31–40 of 66 posts
I've heard that the doctors who perform this joke that they are breeding future clients for themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, aside from the preschool formatting of the article (one sentence per paragraph, a concerning recent BBC trend), the journalist didn't actually say anything incorrect. But she did not answer the main question that was asked: why the human pelvis has not grown wider over the years? She said that there were two opposing forces, one for larger babies (they have more chance of survival), and the other was natu…
> one sentence per paragraph, a concerning recent BBC trend 3 of your 5 paragraphs are a single sentence.
Do we really need caveman-capabilities? To be ready for the day we lose our tech and have to start over? In a different context it has been discussed how we have used up our easily accessible energy and may not be able to restart civilization on this planet. So why keep lowtech genes around? Make way for large brains and large heads!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's two sides to this coin. By allowing normally lethal genes to be passed on were likely to cause more death in the future. This is definitely something that should be screened and prevented, whether through gene editing, surrogacy, or just selecting for embryos that are either male or lack the undesired trait. Nobody has to die to voluntarily select this out of the population. The Jewish community has been on t…
Why should we avoid those genes? We have the technology to deal with the situation when it arises. What would be the problem with, eventually, all women giving birth by Caesarean? There are plenty of other instances where our advancements have likely influenced our evolution. For one, the ease at which we can today travel between continents means that there's far more breeding between different races than we've ever…
It needs significantly more resources (time, labor, medication) and therefore should negatively affect host's fitness but in most developed countries it does not. NOW we optimize for a world that does not exist.
Going to potentially be controversial, but we need (might be a strong word here) genetic manipulation with strong ethical and humanist values attached to it (and a lot more knowledge). If we are to deny natural selection its role, then we might want to still prevent people from passing on genes which effectively handicap them when they don't have access to certain facilities and technology. Prevention in this case is…
It's an expensive and convoluted process, so it's only done when one or both of the parents are carriers of a serious genetic mutation.
It is blindingly obvious from an evolutionary standpoint that this is happening. I have thought about it a fair bit, as it has directly impacted my own family, and I've no doubt it will continue to do so in subsequent generations. I don't think it's something to worry much about, as the much broader benefits of modern medicine (namely, antibiotics) have had so much impact on our survival rate that this would pale int…
Couldn't this be said about medicine in general?
Yes. The better medicine gets, the feebler we all become. This is a pity, but the alternative is worse[1]. [1] https://www.quora.com/Are-we-eliminating-natural-selection-b...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should we avoid those genes? We have the technology to deal with the situation when it arises. What would be the problem with, eventually, all women giving birth by Caesarean? There are plenty of other instances where our advancements have likely influenced our evolution. For one, the ease at which we can today travel between continents means that there's far more breeding between different races than we've ever…
> What would be the problem with, eventually, all women giving birth by Caesarean? It needs significantly more resources (time, labor, medication) and therefore should negatively affect host's fitness but in most developed countries it does not. NOW we optimize for a world that does not exist.