lunachick

My doctor put an interesting thought in my mind last week, and I've been pondering it ever since.

I'd been reading something in Time mag in the waiting room, and while he was examining my daughter, I made a comment about fertility drugs. Something to the effect of my not agreeing with the use of them until such time as they could make these drugs produce only one child at a time. (The Time mag article was discussing families who had used fertility drugs, and were now struggling with multiple births; ie: 6 & 7 children from one pregnancy).

He made a comment that perhaps fertility drugs would actually be a catalyst in human de-evolution. His reasoning was that for some evolutionary reason, the fertility of some people has been 'switched off'. To reactivate a persons fertility often means the infertility gene will be passed on anyway, and so the offspring will also need fertility drugs to reproduce. Other genes which may have contributed to 'nature' turning off the ability to continue within that genetic line are also passed down, after natural evolution/selection/whatever has put the brakes on with regard to reproduction.

I found this an interesting theory and would have liked to delve deeper into it with him; but, of course, doctors appointment times does not allow patients to engage in lengthy debates about things too unrelated to the case at hand.

Anyway, what do you guys think about the de-evolution of some of us? What do you think may be contributing factors to that? The basic divisions of Homo Sapien were basically the relatively minor ones of race - Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid: Are we now dividing further via those who are evolving stronger, and those who are (in a sense) de-evolving due to medical (or other) interference? And, on a more abstract note, where are we going?

Thanks.

[ October 19, 2002: Message edited by: lunachick ]</p>

pz

There is no such thing as de-evolution. Since there is no direction to evolution, you can't talk of 'reversing' it.

I also find the whole idea of 'dividing' humanity into "Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid" thoroughly bogus, and nothing but a relic of 19th century racism. We are all one species. Racial divisions are arbitrary, nothing more than an invalid attempt to impose simplistic, discrete boundaries on clines of complex characters.

Liquidrage

There might be no such thing as de-evolution.
But one could make a strong case that humanity does not adhear to survival-of-the-fittest at an individual level much these days.

pz

No, one could not.

Liquidrage

Why not?

With our advances in medicines and the sciences in general people who would otherwise not be able to reproduce now routinely can.

Instead of certain genetic defects being eliminted from the gene pool, these genes remain.

Is this just not common sense?
Does not giving people who would otherwise be unable to reproduce that ability to reproduce defeat survival of the fittest at an individual level?
I'm not talking about viagra. I am including any and all cases where for various reasons people would not be able to survive to an age that allows for reproduction as well as those that would suffer from an ailment or condition that would make it hard for them to find a mate.

[ October 19, 2002: Message edited by: Liquidrage ]</p>

ps418

Surely we are all one species, and a genetically homogenous one at that. But are sub-species-level divisions (races or varieties) amongst humans really any more or less invalid or bogus or simplistic than sub-species-level divisions of other species, say, dogs or gulls?

pz

No, of course not. They're merely taking advantage of new opportunities in a changing environment. One aspect of our environment is the availability of new fertility treatments. It is no more defeating 'survival of the fittest' than what our ancestors did. Was sharpening a chunk of flint and using it to whack an antelope defeating natural selection?

Liquidrage

No.

Nor do I see that as a proper analogy to someone that would die without medicine and treatments that they have no way of producing themselves.

Neophyte

I quite agree, but even though we don't "devolve", we certainly are evolving in a direction of increasing reliance on drugs and technology. Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a path that requires great wisdom on our part. This path requires us to face challenges such as dwindling natural resources, pollution, and farther down the road, the very real possibility of thinking machines that just may decide to stop serving us.

Neophyte

We're already to a point where much of the population is dependant on drugs/technology that they cannot produce themselves, and there's no turning back. But I look at it this way -- once a new drug or technology is invented that treats a particular problem (infertility, for example), then that "problem" isn't really a problem anymore, and there is no reason that somebody with that "problem" shouln't reproduce.