A while back, I was talking with a
group of young students about evolution and natural selection, and I was
teaching them about the role of mutations when I was asked an interesting
question that I failed to answer.
The concept of mutations can
be tough to grasp, because mutation sounds like a really bad
thing, and indeed it often is. A mutation is essentially an accident in your
DNA, and while most of them are harmless, most of the rest have unfortunate
side effects. And yet mutation is one of the driving forces of evolution:
natural selection weeds out the bad accidents and encourages the good ones,
and life changes through the generations.
Which brings me to this
question I was asked: Are there examples of good mutations in humans?