Darwin expert's warning on spread of epidemics

By jhedge oliver vergnault overgnault@heraldexpress.co.uk

EMINENT geneticist Professor Steve Jones told a packed audience at the Ways With Words literary festival that inbreeding is finally on the decline.

Speaking at Dartington's Great Hall at the beginning of this year's festival, he told the audience that new technologies, modern travelling and better medicine and hygiene were now strengthening mankind's genetic pool.

The geneticist and expert on Charles Darwin, who wrote his On the Origins of Species partly in Torbay, said: "Inbreeding is coming down because of globalisation.

"This means human health is improving. We are now less likely to pass on the copy of a damaged gene, defects and illnesses."

Prof Jones said inbreeding had been a concern of Charles Darwin himself because he had married his own cousin and had tried throughout his life to see if there was any correlation between inbreeding and a weaker genetic make-up.

However, Prof Jones, who received the Michael Farraday science prize in 1996, warned that our modern ease of travelling around the world could also encourage the spread of epidemics.

He said: "It will have an effect on human evolution. Once again those with an ability to withstand these epidemics will survive."

The University College London professor was addressing a sell-out crowd at the start of the week long literature festival and was revisiting Darwin's theories of evolution, as well debunking some myths around genetics. He said: "To think there is a gene for happiness, a gene for melancholy or religiosity is stupid and absurd. We haven't even identified genes for height."

In another lecture, historian Ian Mortimer took his Great Hall audience through a journey not through another country but through time and 14th century England.

The historian, who wrote The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval History, said medieval England would not have been a great nor inviting place to visit but a 'brutal, cruel, violent and most filthy place'.

He said: "If you're planning your holiday go anywhere else but medieval England.

It's not a nice place."

Mr Mortimer said 14th century England would have been 'an assault on all senses' with cathedrals rising out on the horizon to stun travellers with their beauty, filth and dirt and stenches and diseases in cities, violent behaviours and cruelty pervading throughout society.

He said: "When you have a young population, that is armed and drinks ample amounts of ales, no wonder you have lots of violence."

But Mr Mortimer also insisted that at the time of the Black Death and other epidemics, wars and famines, 14th century England was also a time of great change and beauty and engineering which saw the completion of great cathedrals, the advent of the clock and great sophistication.

He explained: "History is not about the past, it's about humanity in time."