this post was submitted on 18 May 2024

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154

A bit of a weird question: Can modern medicine be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing effects of natural selection? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

107 comments fedilink hide all child comments

OK, I hope my question doesn't get misunderstood, I can see how that could happen.
Just a product of overthinking.

Idea is that we can live fairly easily even with some diseases/disorders which could be-life threatening. Many of these are hereditary.
Since modern medicine increases our survival capabilities, the "weaker" individuals can also survive and have offsprings that could potentially inherit these weaknesses, and as this continues it could perhaps leave nearly all people suffering from such conditions further into future.

Does that sound like a realistic scenario? (Assuming we don't destroy ourselves along with the environment first...)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but I'd argue that capital has a more profound impact than "modern medicine".

There is a massive MASSIVE selection pressure against reproduction for if you can afford kids or not.

You can look around the world and see countries with amazing health outcomes, beyond anything our ancestors even a few generations back could have dreamed of...

... And yet these countries no longer even have children at a replacement rate.

I'm not saying medicine isn't a factor... Just saying that in terms of evolutionary pressure, capitalism is even greater a pressure.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

I would argue that modern medicine prevents non-selective deaths. We try and keep everyone alive, not just the idiots.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It already has affected natural-selection.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This has been happening for a while now and the results of which are the voting populace of the anti-intellectual movement that is explained in the documentary film, Idiocracy.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago

Yes absolutely. We've already affected our biology and evolution.

Birth control, antibiotics, are examples

Given time, and even greater lifespans, we will have a larger impact on the path of our evolution.

As a thought experiment let's imagine humans that live for 2,000 years. What does this mean for our adaptability to environmental changes? What does this mean for our fertility?

If nothing else changes, the carrying capacity for new humans will decrease, if the average lifespan goes up to 2,000 years.

From an evolutionary perspective, the question is always what is the current selection pressure? Historically it's almost always been intelligence plus something else, melanin in the skin, the ability to metabolize lactose into adulthood, etc...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

i always thought that it was the greater volume of humans, the greater the genetic diversity

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

There's barely any pressure to extinguish "bad" traits, though.

If you're the idiot who eats every berry you can find, cavemen can't save you and your genes disappear. Modern medicine can and will save you, so you can create offspring and the berryeaters keep their proud heritage alive.

Now, what is considered "good" or "bad" is of course highly debatable, but currently we have effectively no survival pressure, the only selection is how many children you get.

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