Are We Screwing Ourselves Over?
 

We had an interesting discussion in my molecular biology class last week. Humanity has improved medicine drastically even over the past fifty years. We can now isolate entire genomes (I do genetic testing on parasites at work), we can manipulate and create recombinant DNAs, we can analyse drugs right down to the molecular level and find out exactly what makes them work and describe it in amazing detail.

Most of us know that bacteria and viruses and fungi and any other parasites can develop resistance to the drugs we use to kill them. It's basic Darwinian natural selection in the survival of the fittest. We kill the weaker ones, and those occasional few with a predisposition for survival get to reproduce more. The result is the species or strain as a whole becomes stronger both genetically and phenotypically.

Does the opposite apply to us as humans? After all people with diabetes, asthma, or even diseases like Crohn's or colitis (I have Crohn's) would probably not have survived to their 20th birthday even 100 years ago. Now with modern medicine we can have normal lives even with potentially lethal defects if untreated. Even though technology increases, rates of disease and cancers are constantly on the rise. It was said by several philosophers that humanity outwitted evolution, but maybe there's a drawback.

Might we be getting genetically weaker as a species every year? Could this potentially ruin humanity? If so, does this mean that people with these huge defects shouldn't be allowed to reproduce? It brings a lot of Neitzche (spelling?) and Nazi-type theory into it which we believe as bad (hopefully), but can taking a 'everybody deserves to live and have kids' approach eventually destroy humankind?

What do you guys think? I for one think humans are subject to the laws of nature no matter if we think otherwise, and there are punishments for breaking those laws. I just can't fathom potential future social consequences of what might happen.

This is way too broad an issue to address without a long post, I'm just going to throw a few things out there:

"Diseases on the Rise": Anybody got links to actual evidence of this? And that means an actual rise, not a rise in our ability to detect ailments. 100 years ago we were probably rather shabby at detecting cancer compared to a modern test, so is cancer on the rise or are we seeing what is normally there much easier?

That being said, my intuition (ugh, gotta stop using that thing) tells me there is probably a reason for things like cancer and allergies and so on to be on the rise: pollution. In a broad sense, but I wonder how many toxins we don't detect we're inhaling with every breath (byproducts of industry and so on). I wonder how much fallout the open testing of nuclear weapons in the 1940s and 1950s spread throughout the entire world. Fallout's a nice way to help our friend cancer!

Selection pressure on a lot of ailments that would have killed us in the past...don't anymore...and coupled with treatments means, yeah, we're probably weakening our genepool as a whole. As for the Nazi-style purging, I think I might have to pass on that one, because I think I have hayfever and I don't feel like getting culled.

There's no need to act as social engineers. We don't need to steer humanity into a certain direction. There are enough humans that, if something came and wiped out most of us, there would be many who would survive and continue the species.

Genetic technology might become so good that we start re-creating ourselves to make us immune to most diseases. Imagine, with genetic technology, beefing up white blood cells and making 10x as many of them in the average person. Say goodbye to the common cold, and many other diseases. I don't see a problem or a cause for alarm.

Well you could look at any one of a number of articles or journals to figure out that theres definitely an increase in disease incidence.

This article for instance mentions how human pathogens are increasing at a tremendous rate. You are right in saying that it its probably a lot to do with detection methods, but incidence is increasing even every year and detection methods haven't changed that much in the past 5 years or so. Besides, its impossible to test whether its methods or not so basically we have to go based on observations.

So I would definitely say disease incidences are increasing. 20 years ago only 1 in 5000 people had Crohn's disease. Now its about 1 in 200. Thats a pretty big increase, and Crohn's is a genetically linked disorder.

That happens sometimes naturally. It's called septic shock. And its not a good thing. In fact, its lethal.

There's another big problem with eugenics, apart from the fact it's morally disgusting. It is that in a lot cases whether something's a good trait or not is dependent on context.

A prime example of this is Sickle Cell Anemia(sp?), not a great thing, you can't fly, climb mountains and have a higher rate of heart disease and strokes. However it also protects against a wide range of blood parasites, sleeping sickness being a good example, which in Equatorial Africa where Sickle Cell Anemia is most prevalent is far more dangerous than heart disease and strokes.

