X-Men

This article for the most part was extremely boring and too drowned out with facts and names of genes for me to really enjoy it. I did however find it very interesting and the entire time I could not stop thinking about the movie "X-Men". I'm still not entirely sure what this article was trying to prove to us. For the most part of the article Phelan writes about how mutations in genetics are able to occur. The mutation that he describes is the lactose intolerant gene. This is what causes adults to not be able to drink milk. Today this gene is common among a good amount of the population yet has become less and less common throughout time. According to his article "How We Evolve" the gene appeared about 8,000 years ago but did not become common in the population until about 3,000 years ago.
As for our "self-inflicted extinction" it seems that he is referring to all of the natural disasters that he mentioned about 2 paragraphs before. The only way that we could "inflict" extinction on ourselves is through global warming and destroying our climate. It will ultimately lead to our extinction because if our climate continues to get worse than it already is then it will threaten our ways of life and ultimately our lives entirely. I think Phelan is correct in this thinking because if we cannot fix our climate problems now then soon it will be too late.