Should we continue along this path?

[youngmafbog]

Please no comment son cuts, I mean this from a purely ethical point. surely there becomes a point where we are interfering with nature and that cannot be good.

http://news.sky.com/story/1020756/premature-babies-dilemma-over-care-grows

[Canary42]

We ARE nature.

[bazwillrun]

From the day we started using medicines and potions etc, to heal all sorts of things we interfered with nature.

ailments, injuries etc that prevented a person from departing this mortal coil in the past are being kept in the gene pool and these genes, from natures point of view are "weak genes" and it would remove them its own way.

so unless the defective genes are removed the ill person recovers and can still pass on the defective genes
Nature works on the survival of the fittest but we are definitely "tinkering" in all sorts of ways with that line of action

[dave50]

Very well put bazwillrun. While I agree with you, some would say that because we are capable of using medicines, treating the sick and keeping them alive, then this ability is all part of the evolutionary process.

[ZedBloke]

Yes as baz points out any form of medical involvement is interfering with natural selection. Now it could be argued that the ability to change the game as it were is itself part of the process of evolution. Interesting.

[FredPuli43]

We've been interfering with nature ever since Christ raised someoone from the dead, cured leprosy and made ae a blind man able to see! And since then we have learned how to do such things without divine intervention.

Every cure brings more questions. People who would have died are now living to old age, so we have the problems of dealing with the afflictions of old age; our ancestors didn't have to bother, even if they had the means or incentive to try.

[LazyGun]

Others have already mentioned that any medical or surgical intervention could be termed interfering with nature.

Babies are an emotive subject, and instinct tells us that aiding survival in very premature babies is a good thing - but medical science is not infallible -all we are able to do is increase the odds that a very premature baby might survive. The hurdles to survival that a premature baby faces are immense - as just one example, they are born with immature lungs, which can lead to severe Respiratory Distress Syndrome, needing oxygen therapy, use of a respirator, continuous positive pressure within the airways, doses of surfactants. And even if they get past this, they run the constant risk of pneumonia.

And even if they do survive, the long term mortality and morbidity rates are significantly poorer than for full term infants, often suffering major medical complications as they develop through childhood.

These complications of survival, and the poor prognosis for those premature babies lucky enough to survive are incidentally the reason why medical evidence does not support the idea that the abortion limit should be reduced from 24 weeks to 20 weeks or less.

Whether we are actually interfering with the evolution of homo sapiens is an intriguing question, and one difficult to answer. Common sense might suggest that we are, but we have very little evidence to support that notion, and there is evidence to show that humanity is still evolving.

[NOX]

As everyone else has said we constantly interfere with nature in the most minute ways so everything from that point of view is corrupt- There are laws preventing people like me beating weasely little traffic wardens to death, therefore their weasely little traffic warden genes get passed on as well as my big aggressive survival of the fittest ones ;-)
Likewise we medicate illnesses, try to save people who would naturally die and generally play god ( thank goodness).
As to pre-term babies, I think parents should be informed fully ( and truthfully) and it should be their choice whether to try to save a very pre term baby or not, cost most definitely ought not to come into it.

[bazwillrun]

"Common sense might suggest that we are, but we have very little evidence to support that notion, and there is evidence to show that humanity is still evolving. "

the reason there is little evidence is primarily because of the time scales involved for changes to become noticeable.

Usually at a minimum (there are few rare exceptions)tens of thousands of years to millions of years, and we havent really known that much about "the genetic force" prior to Darwin proposing his theories and Crick and Watson discovered the DNA molecular structure.

its still very early days, its an evolving science !