Hey there's an example of selective evolution among humans right there. The pressure of the blood parasites makes it very common in equatorial Africa yet the pressure of heart disease and strokes reduces it's prevalence elsewhere.

In summary, I wouldn't want it living in Australia, but if I was in Guinea, then hell yes.

Also there are people who would take this too far and go after largely or completely irrelevant traits, based on unfounded beliefs and prejudices, and well, that's Gattaca and racial/ethnic supremacists.

Actually its when a person has only the recessive gene for sickle cell anemia are they resistant to blood parasites. You need two genes for the disease to actually have it, and then no amount of resistance can help. Its called heterozygote superiority, and its true that genetic diversity makes a better specimen.

But now if drugs were used to treat malaria and nearly wiped malaria out, people with only the recessive gene no longer have an advantage so the gene frequency becomes far less.

Then imagine that the parasite that causes malaria suddenly develops high resistance to the quinine based drugs used to treat them, suddenly humanity no longer has the genetic diversity to survive an outbreak of the disease.

Countless people die. More than what would have if quinine hadn't been used to treat the disease to begin with.

In which case, wouldn't it have been better just to leave people to their fate instead of tampering with the genetics of the parasite? Most of us feel an obligation to help the sick, so it leaves us with a nasty dilemma. Do we help people now and risk more people dying later, or do we let people die now so more survive later. It's a lot easier to do the first one, but is it right?

Of course it applies. We're beings such as any other and passing of all traits, positive and negative, apply. It's just how it works.

Maybe, but I'm getting there...

Now see...I don't view these advances of medical technology of a way just to sheerly make genetically defected (I use that term loosely) people able to live and breed on, but more as the progression we're having to make to get to that ideal point where these problems aren't problems anymore.

We don't tirelessly examine, breakdown, concoct, divulge and whatever other verb you'd like to throw in there just to make people able to live. Sure, it's a humanitarian bright side, but at this marvelous rate you've noted our science being at, how long until we can take these birth placed inferiorities and make them obsolete in an absolute extreme?

Sure, it's a purely optimistic point of view, but it's a view none the less. It's true to a point that we are weakening our overall species by letting people with genetic problems live on and breed, but these defects are surely getting less and less bothersome in the here and now, no?

Technically weaker, but on a grand scheme, it may just be setting every human on a more equal track, regardless of how they're born. Equality is good, no? (Heh, half derailing the subject there >.> )

Wow, I was just thinking about this yesterday.

People slap evolution in the face by going out of their way to ensure that their weakest lead "normal" lives, which generally means that they don't die and probably reproduce at some point. Could this come back to bite us in the ass? Maybe, although I imagine it would take a while. And of course, if genetic manipulation becomes a perfectly viable option, this won't be a problem. But if not, what are we to do? Even the cold and inhuman act of killing off "defective" humans early in their life might not be good enough, since it might be too late by the time a problem is even noted and though to be significant.

One good thing about Eugenics, however, is that it will spark the Eugenics Wars and lead us to the time where Kirk and Picard will travel the galaxies.

Such a goddamn nerd.

In the interest of being on topic, I don't think it's a bad thing that humankind "defeated" evolution. I don't really see the point in people not creating new ways to treate sick people. Should we just let people with lethal diseases die because "that's evolution"? I think not.

Really?
Well I knew the gene for it had something to do with parasite resistance, and yeah genetic diversity does make it better, which is the opposite of eugenics I believe.
Eugenics= Only allowing "favourable" genes to be transmitted.

Unfortunately we aren't anywhere advanced enough to make a proper judgement about what is really favourable in the long term. Hell, until we can predict climate change and the evolution of pathogens with perfect accuracy we never will be. And THAT'S the big problem with eugenics from a logical standpoint. Without accurate knowledge of the future it's too risky.

What if some virus arises that only carriers of Parkinsons or Huntingtons are immune too, those are traceable genetic defects, and would therefore probably be among the first targets if an eugenics movement got off the ground.

Oh and Roy, if you didn't say it someone would have, just like someone would have said this:
If I didn't.