As I understand it, birth defects are like 99.999% of the time unhelpful. But that 0.0001% of the time the genetic freak is a huge advantage and that gets passed down in the gene pool and thus, over many many generations, evolution.
Alcohol, which is known to increase birth defects, should increase the speed at which that happens. Right? Like playing the lottery with more tickets.
None of the birth defects caused by boozing it up whilst pregnant affect the genetics of the child. it disrupts the development, and does not generally effect the genetic make up.
in short, fetal alcohol syndrome is not a heritable trait and have no reasonable effect on ‘the rate of evolution’.
Keep in mind, evolution is a slow process consisting of gradual changes resulting in divergent species.
I also want to add that evolution is a species-wide phenomenon over hundreds or thousands of generations, it’s not done individually.
I guess I was understating the slowness, lol.
I do wonder if it might not actually slow down evolutionary change by removing otherwise beneficial traits?
Probably not on the scheme of things. It’s not like alcoholic mums haven’t always been around.