This is a fore-warning now, this post will offend someone somewhere, I warn you because my intentions are not to offend but to provoke thought on the subject
I disagree with bunni's use of an individual case for a counter argument. You can pull out but what about people all day. The main way of measuring it is statistics and modelling. The main confusion seems to be from bad mutation accumulation. The idea that bad mutations accumulate and propagate through the genome. The main defence we have against this is sex. 50% of your DNA is kept in the new generation; thus negative mutations don't accumulate. This has the same effect on positive mutations as well. This effectively puts a damper on our evolution. Changes only occure occur when we have mass culling. This has been shown in HIV / medieval plague differences. Some Africans have a natural immunity to HIV. Most Caucasians are very susceptible to HIV. This seems to be a change that was linked to a difference in white blood cells caused by 2/3 of Europe dying from the plague. Those that didn't die happen to have DNA that made them more susceptible to HIV but stopped them dying from plague.
Genetic disorders are an unfortunate side effect from other genes that are good for us. i.e. suppose there was a gene that increased your healing rate from wounds but had a side effect of causing death at 40. It would be selected for due to increased chance of propagation. The same thing is linked to gay genes. In you can be gay because of those genes, but have an effect of making females more likely to get pregnant, not that I'm saying that's the case, for example.
To summarise: Medicen Medicine will not cause damage to the genome. It stops us evolving yes, but we can maximise on variation such that if a big killer came along we have better chances to survive as a species. As for finite resources available there isn't much we can do other than educate people on the factors that affect the world and hope that people are good citizens.
This has the same effect on positive mutations as well. This effectively puts a damper on our evolution. Changes only occure occur when we have mass culling. This has been shown in HIV / medieval plague differences. Some Africans have a natural immunity to HIV. Most Caucasians are very susceptible to HIV. This seems to be a change that was linked to a difference in white blood cells caused by 2/3 of Europe dying from the plague. Those that didn't die happen to have DNA that made them more susceptible to HIV but stopped them dying from plague.
Genetic disorders are an unfortunate side effect from other genes that are good for us. i.e. suppose there was a gene that increased your healing rate from wounds but had a side effect of causing death at 40. It would be selected for due to increased chance of propagation. The same thing is linked to gay genes. In you can be gay because of those genes, but have an effect of making females more likely to get pregnant, not that I'm saying that's the case, for example.
To summarise: Medicen Medicine will not cause damage to the genome. It stops us evolving yes, but we can maximise on variation such that if a big killer came along we have better chances to survive as a species.
As for finite resources available there isn't much we can do other than educate people on the factors that affect the world and hope that people are good citizens.
PS
Sorry for the long post.
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