[Closed] I know it's always my fault but...

Provocative dumbed-down tabloid headline for an interesting bit of research.

Thanks BBC. 🙄

I thought that the headline was a dry joke.. it amused me greatly 🙂

Some of the comments are great.

"It's not PMS, it's YOU"
"Did I miss anything while I've been out causing women to menstrate?"

I'm surprised that no-one has added a comment yet as simply, 'Sorry dear'

The researchers (and the BBC people who haven't thought about this critically) seem to have forgotten that through most of human evolution if you lived to 40 you were doing well. Women didn't need to be fertile after 50 because they were long dead.

and the BBC people who haven't thought about this critically

The BBC and critical thinking have been polar opposites for a good many years now.

if you lived to 40 you were doing well. Women didn't need to be fertile after 50 because they were long dead.

That doesn't really explain why it stops though does it?

Rather the opposite in fact. Why does it need a stopping mechanism if they will be dead before it kicks in?

I thought they'd run out of eggs before then anyway.

You b@5t@**s!

Why does it need a stopping mechanism if they will be dead before it kicks in?

Why do humans need a stopping mechanism? Or to put it another way, maybe it just runs out in the same way life does.

The question nobody seems to have asked is whether other animals would also have a menopause if you extended their life expectancy?

[i]through most of human evolution if you lived to 40 you were doing well. Women didn't need to be fertile after 50 because they were long dead. [/i]

There's lots of evidence that even early civilisations people were living into their 60's. You don't need women giving birth at that age, but you do need them to look after the small children whilst mum and dad are hunting and gathering. There are many many graves of older folk at prehistoric sites, buried with obvious care.

The study is just a modelling exercise. It has no decent mechanism, and so the theory just joins [url= http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003092.t001/largerimage ]these[/url] , and is a good deal less plausible in evolutionary terms than many of them.

It's a decent write-up though because it gets people thinking about humans in evolutionary terms. There are technical reasons why the headlines tend to be short and punchy, but it's clear from the piece that the science is being presented as theory, not established fact.

If we're responsible for their infertility then we must be responsible for their fertility.
You're welcome!