On Tuesday, we watched a NOVA ScienceNOW episode hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. The show addressed the question, “Can We Live Forever?” Students then turned in their responses to three questions on a worksheet. Humans continue to develop amazing biomedical tools which may someday enable us to replace human parts just like car parts, potentially extending the human lifespan indefinitely. This provides a stark contrast to the traditional concept of evolution, where DNA mutations accumulate over many generations and may provide individuals with a survival advantage. In the rapidly approaching future, where biomedicine can overcome genetic defects and introduce new organs or even new traits, will we have to reconsider our definition of the process of evolution?
