Page 222 - The Miracle of Hormones
P. 222
THE MIRACLE OF HORMONES
antelopes; as they struggled to eat the leaves of high trees, their necks
were extended from generation to generation.
Darwin also gave similar examples. In his book The Origin of Species,
for instance, he said that some bears going into water to find food trans-
formed themselves into whales over time. 89
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel
(1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics, which flourished in the
twentieth century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits
were passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell
out of favor as an evolutionary mechanism.
Neo-Darwinism and Mutations
In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the "Modern Syn-
thetic Theory," or as it is more commonly known, Neo-Darwinism, at the
end of the 1930's. Neo-Darwinism added mutations, which are distor-
tions formed in the genes of living beings due to such external factors as
radiation or replication errors, as the "cause of favorable variations" in
Accidental mutations develop into de-
fects in humans as well as other liv-
ing beings. The Chernobyl disaster is
an eye-opener for the effects of muta-
tions
220
