GwJ
Smash Hero
THERE IS A PRESUPPOSITION IN THIS THREAD THAT EVOLUTION IS TRUE; DO NOT ARGUE EVOLUTION IN THIS THREAD
I read a student's paper at my university a few weeks ago talking about how modern medicine practices are causing evolution in humans to slow down. Here's essentially what was brought up:
Modern medicines allow humans with undesirable genes to survive and reproduce, when they normally would get weeded out via natural selection, and are able to pass their genes on to further offspring. This overlaps with the process of natural selection which works against the weeding out of bad genes by allowing the survival of said genes. With this happening, human evolution cannot proceed at the speed that it would be if modern medicine would not be involved.
tl;dr Medicine makes bad people with bad genes reproduce, stopping evolution.
Does his argument have any cogency to it? I feel like on the surface it does, but I also have a nagging feeling that there's something wrong with what he's saying.
I read a student's paper at my university a few weeks ago talking about how modern medicine practices are causing evolution in humans to slow down. Here's essentially what was brought up:
Modern medicines allow humans with undesirable genes to survive and reproduce, when they normally would get weeded out via natural selection, and are able to pass their genes on to further offspring. This overlaps with the process of natural selection which works against the weeding out of bad genes by allowing the survival of said genes. With this happening, human evolution cannot proceed at the speed that it would be if modern medicine would not be involved.
tl;dr Medicine makes bad people with bad genes reproduce, stopping evolution.
Does his argument have any cogency to it? I feel like on the surface it does, but I also have a nagging feeling that there's something wrong with what he's saying.