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Scientists Redesign Human Beings
N E W Y O R K, Feb. 9 -- If the human body were designed to last, we would look like short and chubby elves.
Although our upright posture and shapely buttocks might inspire artists and lovers, the human body’s overall engineering just isn’t meant for the test of time, say three scientists writing in the March issue of Scientific American.
Aching backs, creaky knees, leaky bladders, poor eyesight, weakened hearing and other signs of age are the clues of a defective blueprint, says author S. J. Olshansky, professor of biostatistics at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and his colleagues.
Improving on Evolution
Olshansky and two other scientists — Bruce Carnes, senior research scientist at the National Opinion Research Center, and Dr. Robert Butler, president of the International Longevity Center in New York City — decided to see if they could improve on what God and evolution have wrought.
Humans suffer over time because evolution doesn’t create perfect beings, they explain.
In an attempt to design a Homo sapiens that could live comfortably past its “warranty” period, the threesome sketched out a new plan for human structural anatomy.
They started on our posture. Even though moving from four legs to two increased our tool use and intelligence, the human stance actually does damage to the body. “Over the course of a single day, disks in our lower back are subjected to pressures equivalent to several tons per square inch,” the scientists say. All that weight hurts our spine, knees and joints.
Moving Us Forward
To fix our stance, the scientists made their model of us shorter to help prevent falls and hip fractures caused by aging. They tilted our bodies forward to relieve pressure on the vertebrae and on our lower backs. They thickened our neck so it would be easier to hold up our heads. They padded our legs with more fat, muscle and thicker bones to withstand falls. And they made our knees able to bend backward, so the wear and tear on the knee and foot joints would subside.
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