Do you think modern medical science will have a detrimental effect on the human gene pool.?

Question

What I mean is, its not survival of the fittest with humans.

Any thoughts. with no emotional attachment.

I don't need lectures on emotion and morals, just thoughts on the question

Answer 1

Yes, if gene therapy continues to be rushed through approval without any significant long term safety assessment.

Answer 2

YES definitely

we are helping fat flawed fu#$s survive long enough to pass  their fu#$ed up genes on- a hundred years ago these people would have died.

the new natural selection will be $$$$$  with the environment going to S#!t those who can afford to clean the air in their houses better and eat organic will be able to overcome the environment while the poor will choke on toxic smog and be forced to eat toxic 'food like' products that will kill them>

Answer 3

Nope.  No matter what they mess with, nature has a way of straightening things around again, so I'm not worried about it.

Answer 4

don't hate/judge here but you have to wonder whether sometimes a baby can be forced to survive when really they shouldn't.

I saw a program once on a couple who had a baby with a condition called 'harlequin' or something. Its a horrible skin condition that results in its sufferers enduring constant pain as the skin sheds too fast resulting in their entire bodies being raw constantly. It was proved that this couple shared some genetics (maybe distantly related or something) and they had a 95% chance of any more kids having this condition. Knowing this they went on to have 2 more children - both afflicted with the same illness!! WHY???

Answer 5

Eventually, yes.

However there are always NEW deceases to kill the weaker humans.

Answer 6

yknow I always assumed it did, but now I've changed my mind.. I think its actually going to help the survival of the human race..

genetic diversity within a species is the key to its ability to survive catastrophes, disease, etc... medical science saves lives which would otherwise be lost, thus increasing the diversity of our gene pool... the killer is that you never know which traits will be beneficial in the future.. maybe being obese will end up saving you from the next plague that comes along...

Answer 7

Mathilda & Jen-ee have it right.  In addition, I suspect we will soon be able to correct genetic defects before they are passed on to offspring, as well identifying the defective gene & correcting said gene in living people.  We are rapidly identifying genetic defects & genes... that should soon lead to splicing in missing or defective segments of genes to repair both the living & their potential offspring.  This of course, opens a whole new debate.

Answer 8

What's "detrimental" here really?

You can't get an answer without morals when

your question has a moral ground to start with.

"Survival of the fittest" was said by Spencer,

one of the founders of Social-Evolutionism.

So that term doesn't really apply here,

unless you're speaking of socio-biology,

some kind of concept where the genes determine social behaviour...

This question makes me think about the Foundation sci-fi books by Isaac Asimov. Even though it was many a years in the future, humans didn't really look that different. Or, well, that depends on how you interpret it. The thought was, humans are continuously fighting against biological evolution. For example, when we go to the dentist, we ask for white teeth. White teeth is an ideal. If the human race would evolve towards something with black teeth, we would bleach and/or replace them completely.

   This kind of thinking can be seen everywhere in medical science. From plastic surgery to cloning. "Modern" medical science is filled with morals and values. It's not as modern as we'd like to believe. Modernism is a time and place where rationalism is ideal, but what we have today is a strive towards roots. These roots include religion and morals. That's post-modernism...

So, in short, Yes, modern medical science has a detrimental effect.

But! That's only detrimental from a pro-bioevolutional standpoint.

There's no way of knowing that this our fight against

biological evolutoin will actually be more

beneficial for the entire human race in the long run...

Answer 9

Firstly, I'd like to say that the majority of things medical science saves us from are not genetic defects, or inherited weaknesses. More lives are saved by clean water than anything else, then vaccinations, then antibiotics. The genetic tendencies to obesity, asthma and a bunch of other diseases are all important in a non technological societies, as they protect us from death by starvation, parasites, malaria, etc.

Secondly, we are reaching the point at which we''ll be able to filter out serious inherited genetic conditions by screening and embryo selection.

I'd be much more worried about the dysgenic effect our social welfare has on encouraging the stupid and criminal to breed like rabbits, while discouraging the responsible from having kids by not improving state childcare for working parents, or by taxing 'one working parent' families to a stupid degree. The UK system is a good example. Families entirely on state benefits have more spare cash than a family with a man working to support a wife and two kids.