On Feb 1, 2005, at 9:38 AM, DJA wrote:
Exactly. The War on Terrorism(tm) is the equivalent of the March of Dimes' fight against birth defects: the only solution to either is to eliminate people or wait for evolution to clean up after itself.
That is an unfair characterization of the fight against birth defects.
No, it's a fair criticism of the March Against Birth Defects, a means to gather wealth from an organization whose purpose withered away with the cure of it's original nemesis. In fact, I wonder what if any effect the March of Dimes actually had on the development of the vaccines.
Evolution does *not* always "clean up after itself" nowadays.
That's not known. We don't know about /all/ evolution, we haven't been here long enough and so weren't first person witnesses; we barely understand /some/ of how evolution works.
Modern medicine often rescues those whom evolution would have "cleaned up" in the past.
Maybe. Probably. Sometimes. But your statement is more value judgment than fact. "Rescue" is a bit subjective from some people's perspective when medicine only made things worse in the name of prolonging life merely for the sake of postponing death.
> Sometimes this is a great cost to society.
It should always be so minimal, sometimes there is a greater cost to the *species*.
Unlike "The War on Terrorism(tm)", the fight against birth defects has solutions that can be shown to work. Making sure that women who might get pregnant get enough folic acid has been a huge boost, for example. I can cite many others. While this does not eliminate *all* birth defects, it certainly eliminates unnecessary ones.
But you cited only one, and I doubt you could cite enough others to support a proposition that /all/ birth defects can be prevented. My original implication therefore stands: you can't prevent (all) birth defects unless you can prevent birth (people).
By the way, just what is a "necessary" birth defect? And what are the rules which determine what is an unnecessary birth defect and what is a necessary one? Aren't defects, by definition, something to be avoided if possible?
In addition, as we get better at gene manipulation, I can certainly foresee at time when we can correct *all* genetic problems.
Sure, if you can get everyone to agree on what defines a problem (defect) and then agree on what is an acceptable solution? The problem is that there is a potential that the more "defects" are "cured", the more new defects are to be found.
And then there's the problem of introducing even more serious problems because we really don't understand the nature of what we are "curing" in the first place. I'd expect that at the point at which medicine has corrected all genetic defects will be about the same point at which the species truly begins to die out due to lack of genetic diversity.
Remember, in many cases, a birth defect is nature's attempt to adapt to a changing environment. It usually takes many, many failures before the adaptation is successful. That's just basic biology. Attempting to prevent all genetic "defects" is tantamount to taking away nature's ability to learn from its mistakes. Not only can we *not* prevent all birth defects, we should *not* do so.
Now, I have no idea about the March of Dimes as an organization. But calling the fight against birth defects pointless is incorrect and unfair.
-a
Then you miss my point entirely, and I can't help you see it. Fighting /a/ birth defect might be reasonable, depending on the defect. Expecting to prevent all defects is to go against evolution, natural selection, and nature in general. And I'd go as far as calling it grand hubris. It's also apparently a good way to collect a lot of money by always telling people we're halfway there now.
--
Best Regards,
~DJ "I'd hate to live in a world where nobody dies" A.--
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