Advances in medicine is interfering with natural selection

[david51058]

Does anyone think that as medicine and the treatment of illness gets more advanced, nature's system of elvolution and natural selection is being impeded? In the animal kingdom only the strongest survive and reproduce, hence the individual species grow stronger and healthier through the generations. However all humans are kept alive and are encouraged to reproduce no matter how weak they are, thus hampering evolution.

[albaqwerty]

I got shouted at in a thread not unsimilar to this when I said that "Mother Nature" has her own way of sorting things.

[Maydup]

I think we probably have theoretic ideals about allowwing Mother Nature to take her course, but when it comes to ourselves or our loved ones, we naturally want the best medical care we can possible find.
Until it happens to us we can hold all manner of oppinions, but when we're sick we throw them all out of the window.

[Graham-W]

Most of us have added our bit to the gene pool in our youth. Living longer wouldn't effect that

[boxtops]

I have to say yes, but evolution too is a wonderful thing - thanks to science, better diet, etc., we now live twice as long as only a few hundred years ago - in Shakespeare's time people died naturally in their forties. Babies born well before time now survive.

[daffy654]

Hitler was a fan of eugenics.
I most definitely am not!

[China Doll]

In some cases possibly. I sometimes worry about how we are now able to keep very premature babies alive, some of these babies grow up to have very severe disabilities and neediing constant care. I personally am not sure if this is a good thing or not. That said, I am not a mother and have never been in a postion in which I have to make any difficult choices of this sort and have no idea how I would feel if I had to. I am just answering from my own experiences of two children who regularly come to the cliinic of the doctor I work for and I wonder about their quality of life and indeed the parents.

(This isn't meant to sound like a callous and mean post, just what I've genuinely thought).

[McMouse]

Survival of the fittest worked fine for human beings when the strongest and most virile were good hunters and grabbed the best women. These days the guys with the most money get to spread their genes irrespective of physical prowess or health.

[Old_Geezer]

It's not impeded as that implies an aim. it is just that the system has less filtering since folk survive to reproduce that in past times wouldn't have. The species is more tolerant of problems. Anyway natural selection can work at a species level. Those species that developed the ability to cure the sick are fitter at surviving than those who do not. Maybe.

[237SJ]

If gene therapy can filter out diseases from embryos then medical science is actually contributing to survival of the fittest. Lots of people are helped by medicine when they are past reproductive age anyway and only first world countries are likely to benefit from most of the advances in medical science, at least for a quite a few years anyway.

[jomifl]

It is all part of natural selection but whether it will be to the advantage of humans is another matter.

[keyplus90]

Natural selection does not apply when it comes to human. And if you watch few programmes on discovery where animals try helping other weaker ones, then it does not apply to animals either. In few cases.

[DTCwordfan]

you do have a point re Darwinism and perverting it - perhaps the natural selection is to arrive at bionic, asexual man or woman.

Think I will go and dress as a female as no doubt we will here they are the stronger sex and here to outlast men

[joko]

i understood survival of the fittest theory to be more about survival of successful species and loss of ones unable to adapt rather than sickness in individuals...if that was the point animals and us would perhaps not have or need such amazing abilties to heal and regenerate??

[Quizmonster]

The meaning of the word, 'fittest', in the theory is not biggest, toughest, strongest, as we usually think of it; it is rather 'that fits best' in the circumstances. For example, there was a case of a type of moth which was basically white common in northern England, though there were also dark ones. When the industrial revolution got under way, smoke from factories tended to blacken surfaces for miles around and the inevitable happened...the white ones stood out against the background, whilst the dark ones did not. Predatory birds simply picked the white ones off easily, but failed even to see the dark ones. They survived because they were more 'fitting' in their environment, not because they were in any way stronger etc.

Our medical advances are now, in effect, part of "nature"...rather like the smoke above.

[chakka35]

daffy654, what on earh have eugenics got to do with anything?

[sandyRoe]

Maybe we could go back to the days when a baby who wasn't perfect in every was left out on a hillside to die?

[China Doll]

Perhaps not quite that severe sandyroe but I do stand by the answer I gave. In general, I sometimes think science goes faster than the morality (not religious) behind it. I do believe the question of just because we CAN do it, does it mean we acutally SHOULD? needs to be asked. It's illegal to assist the suicide of someone who is an adult and suffering greatly even if that's what they want, turn it around and look at a child who is suffering greatly and has never had any choice... I'm not sure exactly where I stand on this myself. But I have thought about it a lot more since I started working in paediatrics.

[jomifl]

Keyplus if you think that natural selection does not apply to mankind then you do not understand what natural selection is. Natural selection applies to anything living and everything evolves. Look at how cars have evolved since they were first invented. The ones that weren't fit for the job have been forgotten and replaced by better ones.

[DaisyNonna]

Already done my bit for evolution.
Cannot encourage reproduction in those too old.