Survival of the Fittest and Health Care

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If you have the ability to preserve life and you willfully refuse to do so you have morally committed murder.

Legally speakng you are wrong.

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Moral relativism is wrong pure and simple. It is not a debatable issue.

From that perspective, you will always keep people alive, including those with terminal illness who are are confined to a bed in great pain with no chance of getting better and no quality of life, and who wish to die peacefully...and you are happy for people to engage in bestiality / incest / paedophilia / orgies / bdsm / homosexuality / hetersexuality / wife swapping / swinging , or any other form of sexuality (this is afterall, the ultimate end of a lack of moral relativism - it's all or nothing)...well, unless you don't believe in sex at all (the 'nothing' part of 'all or nothing')

Of course you may mean it another way, but that is how I see a lack of moral relativism. If it is not your view you will have to explain it properly, but as it stands I see your view of morality is simply a statement of opinion only, and in my view, an ugly and dangerous one at that.

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vikorr wrote:

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If you have the ability to preserve life and you willfully refuse to do so you have morally committed murder.

Legally speakng you are wrong.

I am not talking about what is legal. I am talking about what is morally right, and morality seems to be something that you have no acquaintance with.

It was legal to kill Jews in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right. It was legal to kill the mentally ill in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right. It was legal to kill the physically handicapped in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right.

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It was morally right to stone sinners?

It was morally right to murder non-believers?

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It was legal to kill Jews in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right. It was legal to kill the mentally ill in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right. It was legal to kill the physically handicapped in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right.

Well, while we agree - that's getting a little off topic now. The thread subject is 'survival of the fittest and health car'.

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vikorr wrote:

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It was legal to kill Jews in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right. It was legal to kill the mentally ill in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right. It was legal to kill the physically handicapped in Nazi Germany, but it was not morally right.

Well, while we agree - that's getting a little off topic now. The thread subject is 'survival of the fittest and health car'.

Like it or not the Nazis were avid disciples of Darwin. By killing off the sick and infirm among their German brethren, the Nazis were trying to purify their master race. I don't see how euthanasia in our day, trying to help Darwinism along, is any different than what the Nazis did in theirs.

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Because I wasn't familiar with your claims regarding Nazi Germany regarding killing off mentally ill & disabled people, I did a web search, and came across the following :

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html

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Nazi Germany was not the first or only country to sterilize people considered "abnormal." Before Hitler, the United States led the world in forced sterilizations. Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill.

Still, no nation carried sterilization as far as Hitler's Germany. The forced sterilizations began in January 1934, and altogether an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people were sterilized under the law. A diagnosis of "feeblemindedness" provided the grounds in the majority of cases, followed by schizophrenia and epilepsy.

Forced sterilization in Germany was the forerunner of the systematic killing of the mentally ill and the handicapped. In October 1939, Hitler himself initiated a decree which empowered physicians to grant a "mercy death" to "patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health." The intent of the socalled "euthanasia" program, however, was not to relieve the suffering of the chronically ill. The Nazi regime used the term as a euphemism: its aim was to exterminate the mentally ill and the handicapped, thus "cleansing" the "Aryan" race of persons considered genetically defective and a financial burden to society.

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Like it or not the Nazis were avid disciples of Darwin. By killing off the sick and infirm among their German brethren, the Nazis were trying to purify their master race.

That certainly looks like the case doesn't it. A rather nasty business.

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I don't see how euthanasia in our day, trying to help Darwinism along, is any different than what the Nazis did in theirs.

Euthanasia of whom?

Now let's say my previously mentioned terminally ill person. There's a number of differences :

Most importantly - terminally ill, and the will of the person involved, and :
based on (any of the following) - suffering great pain, loss of dignity, bedridden, loss of function, etc

Basically allowing a person to make the decision for a peaceful death, thereby: ending the torture of a person otherwise forced against their will to be tortured, and ending the psychological pain of a proud person otherwise forced against their will to suffer indignity.

