Stephen R. Palumbi

The Evolution Explosion

A critical look at the intersection of evolution and high-tech modern life.

Evolution is not just the slow process that ruled the rise and fall of the dinosaurs over hundreds of millions of years. It happens quickly too, so quickly and so frequently that it changes how all of us live our lives. Drugs that suddenly fail because diseases evolve, insects that overcome the most powerful pesticides, HIV we can treat only for months before it evolves resistance to the newest drugs—all of these changes happen right before our eyes, driven by the intensity of human medicine, industry, and agriculture.

This fast evolution is evolution with teeth, and it impacts our society, our technology, and, very importantly, our wallets. Evolution adds approximately $30 billion a year to U.S. medical bills and makes some diseases economically incurable except in the richest countries. In addition, U.S. farmers pay an extra $2 billion annually to combat insects that have evolved to tolerate pesticides so powerful that a teaspoon would kill a person.

While the ecological scars of human technology have been well publicized, the broad evolutionary consequences of antibiotic and antiviral use, insecticide applications, and herbicide bioengineering have never been explored. Does the human impact on evolution falter at the borders of our own species? Have humans stopped evolving? Do we, in fact, generate our own evolutionary pressure?

The Evolution Explosion illustrates these practical aspects of modern evolution and explains in a popularly accessible way how the evolutionary engine functions. With simplicity, humor, and popular imagery, The Evolution Explosion charts answers from the critical intersection of evolution and high-tech modern life.