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-   -   Modern medicine taking us nowhere (http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/vbz/showthread.php?t=35328)

ramonesfan 11-30-2005 08:12 PM

Modern medicine taking us nowhere
 
Sure, it is used every day. I am hopped up on pills (2 for allergies, 1 for asthma, vitamin, and one for acne... but thats off topic). I just started thinking modern medicine has slowed down MAJORLY if not stopped evolution. While it saves lives, if you think about it in the long run, we are screwing ourselves over with it.

If someone gets a mutation in their DNA, and it is good, according to evolution, it will be passed on to later generations. I am not saying this won't happen, but rather it will not show as much effect because unlike wild animals, we don't breed within one area or with our families. So as this person passes on this new mutation, his/her offspring will have kids with someone who does not have this mutation. This will keep happening until the mutation pretty much goes away.

The reason this mutation would eventually go away is because people who would usually be dead before they made it to age 5 are living healthy because of modern medicine. Thus putting evolution at a standstill.

I will probably edit this post later... as I was writing it, my mind stopped. Please don't read this as me saying I want people to die or anything like that, because I am one of those who wouldn't have made it very far :?

And please don't start flaming me because this may be old, or you don't agree with evolution.

discuss

GuidoHunter 11-30-2005 08:44 PM

RE: Modern medicine taking us nowhere
 
We're not going to observe evolution in our species because we've moved past the survival-of-the-fittest stage. We alter our environment in a way such that it suits our current needs while evolution takes us and adapts us to our environment. With our technology there's no reason to evolve.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ramonesfan
So as this person passes on this new mutation, his/her offspring will have kids with someone who does not have this mutation. This will keep happening until the mutation pretty much goes away.

That's, uh, not how evolution works. All genetic mutations started with one creature. Those creatures in turn mated with others who didn't have it. The result is that the offspring had the mutation, too, just as strong as it was in the parent. It's not like heritages (my great-great-grandmother was from Czechoslovakia, therefore her daughter was half Czech, her daughter was quarter Czech, etc.).

As for your next paragraph, go back up to my first one. To summarize: we don't need to evolve (adapt ourselves to our environment) because we can adapt our environment to ourselves.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

evilbutterfly 11-30-2005 08:53 PM

RE: Modern medicine taking us nowhere
 
I would say that we are severely overmedicated, but trying to say medicine is stopping evolution is...well...not right, as Guido pointed out. What it does instead is kill our immune system kinda. If we're so used to a super clean environment because of antibiotics killing all microorganisms around us, our immune systems won't have a chance to build up immunities. As a personal example, I used to never complain when I was sick. I ended up getting a lot of triple infections as a youngster to the point where if I had continued to not complain, I would have been hospitalized and near death. Because of this, my immune system has built up a lot, just on the off chance that I'm an idiot and don't go to the doctor. Yeah, I was severely ill quite a bit as a kid, but now I rarely get sick, and when I do I recover extremely quickly while people around me stay sick for long periods of time. Hell, I drink/eat after sick siblings/parents and don't catch anything because of my built up immune system. It's great.

But I digress. Point is, the more we let medicine take over for our immune system, the lazier/weaker it gets, which will screw us over if we can't acquire medicine anymore. I think medication should be more of a last ditch effort than it is now, and we should let our immune systems take over a lot more than they do now.

GuidoHunter 11-30-2005 09:09 PM

RE: Modern medicine taking us nowhere
 
God help us if there's ever a smallpox outbreak.

But eb, taking medicine doesn't interfere with our immune systems. Once something gets in, we produce antibodies and receptors for it. The only way medicine will get in the way of our immune systems is by making viruses and bacteria evolve in such a way that we don't have the proper antibodies already and would have to take time to make new ones.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

sleeplessdragn 11-30-2005 11:39 PM

RE: Modern medicine taking us nowhere
 
Taking this perspective, you can say that evolution of the human species stopped the minute we picked up a tool and used it. Evolution requires a much longer period than our classified existence in order to produce, I suppose what could be considered, noticeable attributes. So it may not be that medicine has stopped evolution, I think that the scope of time you've given medicine to "interefere" with the gene pool is simply too short.

Oh, and I would LOVE to see what would happen to EB if he had SARS. Well, kinda.

T0rajir0u 12-1-2005 12:11 AM

RE: Modern medicine taking us nowhere
 
Evolution "stopped" long before medicine became good enough to make a difference. From the period of the Agricultural Revolutions onward, humankind has been changing the environment to suit its needs. When that happens, the environment can no longer select attributes in a population - simply put, not only is the effect of the environment on the propagation of the species lessened, but as technological advances grew, the environment in which the human species situates itself changes too fast for evolution to keep up.

Think about what life was like a hundred years ago. Women still died at menopause. Health care was almost nonexistent. Malaria hadn't been wiped out of parts of the southwestern United States. A hundred years later?

I'm not saying that genetic changes aren't going to happen in the human population, but they're not going to be a result of evolution as it is generally understood. A selection process only works over time, and there isn't enough time for any given selection process to act on the human species before another one overwhelms it.

Medicine's role in all this... I am going to argue that overmedication actually does weaken immune systems. Immune systems become strengthened through exposure to harmful influences - the body learns to fight off pathogens early, and retains that strength throughout the rest of an individual's life. Overuse of antibacterials does two things to the human population: 1. it decreases children's exposure to harmful pathogens, which causes their immune systems to be weak (this is, I theorize, how non-genetic allergies develop), and 2. it forces evolution in the pathogens - they'll eventually become stronger against, and possibly even immune to, modern antibacterials.

The other thing modern medicine has done, and I suppose I am somewhat agreeing with the topic starter, is that it allows people with gene abnormalities who would otherwise have died off quickly to survive, prosper, and spread their genes to the next generation. People with a predisposition to cancer, etc., are allowed to live long, healthy lives and keep their defective genes in the gene pool. In that sense, modern medicine has further contributed to a reduction in evolution's effect on the human species.

Grandiagod 12-1-2005 12:26 AM

RE: Modern medicine taking us nowhere
 
Actually some new studies show that the average size of the human brain is actually expanding which some believe is a functioning evolutionary device. However, there is a debate on whether a growing brain is actually an evolutionary trait some arguing that advanced toolmaking is what originally started the evolutionary tree to homo sapien. However, on the topic of modern medicine, one might argue that medicine is not stunting human evolution but is actually a form of evolution in itself. Medicine has almost become a second immune system and more not only dealing with viruses but tumors and physical handicaps, ect. Medicine preforms all the necessary functions of an evolutionary device, which basically encompasses the continuation of a single species and it is indisputable that medicine has helped propagate the human race.


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