CDZ Does humanity have too much health care?

[FA_Q2]

That assumes that intelligence is passed down as a function of the intelligence of the parents. I am not entirely sure that is actually the case though. Trying to find a study on the subject has not yielded any results for me yet.

Off topic:
I give you props for at least seeking a credible study on the matter and recognizing that your supposition needs to be confirmed by something having intellectual rigor. I've noticed that you do so with a reasonable degree of consistency. That's at least one reason I appreciate your posts, even when I don't agree with them. <winks> That's more than I can say for a lot of folks whose remarks I've read around here, and not just in this thread.

Hmm, I did an internet search for "inherited intelligence studies" and got ten pages of results plus some suggested searches that yielded dozens more. Most of these seem to support the concept that there is a significant inherited component to intelligence. I'm not sure where 320 was looking.

Now try reading them.

You do understand that intelligence as an inherited attribute does NOT necessarily mean that it is directly related to the actual intelligence of the parents?

 

[FA_Q2]

The title question focuses primarily on treatments for genetic ailments that in years gone by would have killed the folks who are born with them. It seems to me that dying of those things was/is nature's way of flushing out defective genes, yet these days, we seem to think we are better at managing "things" than is Mother Nature. The arrogance of that assumption astounds me, but that as a society our buying into it is even more astounding.

Is it emotionally devastating to lose a child to a genetic disorder, or to a somewhat lesser extent one further on in life, to a fatal genetic disorder? Of course, it is. The question posed here, however, is whether it makes sense for the long run (I'm talking eons, not a single human lifespan) to allow those defects to persist in the gene pool and continue to replicate?

To get a grasp on the scope about which I'm asking, consider this. Suppose a super calamity were to occur, say a large asteroid strike or some other event that wipes out nearly all of humanity. It's happened before, it can happen again. Indeed it's a matter of when such an event will occur, not whether it will. (After Near Extinction, Humans Split Into Isolated Bands)

Suppose when that happens, the only folks left to repopulate the Earth consist largely of folks who have genetic defects of which they were cured, or for which palliative measures allow them to live "normal" lives, but that remain in their DNA. Coupled with the devastating natural disaster (although the disaster need not be natural), humanity is quite likely doomed for it'd lack access to the treatments used before the calamity. In contrast, were we to allow folks having fatal, at least fatal before one reaches reproductive age, to simply take their toll, we'd at least be able to breed again and work our way back from the brink, so to speak.

So, having presented my concern, if you are able to distance yourself from the short term and whatever anguish y you may feel were you faced with such a situation, what do you think?

Note:
This is not a "God" discussion. If you feel compelled to write about God, do me a favor and click on just about anything you want other than the Reply/Post options on this page.

While you are correct that it tends to be a bad idea for a species to encourage bad traits, where does this line of logic lead?

Nowhere.

Weather or not we are not helping humanity by encouraging damaging genetic traits to persist when they would have naturally died off what are you going to do about it? Lessen healthcare? Kill those that are likely to have or pass on those traits? Kill yourself when it is you that is discovered has those traits?

Of course not. Nor are we going to stop trying to help those that are suffering from such ailments (or should we). The impending 'disaster' that you speak about is not really something that is remotely likely anyway. At some point all this extra healthcare will overcome such a limitation being able to weed out those traits entirely. We are not all that far off of doing so even today. Either we will reach a technological point that we will no longer have to worry about pervasive and horrible genetic epidemics or we will destroy the modern world and nature will once again be weeding those traits out. Either scenario, IMHO, will happen LONG before those traits become so pervasive that it will threaten humanity as a whole.

I think that there are many more disasters that actually present a FAR larger threat to humanity as a whole until we manage to actually move off this small rock that we are currently attached to.

Mostly just stop spending resources to find cures and/or palliative measure for such maladies and use them to find cures for other things, and/or spend the resource on totally different, non-healthcare related things. We spend a ton of money to find fixes for things that, left to Mother Nature, would fix themselves eventually by disappearing from the gene pool because the folks who have the defects would not, over time, be able to produce offspring who live to reproduce.

In the end, you may see this as a better direction for the species as a whole but we do not make decisions based on the species for better or worse - we make these decisions individually. At the end of the day, virtually no one is going to ignore the suffering that they experience or cease looking for a cure to it weather or not someone has declared it better for the rest of us. nor do I think that they should. As I stated before, I think the possible outcomes that you look at are erroneous as they ignore the strong possibility in my opinion that such ailments will become a thing of the past - utterly cured and removed from the gene pool through technological advancement.

Advancement, I might point out, that is unlikely if we stopped researching and curing those ailments. I would also point out that what you are proposing is essentially central planing for medical care - deciding that one cure or research is not worth the cost and should be shifted to other avenues. I think that we are better off allowing people in general to try and cure what they want and I also think that the advances in genetics shows that this approach is better in the long run anyway even if some ailments tend to propagate a little more than if we just allowed those people to die.

 

[oldsoul]

The title question focuses primarily on treatments for genetic ailments that in years gone by would have killed the folks who are born with them. It seems to me that dying of those things was/is nature's way of flushing out defective genes, yet these days, we seem to think we are better at managing "things" than is Mother Nature. The arrogance of that assumption astounds me, but that as a society our buying into it is even more astounding.