Any other course, the 'do-gooder', against the will of the person, refuses to stop the physical torture, refuses to the psychological torture, and refuses to stop the degradation the person....

or looked at another way:

...the 'do-gooder' says (through implication, not through direct words) "I want you to be tortured, I want you to suffer psychological anguish, I want to suffer indignity, because allowing you to die as you wish would be against my morals...

or another way :

... What (says the 'do-gooder'), your morals and wishes? Who gives a stuff about your morals, or your wishes. I, my morals, and my wishes are the only ones that count here."

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vikorr wrote:

]Nazi Germany was not the first or only country to sterilize people considered "abnormal."

Sterilization is not extermination (I was talking about Aktion T4). And regardless of whom it was that did it first, it is still morally wrong.

It is a sign that a society in on the brink of total moral dissolution when it will sterilize the sick and infirm to keep them from having pregnancies that that society does not want when that society won't make the effort to see to it that the sick and infirm are not raped or molested. The eugenics of the late 19th and early 20th century laid the foundation for places like Hadamar, Schloss Hartheim, Auschwitz and Dachau as well as every abortion clinic in the world.

BTW: Most illnesses and handicaps that have a genetic basis are likely determined by recessive genes. In order for a person to have such a genetic condition he must inherit a copy of the recessive gene from both parents (who would each have 1 copy of the normal dominant gene and 1 copy of the abnormal recessive gene). This means that these parents are carriers for the abnormal gene and they can also produce offspring that are homozygous dominant- meaning the offspring has 2 copies of the normal gene as well as heterozygous dominant- meaning the offspring are like the parents with 1 dominant gene and 1 recessive gene. Killing off people that are sick or handicapped because they are homozygous recessive does not eliminate the unwanted gene from the population.

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The quote attributed to me in your post, is a quote from a webpage. You apparently didn't read the full quote either - the part about extermination is in the last paragraph of that webpage quote.

The part on how defective genes are passed on is a little irrelevant if the percentage of people carrying defective genes is growing...my question at the start was related to this - what happens 5, 6...10...20 generations down the track - will everyone have an illness/allergies, or multiple illnesses/allergies?

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vikorr wrote:

The quote attributed to me in your post, is a quote from a webpage. You apparently didn't read the full quote either - the part about extermination is in the last paragraph of that webpage quote.

The part on how defective genes are passed on is a little irrelevant if the percentage of people carrying defective genes is growing...my question at the start was related to this - what happens 5, 6...10...20 generations down the track - will everyone have an illness/allergies, or multiple illnesses/allergies?

Whether there is a difference in genetic stuff being handed down now depends on

a. Whether the genetic issue previously prevented the affected individual from having/successfully raising children

b. Whether it expressed itself before or after the fertile years.

The increase in allergies MAY be more a function of hyper-clean infant environments and omni-present multi-chemical invasion of the environment than allergic folk living to have kids...but I do get your point.

I doubt I would have lived, at least in prehistoric times, because of my short-sightedness, for instance......I would have been a dream prey for a cave lion...probably would have thought it was a relative! ; )

I also am likely a carrier for a genetic illness...cystic fibrosis...(I have a 2 in 3 chance of being so) and my key child-bearing years occurred before there was a test to see if one WAS a carrier, and before amniocentesis was able to detect if the foetus had it.

The fella I was thinking of having kids with also had a brother who died of the disease (with me it was my sister), and we did the maths and determined there was no way we would have kids together.

I clearly am not the maternal type, because I never seriously considered kids again.....but I have to say, in thinking about the possibility, I was mindful that I have hereditary extreme short sight, and am also slowly going deaf with hereditary nerve deafness!!!!

Most people do not seem in the least deterred by such concerns, though, I note.

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I doubt I would have lived, at least in prehistoric times, because of my short-sightedness, for instance......I would have been a dream prey for a cave lion...probably would have thought it was a relative! ; )

On a serious note though, shortsightedness isn't of major concern, because it is easily fixed through glasses etc.

In relation to allergies, I take your point regarding hyperclean environments and chemicals.

