What is wrong with the world... and what can we do about it?

[Caesar15]

I wonder if they have all these problems in equestria.

[Ydoow]

That... is what I said.

Yes, I thought I stated this awkwardly. I more of meant to say, I don\'t see why this Pediatrician\'s views are revolutionary, because I have always thought of fevers and such as human reactions to fight off bacteria.

You seemed to be implying that this way of thinking was new, but for me it was not. Which surprised me.

As I said, there are some exceptions, although I did fail to mention that some diseases cause the 'side-effects' as you call them. Also, if you have diahrroea, it\'ll flush it out easily enough, you just have to drink a ton of water to stay alive. That\'s all the 'treatment' you really need, for as you said, the cholera often is totally flushed out anyway.

Yes, when it comes to biology, there is never an absolute. I wasn\'t trying to 'Poke holes' into your post or logic, I was just trying to complete the picture I guess.

Just so you\'re aware though (in case anyone you know ever gets a disease that causes massive dehydration), I forgot to say that people may die of either Dehydration OR electrolytic shock.

So the treatment isn\'t to drink tons of water, but rather to drink tons of saline water; mixed with salt and sugar. It\'s quite delicious actually.

Just in case there\'s a zombie apacolypse and someone in your group starts dying

Also stay very clear of their watery stool. It\'s the method in which cholera spreads.

Aye. I didn\'t mean to imply that ALL reactions are helpful. Just the most common ones Fever, pain, swelling, etc, for the majority of infections. It\'s when something swells that REALLY shouldn\'t (and that the body is incapable of causing swelling in) then you start to counteract it. Say, if your inner ear started swelling a ton, you\'d want to stop that immediately.

Yup, just like I noted at the end, the goal of modern anti-biotics are meant to hold off more severe reactions to prevent bodily damage (I\'ll expand on this a bit later).

I also found it interesting in my class that Diphtheria can cause your lymph nodes to swell to such and extent that you can asphyxiate

The disease is also called 'Bull Neck' because of this very unique symptom.

Not always. Some will, certainly, but not all. And if we simply allowed our bodies to deal with this stuff (bar things that our bodies quite literally cannot deal with, deadly diseases we have zero defence against, etc), we\'d be evolving alsongside the pathogens, (hopefully) always being ready.

Ah, of course not all. With STD\'s it\'s very common for there to be no symptoms, or unnoticed symptoms (e.g. painless warts inside the vagina). I find it interesting that other diseases haven\'t taken up this method. Or rather, it\'s more correct to say that I am surprised more bacteria haven\'t been pressured into avoiding flare up of symptoms.

Source please. The very name 'anti-biotic', by definition, means it destroys living cells and environments conducive to life. That include the human body and also, they tend to kill the good bacteria as well as the bad, making things worse in many cases.

Source? A PhD who lectured us in class last week ;D

Each anti-biotic is different, so I certainly can\'t speak for all.

However a majority work by stalling bacterial growth, mainly by slowing down or halting reproduction of the pathogen.

They\'re called Static Antibiotics, whereas antiobiotics that kill the organism are called Cidal Antiobiotics.

If you stop an organism from reproducing, it effectively stops spreading through your body and it\'s numbers will very very quickly dwindle, since the life of such organisms typically hang around a day or two. Some even less.

Again, probably not a good idea. See, if you clear everything from the patient\'s body, the most deadly bacteria tend to be the ones that multiply fastest and do the most damage. An antibiotic somply clears space for that bacteria to grow as soon as the antibiotic leaves the system. In a patient with immune deficiency or total lack of immunity, that will appear to help over the course of the antibiotics, but there is a rather large risk that subsequent harmful bacteria can enter the body after the antibiotics have left the system before any of the good bacteria can get in again. It has a severe potential to do more harm than good.

You\'re absolutely right about creating these 'Super Bugs'. It\'s essentially evolution in action.

However you have to remember, these bactericidal drugs are only used in very special cases where the patient has no, or very limited immune response.

With these patients, the options are kill the pathogen with medicine, or the patient dies.

For the reasons you mentioned, creating superbugs, this is exactly why doctors use static antiobiotics. It\'s very unlikely for bactericidal antiobitics to kill 100% of the infection. Whatever cannot be killed by that drug is said to be resistant.

While it\'s likely your body can kill the very few remaining in your body, there\'s a chance it could spread to someone else and literally lay waste to decades of scientific research on the antibiotic.

Your own immune system can create many different selectors against pathogens, and as a result is much more holistic in it\'s destruction of the pathogen, albeit much slower.

This is why the goal of ordinary antibiotics is of static nature, to stall the bacteria long enough for your body to take over.

Aye, but be careful about which bacteria you stall. You can\'t stall one without all the rest, and many are quite important in the body\'s digestive systems and such.

This is very true as well.

Your colon\'s natural flora of bacteria is very beneficial to digestion. It holds many hundreds of thousands of species of bacteria, including a few nasties.

It\'s not uncommon for someone being treated with antibiotics to gain a secondary illness because treatment for the primary illness upset the balance of bacteria in the gut.

The large amount of bacteria in your gut compete for nutrients with each other, and generally keep the other in check. An antibiotic may decrease the numbers of one species, and allow another one to grow beyond a healthy proportion.

Also, on the topic of antibiotics, have a look at this one as well:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328582.700-antibiotics-are-wonder-drugs-no-more.html

That\'s very interesting. I didn\'t think it could really cause long term/permanent changes in the gut. I was with the article, I thought it would generally recover in a few days or weeks.

Most interesting indeed

[vexx32]

Yes, I thought I stated this awkwardly. I more of meant to say, I don\'t see why this Pediatrician\'s views are revolutionary, because I have always thought of fevers and such as human reactions to fight off bacteria.

You seemed to be implying that this way of thinking was new, but for me it was not. Which surprised me.

Yes, when it comes to biology, there is never an absolute. I wasn\'t trying to 'Poke holes' into your post or logic, I was just trying to complete the picture I guess.

Oh, OK. No, it\'s not knew to me either. I have yet to be given any vaccines, I take no medicine for fevers and swelling aside from a very small amount of homeopathic medicines (although their effectiveness is marginal, if they do anything at all). Even if I have serious cough, I usually just lie down for a few days and let it pass. However, among qualified doctors, this approach does seem rather new. Most doctors hand antibiotics out like candy.

Just so you\'re aware though (in case anyone you know ever gets a disease that causes massive dehydration), I forgot to say that people may die of either Dehydration OR electrolytic shock.

So the treatment isn\'t to drink tons of water, but rather to drink tons of saline water; mixed with salt and sugar. It\'s quite delicious actually.

Just in case there\'s a zombie apacolypse and someone in your group starts dying

Also stay very clear of their watery stool. It\'s the method in which cholera spreads.

I was not aware of that. I\'ll be sure to remember that! (Although I was very aware of the fact that the virus is always in the watery stool. yeuch.)

Yup, just like I noted at the end, the goal of modern anti-biotics are meant to hold off more severe reactions to prevent bodily damage (I\'ll expand on this a bit later).

I also found it interesting in my class that Diphtheria can cause your lymph nodes to swell to such and extent that you can asphyxiate

The disease is also called 'Bull Neck' because of this very unique symptom.

Ah, of course not all. With STD\'s it\'s very common for there to be no symptoms, or unnoticed symptoms (e.g. painless warts inside the vagina). I find it interesting that other diseases haven\'t taken up this method. Or rather, it\'s more correct to say that I am surprised more bacteria haven\'t been pressured into avoiding flare up of symptoms.

Source? A PhD who lectured us in class last week ;D

Each anti-biotic is different, so I certainly can\'t speak for all.

However a majority work by stalling bacterial growth, mainly by slowing down or halting reproduction of the pathogen.

They\'re called Static Antibiotics, whereas antiobiotics that kill the organism are called Cidal Antiobiotics.

Aye. What they don\'t tell ya (at least from what you\'ve said) is that by stalling the growth, they kill them anyway. bacteria grow in order to replicate, so if you forestall their replication, they can grow too large and basically explode from consuming too much. As such, the difference is that they just die more slowly. And thus, my previous point stands. Unless you can target antibiotics so that they only affect harmful bacteria, they will cause detrimental effects to the body, occasionally worse than the original disease itself.

If you stop an organism from reproducing, it effectively stops spreading through your body and it\'s numbers will very very quickly dwindle, since the life of such organisms typically hang around a day or two. Some even less.

You\'re absolutely right about creating these 'Super Bugs'. It\'s essentially evolution in action.

However you have to remember, these bactericidal drugs are only used in very special cases where the patient has no, or very limited immune response.

... yet, doctors will very quickly prescribe antibiotics for just about anything. It might be a good 'general drug', but we need to be careful about when it is and isn\'t necessary.

With these patients, the options are kill the pathogen with medicine, or the patient dies.

From a purely evolutionary perspective, it\'s better for those people to die out. While I myself don\'t entirely agree with that line of rationality, the logic is quite flawless. If we let everyone with an autoimmune condition just die, it quickly becomes very difficult for the disease itself to die.

However, even I can\'t entirely agree with that aproach, although it is guaranteed to work almost flawlessly doubtless some other new viruses will evolve and such eventually and suchlike, but again, they\'ll be gone quickly if we stop trying to sustain every single living person.

