it relative.

    Just because the scale is renormalized doesn't mean what it's measuring isn't changing.

    --
    StoneCypher is Full of BS
  2. Great News by Moby+Cock · · Score: 3, Informative

    No if we could only find a healthy environment for all these healthy people to life their long lives in...

  3. To the "100 is always the avg LOL!!1" crowd by thebigo195 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's entirely possible that the overall average is an all-time constant 100 but that people being tested in recent years have consistently beaten the historical average.

  4. Re:The article and conclusion totally ignores.. by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 3, Informative

    actually leaches and maggots are great for medicine.. leaches are applied to keep gangrene from forming by keeping blood flowing and maggots accelerate the healing of wounds by eating the dead tissue.

  5. Re:I doubt it. by CptNerd · · Score: 3, Informative
    That being said, the water and soil pollution, horrible animal farming techniques, and a lack of any new antibiotics or other non-deathbed "wellness" medicine over the past 50 years probably argues in the grandparent-poster's favor.
    Except for the fact that the air and water are cleaner than they were 50 years ago, and keep getting cleaner. Older, less "horrible" animal farming techniques required cooking meat nearly crunchy just to make sure you didn't get trichinosis and other diseases that more "humanely" treated animals always got.

    --
    By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
  6. Re:Increasing IQ's? by kingkongrevenge · · Score: 5, Informative
    The increasing IQ trend is called the "Flynn effect." But Flynn himself thought people were just getting better at taking tests and various other biases were interfering. He suspected that intelligence was actually declining at a rate of about 1% per generation because the dumbest among us have more children.

    http://users.fmg.uva.nl/jwicherts/wicherts2004.pdf

    This study concludes the Flynn effect is a matter of how you tweak the numbers. It's weak enough it's not really worth talking about. Other studies have shown IQs have been declining in the West since the mid to late 90s.

  7. Re:Increasing IQ's? by brit74 · · Score: 3, Informative
    What I find funny is the line "The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades", because if it has, someone dropped the ball.. The average IQ is 100, by definition if IQ. That's what the tests are normalized for.
    People who take tests normalized decades ago tend to score more than 100. The older the test is, the higher people tend to score.

    Lookup the Flynn Effect for more information: "The Flynn effect is the continued year-on-year rise of IQ test scores, an effect seen in most parts of the world, although at greatly varying rates. It was named by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve after the New Zealand based political scientist James R. Flynn, its discoverer. The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade...." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_Effect