That evolution doesn't produce enhancement is the flaw that undermines the whole of the article, you are correct.
This is well illustrated in longevity science by the large and growing number of comparatively simple genetic manipulations that extend healthy life in mice, flies, and worms - by all measures an enhancement for the individual. e.g.
A great many of these alterations are well within the reach of mutational processes, and would be selected for if they provided advantage. But they clearly do not - many come with obvious costs, and the rest with costs we haven't figured out yet, perhaps as simple as leading to lack of front-loading of energy expenditures. Evolution only selects for longevity in comparatively rare instances, such as:
a) We humans, long lived amongst mammals of our size, and possibly due to our intelligence allowing things like the Grandmother Hypothesis:
c) Naked mole-rats, in which longevity looks like some mix of a side-effect of resistances needed to survive their natural environment, plus a touch of the longevity stratification that comes with being eusocial.
This is well illustrated in longevity science by the large and growing number of comparatively simple genetic manipulations that extend healthy life in mice, flies, and worms - by all measures an enhancement for the individual. e.g.
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/08/a-list-of-interes...
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/07/an-engineering-ap...
A great many of these alterations are well within the reach of mutational processes, and would be selected for if they provided advantage. But they clearly do not - many come with obvious costs, and the rest with costs we haven't figured out yet, perhaps as simple as leading to lack of front-loading of energy expenditures. Evolution only selects for longevity in comparatively rare instances, such as:
a) We humans, long lived amongst mammals of our size, and possibly due to our intelligence allowing things like the Grandmother Hypothesis:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/02/why-are-humans-lo...
b) Sessile creatures like mussels and trees, where longevity is a way of competing for space for yourself and your lineage.
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/01/ouroboros-on-the-...
c) Naked mole-rats, in which longevity looks like some mix of a side-effect of resistances needed to survive their natural environment, plus a touch of the longevity stratification that comes with being eusocial.