For the reasons you mentioned, creating superbugs, this is exactly why doctors use static antiobiotics. It\'s very unlikely for bactericidal antiobitics to kill 100% of the infection. Whatever cannot be killed by that drug is said to be resistant.

While it\'s likely your body can kill the very few remaining in your body, there\'s a chance it could spread to someone else and literally lay waste to decades of scientific research on the antibiotic.

Aye. Problems left right and center with such things. :/

Your own immune system can create many different selectors against pathogens, and as a result is much more holistic in it\'s destruction of the pathogen, albeit much slower.

This is why the goal of ordinary antibiotics is of static nature, to stall the bacteria long enough for your body to take over.

This is very true as well.

Antibiotics tend to get in the way of the body\'s own immune response anyway, so it doesn\'t really help all that much.

Your colon\'s natural flora of bacteria is very beneficial to digestion. It holds many hundreds of thousands of species of bacteria, including a few nasties.

It\'s not uncommon for someone being treated with antibiotics to gain a secondary illness because treatment for the primary illness upset the balance of bacteria in the gut.

Aye, which is why we need something better.

The large amount of bacteria in your gut compete for nutrients with each other, and generally keep the other in check. An antibiotic may decrease the numbers of one species, and allow another one to grow beyond a healthy proportion.

That\'s very interesting. I didn\'t think it could really cause long term/permanent changes in the gut. I was with the article, I thought it would generally recover in a few days or weeks.

Most interesting indeed

Yeah. It\'s basically the concept of too much room for bacteria -- the first ones in are tyically harmful ones, as they tend to be the ones that replicate fastest. The ones that are already there are all that stop them gaining one hell of a foothold...

But yeah. basically, antibiotics do as much harm as good... it\'s like trying to use a bladed weapon that is all blade and no handle whatsoever. You cut yourself as the same time as the enemy.

[Caesar15]

ydoo and vex, are your typing hands okay?

[Johno]

Problem is they all blow. Which is why many people don\'t vote.

<Schnippedy schnip>

If implemented it would certainly rise voting rates lol.

I feel like people would start 'Throwing out their votes' though. As in 'Jesus...they all suck...I\'ll vote for the guy most unlikely to win' or some random person.

But who knows, that might actually cause a giant upturn and cause a super unlikely candidate to win lol

When we have two parties that don\'t inspire confidence (and it happens now and again!) you do get a bit of what we call 'informal voting' and 'donkey voting'. An informal vote is one in which you don\'t follow the instructions to correctly register a preference. You are legally obliged to show up at the polling booth and get your name marked off, but since the ballot is secret, you can do whatever you like with your ballot paper; you can leave it blank, you can write 'You all suck' on it, you can draw a picture of a pony, whatever you like. All of these votes (obviously including the ones where people mark ballots incorrectly by accident) are gathered together and called 'informal'. If both major parties suck, your informal vote skyrockets. I expect a high informal at our next election!

Donkey voting is when you protest by not caring; you just vote 1,2,3,4 etc down the page without bothering about which candidate is which. I dislike this form of protest because a donkey vote IS A FORMAL VOTE. So donkey votes artificially inflate the candidate numbered '1' (for this reason the law says candidates must be randomly allocated in each division).

There is a bit of this kind of protest voting. However our system allows a better way of protesting. Like most major democracies, we have two major parties (namely the left-wing Labor party, and the right-wing Liberal party[1]; and you can be pretty sure that ultimately one of those two will win most of the divisions. But minor parties or independent candidates CAN have an impact because we have a preferential system - in other words, you don\'t just tick the candidate you want and cross the other guy; you rank the candidates in order from most preferred to least preferred. If the election is close, the preferences of people voting for the independents and minor candidates can decide who wins many seats.

Like the USA we have two houses - House of Representatives and the Senate. Unlike the USA, in which the party of the president finances his/her campaign but doesn\'t really figure in the election, the party with the most representatives is considered to be elected as government, and one member of that party is elected (by their party members) as Prime Minister. One curious result of this is that there\'s absolutely no reason why a party couldn\'t go to an election with leader Herp, then win the election (But Herp loses his seat) and instead elect Derp as PM.

This system has a big advantage over the US system - if a PM is really doing a terrible job, there\'s an easy system for removing him or her (if the party loses confidence in them and has a vote as such, the PM is sacked). The disadvantage is that it\'s all too common for a sitting Prime Minister to be ousted by their own party on the back of bad results in the Opinion Polls (that is, not necessarily doing a bad job!). Our current PM 'knifed' our last PM, and this is a real problem for many of her traditional voters.

I don\'t quite see the logic here honestly, or at least I don\'t see how it would change things here. Most people in the US are very middle grounded; radicals are the extreme (they just get the most media coverage because they sound apeshit crazy and get high ratings).

Exactly. But right now, appealing to the centre ground won\'t get a candidate much traction. It\'s easier to convince people who don\'t vote BUT ALREADY SHARE YOUR VIEW to just get out there and vote than it is to convince people to change from voting one way to voting another way. This is why Presidential candidates tend to appeal to either the redneck vote or the bleeding heart vote - it\'s just the path of least resistance.

In Australia, the whacked out fascists and the crazy communists are already voting, so appealing to the extremes doesn\'t actually help you. Instead, you need to put the effort into capturing the middle ground.

You say that the majority of Americans are fairly centrist, and I\'d say you\'d be absolutely right. But your system doesn\'t actually reward politicians who truly represent them. Our system does.

Perhaps the diagram below might help explain what I mean.

<Party discipline>

I disagree with this. It\'s the exact opposite it seems to me.

Political members are extremely dedicated to their party. So much so, that they will do ANYTHING to prevent the other party from accomplishing their goals. They stall votes over periods of months, leaving no decision to be made while the country rots.

My friend\'s economic professor told us it didn\'t use to be like this, that Democrats and Republicans actually did work together before relatively well (not always). I think each party is trying to claim all the credit to boost their image and make the other look like they did nothing.

It\'s what I was talking about, like the whole race is Prom Queen election. They\'re just trying to win and not help the country because they think they\'re way is the right way.

Oh, they\'re quite willing to sabotage each other. But when I talk about party discipline, I mean something a little different. Our two parties certainly don\'t work together much. But they are disciplined.

Every time Congress comes to a vote, the numbers of the votes will be slightly different. This is because Democrats and Republicans who feel strongly about an issue may well vote against their party. Therefore, in order to get a bill through Congress, a president or member often has to sacrifice a lot of what is good about their bill to get it through.

In Australia, we consider that if a person has been elected on behalf of a particular party, they are obliged to vote with that party EVERY TIME SOMETHING COMES BEFORE PARLIAMENT. There are, of course, exceptions. A member who votes against their party is described as 'Crossing the floor'. But this is an extremely unusual event, and since the member was elected as a member of their party, it is viewed very seriously. If that member holds any ministry, they\'re required to resign.

Consequently, a party that is elected in Australia has a much easier time of enacting their platform. In fact, to promise something and fail to deliver it is a very bad mistake for a party here. Of course it happens frequently, but it really harms your re-election chances if you do it. A curious example - the current Prime Minister went to the last election promising that there\'d not be a tax on Carbon dioxide emissions. The Carbon Tax is to be enacted this year! Here\'s the weird bit: Most Australians actually have little or no problem with the tax itself (there are a fair few people who disagree, or course, but polls have repeatedly demonstrated that people are generally okay with it). They DO have a problem with what is perceived as Ms Gillard\'s dishonesty - she went to the election promising 'no' but changed her mind once elected. The Labor Party will probably lose the next election because of this issue.

The budget is some random number they make up and change when they want to >_>

It shouldn\'t be. Since the main power of government is to sign cheques (think about it - if they want to do something, government has to pay people to do it!), the budget is a key statement of priorities. Now, every government deviates from their budget because you can\'t plan for every event. However, governments should stick to budget as much as possible.

Also, see what I said about party discipline. In Australia, a party promises X, Y and Z (and recently they\'ve been asked to submit their policies to Treasury to be costed). They then allocate the Nation\'s funds accordingly. Since they\'re elected to enact their platform, the budget should pass without any question or comment. Otherwise it\'s like having a new election every year!

The amount of deadly spiders, squid, scorpions and kangaroos scare me D:

Well, if you can\'t cope with an inch-long spider that can kill a horse with its bite, you\'re probably too pitiful and weak to come here anyway.

[1] Ironically Australian Liberals are not 'liberals' in the American context, they\'re conservatives! The name comes from a different use of the word - the Liberal party includes a fair number of different right-wing perspectives, ranging from fairly far right (think Tea Party Republicans) to Centrist (think bleeding heart Democrats). In the sense of a wide variety of views, they can truly said to be liberal.

[Ydoow]

Oh, OK. No, it\'s not knew to me either. I have yet to be given any vaccines, I take no medicine for fevers and swelling aside from a very small amount of homeopathic medicines (although their effectiveness is marginal, if they do anything at all). Even if I have serious cough, I usually just lie down for a few days and let it pass. However, among qualified doctors, this approach does seem rather new. Most doctors hand antibiotics out like candy.

Some do, which is very bad.

Many steps are taken to help prevent creating 'super bugs'.

Personally I think the doctors have the biggest effect on prevention by limiting how much antibiotics they hand out.