Is it emotionally devastating to lose a child to a genetic disorder, or to a somewhat lesser extent one further on in life, to a fatal genetic disorder? Of course, it is. The question posed here, however, is whether it makes sense for the long run (I'm talking eons, not a single human lifespan) to allow those defects to persist in the gene pool and continue to replicate?

To get a grasp on the scope about which I'm asking, consider this. Suppose a super calamity were to occur, say a large asteroid strike or some other event that wipes out nearly all of humanity. It's happened before, it can happen again. Indeed it's a matter of when such an event will occur, not whether it will. (After Near Extinction, Humans Split Into Isolated Bands)

Suppose when that happens, the only folks left to repopulate the Earth consist largely of folks who have genetic defects of which they were cured, or for which palliative measures allow them to live "normal" lives, but that remain in their DNA. Coupled with the devastating natural disaster (although the disaster need not be natural), humanity is quite likely doomed for it'd lack access to the treatments used before the calamity. In contrast, were we to allow folks having fatal, at least fatal before one reaches reproductive age, to simply take their toll, we'd at least be able to breed again and work our way back from the brink, so to speak.

So, having presented my concern, if you are able to distance yourself from the short term and whatever anguish y you may feel were you faced with such a situation, what do you think?

Note:
This is not a "God" discussion. If you feel compelled to write about God, do me a favor and click on just about anything you want other than the Reply/Post options on this page.

While you are correct that it tends to be a bad idea for a species to encourage bad traits, where does this line of logic lead?

Nowhere.

Weather or not we are not helping humanity by encouraging damaging genetic traits to persist when they would have naturally died off what are you going to do about it? Lessen healthcare? Kill those that are likely to have or pass on those traits? Kill yourself when it is you that is discovered has those traits?

Of course not. Nor are we going to stop trying to help those that are suffering from such ailments (or should we). The impending 'disaster' that you speak about is not really something that is remotely likely anyway. At some point all this extra healthcare will overcome such a limitation being able to weed out those traits entirely. We are not all that far off of doing so even today. Either we will reach a technological point that we will no longer have to worry about pervasive and horrible genetic epidemics or we will destroy the modern world and nature will once again be weeding those traits out. Either scenario, IMHO, will happen LONG before those traits become so pervasive that it will threaten humanity as a whole.

I think that there are many more disasters that actually present a FAR larger threat to humanity as a whole until we manage to actually move off this small rock that we are currently attached to.

Mostly just stop spending resources to find cures and/or palliative measure for such maladies and use them to find cures for other things, and/or spend the resource on totally different, non-healthcare related things. We spend a ton of money to find fixes for things that, left to Mother Nature, would fix themselves eventually by disappearing from the gene pool because the folks who have the defects would not, over time, be able to produce offspring who live to reproduce.

I think that part of the human experience is to have compasion for those less fortunate than onee's self, and thus attempt to assist in whatever way one feels is best. To that end, it would be, IMO, against human nature to not attempt to help those folks. That said, the research that lead to treatments for genetic ailments, oftentimes also leads towards, if not directly to, genetic "fixes". Science, as I understand, is getting ever closer to being able to "clone" a human. With that knowledge, one would assume, they could also use theat technology (with some modifications?) to "fix" genetic defects and effectively erradicate the defect from the gene pool. Not sure if this would be "playing God", but that is a duscussion for another thread... IMHO, going down this "genitic rabbit hole", for lack of a better way of putting it, is akin to opening Pandora's Box, we really have no idea what will come of it, nor do we have any way of "unlearning" the knowledge once we gain it. I think this is an interesting philosophical question that can be answered by answering this question: "How far is too far?" As it pertains to the expansion of human knowledge. In other words, is there a point at which we will know too much? If so, where is that point? Have we already crossed it? At what point will human knowledge expand to the point where we will no longer be guided by a moral compass(science, after all is amoral)? Just because we can, does that mean we should?

 

[SingleVoyce]

That assumes that intelligence is passed down as a function of the intelligence of the parents. I am not entirely sure that is actually the case though. Trying to find a study on the subject has not yielded any results for me yet.

Off topic:
I give you props for at least seeking a credible study on the matter and recognizing that your supposition needs to be confirmed by something having intellectual rigor. I've noticed that you do so with a reasonable degree of consistency. That's at least one reason I appreciate your posts, even when I don't agree with them. <winks> That's more than I can say for a lot of folks whose remarks I've read around here, and not just in this thread.

Hmm, I did an internet search for "inherited intelligence studies" and got ten pages of results plus some suggested searches that yielded dozens more. Most of these seem to support the concept that there is a significant inherited component to intelligence. I'm not sure where 320 was looking.

Now try reading them.

You do understand that intelligence as an inherited attribute does NOT necessarily mean that it is directly related to the actual intelligence of the parents?

I didn't say that it was. That depends, of course, on the actual mechanism of the inheritance. It is true, however, that intelligent parents will posses the intelligence enabling genes that may be passed down to their offspring. It is also possible that parents who are not particularly high on the intelligence scale may possess the intelligence genes that are somehow masked by other genetic traits and may have children who are higher on the intelligence scale than they are. However, the chances of two intelligent parents having intelligent offspring are much higher than the chances of two lower intelligence parents for most inheritance mechanisms.

I'm not clear on what you wanted me to read. I read several of the articles that were listed and they all seemed to say that there was a positive correlation between the intelligence of the parents and the intelligence of their offspring. If you found one that said something different, please provide a reference and I'll take a look.