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Asked by mindsets - 03/09/09 at 08:09 amIs medicine and defying the natural selection process ultimately unethical?
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September 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
It’s merely a different form of natural selection. Where once the survivors were the quickest and strongest now they are those with the best artificial protection from danger.
That said, the people with access to the best medicines etc. are going to be those with the most money and whilst money is in a way hereditary, just as the genes for strength and speed are, it is possible to have inherited money without having inherited anything biologically worthwhile. Thus whilst physical and mental skills can always be put to use, the “skill” of having money is only useful in the present society and may not remain. So whilst I wouldn’t say it is unethical per se, I would say it is potentially detrimental to the human race as a whole.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Medicine can not defy natural selection.
Natural selection can be defined as the process of organisms who are not adapted to the current environmental conditions dying before they can reproduce or help their offspring reproduce.
From this vantage point, medicine (and other “defying natural selection”) can not actually defy natural selection, because they fall under current environmental conditions.
Does this mean that adapting to “man-made” or “technology-driven” conditions puts man at risk should those technologies disappear? The answer is, of course, yes.
Yet, if those technologies continue to exist, they provide the means for more organisms to survive and reproduce. Which is more or less the object of life from an evolutionary standpoint.
Nothing is more natural in natural selection than the environment changing and many, most, if not all organisms adapted for the previous conditions dying in the new environment. With less than 1% of all kinds of life to have ever existed being alive today, one would assume this is closer to the rule than not.
There’s also the question of if “ethics” are even applicable on evolutionary time. Millions of generations is so far removed from the usual “unit” of ethics (individual action), that it probably doesn’t offer any kind of insight.
Neither Evolution or Natural selection are about any kind of ultimate betterment. They’re about matching an organisms qualities with the environment, with the qualities that enable an organism to live and reproduce being rewarded with living longer and reproducing more.
Qualities that at one point were highly adaptive could easily stop being so with a little environmental tweak. Cold blooded animals that rock hardcore in a sub-tropical environment don’t do so well when an ice age sets in.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Natural selection in its present form is hardly ethical either