But it\'s also very important for the patient to follow the regiment the doctor provides. My sister was recently diagnosed with Strept. throat and given antibiotics for that. The regiment lasts 3 weeks, even though her throat probably feels better already (after 2 days).

A part of the research put into drug therapy is figuring out how long to give a person a drug to lower the chance of 'super bugs'.

Consuming an antibiotic for too long greatly increases the chance for a 'super bug', but the very same can happen if you give it for too short a period.

So it\'s not entirely on the doctor. The researchers take part in setting guidelines, and the patient is responsible for following these guidelines to protect the rest of us.

Aye. What they don\'t tell ya (at least from what you\'ve said) is that by stalling the growth, they kill them anyway. bacteria grow in order to replicate, so if you forestall their replication, they can grow too large and basically explode from consuming too much. As such, the difference is that they just die more slowly. And thus, my previous point stands. Unless you can target antibiotics so that they only affect harmful bacteria, they will cause detrimental effects to the body, occasionally worse than the original disease itself.

Bacteria do grow in order to replicate, but they stop growing once they hit replication stage.

From what I\'ve seen in my class, the drugs we\'ve gone over don\'t prevent the cell from entering replication stage, but cause the replication stage to malfunction.

This way, the cells do stop growing and enter the replication stage. The drug will \'mimic\' a protein, or receptor target. It may bind to the designated receptor, or fit into where it needs to go, but is designed in such a way that prevents the replication from continuing further.

An analogy could be replacing the cars on a tire, that look exactly like regular tires, except they have a coefficient of friction of 0; so they can\'t grip anything, just spin wildly until the car runs out of gas and dies.

But again, there are so many different bacteria out there, and so many different drugs there is no possible way what I\'ve said is right for all of them. I can only say this is what I\'ve learned is being used on the more common bacteria we encounter.

And you are right that antibiotics will occasionally do more harm than good. It\'s a very well known risk and must be accounted for before prescription.

Research is always under development for something better with less toxic effects on the human body.

From a purely evolutionary perspective, it\'s better for those people to die out. While I myself don\'t entirely agree with that line of rationality, the logic is quite flawless. If we let everyone with an autoimmune condition just die, it quickly becomes very difficult for the disease itself to die.

This is very interesting point that I\'ve pondered over myself too.

My answer is that I both agree and disagree.

In the immediate future, this is absolutely correct. If we were to stop treating people and let them die, then the only humans remaining would be immune to the bacteria, yes.

But this works exactly the opposite way too. Remember that whatever survives reproduces and is what we see: evolution.

Therefore, it\'s highly likely a couple of bacteria will be able to infect these new 'super immune humans' and we\'re right back where we started.

It\'s exactly how life has been occurring for...well forever.

You could think of antibiotics as just a part of human life, being that antibiotics are just a part of our nature we are indeed these 'super immune humans'

It\'s the same scenario, eventually a bacteria or two are going to overcome our 'natural' super immunity.

The main difference here is that someone has pressed the fast forward button and everything is going at a blazing pace.

Whereas all past life took millions of years to adapt and change over generations,

we are creating new antibiotics (that are basically a part of most everyone\'s everyday life) every couple of decades.

I don\'t see any real difference between what we\'re doing and regular evolution except that it\'s going at lightning speed compared to what you see in nature.

Which is very, very costly. I know a couple of researchers that are trying to work against this expensive cycle.

But yeah. basically, antibiotics do as much harm as good... it\'s like trying to use a bladed weapon that is all blade and no handle whatsoever. You cut yourself as the same time as the enemy.

I disagree.

I would say it\'s a double bladed weapon with a handle, but the blade that hits us is dulled.

We both agree that it certainly has it\'s negative effects on us, but you cannot argue that antibiotics and vaccines have done far more damage to bacteria than they have to us.

I said above that you could consider antibiotics and vaccines to be a part of human nature because it\'s such a common thing in our lives.

I also said that it\'s a cyclic battle, create antibiotic/vaccine, new bacteria are created, create new antibiotic/vaccine.

This is very fine and perfectly normal cycle of evolution that can adapt readily.

However! By assuming antibiotics are a part of human nature, a part of our species, you must also be forced to assume that the scientific research and development is also a part of our nature. Which it could be assumed to be in this modern day and age.

But not if the research goes away. Then the antibiotics become limited/nonexistant and therefore can NOT be considered a part of 'human nature'

This is when bacteria would sweep wide across humans since our 'antibiotic immune system' has suddenly been dropped.

Bacteria wouldn\'t be super killers (antibiotic resistants doesn\'t mean they have insanely higher deathrates than normal bacteria), but we would probably see deathrates very similar to the world before antibiotics.

Pre-1900\'s or so.

[vexx32]

Huh... it appears we\'re having two different discussions at once... how amusing. Just try to remember which one you\'re taking part in, and not confuse the two topics. It is acceptable to participate in both if you wish, merely clearly divide your post between the two topics, so we can keep it in a modicum of control.

Also, my typing hand is OK for now; I\'ve been using it for texturing purposes after each post so as to give it a bit more varied exercise and a tidbit of rest.

Some do, which is very bad.

Many steps are taken to help prevent creating 'super bugs'.

Personally I think the doctors have the biggest effect on prevention by limiting how much antibiotics they hand out.

Not exactly the biggest, but certainly a significant effect.

But it\'s also very important for the patient to follow the regiment the doctor provides. My sister was recently diagnosed with Strept. throat and given antibiotics for that. The regiment lasts 3 weeks, even though her throat probably feels better already (after 2 days).

A part of the research put into drug therapy is figuring out how long to give a person a drug to lower the chance of 'super bugs'.

Consuming an antibiotic for too long greatly increases the chance for a 'super bug', but the very same can happen if you give it for too short a period.

No, if it the period is too short, the harmful bacteria aren\'t all killed and the infection worsens very quickly, but yes, you are correct.

So it\'s not entirely on the doctor. The researchers take part in setting guidelines, and the patient is responsible for following these guidelines to protect the rest of us.

Bacteria do grow in order to replicate, but they stop growing once they hit replication stage.

From what I\'ve seen in my class, the drugs we\'ve gone over don\'t prevent the cell from entering replication stage, but cause the replication stage to malfunction.

Which, I would think, causes any bacteria that enter the replication stage to die, I would think. Or at least seriously harm them. ALso, to what extent does this form of drug affect the body itself? i.e., does this drug impair the replication process in the human body itself? I\'ve always wondered...

This way, the cells do stop growing and enter the replication stage. The drug will \'mimic\' a protein, or receptor target. It may bind to the designated receptor, or fit into where it needs to go, but is designed in such a way that prevents the replication from continuing further.

An analogy could be replacing the cars on a tire, that look exactly like regular tires, except they have a coefficient of friction of 0; so they can\'t grip anything, just spin wildly until the car runs out of gas and dies.

I see. The end result is, basically, they cause the cell to die without replicating.

But again, there are so many different bacteria out there, and so many different drugs there is no possible way what I\'ve said is right for all of them. I can only say this is what I\'ve learned is being used on the more common bacteria we encounter.

Yeah... we use it on everything because it works on the common stuff. Anything it doesn\'t work on... well, thus is why we need targeted drugs... or something else entirely.

And you are right that antibiotics will occasionally do more harm than good. It\'s a very well known risk and must be accounted for before prescription.

Research is always under development for something better with less toxic effects on the human body.

This is very interesting point that I\'ve pondered over myself too.

Yeah... the research doesn\'t get much priority though, and that fault is largely due to stupid politicians who don\'t understand what they\'re making decisions about. They just make the decisions about where government funding goes, but they often don\'t understand exactly what they\'re making decisions about... which is a big problem, in some ways.

My answer is that I both agree and disagree.

Don\'t we all

In the immediate future, this is absolutely correct. If we were to stop treating people and let them die, then the only humans remaining would be immune to the bacteria, yes.

But this works exactly the opposite way too. Remember that whatever survives reproduces and is what we see: evolution.

Therefore, it\'s highly likely a couple of bacteria will be able to infect these new 'super immune humans' and we\'re right back where we started.

If the bacteria evolves to be able to infect us again, as it no doubt will, or if another similar bacteria comes along with the ability to do this, then we will adapt, as we always have. Evolution is a constant process, and the minute you stop it, you are at a major disadvantage, for everything else continues to evolve to try and tear down the walls we put up against it. Purely from logic, it makes more sense to let humans deal with these threats themselves, for using drugs, in the end, only gives the bacteria and other pathogens even more of an advantage, for we sit here behind the barriers of drugs and painkillers and everything else, not really evolving at all, while the pathogens evolve at an alarming rate because of us trying to stop them.

It\'s exactly how life has been occurring for...well forever.

At least, to the best of our knowledge.

You could think of antibiotics as just a part of human life, being that antibiotics are just a part of our nature we are indeed these 'super immune humans'

It\'s the same scenario, eventually a bacteria or two are going to overcome our 'natural' super immunity.

Except that since antibiotics are not a part of the human bod and are a drug, they tend to do more harm than any part of the human body would ever do itself, thus making us weaker than any natural 'super immunity'. And when that day of reckoning comes... well, we\'re pretty screwed.

The main difference here is that someone has pressed the fast forward button and everything is going at a blazing pace.

