Medicine is used to fix cancer, stupid, what ARE you talking about?
Bear with me here for a second.
Assuming you believe the theory of evolution, we've arrived at each new iteration (species) by selectively breeding for traits that help us pass those traits on to the next generation. There's a key here: the traits really only need to benefit our ability to make more offspring. After the new generation is born and independent, there's questionable benefit to the parents staying alive. In practice, all the selective breedings are really accidental combinations of two people's genetic goo. The selector is the external environment (in much the same way that a dog breed is hostile to the un-cute puppies).
Medicine has improved by leaps and bounds over time. Not that long ago, being born diabetic would have been an early death sentence with a very low odds of that person having kids. Assuming diabetes has a genetic link, those exhibiting the issue would have been pruned from the gene pool by, effectively, our species' immune system. Go back just 500 years and people with bad eyesight would likely have met the same fate.
At the species level, we self-correct failures. Testing against the real world validates which people will lead to stronger branches of descendants. Medicine counters all this. We are now able to manage poor eyesight, diabetes, mental retardation, many cancers, etc. Socially we've accepted that it's unfair to let people who lost the gene pool lottery die. This is a statement of fact, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that these people will reproduce, adding more and more defects to the species gene pool.
I'm not advocating eugenics here, just drawing conclusions from the state of the world as I see it. But, what's the outcome? Medicine should, in effect, keep pace with increasing rates of disease. After all, it was that effectiveness that leads to previously unfit people surviving. However, it feels like a fragile end-game. Will we reach a state where each individual has to many flaws that they require constant attention to survive? And then the next flaw causes it all to come crashing down?
In short, medicine allows our unproductive divisions to survive, and possibly take over the whole system.
Bear with me here for a second.
Assuming you believe the theory of evolution, we've arrived at each new iteration (species) by selectively breeding for traits that help us pass those traits on to the next generation. There's a key here: the traits really only need to benefit our ability to make more offspring. After the new generation is born and independent, there's questionable benefit to the parents staying alive. In practice, all the selective breedings are really accidental combinations of two people's genetic goo. The selector is the external environment (in much the same way that a dog breed is hostile to the un-cute puppies).
Medicine has improved by leaps and bounds over time. Not that long ago, being born diabetic would have been an early death sentence with a very low odds of that person having kids. Assuming diabetes has a genetic link, those exhibiting the issue would have been pruned from the gene pool by, effectively, our species' immune system. Go back just 500 years and people with bad eyesight would likely have met the same fate.
At the species level, we self-correct failures. Testing against the real world validates which people will lead to stronger branches of descendants. Medicine counters all this. We are now able to manage poor eyesight, diabetes, mental retardation, many cancers, etc. Socially we've accepted that it's unfair to let people who lost the gene pool lottery die. This is a statement of fact, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that these people will reproduce, adding more and more defects to the species gene pool.
I'm not advocating eugenics here, just drawing conclusions from the state of the world as I see it. But, what's the outcome? Medicine should, in effect, keep pace with increasing rates of disease. After all, it was that effectiveness that leads to previously unfit people surviving. However, it feels like a fragile end-game. Will we reach a state where each individual has to many flaws that they require constant attention to survive? And then the next flaw causes it all to come crashing down?
In short, medicine allows our unproductive divisions to survive, and possibly take over the whole system.
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