Medicine: Harmful to the human race?

[SublimeOne]

The idea of natural selection is where a species slowly adapts as organisms with relatively bad genes die off as organisms with relatively good genes live and procreate, making more organisms with relatively good genes.

Now that we have medicine, people who are born sickly, lives long enough to procreate anyways as they won't die off very easily. Evolutionarily, that's bad. That would slow the evolution of humans, since bad genes would still be around, with medicines constantly being discovered to help them stay alive.

Any thoughts?

[Thanatos]

Over the extremely long term, yes. Our genomes will indeed deteriorate.

Medicine also brings us genetic engineering, which will solve this problem.

[SublimeOne]

Quote by: Thanatos Medicine also brings us genetic engineering, which will solve this problem.

It's really controversial though.

[5010]

Yeah, our descendents may be unable to survive without daily medicine, just like we cannot survive in some places of the planet without daily use of clothing while animals run around naked.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: 5010 Yeah, our descendents may be unable to survive without daily medicine, just like we cannot survive in some places of the planet without daily use of clothing while animals run around naked.

Indeed, in many places we can't even drink the water without considering pollution.

[SublimeOne]

So, every invention that we consider 'world changing' apparently will only make us more vulnerable if doomsday comes and pushes us back to stone age. Interesting...

[5010]

Quote by: SublimeOne So, every invention that we consider 'world changing' apparently will only make us more vulnerable if doomsday comes and pushes us back to stone age. Interesting...

Yeah. I wonder if the ratio of people with perfect vision to those dependent on glasses is lower since such tech has been available.

There is one area where humans are forced to become stronger. That is, the ability to survive on crappy food. Studies have shown nutritional value of veggies has diminished over the past century as farms have depleted the soil.

So maybe our descendents will consider cardboard and drugs the staple diet.

[HelioPrime]

Quote by: SublimeOne The idea of natural selection is where a species slowly adapts as organisms with relatively bad genes die off as organisms with relatively good genes live and procreate, making more organisms with relatively good genes. Now that we have medicine, people who are born sickly, lives long enough to procreate anyways as they won't die off very easily. Evolutionarily, that's bad. That would slow the evolution of humans, since bad genes would still be around, with medicines constantly being discovered to help them stay alive. Any thoughts?

You left out prolonging the human life span costs us average citizens more each day. People are only living longer in the final stages of life, lingering on while doing nothing but consuming, while providing nothing back to society.

Not that I support the eskimo shove them out in the ice idea but why should be really be focusing on prolonging the life of people once they move into the age of body deterioration.

[SublimeOne]

So, I should be expecting a society of intelligent piles of goo, eating antiviral-vitamin pills, something like that.

I disagree about us eating cardboard. We can't digest cellulose, and since we're eating processed food all the time, we're not going to evolve to eat tougher food like cardboard.

[Kuldeep]

Quote by: SublimeOne The idea of natural selection is where a species slowly adapts as organisms with relatively bad genes die off as organisms with relatively good genes live and procreate, making more organisms with relatively good genes. Now that we have medicine, people who are born sickly, lives long enough to procreate anyways as they won't die off very easily. Evolutionarily, that's bad. That would slow the evolution of humans, since bad genes would still be around, with medicines constantly being discovered to help them stay alive. Any thoughts?

In the long run, yes medicines are dangerous from evolution point of view. But, if you look from individual desire to live longer or, from parental love for their sick offsprings having bad genes to continue live longer then, medicines are very much helpful to humanity. Just note, how much good gene containing population have got saved from numerous contagious diseases with the development of vaccines for example. To my mind, medicines have helped more than created fear of expecting wrong gene develpment in future offsprings. I think, it is better to live happily at present than thinking what would happen after 10 generations.

Therefore, I conclude, let life saving drugs continue to be developed along with gene modification techniques and with specific medicines, which would modify the bad genes and reduce the fear of getting those carried over to next generations.

[Night]

Technically speaking, medicines are not harmful to the human race, they just aren't evolutionarily helpful.

They don't harm our genes. They do however somewhat eliminate the need to develop immune countermeasures to biological infections.

I don't know about you, but if I get deathly ill, I want doctors to drug me up

[tinybear]

Medicines are a necessary evil. All medicines produce side effects. Another medicine is then invented to deal with the side effect and so it goes on and on. Buy some stocks in pharmaceutical companies folks. You won't regret it.

[grandpa]

I think drugs should be considered in moderation. For example, medications can help people with mental disorders.

