Wednesday 27 January 2010

Have we sealed our own fate?

A thought has occured to me recently, considering all the health problems I'm currently suffering. It is simply this:
Would I actually be alive if all the anomalies in my genetic code had been eliminated by the process of natural selection?
Think on this. The morbidities currently uppermost in the psyche of Man are exceptionally rare in any life form not having been messed around with by us: i.e. those that we haven't tried to manipulate in some way by breeding etc.. Those that do suffer from them get them by - for want of a better phrase - "secondary transfer", in other words because they can't escape our detritus.

I know there are evolutionary dead-ends out there: flora and fauna that have not changed in millions of years such as the Ginkgo biloba plant, crocs, caymen, gators and the like or everyone's favourite insect - the 'roach'. But the reason they haven't changed is that their family trees have hit the buffers, their adaptation is perfect for their little niche in what's left of this planet's eco-system.

I will not get into the "creationism" debate, it just isn't worth it. Suffice to say that if there is any indication of intelligent design, it certainly isn't homo-sapiens: we have just too many physical problems.

My point is this: I do not believe we have reached the pinnacle of our existence in terms of what we could become. By prolonging the life of people with genetically caused problems for so many centuries now, have we actually caused ourselves to stop evolving? If so, what could we have become?

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