Here's why all those c-sections are messing with evolution

Anything doctors do to save lives has the potential to impact evolution.

Repeated use of C-sections to give birth could be 'messing' with evolution, scientists say. As women with narrow pelvises survive childbirth, they are passing their genes to the next generation, increasing the population of women who cannot deliver children naturally.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) -- Scientists are worried that our reliance on caesarean section births may be disrupting evolution, creating a growing pool of women who cannot give birth by natural means.

The problem has to do with pelvis size, according to scientists. According to evolution, women with pelvises that are too small to give birth should die in childbirth. This prevents the genes for a narrow pelvis from being passed along to a surviving generation of offspring.

However, the use of c-sections means these women survive to have more children, and those children have a significant chance of also having narrow pelvises. Within a generation or two, women will be dependent on c-sections.

According to the data, published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the c-section rate has increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s, to 36 in 1,000 today. This is a significant increase in 50 years.

Of course, the researchers aren't advocating an end to lifesaving c-sections. In fact, every time a doctor saves a life, they are messing with evolution.

No sane person would ever suggest we stop performing these lifesaving surgeries.

What we are noticing is evolution by artificial selection, which is the evolution of an organism by deliberate choice. Humans have been doing this for thousands of years with farm animals and crops. This is most apparent with dogs, which have been deliberately and artificially evolved by humans to be docile and cute. Any dogs that were not docile or cute were not kept.

And so it is with humans. By keeping as many people as possible and saving lives that would normally be claimed by nature, we preserve certain traits. One of those traits is a narrow pelvis.

Doctors do not believe the entire human species will ever become dependent on c-sections, but it is a concern should we find ourselves in a place where such surgeries are no longer possible.

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