Nothing specific, we just need to acknowledge that if people reproduce with serious diseases the prevalence increases. Medicine is fantastic at saving lives, this is no anti-medicine rhetoric.
Medicine is so good, and only getting better, that our genetic fitness as a species is going to be progressively eroded through the continued spread of negative mutations.
Generations will progressively suffer more and be more dependent on medicine to live a normal life compared to now.
There are two main ways to prevent genetic disease, either don’t reproduce or control genetics. Each with their own stack of moral dilemmas. Inaction is also a choice with its own issues and moral concerns, like in the trolley problem, except over such a long period of time the cause and effect is not abundantly obvious
Natural selection was always the cruelest way to manage disease. It requires us to be struggling to survive. When a significant proportion of humankind have died from a disease, we may evolve a resistence to it, but that’s a brutal price to pay. We’re past that, and good riddance to it.
But you chose a strange place to bring that up. A drug to prevent Alzheimers won’t have much effect on natural selection, since a susceptibility to Alzheimers would very rarely prevent successful reproduction. Alzheimers is strongly tied to the ageing process, which is probably an evolved characteristic in itself. Natural selection was never a friend to the elderly.
Sure. There’s various ways to influence the gene pool and most are not great ideas on a large scale. Enforced non-procreation for people with “undesirable” genes is a dark road to go down. Especially if we have other ways to treat these problems.
In the very long term the lack of natural selection could have a noticeable degrading effect on the human genome, but it’s a slow process of drift. Since gene editing will probably be more common eventually I don’t see it as a major concern. We left the brutal mechanisms of nature behind, and we already have the means to replace them. It’s right that we approach the topic of genetic manipulation with caution, focusing on clear cases of extreme need. We’re fine for the foreseeable future.
Bridging the gap with eugenics or the like just isn’t necessary, and is likely to cause societal problems far outweighing any advantage.
What exactly are you advocating for here?
Nothing specific, we just need to acknowledge that if people reproduce with serious diseases the prevalence increases. Medicine is fantastic at saving lives, this is no anti-medicine rhetoric.
Medicine is so good, and only getting better, that our genetic fitness as a species is going to be progressively eroded through the continued spread of negative mutations.
Generations will progressively suffer more and be more dependent on medicine to live a normal life compared to now.
There are two main ways to prevent genetic disease, either don’t reproduce or control genetics. Each with their own stack of moral dilemmas. Inaction is also a choice with its own issues and moral concerns, like in the trolley problem, except over such a long period of time the cause and effect is not abundantly obvious
I get the conundrum but apply some context here. Diseases of old age are irrelevant to natural selection
Natural selection was always the cruelest way to manage disease. It requires us to be struggling to survive. When a significant proportion of humankind have died from a disease, we may evolve a resistence to it, but that’s a brutal price to pay. We’re past that, and good riddance to it.
But you chose a strange place to bring that up. A drug to prevent Alzheimers won’t have much effect on natural selection, since a susceptibility to Alzheimers would very rarely prevent successful reproduction. Alzheimers is strongly tied to the ageing process, which is probably an evolved characteristic in itself. Natural selection was never a friend to the elderly.
It’s pretty straight forward to select away almost all cases of Alzheimer’s by simply not procreating if you are positive for APOEε4, for example
No suffering required
That’s not natural selection.
You are seriously missing the point…
I said we no longer have natural selection removing diseases like it was
I am not advocating for natural selection/genocide
I’m saying without action we’ll accumulate more, and there’s very real things we can do about it either as individuals or as a society
Sure. There’s various ways to influence the gene pool and most are not great ideas on a large scale. Enforced non-procreation for people with “undesirable” genes is a dark road to go down. Especially if we have other ways to treat these problems.
In the very long term the lack of natural selection could have a noticeable degrading effect on the human genome, but it’s a slow process of drift. Since gene editing will probably be more common eventually I don’t see it as a major concern. We left the brutal mechanisms of nature behind, and we already have the means to replace them. It’s right that we approach the topic of genetic manipulation with caution, focusing on clear cases of extreme need. We’re fine for the foreseeable future.
Bridging the gap with eugenics or the like just isn’t necessary, and is likely to cause societal problems far outweighing any advantage.
Yes, you agree on all points? So what is the point of this?
I disagree with your assertion that you can deny procreation to swathes of the population without causing suffering.