Whereas all past life took millions of years to adapt and change over generations,

we are creating new antibiotics (that are basically a part of most everyone\'s everyday life) every couple of decades.

Which in turn is slowing our rate of evolution by providing a sort of 'crutch' for our immune system, and also accelerating the evolution of the bacteria. I just had an interesting thought... even if some super bacteria infects the human body, if there is no defence, those that survive could, after a significant time period, evolve their own way of living with it, turning it into just another one of their (mostly) harmless gut bacteria, or using its infective properties for something else entirely...

I don\'t see any real difference between what we\'re doing and regular evolution except that it\'s going at lightning speed compared to what you see in nature.

Aye, everything else is evolving... but when the drugs run out or become ineffective, we\'ll find out we ourselves are millions of years behind and seriously disadvantaged. Not good.

Which is very, very costly. I know a couple of researchers that are trying to work against this expensive cycle.

I disagree.

I would say it\'s a double bladed weapon with a handle, but the blade that hits us is dulled.

We both agree that it certainly has it\'s negative effects on us, but you cannot argue that antibiotics and vaccines have done far more damage to bacteria than they have to us.

Perhaps. As I said just before, the effect of halting our evolution in favour of developing better drugs and artificial defences, could potentially cause more harm than anything else. But then again, we may never know. it all depends.

I said above that you could consider antibiotics and vaccines to be a part of human nature because it\'s such a common thing in our lives.

I also said that it\'s a cyclic battle, create antibiotic/vaccine, new bacteria are created, create new antibiotic/vaccine.

Yes, but if something totally resistant to everything like that rears its head, our immune systems will be lazy and ineffective, having been using our artificial aids as a sort of crutch, and then we are completely helpless to deal with it. My point is that if we stop trying to prevent all forms of illness, we\'ll be better equipped to deal with something we\'ve never seen before.

This is very fine and perfectly normal cycle of evolution that can adapt readily.

However! By assuming antibiotics are a part of human nature, a part of our species, you must also be forced to assume that the scientific research and development is also a part of our nature. Which it could be assumed to be in this modern day and age.

Aye, it may be, but it is my opinion that we\'ll get further by going against our nature than just giving in to it and thus making ourselves weaker.

But not if the research goes away. Then the antibiotics become limited/nonexistant and therefore can NOT be considered a part of 'human nature'

This is when bacteria would sweep wide across humans since our 'antibiotic immune system' has suddenly been dropped.

Exactly my point. Also, babies whose immune systems have not yet been fully developed and are too young to be taking antibiotics will have far less of a chance of surviving, since the mother\'s milk (which normally contains antibodies from the mother\'s immune system and sustain the individual for about three months while their own immune system develops. Our survival rate will plummet.

Bacteria wouldn\'t be super killers (antibiotic resistants doesn\'t mean they have insanely higher deathrates than normal bacteria), but we would probably see deathrates very similar to the world before antibiotics.

Pre-1900\'s or so.

Well, there\'s our solution to the population problem... nature will eventually return balance to the world, in time. Perhaps.

[Ydoow]

I think we\'ve come down to one single topic, so I won\'t bother quoting the whole thing again

Your making a distinction in evolutionary speed between a Human without any antibiotics, and a Human who takes antibiotics.

I want to quell this thought because I believe there is very little difference, and I hope I don\'t come off as condescending because that is the very last thing I wish to do.

I understand perfectly what you are telling me, and you are not wrong to think as you are. I only wish to extend the thought further to hopefully reveal how far out evolution goes.

When I think of evolution, how species change over time to certain stimuli, I find that you cannot limit how a species evolves to their own biological features. In fact it goes into things that don\'t physically exist.

Another thing to say is that evolution only means 'Change over time'

It does not mean a change is good, bad, broadens or narrows the definition of a species.

It only means change.

The ONLY deciding factors that affect how something evolves (remember, good or bad) are things that affect the birthrate of an individual in some manner.

If a bird has a beak that is too big and can\'t eat, it will probably die before reproducing, and the species as a whole will experience a push towards smaller beaks. Because the individuals with smaller beaks are more likely to survive up to birthing age.

It\'s easy to think that killing something is a factor in evolution, even the bird example above seemingly implies that.

I worded it carefully to include 'survive up to birthing age' for a reason though.

It\'s only birthrate.

If you\'re mother has a heart-attack at age 80 and dies, how does that affect her lineage?

It does not. Even if the heart condition is genetic, it does not.

Your mother is way beyond possible birthing age, and her offspring are already out in the world.

All of her offspring may die at the same age, same cause as her, but if they\'ve already reproduced it simply does not matter.

It\'s only the things that reproduce that exist.

Building us up to the point a bit more, I\'m going to present 3 examples and tie them together.

1) In EvoBio lab, we counted the number of plates on Rolly Pollie bugs (or pill bugs). They all had 7 plates. There was absolutely no variance between any of them, and indeed, there are 7 plates on 99.9999% of all pill bugs.

Deep back in the past, there was a very VERY heavy pressure against birthrate with having more or less than 7 plates on their back.

(why or what the reason is, I do not know)

Today, we see no variance.

This is similar to the idea of 'Super Immune Humans', where we let all humans who can\'t handle the diseases die off (ignoring the part after where bacteria adapt to infect us again) leaving only 1 very specific type of human left; 1 with very high immunity.

This is a form of evolution as you and I stated.

2) Dogs have many different colors, thickness, lengths and shapes of hair. There doesn\'t seem to be very much pressure against birthrate when it comes to the type of hair, even between the same species of dogs. There\'s certainly some pressure (who wants to mate with a mangy haired dog??), but nothing like the pill bugs where ALL dogs have the EXACT same hair.

3) Now, let\'s take us humans and assume we\'re being treated with antibiotics. It\'s having the same effect you\'re arguing, stalling our evolution. The Human Body is not adapting, the lineage is not evolving to the bacteria out there in the world. The antibiotics are handling that for us.

As a result, as you said and as is happening in reality, many more people are living who may not have been able to live without these antibiotics. That is to say, these people would be flat out dead without this medicine, they would not exist.

These antibiotics are repelling the evolutionary pressure, allowing the birthrates of many different types of humans to match up with humans who COULD survive without these antibiotics.

It\'s important to see it\'s not simply just rising the Human Population, but increasing the variance of Humans.

Now, bringing it all together:

What would happen if, say, suddenly humans killed all dogs with black, thick, curly hair because we\'re all sick demented people who hate black, thick, curly haired dogs?

Obviously, all dogs without those specific traits would survive, and have a higher birthrate compared to those black haired dogs. It would be a evolutionary shift against those traits.

What if we did the same thing to the pill bugs? Killed all pill bugs with 7 plates.

Well they\'d go extinct.

There is no variation, so there is no way for a select few bugs to survive and reproduce. The negative pressure would be against ALL pill bugs.

And if we removed antibiotics from Humans?

The evolutionary pressure, being repelled by antibiotics, would come crashing back down on those who cannot exist without them. Many of them would die.

But see this, no matter which way things go, to increase variance or to decrease it, it is evolution by definition.

And in fact, you cannot say that one is good and the other is bad.

It\'s my argument that both are good, decreasing and increasing variance.

If we evolve so specifically as to be the same as the pill bugs, there is an insurmountably small chance of the Human Species being able to survive ANY type of birthrate pressure against that trait.

My argument is that antibiotics do not slow down evolution, because the effect of increasing variance is evolution itself.

Being freed from a birthrate pressure is a part of evolution, because that is evolution. The only things that exist, are those that have a higher birthrate than the rest.

Be it they can increase their birthrate, or that the rest of the species has a decrease in birthrate. Or to say that one species birthrate becomes more free of pressure, or the rest of the species experience an increase in birthrate pressure.

I\'d like to finally say that 'Super Bugs' are no big deal if there are no antibiotics around anyway. The term 'Super Bug' only means they are resistant to antibiotics. If there are no antibiotics, they are no more harmful than a regular bacteria.

Likewise, by choosing not to use antibiotics, you are choosing to use yourself as the antibiotic.

The bacteria will adapt to your immune system. If your immune system creates a 'super bug' it is resistant to your bodies defenses.

If you do not use antibiotics at that point, you are dead.

Even with the availability of antibiotics, I would argue that any bacteria that is resistant to the Human\'s Immune system is incredibly more dangerous than any type of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Like I said in my previous post, you could consider antibiotics as a part of human nature (metaphorically).

You could see antibiotics as an add-on to our immune system. Yes, it has detrimental effects on our cells, but so does our own immune system at times.

The point is that the antibiotics take the brunt of evolutionary pressure.

Antibiotics are born out of laboratories.

Only the ones that kill bacteria are reproduced.

If they become ineffective, a new type of antibiotic that is effective can be made in a decade. Several, several, several millions of times faster than any biological system can adapt, or species can evolve.

That is my final point. That evolution defines existence. Existence as a whole, not being limited to biological systems.

It describes everything that we encounter because only that which can reproduce or be reproduced is what exists.

That is existence.

[vexx32]

Yay for piecemeal!

Your making a distinction in evolutionary speed between a Human without any antibiotics, and a Human who takes antibiotics.

I want to quell this thought because I believe there is very little difference, and I hope I don\'t come off as condescending because that is the very last thing I wish to do.

I understand perfectly what you are telling me, and you are not wrong to think as you are. I only wish to extend the thought further to hopefully reveal how far out evolution goes.