As for other problems, hopefully one day they can be prevented through genetic engineering (though that path is fraught with peril, hopefully it can be navigated relatively safely). The only other option, should society not wish to bear the cost of everyone having multiple illnesses / hereditary risks (which is a long way off, for us at least), is preventing those with defective genes from procreating, which is a terrible way to go. Perhaps another way will be found.

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vikorr wrote:

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I doubt I would have lived, at least in prehistoric times, because of my short-sightedness, for instance......I would have been a dream prey for a cave lion...probably would have thought it was a relative! ; )

On a serious note though, shortsightedness isn't of major concern, because it is easily fixed through glasses etc.

In relation to allergies, I take your point regarding hyperclean environments and chemicals.

As for other problems, hopefully one day they can be prevented through genetic engineering (though that path is fraught with peril, hopefully it can be navigated relatively safely). The only other option, should society not wish to bear the cost of everyone having multiple illnesses / hereditary risks (which is a long way off, for us at least), is preventing those with defective genes from procreating, which is a terrible way to go. Perhaps another way will be found.

Actually, as I am discovering as my eye people start checking me for ever more dastardly eye problems, very short-sighted eyes are prone to all sorts of awful things that can cause blindness, so the correction thing is not so simple.

In reality, as you say, eugenics is likely too terrible a way to be considered again, and we can only hope that gene therapy is proven efficacious.

Again, the picture is not so simple as you suggest, since many factors influence our health, (poverty, for instance, being a major issue) and whether genetic vulnerabilities express themselves.....epigenetics is opening up as a fascinating field in relation to this.

One of the things that worries me is that there is a kind of health underclass in the west...where poor people suffer signicicantly more of almost all illnesses than the comfortably off.

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Actually, as I am discovering as my eye people start checking me for ever more dastardly eye problems, very short-sighted eyes are prone to all sorts of awful things that can cause blindness, so the correction thing is not so simple.

Truly? Shows how little knowledge I have of some (and in reality many) things. Best wishes with the health of your eyes Very Happy

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Again, the picture is not so simple as you suggest, since many factors influence our health, (poverty, for instance, being a major issue) and whether genetic vulnerabilities express themselves.....epigenetics is opening up as a fascinating field in relation to this.

I've never suggested that our health is a simple matter (otherwise our health problems would be easy to solve), nor that it isn't influenced by our environment, or our lifestyle, or our diet.

That said, throwing too many variables in makes a discussion of a base issue makes discussion difficult...unless, in this case one is arguing that % of genetically based illnesses isn't increasing.

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One of the things that worries me is that there is a kind of health underclass in the west...where poor people suffer signicicantly more of almost all illnesses than the comfortably off.

Same here, but that stretches across to other things too - notice how rarely politicians get charged, and how often the rich get off charges? Rich/Poor = Social Upper / Lower, Health Upper / Lower, Legal Upper / Lower classes.

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flaja wrote:

Terry wrote:
Fitness is a function of surviving in a given environment, and mental ability, creativity, talent, charm, or other traits may be more important to modern human beings than physical fitness.

Fitness is a product of genetics. Aren't mental ability, creativity, talent, charm and all other traits we have due to our genes? Why wouldn't these things be part of fitness?

???I just said that they ARE part of fitness, but they are a product of environment as well as genes. Some people seem to think that physical attributes such as strength, speed, and health are all that natural selection works on.

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A society that allows individuals with diverse assortments of genes to survive is a far richer one than it would be if it selected only those with approved genetic profiles. Diversity allows for the evolution of genes that might not be beneficial initially but in combination with other mutations could eventually confer new traits to our species.

Thus natural selection strives to achieve genetic diversity- preserving "bad" genes that lead to a lowering of fitness. Contrary to Darwinian thinking (and the earth's natural history) natural selection doesn't seem to lead to extinction.

Natural selection quite often leads to extinction - 99% of all species that ever existed are gone - some to catastrophe, but others (Neanderthals, for instance) lost out in the survival game.

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I agree with Phoenix that spending millions on one hopeless case at the expense of thousands of other children who suffer due to inadequate medical care does not seem right.

