CDZ Does humanity have too much health care?

320 Years of History

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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.
 
The bioethics of the OP are troubling.

Seems to me that the OP wants to play God and Nature together, to remove man's agency.

The argument opens the door to euthanasia for the elderly and those who cannot contribute to society sufficiently so that the world's resources are managed for usefully.
 
If you are really thinking about the long term fate of homo sapiens then there are much larger issues than that. Because of our technology, we've basically taken ourselves out of the natural selection process for many reasons. It is no longer true that the "fittest" survive and reproduce.

In a calamity such as you proposed, there is very little chance that our species will survive unless we have already colonized other planets.
 
Such a cataclysm as you suggest would probably kill off primitive man as well.

Man are similar to cockroaches in surviving disasters.
 
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Does the prohibition on mentioning God also apply to Godwin's Law?
 
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The problem of the OP has traditionally been solved by the loss of tax base going back to at least the break that occurred between the Old and Middle kingdoms of Egypt. Histories of interest rates based on symbols stamped into clay in pre-literate societies would put that date back even further. And yes, Virginia you can find histories of interest rates that do infer pre-literate interest rates on Amazon.
 
Yeah, we've built a fragile construct. I worry more about the Marching Moron effect, breeding for low intelligence. That'll hit us even if there isn't a disaster.

Medicine is an obsession. It's also successful. It's also speculative. We don't understand the long term implications of many of the health policies we've implemented. Nonetheless we will continue to try to extend lifespans and repair damage until the bombs start falling, or the waters rise, or the UFOs invade, or we start to fight over potable water and descend into chaos.
 
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.
 
Yeah, we've built a fragile construct. I worry more about the Marching Moron effect, breeding for low intelligence. That'll hit us even if there isn't a disaster.

Medicine is an obsession. It's also successful. It's also speculative. We don't understand the long term implications of many of the health policies we've implemented. Nonetheless we will continue to try to extend lifespans and repair damage until the bombs start falling, or the waters rise, or the UFOs invade, or we start to fight over potable water and descend into chaos.
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.
 
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.
 
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?
.

I think it would just even itself out by couples just having as many kids as they used to in the 1800s. It wasn't uncommon for a couple to have 6-8 children (or more) and having only about half that survive to adulthood to have children of their own.

Not every defect comes out in the next generation nor does it come out in every kid born. Yes, there is something that is passed on that "could" be a problem but I would wager the environment after an apocalypse would be worse than any defect.

Plus I don't think you could ever screen out every kind of defect out there anyways.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.

I wasn't the one looking. That was FA_Q2.
 
When it's your children affected, do you ask yourself if there is too much health care?
 
When it's your children affected, do you ask yourself if there is too much health care?

Perhaps you didn't make it to the end of the OP of this thread? The next to last thing written there is this, "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?"

The point of that statement is to establish that I intend the discussion be held as an intellectual abstraction, not as one driven by how one might feel/act were it really one's circumstance to deal with.
 
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.

I wasn't the one looking. That was FA_Q2.

Sorry about that.

In any case, I think that those studies support the proposition that intelligence is inherited. It's pretty much impossible to devise an intelligence test that doesn't reflect acquired knowledge and skills to some extent but, if such a test was possible, I think you would find that there is a very wide range of innate inherited intelligence within our species. There does not, however, seem to be a reproductive advantage to the individuals at the higher end of the range so no process of natural selection would seem to be driving our species toward higher intelligence.
 

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