Medical Intervention Vs Natural Selection

[khunit]

I wonder....

Is mankind weakening the human races genetic gene pool but enabling more people to survive medical conditions and thus having the opportunity to have children?

How does man effect his natural selection of the strongest surviving and adapting/evolving?

Is it more important to have compassion and try to save everyone via any medical means possible?

How does antibiotics effect this all?

Kind of overwhelming when you thing about it... Is the medical field really helping mankind in the longterm? Or are they weakening us as a species?

-=< KhunIT >=-

[chingching]

I think Humans evolve too slowly to make much of a difference. Yes you have weaker humans now in the population, but even if they have children it won't make much difference. It takes humans about 20 years for a generation. Figure that in your body there are say one billion viruses, each one reproducing every week. That's about 5 trillion mutations to your one, so if the child survives due to new medicines or vaccines, don't worry the next flu will get him.

[Neeranam]

So how long before the gene for suicidal pick-up drivers is removed?

Should we speed up the process by shooting some of them?

[jumnien]

Since I reproduced for the first time a year and a half ago I'd have to say that the human race is getting weaker!

[Dakhar]

Just my opinion...

But I don't think medical intervention is making the human race weaker.... I think lifestyles are. Sorry to insult anyone, including myself. But if you take the tech. out of the hands of the American military, and tell them to go toe to toe against other nations..... we wouldn't last a week.

You all know most Thai food is survival food, and you would not eat it if you had the choice. That is not to say all Thai food is survival food.... No there is some great dishes too.

I am amazed when I see many Thai older women in a pond walking in the mud and muck trying to catch fish, and I would not even dare get into the water myself, and my mother would die if she got into that muck.

"The Meek Shall inherit the Earth" and the Thais are in practice.

Any how, I could go on, but I imagine you folks have seen many examples of this.

[Jamie]

I think to some extent we are weaker. Instead of killing off the weak through diseases we are now immunized against them.

We take antibiotics to fend off other diseases as well. With antibiotics though, we are seeing a turn where bacteria are getting the upper hand with resistance.

In other ways we are stronger. I think the average human height has increased over the last 200 years due to better nurtrition and health care. We are beginning to use genetic engineering to turn off certain deliterious genes and to possibly cure certain diseases.

[Tolley]

Definitely weaker.

Our ancestors had to work very hard just to survive and most of us these days do bugger all. We are soft and would not last five minutes if we were transported back a couple of hundred years.

The food chain is also so polluted that we are eating substandard quality food although we have more food readily available most of it has a lot less nutrients.