Killing off the sick and infirm or letting them die of thirst or starvation is any less right?

No one said anything about killing off the sick and infirm. But it makes no sense to use heroic (and expensive) measures on a child with no mind or quality of life while denying basic medical care to people who could be helped.

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vikorr wrote:

Has anyone given thought to the fact that we are removing survival of the fittest from the (western world) human equation?

Survival of the fittest means those people with 'defective' genes would die out and not pass them on, yet with our health care they are.

If medical care in the western world allows the medically "unfit" to survive, presumably people in 3rd world countries that lack adequate health care would be far more fit because those with defects simply die before reproducing. But that's not the case. If lifespans are increasing and overall health in the western world is improving, I'd say that indicates a general increase in fitness whether it is due to genes or environment.

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dlowan wrote:

Again, the picture is not so simple as you suggest, since many factors influence our health, (poverty, for instance, being a major issue) and whether genetic vulnerabilities express themselves.....epigenetics is opening up as a fascinating field in relation to this.

One of the things that worries me is that there is a kind of health underclass in the west...where poor people suffer signicicantly more of almost all illnesses than the comfortably off.

Poverty and ignorance. Even free health care cannot cure the problem of people who do not make healthy choices in their lives. How do you get them to buy veggies instead of cigarettes and soda?

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Terry wrote:

dlowan wrote:
Again, the picture is not so simple as you suggest, since many factors influence our health, (poverty, for instance, being a major issue) and whether genetic vulnerabilities express themselves.....epigenetics is opening up as a fascinating field in relation to this.

One of the things that worries me is that there is a kind of health underclass in the west...where poor people suffer signicicantly more of almost all illnesses than the comfortably off.

Poverty and ignorance. Even free health care cannot cure the problem of people who do not make healthy choices in their lives. How do you get them to buy veggies instead of cigarettes and soda?

Sure...but I am not talking about that....I am more talking about stuff like certain kinds of stress seemingly triggering the expression of a genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia, or interfering with optimal foetal development etc., not health choices made by people after they become able to make choices.

Oh, I probably need to note that these are stresses found more frequently in poorer people.....not that they can't and don't exist amongst the wealthy...

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vikorr wrote:

The quote attributed to me in your post, is a quote from a webpage. You apparently didn't read the full quote either -

I am well aware of where the quote came from. I just didn't take the time to worry with the mechanics of posting.

I also see sterilization and extermination as two separate German crimes. Sterilization was Nazi policy long before extermination was.

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The part on how defective genes are passed on is a little irrelevant if the percentage of people carrying defective genes is growing...

You have documentation that the number of people carrying such genes is growing? No. Whether or not gene frequency is changing in a population depends on how genes behave, so my explanation is very relevant. Without mutations and without controlling mating habits in a population, it is biologically impossible for gene frequencies to change.

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my question at the start was related to this - what happens 5, 6...10...20 generations down the track - will everyone have an illness/allergies, or multiple illnesses/allergies?

No. A homozygous dominant parent can only pass dominant genes to the next generation with 100% certainty. A homozygous recessive parent could die before reaching puberty depending on the gene's effects, but if such a parent does produce offspring he/she can only pass the a gene to the next generation with 100% certainty.

Furthermore, a heterozygous parent has an equal chance of passing either the dominant or the recessive gene on to the next generation every time he/she produces offspring since genes are transferred to gametes at random as long as they are not found on the exact chromosome. There is a 50% chance that a heterozygous parent will pass the A gene and a 50% change that he/she will pass the a gene.

In any infinitely large population where mating pairs are formed at random and genes do not mutate, gene frequencies remain the same from one generation to the next due to the Hardy-Weinberg law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy_weinberg

A gene is either dominant A or recessive a.

The possible parents are AA, Aa and aa.

