Something Borrowed, Something New? The Challenge to Darwinism from Human Orphan Genes

What makes us human? Some would say it's our genes. I don't want to argue the case that we are more than our genes, though we are. I simply want to point out that interesting new research indicates we have a number of new genes -- genes that are specifically human -- in our genome.

These new genes are few in number, some would say, but there is a current bias in genome annotation against classifying sequences as novel genes. Estimates range from three to sixty to three hundred human-specific...