When I think of evolution, how species change over time to certain stimuli, I find that you cannot limit how a species evolves to their own biological features. In fact it goes into things that don\'t physically exist.

Another thing to say is that evolution only means 'Change over time'

It does not mean a change is good, bad, broadens or narrows the definition of a species.

It only means change.

No, I understand that perfectly. What I mean to point out is that because of us controlling our 'evolution' by external things, our bodies themselves are not actually evolving in this way. If anything, they are becoming weaker. This is unnoticeable for as long as the technology remains, but we become irrevocably dependent on this technology. If we run out of resources or something occurs so that this medicine and other things that amount to our 'evolution' will vanish, and we will be so far behind all the viruses and such that have been continually evolving that we will probably find that most of us will die, with the few remaining being very lucky and adapting at a very fast rate.

The ONLY deciding factors that affect how something evolves (remember, good or bad) are things that affect the birthrate of an individual in some manner.

If a bird has a beak that is too big and can\'t eat, it will probably die before reproducing, and the species as a whole will experience a push towards smaller beaks. Because the individuals with smaller beaks are more likely to survive up to birthing age.

If a bird is given food its entire life, it\'s children will grow up not knowing how to find their own food. if the food source is removed, both parent and child die. it\'s not just birth/death rates. Everything in their lives affect the evolution of a creature.

It\'s easy to think that killing something is a factor in evolution, even the bird example above seemingly implies that.

I worded it carefully to include 'survive up to birthing age' for a reason though.

It\'s only birthrate.

Not quite. Birthrate is important, no doubt, but evolution is influenced by, well, everything.

If you\'re mother has a heart-attack at age 80 and dies, how does that affect her lineage?

It does not. Even if the heart condition is genetic, it does not.

Your mother is way beyond possible birthing age, and her offspring are already out in the world.

All of her offspring may die at the same age, same cause as her, but if they\'ve already reproduced it simply does not matter.

It\'s only the things that reproduce that exist.

Aye, if the creature is beyond the age of reproducing, subsequent happenings do not affect the future of the species. That does not mean to say reproduction is the only factor.

Building us up to the point a bit more, I\'m going to present 3 examples and tie them together.

1) In EvoBio lab, we counted the number of plates on Rolly Pollie bugs (or pill bugs). They all had 7 plates. There was absolutely no variance between any of them, and indeed, there are 7 plates on 99.9999% of all pill bugs.

Deep back in the past, there was a very VERY heavy pressure against birthrate with having more or less than 7 plates on their back.

(why or what the reason is, I do not know)

Today, we see no variance.

This is similar to the idea of 'Super Immune Humans', where we let all humans who can\'t handle the diseases die off (ignoring the part after where bacteria adapt to infect us again) leaving only 1 very specific type of human left; 1 with very high immunity.

This is a form of evolution as you and I stated.

2) Dogs have many different colors, thickness, lengths and shapes of hair. There doesn\'t seem to be very much pressure against birthrate when it comes to the type of hair, even between the same species of dogs. There\'s certainly some pressure (who wants to mate with a mangy haired dog??), but nothing like the pill bugs where ALL dogs have the EXACT same hair.

3) Now, let\'s take us humans and assume we\'re being treated with antibiotics. It\'s having the same effect you\'re arguing, stalling our evolution. The Human Body is not adapting, the lineage is not evolving to the bacteria out there in the world. The antibiotics are handling that for us.

As a result, as you said and as is happening in reality, many more people are living who may not have been able to live without these antibiotics. That is to say, these people would be flat out dead without this medicine, they would not exist.

These antibiotics are repelling the evolutionary pressure, allowing the birthrates of many different types of humans to match up with humans who COULD survive without these antibiotics.

It\'s important to see it\'s not simply just rising the Human Population, but increasing the variance of Humans.

Now, bringing it all together:

What would happen if, say, suddenly humans killed all dogs with black, thick, curly hair because we\'re all sick demented people who hate black, thick, curly haired dogs?

Obviously, all dogs without those specific traits would survive, and have a higher birthrate compared to those black haired dogs. It would be a evolutionary shift against those traits.

What if we did the same thing to the pill bugs? Killed all pill bugs with 7 plates.

Well they\'d go extinct.

There is no variation, so there is no way for a select few bugs to survive and reproduce. The negative pressure would be against ALL pill bugs.

And if we removed antibiotics from Humans?

The evolutionary pressure, being repelled by antibiotics, would come crashing back down on those who cannot exist without them. Many of them would die.

But see this, no matter which way things go, to increase variance or to decrease it, it is evolution by definition.

And in fact, you cannot say that one is good and the other is bad.

It\'s my argument that both are good, decreasing and increasing variance.

If we evolve so specifically as to be the same as the pill bugs, there is an insurmountably small chance of the Human Species being able to survive ANY type of birthrate pressure against that trait.

My argument is that antibiotics do not slow down evolution, because the effect of increasing variance is evolution itself.

Being freed from a birthrate pressure is a part of evolution, because that is evolution. The only things that exist, are those that have a higher birthrate than the rest.

Be it they can increase their birthrate, or that the rest of the species has a decrease in birthrate. Or to say that one species birthrate becomes more free of pressure, or the rest of the species experience an increase in birthrate pressure.

Well said. My point is part of that, really. Not all evolution is good. I\',m not saying we\'re not going to evolve, but in a sense, we\'re sort of evolving in a bad way. Getting lazier, less immune because all the stuff is done for us. It\'s fine while our technology lasts. If it ever fails, though, very few will survive... but that\'s just how it is, I guess.

I\'d like to finally say that 'Super Bugs' are no big deal if there are no antibiotics around anyway. The term 'Super Bug' only means they are resistant to antibiotics. If there are no antibiotics, they are no more harmful than a regular bacteria.

Likewise, by choosing not to use antibiotics, you are choosing to use yourself as the antibiotic.

The bacteria will adapt to your immune system. If your immune system creates a 'super bug' it is resistant to your bodies defenses.

If you do not use antibiotics at that point, you are dead.

Even with the availability of antibiotics, I would argue that any bacteria that is resistant to the Human\'s Immune system is incredibly more dangerous than any type of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Good point, but I will point out that bacteria are completely incapable of being 'resistant' to the body\'s immune system. The body\'s immune system basically decomposes and destroys invading cells as it identifies them. Viruses can become sort of immune (i.e., HIV/AIDS) by taking over the immune system or hiding within the cells themselves, but bacteria (thankfully) cannot (as far as we know) do this. Even if they could, if the bacteria was widespread enough, our bodies would find a way to survive.

My point is, basically, we should let our bodies handle it, because while our minds are good and all, our bodies have a priority to survive and are much more suited to it than our minds. Our bodies are focused on survival... but we try to use our minds to survive. It\'s pretty silly.

Like I said in my previous post, you could consider antibiotics as a part of human nature (metaphorically).

You could see antibiotics as an add-on to our immune system. Yes, it has detrimental effects on our cells, but so does our own immune system at times.

The point is that the antibiotics take the brunt of evolutionary pressure.

Antibiotics are born out of laboratories.

Only the ones that kill bacteria are reproduced.

If they become ineffective, a new type of antibiotic that is effective can be made in a decade. Several, several, several millions of times faster than any biological system can adapt, or species can evolve.

Out immune system is capable of adapting to an unknown threat in a matter of weeks. Far faster than any antibiotic. Even if the immune system never properly recognises the invader for what it actually is, T-Cells are capable of destroying anything that is not a part of the human body itself, and only the harmless bacteria survive. I must read up on this, because I don\'t quite understand them properly. I only know vaguely how it works, but that\'s basically it.

That is my final point. That evolution defines existence. Existence as a whole, not being limited to biological systems.

It describes everything that we encounter because only that which can reproduce or be reproduced is what exists.

That is existence.

Well, I\'d prefer to be existing off my own back than that of technology and getting lazy. Just a personal preference

[Ydoow]

I understand what you\'re saying. I think I missed a small part of it initially; that you\'re concerned over time, with antibiotics relieving evolutionary pressure, human immune systems will be too greatly varied. In time meaning that a large amount of people may have crappy immune systems, while few have capable immune systems.

I have no dispute with that. It\'s perfectly logical and correct.

There are a few things I want to touch on though, mostly irrelevant to the above.

Aye, if the creature is beyond the age of reproducing, subsequent happenings do not affect the future of the species. That does not mean to say reproduction is the only factor.

Reproduction truly is the only thing that defines evolution.

There are many many factors that tie in to birthrate/reproduction, some direct, and many indirect. But it always comes down to birthrate.

Jeane Baptiste Lamarck had the idea of 'Use/Disuse' where if a Giraffe kept trying to eat the higher leaves off a tree and succeeded by growing a longer neck, it\'s offspring would have a neck in similar length to the one the Parent Giraffe grew.

It\'s similar to thinking that if a body builder had a baby, the baby would be born with ripped muscles.

While it\'s true that the baby may have the potential to grow large muscles, it will not be born with large muscles.

Evolution (change between generations) isn\'t affected by things like this (directly). Only things that allow one individual to reproduce more comparatively to the rest.

