Daft Question

[Auld-Kelpie]

I have been the butt of this question, so decided to put it out to a wider audience.
ARE YOU THE RESULT OF GENETIC VIGOUR, OR OF MODERN SCIENCE?
I had to admit that when it comes to genetic vigour,I had no right to be here. Father; one of the first in my country
to have an operation for peritonitis. This means that me & mine are here under false pretences in the genetic sense.
HOW ABOUT YOU?

[Sharp_Kid]

Who knows?
The eternal "THEY" say that modern medicine defeated natural selection a long time ago.
How many of our mothers would have suffered serious complications during labour if they had been forced to go it alone without any of the modern things we take for granted? How many of us would have even made it out of the womb? When my daughter was born, there wer "minor complications" during labour. The midwife thought it hardly worth mentioning, but I wonder how "minor" those same complications would have been had our grand parents suffered them.

But directly relating to me, I have Crohn's disease and have gone under the knife more than once for 'emergency surgery', so I guess any of my offspring post diagnosis, are children of modern medicine.
However, Crohn's itself is an illnes caused by modern diet. Milk. We only started herding cattle in the last few thousand years, which isn't long enough for our bodies to evolve to accept their milk, and we have only recently developed pasteurisation processes that we can have confidence in, and hence, it has caused us problems, so modernisation has almost killed me and saved my life. Weird, huh?

[rdt2]

Originally posted by Sharp_Kid
Who knows?
The eternal "THEY" say that modern medicine defeated natural selection a long time ago.

Well, intervention of any kind (civilisation, medicine, whatever) won't stop the process of natural selection - but it will change the criteria for selection. I mean, it is no longer necessary for nature to select for physical strength - so what is it currently selecting for? I don't know, but maybe in 1000 years...?

cheers,

ron.

[Auld-Kelpie]

Interesting thoughts. We here, all seem to think of the world as being the West. There must still be millions out there surviving as our ancesters did. Will our genetic soup get so thin that we fade out, like so many civilisations of the past; or will we build the super being? Re-gened where & when needed. Do you think money will be the answer to who is or is not? As I said in the begining Daft Question; but intriguing in a bizarre sort of way

[Sharp_Kid]

Not daft, very thought provoking. Not sure it belongs in the Health forum though. I'd like to take this one to the Philosophy forum, if I didn't think it would be brought down to an all time low.

Ron, what would you speculate that the requirements are for natural selection now?
Surely we now look at conformity to the norm. Is that natural selection? I suppose it is in a way, but it sort of defeats the point of itself, no?
And is it natural any more?
We talk of genetic screening. That's selection of a non natural variety, unless you are of the belief that because man is part of nature and was created by nature, everything he does is a natural action.
Also, we talk of the western world, but do we, as the western world, not impinge on civilisations which are not 'up to speed', therefore also impinging in some way on any form of natural selection still going on there?
Is mans need for conformity part of natural selection?
To bring this down to a very crude level, what if a kid is born with a perfectly formed and functioning third arm?
This could be of great benefit, and could have, tousands of years ago, led to great success, and the legion of three armed people could have grown, and natural selection would have made humans today three armed.
If a kid today was born with a third arm, it would be removed at birth so that the other kids didn't stare at him and call him names when he started school.
I'm not debating the right or wrong of it, I'm just questioning whether conformity and continuation of a theme is in actual fact natural selection, especially when man plays a hand in that selection.
It's definitely not evolution.

[Auld-Kelpie]

In the past, rape & pillage ensured that the isolated & inbred gene pool had a new infusion. Now we seem to be on the brink of doing the same with a large wallet & the world to harvest. If the family wallet is small, do you teach (indoctrinate) your children to mate for genes not love?
Just another form of social enginering much as they do today to get children to love the inviroment, tolerate diferent lifestyles, all the things their grandparents frowned upon or thought were weird.