A bit of a weird question: Can modern medicine be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing effects of natural selection?
A bit of a weird question: Can modern medicine be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing effects of natural selection?
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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i always thought that it was the greater volume of humans, the greater the genetic diversity
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.
But that if that "idiot" does propagate, but so does everyone else, no skin off the species back. If the selective pressure returns, well then the others keep going.
OG Luci is right, though. There are far more people due to modern medicine. So if we suddenly lose it, there will be a lot of death. But there is more population and diversity to draw from the survivors. So I don't think it's a threat to the species.
Exactly, even if 7 billion people died, well there's still a billion people. If 99% of people died, well there are still millions.
Well, that's a type of pressure. Ogg the berry lover could well have passed on his genes.
For a long time we've largely been selecting for intelligence and social abilities.