Good point, but I will point out that bacteria are completely incapable of being 'resistant' to the body\'s immune system. The body\'s immune system basically decomposes and destroys invading cells as it identifies them. Viruses can become sort of immune (i.e., HIV/AIDS) by taking over the immune system or hiding within the cells themselves, but bacteria (thankfully) cannot (as far as we know) do this. Even if they could, if the bacteria was widespread enough, our bodies would find a way to survive.

Actually, bacteria becoming resistant to our body is completely possible.

There\'s a few reasons I think this.

1) The immune system is one giant evolutionary selector/pressure. Something can slip by it if that bacteria is special enough to avoid it\'s mechanisms. It sounds unlikely, but with our bodies constantly pressuring against bacteria, it\'s only a matter of time.

An argument against this is kinda saying 'Things can\'t evolve to the immune system, because the bacteria can\'t evolve.'

Which really doesn\'t make sense :l

2) It has happened! You said it yourself with viruses, and it\'s also happened/happening with bacteria.

The bacteria I\'ve covered in-class all use many many techniques to avoid the immune system.

You\'re immune system detects objects by sugars on their outside coating and other proteins seen on the outside.

Things like Samonella are able to change their flagella and outer coating to trick the immune system.

For the first week or so they\'ll express Flagella Type A, then after 1-2 weeks they\'ll switch to Flagella Type B.

It\'s a random shift, but the randomness is narrowed down to this time-frame by protein expression well beyond the scope of my course.

1-2 weeks is how long it takes your immune system to mount an counter-attack on the bacteria. So by the time your immune system mounts an attack for Salmonella Type A, Salmonella Type B is in your body - completely invisible to your immune system.

Other bacteria are absorbed by Lymphocytes to be destroyed and broken apart, but the bacteria is able to resist being broken apart.

This generally results in granular growths (large collection of over-inflated lymphocytes) causing other issues.

Shigella is another organism that\'s able to burst through cells and hide from Lymphocytes and other immune cells.

It\'s very possible, and probable, for bacteria to work around the immune system.

Out immune system is capable of adapting to an unknown threat in a matter of weeks. Far faster than any antibiotic.

True, but bacteria can kill or seriously damage you well before a full on immune response is mounted. And as I stated before, your immune response may be incorrect due to bacterial resistance.

Even if the immune system never properly recognises the invader for what it actually is, T-Cells are capable of destroying anything that is not a part of the human body itself, and only the harmless bacteria survive. I must read up on this, because I don\'t quite understand them properly. I only know vaguely how it works, but that\'s basically it.

It\'s quite complex. We only briefed over it in class.

T-Cells are made in the bone marrow, but mature in the Thyroid.

It\'s in the Thyroid that they are tested for self-reactivity (reacting to human tissue).

Aprox. 95% of T-Cells created are killed off due to self-reactivity. T-Cell reactivity is completely random, so that they can have very wide reactivity to foreign debris.

It\'s important to know that the T-Cells, nor any other immune cell, knows what is good tissue and what is bad tissue. No cell knows about any other cell anywhere in the body.

Cells only react to stimuli triggered by receptors.

A bacteria could mimic human cells (created by evolutionary pressure), or a bacteria could (somehow) express no antigens on it\'s surface, making it invisible.

I can\'t remember the name of it, but there\'s a bacteria that is actually able to be absorbed by T-Cells, resist being broken down by 'Hydrogen Burst' (i think that\'s what it\'s called), get transported into the M-Cell (which tells all the cells what to kill) and trick the M-Cell into thinking that the bacteria is something it shouldn\'t react to.

Which is quite a dangerous situation.

[vexx32]

Thanks for all that info

Good to know there\'s still a lot I don\'t know

Basically, there are only two points I feel the need to take issue with. First, evolution. Yes, it does not happen without reproduction, but the environment itself determines evolution, not reproduction. That\'s all.

Second, the body\'s immune system and whatnot. Yes, it is highly likely that many would die if a bacteria entirely unknown came into play, but those that did survive would simply continue to survive and the problem would vanish. By allowing these people to live through the use of drugs, we are thereby weakening the human race as a whole, since as the pathogen can infect these individuals (and probably their children as well), it will from there be able to adapt even more thoroughly to the human immune system and thereby spread to others, being even more capable of evading the immune systems, even if these people were previously immune.

We are basically providing an easy way for the bacteria to evolve, provided it is able to circumvent at least some of the drugs\' effects.

[Ydoow]

Graaah we\'re going in circles, I can see it! lol

And there\'s a LOT to know. I don\'t feel like I even know the tip of the iceberg. It\'s scary imagining how smart PhD\'s must be.

First, evolution. Yes, it does not happen without reproduction, but the environment itself determines evolution, not reproduction.

Yes I see what you\'re saying but that plays into birthrate, it\'s another factor. If an animal has an extra bonus that let\'s them reproduce higher in that specific environment, then they flourish

Yes, it is highly likely that many would die if a bacteria entirely unknown came into play, but those that did survive would simply continue to survive and the problem would vanish. By allowing these people to live through the use of drugs, we are thereby weakening the human race as a whole, since as the pathogen can infect these individuals (and probably their children as well), it will from there be able to adapt even more thoroughly to the human immune system and thereby spread to others, being even more capable of evading the immune systems, even if these people were previously immune.

I completely understand this, but I don\'t think it\'s negative to the human species as a whole.

It\'s my opinion that having a large variance is beneficial to the species as a whole,

whereas having little variance (or resistance) is beneficial to the individual.

Think about it, as a species do you want all the individuals to be very specified with little variance to a stimuli/environment?

Then there\'s little opportunity for the species to survive if this stimuli/environment changes too much too fast.

With large variance, yes individual death may be high, but for the species as a whole this means it has many 'options' to 'choose from' if the stimuli/environment changes.

Having large amounts of variation gives the species a larger arsenal of biological features to survive with.

I understand that you say using antibiotics for a long time will mean many of us will have weakened immune systems. True, but some will have good immune systems.

As long as there\'s a few, that\'s all the species needs.

But again, antibiotics don\'t do all of the work. If the immune system played no part in infections, antibiotics would do nothing but delay death.

Antibiotics are designed only to stall and infection until our bodies can build up a good immune response. So this means there is STILL selective pressure to have good immune systems.

Anyone with no immune system (not just AIDs patients) would succumb to so many infections on a daily basis there would be no physical way to keep them alive unless they lived inside of a bubble.

And that is exactly what has happened in the past.

[vexx32]

Graaah we\'re going in circles, I can see it! lol

And there\'s a LOT to know. I don\'t feel like I even know the tip of the iceberg. It\'s scary imagining how smart PhD\'s must be.Yes I see what you\'re saying but that plays into birthrate, it\'s another factor. If an animal has an extra bonus that let\'s them reproduce higher in that specific environment, then they flourish

I completely understand this, but I don\'t think it\'s negative to the human species as a whole.

It\'s my opinion that having a large variance is beneficial to the species as a whole,

whereas having little variance (or resistance) is beneficial to the individual.

Think about it, as a species do you want all the individuals to be very specified with little variance to a stimuli/environment?

Then there\'s little opportunity for the species to survive if this stimuli/environment changes too much too fast.

With large variance, yes individual death may be high, but for the species as a whole this means it has many 'options' to 'choose from' if the stimuli/environment changes.

Having large amounts of variation gives the species a larger arsenal of biological features to survive with.

I understand that you say using antibiotics for a long time will mean many of us will have weakened immune systems. True, but some will have good immune systems.

As long as there\'s a few, that\'s all the species needs.

But again, antibiotics don\'t do all of the work. If the immune system played no part in infections, antibiotics would do nothing but delay death.

Antibiotics are designed only to stall and infection until our bodies can build up a good immune response. So this means there is STILL selective pressure to have good immune systems.

Anyone with no immune system (not just AIDs patients) would succumb to so many infections on a daily basis there would be no physical way to keep them alive unless they lived inside of a bubble.

And that is exactly what has happened in the past.

Haha, almost.

Variance, yes... but a weak immune system is in no way a 'variance' -- it will become a norm, if we keep using drugs like we have been. That is clearly not a good thing.

As to variance == high death rate... well, that is IF we stop trying to force everyone to stay alive beyond their eighties :/

But for the most part, I agree with you.

Hmm.. we\'re running low on points to argue. Shall I find a second rant?

[Ydoow]

Variance != weak immune system.

With no selective pressure on it, does not mean everyone will have a weak immune system.

Some will be weak, others strong, and some inbetween

Yes, another rant should be good.

I\'ve enjoyed this discussion quite a bit. It\'s not often you can battle out different opinions without slander being flung like monkey poo

[Guest GroundHOG-2010]

Variance != weak immune system.

With no selective pressure on it, does not mean everyone will have a weak immune system.

Some will be weak, others strong, and some inbetween

Yes, another rant should be good.

I\'ve enjoyed this discussion quite a bit. It\'s not often you can battle out different opinions without slander being flung like monkey poo

I haven\'t been talk or reading what you guys have been talking about, but there is two things that scare me. One being that how far people will go with combined themselves with robots and the other being that if we solve every desiease on the planet, that our ammune system will slowly evolve into something weaker, and then when a big bug comes along, it will wipe out half the population because of it.

[Ydoow]

I haven\'t been talk or reading what you guys have been talking about, but there is two things that scare me. One being that how far people will go with combined themselves with robots and the other being that if we solve every desiease on the planet, that our ammune system will slowly evolve into something weaker, and then when a big bug comes along, it will wipe out half the population because of it.

