[busyant]

> biological evolution strike anyone else as rather irrelevant, now?

Depends. I can envision a lot of scenarios where infectious disease wreaks havoc on our species. Random mutation might have a significant impact on who would survive such a scenario and I don't think we (as a species) are anywhere near being able to circumvent natural selection of a sufficiently dire infectious disease. jmho

[jsankey]

Indeed, and a very real scenario that is already starting to play out is the evolution of bacteria outpacing development of new antibiotics. We've quickly forgotten the impact these diseases had just a century ago, and without further breakthroughs (which of course are very possible) we could easily see, e.g. TB return as a major cause of death worldwide (i.e. even in developed countries).

It's not only our own biological evolution that deeply affects us.

[wwwtyro]

Fair and fairly scary point.