Whether human species will get more diseases in future since they lost selection advantage?

Question

I think our species has lost Selection of Best features advantage. For example, if person has some disease due to genetic problem. we use medical facilities to cure him and he reproduces which in turn pass on his problematic genetic traits. Whereas before Medical facilities have advanced people with genetic problems had little chance to reproduce. So nature played role of selection of best features

Answer 1

Humans will get *different* diseases in the future. Viruses will always evolve into things like Ebola, Bird Flu, SARS, giving new challenges to the scientists, social workers, and health care workers.

As the population grows unchecked and as more and more people are forced into less and less space in worse and worse conditions, community diseases may make an upswing. I mean diseases that are easily communicable like TB, Cholera, Typhoid and their offspring.

Remember that even if we cure cancer, cancer isn't really a 'selector'. It usually strikes people past their reproductive years or after they are old enough to have at least one child. The whole point of 'survivial of the fittest' is that those who aren't fit, die before they pass on their genetics.

Answer 2

this is a speculative interesting question
but 1-the medicine can not cure genetically disorders yet ,just make the symptoms some essayer for the patient
2-the medicine is advanced and the people are intelligent enough to have medical supervision and control in pregnancy period ,so they can find out in good time if the embryo is genetically sick or not and terminate the pregnancy if is necessary or the family wants to
3-only the healthy and strong survive and get to the age of having children ,so i think humanity will not became a mutation
4-if new illnesses will be ,yes as long as the bacterias and viruses are changing all the time and they make diseases

Answer 3

It is true that bacteria and viruses mutate and do get stronger, the only thing we can do about it is to keep our immune system in a good shape.
About the genetic problems, the fact that they are genetic doesn´t necessarily means they are hereditarian. Most illnesses are not hereditarian, which means that your offspring has a better chance to survive. Besides, the organism has a lot of tools to defeat a defective gene.
The truth is that people with a genetic syndrome are still mostly sterile.
Now, as for natural selection, I think human species is still fit as nature continues and will continue to challenge them. If we were not fit, there wouldn´t be so many humans in this world!!

Answer 4

That's an awesome question. I think what you're basically saying is that modern technology (not only medicines) have effectively eliminated the vast majority of selective pressures from our modern environment. I think from a physical perspective this is very true and as a result the rate of physical evolution in our species has probably been brought to a virtual standstill. However it is likely that if selective pressures were to appear that was beyond our technology to fix (i.e. supervirus, global warming etc.) then it is likely we would keep on evolving.

Another interesting question is then if we have stopped evolving physically has modern society created new kinds of selective pressure that might affect which genes get passed on (i.e. young working class couples are having not only fewer kids but are having them later in life, etc.)?

Answer 5

I disagree that humans lost this advantage. By the way, the nature selects the fittest, not the best. Even some animals use some primitive tools to adapt. Humans went even further - they develop tools and means to make them more adapted to changing environmental conditions.

Probably gene pool of humans now is much more diverse than thousands and thousands years ago, but I don't think it's bad.

To make my point clear, compare ancient Sparta and Athens. Sparta had the tradition of killing weak babies and Athens didn't. What is Sparta's cultural heritage and what is Athens' cultural heritage?

Answer 6

That is a very good and interesting point. Will we get more diseases? I'm not sure I have an answer for that, but to venture a guess I would have to say yes. But, along the same lines we will also find cures or treatments for those diseases to counteract their prevalence.

Answer 7

Humans and non-human species all have a place to live on the Internet