Yup. But again, only half.

Per individual, this is disastrous.

But for the species, this is perfectly acceptable because it will survive.

[Awaras]

[Guest GroundHOG-2010]

Yup. But again, only half.

Per individual, this is disastrous.

But for the species, this is perfectly acceptable because it will survive.

For the species, half of it at the time I would be speaking for would be around 5 billion. Yes we will survive from it. Yes we will recover. But this is larger by percentage than the largest war (the mongal wars in this case). Larger than every single war put togeather by numbers. Please tell me that this isn\'t and atrocity. And what if this suposide bug not only kills people, but make humans sterile?

And that isn\'t the half of it. If you have played mass effect, there is a race in there that lives in a suit because of there weak ammune system. Thats the worst possiblility out there. A race of people who purify everything to not get sick, to not die because of one cold. Thats worse than becoming half robot.

[vexx32]

I haven\'t been talk or reading what you guys have been talking about, but there is two things that scare me. One being that how far people will go with combined themselves with robots and the other being that if we solve every desiease on the planet, that our ammune system will slowly evolve into something weaker, and then when a big bug comes along, it will wipe out half the population because of it.

Well, cyborgs are a possibility I suppose, but I hope not. Can you imagine programming glitches... in a human(ish) body? *shudder*. oh, the problems.

As to your second point, that\'s sort of what I\'ve been talking about, yeah, but from a bit of a different angle leading to that outcome. Ydoow\'s been trying to convince me that natural variance will leave at least some alive... and with an excess of 7 billion humans alive, he\'s probably right to some degree, but even so... we shouldn\'t be relying on variation, we ought to really stop the weakening in the first place (assuming we\'re objective enough to do so).

@Ydoow:

I don\'t mean that, I simply mean that if everyone makes use of antibiotics, there will be an overall reduction in the effectiveness of the immune system, because half the work will be done for it and the infection will almost always end up being a sitting duck by the time the immune system is geared up for defending it. There will no doubt be exceptions, but for the most part, helping the immune system (excepting cases that would otherwise kill the person) will only make it reliant on that help. At least, that\'s how it seems to my mind.

Now then... next rant. This should prove interesting... Hmm. I wonder. This one\'s largely about medicine in particular, so it should prove interesting. Since we\'ve already discussed antibiotics, I think we can ignore them in particular (unless you find something else to add), but anything else is a free for all

It sort of gets off the topic of medicine towards the end, but that just means more variety. Let me know if you want to tackle it all at once or one part at a time.

It\'s always fun to have a nice clean debate. The things one can learn!

Here we go

I recently saw an article on New Scientist (

here) detailing how scientists researching the H5N1 (bird flu) virus have been forced to stop researching it. Why? Simple. The object of their research is to work out how to contain the virus in the event that it manages to accomplish the 5 (yeah, only 5!) necessary mutations that will make it able to infect humans (along with many other mammalians). In order to do this, they have to force the virus to make those mutations and study how it can be contained while in this form. The problem? They are now afraid that some of these manufactured virii may infect researchers and those around them, possibly because of the minor labs’ sloppy procedures. If this happens, it’s a global pandemic before anybody notices it. Problem? Oh yeah. Bird flu is reportedly deadly to all mammalians it infects. It is not only capable of killing birds… it is rather deadly to anything it is capable of infecting.

So… what’s this have to do with humanity playing God? Simple. We create vaccines, try to prevent everything bad that may occur. We are dooming ourselves. Allow me to explain.

Every creature and form of life (including virii) evolves according to conditions, to better survive. That includes people. However… we continue to follow the path of laziness (the deadly sin of sloth). We try to make everything easier. We made cars so we can sit down while moving faster than we really ought to. We invented vaccines to make it easier for people to cope with pathogens. We invented the Internet so it would be easier for us to remember knowledge. In reverse order, this caused us to forget more than we otherwise would and made us more vulnerable to pathogens in general in the end. If you are confused on this last point, I shall elaborate:

In order for our immune system to be resistant to pathogens AT ALL, it must first be exposed to a pathogen of some type. Different types of pathogens are affected by different antibodies, and are detectable by our system in different ways. To be immune to everything, we need cells that are capable of recognising ANYTHING potentially harmful, and cells that target specific “known†pathogens (i.e. “memory†cells that produce antibodies targeted at specific pathogens). The general detector cells have a more generalised way of dealing with things: anything with certain features is deemed harmful, and removed. Then, the immune system prepares memory cells to deal with it if it comes back again, thus reducing the load on the general detector cells, whose primary function would be to detect new threats.

This cycle repeats. On and on and on. Now, if we try to prevent the virus from ever coming in direct contact with the immune system by “helping†it along (adding specific antibodies that have a short lifetime, giving it weakened or dead cells to examine and fight off, etc), its defenses will be less effective than they would if exposed directly to the virus itself. We daren’t risk deliberate exposure to these pathogens, especially ones that can kill us if our immune system takes too long to realise something wrong — after all, it is not a perfect system.

This mindset (that we have to help nature along) is fundamentally flawed. We survived before without modern medicine. We still can. The more we help ourselves by preventing the constant onslaught of deadly environmental factors (be it other animals, pathogens or natural disasters), the more we weaken ourselves. Sure, some of us would die if we didn’t, but on the other side of things, those left would be much stronger than they had been, and would be far more likely to survive a subsequent occurrence of the same kind. With all this prevention mentality, we are weakening ourselves so far that at the first sign of disaster or the first death around us, we crumble and die. Every day, fewer would die, because the ones that didn’t die would be stronger having been able to survive by themselves. Helping each other is not a problem — it can also make us stronger.

The problem is the prevention mentality. We are being overprotective of ourselves. If, for example, this bird flu virus DID get out, what then? Many of us die. If they had not been so damned careful about containing it, then many people’s immune systems would have been in contact with it before (albeit a strain that could not affect humans, in all probability) and would have developed its own preemptive measures against subsequent infection from that virus. It only needs 5 separate gene mutations to be infectious to humans. That would mean that anyone who had had prior exposure would be able to fight off this pandemic without a moment’s hesitation, without even trying, because the shield is already there.

The way we should do things is to follow nature, not to try and shape it. As much as we try, nature is the same as always, and does not take kindly to us trying to bind it and keep it rigidly in its current state. We don’t like change, and that has GOT to change. if you have been able to follow this this far, thankyou. It has been slightly convoluted, but it outlines well enough how I feel about our playing God with nature. And with ourselves.

If we attempt to prevent every disaster that may befall us, many things will slip through our pathetic little shields. As some say, the best defense is a good offense. What I mean is that rather than stopping us from ever having to deal with such things (and thus making us weaker), we should simply make ourselves stronger and better equipped in and of ourselves to deal with such things. Make no mistake, actually directly meddling is the wrong thing to do, no matter the intention. All we should be doing is occasional deliberate exposure to disease, hunger, sadness, etc. The more we do it without going totally overboard and killing ourselves, the better we are able to deal with it if the need arises.

Do you see what I mean?

I mean, that if we continue playing God, we will die. Perhaps by our own hand, perhaps not. Our somewhat “frightened little kitten†way of dealing with things — i.e. preventing them from occurring at all, will leave us so weak that when there comes something we do not have the power to prevent, we will not know what to do and we’ll be utterly overwhelmed and almost certainly wiped out. A few lucky ones will survive, but I doubt that many will realise why it occurred. Even so, they’ll be stronger for having survived it.

See my point? Our mentality and our playing God is halting our evolution in its tracks. This is most a problem with virii, which constantly evolve to circumvent any and all restrictions they can possibly evade. In our almost frozen state of evolution, we are ever-increasingly at risk from virii, which will outcompete our evolutionary rate in a heartbeat with the way we’re going. The more restrictions we place on them, the worse they get. It’s not going to be long before all this preventative attitude cause a virus to evolve that can completely circumvent all our restrictions — drugs, immune system, the lot. Some already do, by destroying or confusing the immune system. Unless we want to have every virus, from the common cold to polio, circumventing or destroying our immune system as a routine measure of infection, we need to stop restricting them and ourselves. It’s that or we attempt to eradicate every single virus in existence, which is a complete impossibility, simply due to the resilient nature of virii and their tendency to evolve and adapt.

I think you would see my point now.

Are there any that have a cause to disagree with me?

Step forward. Now.

Someone who can change things has to realise the absolute truth of restrictions. Freedom comes at a price, and that is the lives of those who are not able to cope with it. However, the alternative of every single person on the planet dying… it is awful and unthinkable.

It’s our collective choice. Would we rather stop time until it becomes unmanageable, and almost all of us die, with the survivors possibly soon to follow, or would we rather allow time to change both us and the planet, let some die when the world defeats them for the sake of our future being stronger and brighter?

Nobody can stop time… but every single facet of our society seems to be dedicated to doing just that. It’s a pointless endeavor. We train people in jobs that have no meaning in a world without all our complex rubbish. Our legal system is a joke where the person who can afford the most expensive lawyer wins. Our economy fluctuates and causes strife where there need be none, and none of it being the planet’s fault, it is the fault of those pulling all the strings. The people in power are only interested in keeping it that way and laughing at those of us down below, working busily like ants for their gain.