I'm not sure how exactly it affects the gene pool, though.

Grandpa h.

[triad]

Quote by: HelioPrime You left out prolonging the human life span costs us average citizens more each day. People are only living longer in the final stages of life, lingering on while doing nothing but consuming, while providing nothing back to society. Not that I support the eskimo shove them out in the ice idea but why should be really be focusing on prolonging the life of people once they move into the age of body deterioration.

The way I look at that, Helio, is anyone who is in that stage of their life has already paid their dues to society. I sure as hell don't want to be a wal-mart greeter when I am 90 just so I can still be contributing to society; I want to be enjoying my final years before death just 'consuming' and doing whatever I want, you know? It will be my way of saying, 'thanks for the great life society, now leave me alone while I travel to somewhere hot so I can do absolutely nothing.'

'Sir, your pension has fallen through...'

:eek:

[Suburbanite]

Quote by: SublimeOne It's really controversial though.

The controversy will be squelched as soon as everyone has increased their genetic potential. When, suddenly, humans all get 100/1 vision instead of their 20/20 vision, who is going to complain?

[Thanatos]

Quote by: Suburbanite The controversy will be squelched as soon as everyone has increased their genetic potential. When, suddenly, humans all get 100/1 vision instead of their 20/20 vision, who is going to complain?

The humans who can't afford to get the gene therapy to give themselves or their kids 100/1 eyesight. Have you ever seen Gattaca? It might not be exactly like that, but there will be some weird social consequences and probably a few good wars too.

[Sweet Katie]

Quote by: SublimeOne Evolutionarily, that's bad. That would slow the evolution of humans, since bad genes would still be around, with medicines constantly being discovered to help them stay alive. Any thoughts?

^^^^^
I strongly disagree with these assertions.

To begin with, the notion that genes are either "good" or "bad" is simple minded. How does one define intelligence? Einstein performed poorly in school. How does one define moral? Degas was a known elitist. For every person that could be listed as "reproduction worthy", an equally convincing argument could be made to not allow that person to reproduce. George W. Bush -- in a world of selective breeding, should he have reproduced?

Also, it's very humorous that we are now in a period of great technological advancement. Survival of the fittest isn't a factor today as it would have been before the invention of medicine, yet we are technologically expanding in amazing leaps. Can you recall a time before medicine when this was so? The ability to heal our sick bodies and minds brings forward the security needed to focus on inventions to improve our lives.

[Alive]

I don't think any of you understand genetics. It is true that letting people with "bad" genes survive lets them reproduce and spread their genes. However, the actual frequency of the "bad" allele will not increase beyond that. Letting "bad" alleles spread does NOT inhibit the spread of "good" ones. Absent further selection, disease-protecting genes that evolved in the face of eliminated diseases will still have the same prominence in the population that they did when the disease was a great killer. This might sound slightly counterintuitive, but it is true. If 5% of the population needs to take medicine for bad genes, the same 5% will need to take it in 1000 years, not 100%.

[Thanatos]

Quote by: Alive I don't think any of you understand genetics. It is true that letting people with "bad" genes survive lets them reproduce and spread their genes. However, the actual frequency of the "bad" allele will not increase beyond that. Letting "bad" alleles spread does NOT inhibit the spread of "good" ones. Absent further selection, disease-protecting genes that evolved in the face of eliminated diseases will still have the same prominence in the population that they did when the disease was a great killer. This might sound slightly counterintuitive, but it is true. If 5% of the population needs to take medicine for bad genes, the same 5% will need to take it in 1000 years, not 100%.

Close, but not quite. Without selection to push the effects of entropy back the genome will be riddled with random counterproductive mutations. The frequency of a given bad gene may stay almost constant, but new ones will be appearing and not leaving.

[Alive]

Quote by: Thanatos Close, but not quite. Without selection to push the effects of entropy back the genome will be riddled with random counterproductive mutations. The frequency of a given bad gene may stay almost constant, but new ones will be appearing and not leaving.

You are correct. But consider that to have a mutation that is detrimental enough that its cost is significant but not enough for selective pressure to remove it is an extremely small range. Moreover, even if such a mutation occurs in one individual, it will not increase in proportion in the population, so you need a lot of such mutations in different people to have a large effect. Measured compared to economic growth rates I suspect that the negative effect is negligible. It's certainly not anything we have to worry about in the near future.

I am much more afraid of mutations which do have a selective advantage but are detrimental to human society. Like a fundie gene.