Mating AA and AA has only 1 possible offspring AA. This mating has a 100% chance of producing AA:

A A
A AA AA
A AA AA

Mating aa and aa (assuming that someone with the aa genotype can mate) has only 1 outcome aa. This mating has a 100% chance of producing aa:

a a
a aa aa
a aa aa

Mating Aa and aa has 1 possible offspring Aa. This mating has a 100% chance of producing Aa:

a a
A Aa Aa
A Aa Aa

Mating Aa with Aa has 3 possible offspring AA, Aa and aa. This mating has a 50% chance of producing Aa, a 25% chance of producing AA and a 25% chance of producing aa:

A a
A AA Aa
a aA aa

In this population:
The frequency of the A gene is p
The frequency of the a gene is q
The frequency of AA is p^2;
The frequency of Aa is 2pq;
The frequency of aa is q^2.

P^2 + 2pq + q^2 = 1.

Thus the a gene never goes extinct in this population and the possibility of producing someone with the aa genotype is always present.

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dlowan wrote:

Whether there is a difference in genetic stuff being handed down now depends on

a. Whether the genetic issue previously prevented the affected individual from having/successfully raising children

b. Whether it expressed itself before or after the fertile years.

No because heterozygous parents act as carriers for the "bad" genes even though the bad gene will never have any effects on the parent.

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The increase in allergies MAY be more a function of hyper-clean infant environments and omni-present multi-chemical invasion of the environment than allergic folk living to have kids...but I do get your point.

Allergies are immune response reactions. Exposure to allergens has as much (if not more) to do with allergies than genetics do. To my knowledge no one in my family has ever been allergic to pollen, and pollen never bothered me until I was in college in Atlanta during a few years where the Atlanta pollen counts were running about 10 times above normal. But even though the pollen counts here where I was born and raised are never even close to what I experienced in Atlanta, I am still bothered by pollen because I am now hypersensitive to it.

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The fella I was thinking of having kids with also had a brother who died of the disease (with me it was my sister), and we did the maths and determined there was no way we would have kids together.

Assuming that CP is caused by just 1 gene (and not a group of genes working in unison) you both would have the Aa genotype. Every child you would have had would have had a 25% chance of having CP and a 50% chance of being a carrier and a 25% chance of not having CP or being a carrier.

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I clearly am not the maternal type, because I never seriously considered kids again.....but I have to say, in thinking about the possibility, I was mindful that I have hereditary extreme short sight, and am also slowly going deaf with hereditary nerve deafness!!!!

Both of these genetic conditions would have either existed or been carried in your ancestry- likely since time immemorial. By not having children you really wouldn't have done anything to remove these genes from your family's segment of the future human population.

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vikorr wrote:

is preventing those with defective genes from procreating,

Are the genes that cause black skin defective?

Are the genes found among Jews defective?

If homosexuality is caused by genes, are these genes defective?

If alcoholism is caused by genes, are these genes defective?

If it is possible to identify defective genes, who gets to do the identifying?

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Terry wrote:

Natural selection quite often leads to extinction - 99% of all species that ever existed are gone - some to catastrophe, but others (Neanderthals, for instance) lost out in the survival game.

Natural selection or catastrophic environmental conditions? Are you familiar with Bumpus' sparrows? As long as the environment remains constant or changes very slowly the genes in a population seem to be preserved even when they put the bearer at a disadvantage. But when catastrophe strikes the change is too quick for some genes and their bearers die off.

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I agree with Phoenix that spending millions on one hopeless case at the expense of thousands of other children who suffer due to inadequate medical care does not seem right.

When have millions ever been spent on one hopeless case?

And what happens if we do spend millions on one "hopeless" case so that doctors can learn from it and thus develop ways to better treat such cases in the future? If money hadn't been spent on the fist incubator that saved a premature baby, I wouldn't be alive. And the money that was spent on me has, no doubt, enabled babies that are born far more premature than I was to survive.

If money hadn't been spent treating a patient with terminal kidney disease, we likely wouldn't have dialysis machines or kidney transplant operations.

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No one said anything about killing off the sick and infirm.

If you don't kill them off, how do you not spend money caring for them?

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Survival of the Fittest and Health Care

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