This society is so damned stupidly focused. Society should be about us supporting each other to keep each other alive. We can help people past childbearing age live longer, but those still able to (and planning to) bear children should be helped, but not made lax. They should be exposed to all that can make us stronger — but not the kind of things we think of nowadays. These days, we think that giving someone a vaccine and giving them money and a job makes them stronger. In perspective of nature and the world, they are practically a cripple.

We need to focus on staying alive, not money. Farmers ought to be the rich ones — after all, it is they that keep us all alive. But no, the rich ones are the ones best at convincing, the most devious and the ones who thrive on the suffering of others. This is not the way of the world, and these people are the first to die in the event of a natural disaster, because they have grown used to having everything done for them.

You see? We are destroying ourselves. (Man, this feels like I’ve said it a hundred times before, and I have).

I seem to see every cautionary tale as another warning of what is to come.

Something’s gotta give in this world — it’s either our attitude, society and mentality, or it’s the human race itself which collapses…

So much we do leads to our destruction, and all of it the result of this foolish society.

[mincespy]

As to your second point, that\'s sort of what I\'ve been talking about, yeah, but from a bit of a different angle leading to that outcome. Ydoow\'s been trying to convince me that natural variance will leave at least some alive... and with an excess of 7 billion humans alive, he\'s probably right to some degree, but even so... we shouldn\'t be relying on variation, we ought to really stop the weakening in the first place (assuming we\'re objective enough to do so).

The world is realising these problems.

Slowly.

[Ydoow]

For the species, half of it at the time I would be speaking for would be around 5 billion. Yes we will survive from it. Yes we will recover. But this is larger by percentage than the largest war (the mongal wars in this case). Larger than every single war put togeather by numbers. Please tell me that this isn\'t and atrocity. And what if this suposide bug not only kills people, but make humans sterile?

When it comes to evolution you can let emotions get in the way.

It\'s purely about what species is still has individuals to reproduce after disasters.

Would this be an atrocity? By human terms absolutely. I by no means want this to happen.

I\'m only saying that having a diverse genome, diverse humans gives the human species the largest chance at surviving a sudden disaster.

As for making them sterile, it\'s possible. Anything is possible. But again, having a diverse population decreases the chance that everyone will become sterile.

I should also say that having a species too diverse is bad, and pretty much impossible.

Obviously if your each generation has mutations so wildly different from their parents, you\'re going to end up with offspring that are incapable of survival: going outside the limits of survivable diversity. That\'s the outer bounds defining what\'s too diverse, and what\'s acceptable.

Antibiotics extends these boundaries.

And again...antibiotics work with our immune system.

You see it all the time...AIDs patients...it\'s a death sentence. We cannot live without a normally functioning and capable immune system. AIDs patients receive bactericidal drugs, but even that just cannot keep them alive. We encounter far too many bugs every microsecond not to have our own immune system working and survive.

You would have to be on every cidal antibiotic and anti-viral medicine known to man at once. At that point the toxic effects of these medicines would sum together and be a lethal force of their own.

We STILL need our immune system to live day to day and so there is STILL a great amount of selective pressure against it

@Ydoow:

I don\'t mean that, I simply mean that if everyone makes use of antibiotics, there will be an overall reduction in the effectiveness of the immune system, because half the work will be done for it and the infection will almost always end up being a sitting duck by the time the immune system is geared up for defending it. There will no doubt be exceptions, but for the most part, helping the immune system (excepting cases that would otherwise kill the person) will only make it reliant on that help. At least, that\'s how it seems to my mind.

Eh...Yeah I do know what you mean. But like I just said, we aren\'t really dependent on them so there wouldn\'t really be a weakening like I just said above. We still need an immune system.

You\'ve said this before, that it\'s stopping us from developing, say, perhaps a quicker responding immune system because antibiotics help stall the quickness of an infection. And that\'s pretty true.

But then again, is there any point? I mean yeah if we let go of antibiotics and let people die it could help people of the future have better immune systems. But consider these things...

-Future = Millions of years.

-Bacteria, because of their rapid cell cycles and higher than human mutation rates, will basically adapt within a few generations of any -human adaptation.

-There\'s no way to 'Stay ahead' of the bacteria \'naturally\', we\'ll always be at an equilibrium because that is how nature is: meeting it\'s own equilibrium.

Personally, I don\'t care about people 200 years from now let alone millions of years.

I don\'t really care about the human species, I just...don\'t...I don\'t hate humanity per se, I just kinda care more about my life than someone elses who doesn\'t exist yet.

A species will find a way to exist, if it doesn\'t then it\'s the species fault for not being diverse enough, or able to adapt fast enough.

I see the advent of modern technology, medicine, and all that as a way of our species adapting to our environment. I see all this technology as a direct spawn of naturalism. I see technology as being natural. It all comes down to the same things.

I\'m not sure if you\'ll see it in the same light as me, I\'ve thought about this a lot. I got a lot of my ideas from biology and chemistry courses :l

Now then... next rant...

I recently saw an article on New Scientist (here) detailing how scientists researching the H5N1 (bird flu) virus have been forced to stop researching it. Why? Simple. The object of their research is to work out how to contain the virus in the event that it manages to accomplish the 5 (yeah, only 5!) necessary mutations that will make it able to infect humans (along with many other mammalians). In order to do this, they have to force the virus to make those mutations and study how it can be contained while in this form. The problem? They are now afraid that some of these manufactured virii may infect researchers and those around them, possibly because of the minor labs’ sloppy procedures. If this happens, it’s a global pandemic before anybody notices it. Problem? Oh yeah. Bird flu is reportedly deadly to all mammalians it infects. It is not only capable of killing birds… it is rather deadly to anything it is capable of infecting.

I\'m not sure if you meant '(yeah, only 5!)' as sarcasm or not, but I can tell you that even 1 mutation can be an insurmountable feat.

5 all adding on each other in a positive way seems absurdly unlikely (but possible).

I don\'t want to say much more because I\'m completely ignorant when it comes to bird influenza.

So… what’s this have to do with humanity playing God? Simple. We create vaccines, try to prevent everything bad that may occur. We are dooming ourselves. Allow me to explain.

Well not entirely true. I\'m sure that statement was a bit of a hyperbole, but at least let me throw out there that the cost of vaccines does prevent some vaccines from being developed and others from being distributed commonly.

i.e. Rabies has a vaccine, but because the infection rate is so low you only get it once you get bite and receive treatment for it.

New York actually had it\'s first case a week ago in over 50 years (he was a foreigner).

Every creature and form of life (including virii) evolves according to conditions, to better survive. That includes people. However… we continue to follow the path of laziness (the deadly sin of sloth). We try to make everything easier. We made cars so we can sit down while moving faster than we really ought to. We invented vaccines to make it easier for people to cope with pathogens. We invented the Internet so it would be easier for us to remember knowledge. In reverse order, this caused us to forget more than we otherwise would and made us more vulnerable to pathogens in general in the end. If you are confused on this last point, I shall elaborate:

This concerns me for our discussion. I\'m getting the impression you all technology is evil and makes us lazier, more incompetent people.

Cars - Were not made out of laziness, but so that we could move farther distances in the same amount of time, and for money. I doubt anyone was thinking 'I don\'t want to walk. Let\'s make something to move for me.' Although I bet that would make a good sales pitch.

Vaccines - Any medicine used an on average person assists our immune system. Even saying that is wrong. Medicine makes our immune system more potent.

Vaccines work by stimulating an immune response so it can be prepared when it does encounter the bug. It\'s purely exposing our immune system to a dead (usually) virus/bacteria and letting our immune system react to it. There\'s no magical 'Look immune system! I did all the work for you!' drug. Period.

Internet - It was certainly not made to make remembering things easier. It was for quicker communication. And remembering things easier? It certainly has not done that. Made us forget things easier? It has not done that either.

I have learned far more using the internet than before. Was it easier? no. Have I forgotten it? No.

Without KSP, I would not know nearly as much, not have been exposed to nearly as much information as I have been.

These supporting arguments make me think you\'re anti-technology. You seem to have defined 'Limits' to how fast a human should travel, how easy it is for a human to remember information, how he should fight off an infection.

There\'s no limit to anything. If you\'re to define limits for how a human can interact with the world, YOU are against change. You are limiting how the human species can evolve. You are arguing what should change and what should not.

This is why it concerns me. You\'ve contradicted much of what you\'ve said previously with those points.

To me, technology is a part of human evolution.

A molecule is a molecule. It cannot reproduce itself.

In the right environment though, molecules might be attracted to each other. They might react, or cling together by electro-static forces.

Cells are heaps of molecules assembled in a very specific fashion. They can reproduce.

What happened here?

A cell is an environment that is able to reproduce molecules in a similar fashion. Think in relative sizes.

You\'re a molecule inside a cell which is billions of times larger than yourself.

It\'s equivalent to say the cell is your environment, your world. The cell is so large you don\'t even know the limits of the cell, you don\'t know it\'s a cell.

Collectively, millions of molecules unintentionally work together each contributing the environment to affect another molecule. No molecule knows or understands what\'s going on, they just react.

All of this together is what a cell is, and is able to reproduce.

An environment has been formed to recreate the very same molecules.

By \'naturalist\' definitions, I don\'t see this as natural. Molecules seem to be collectively working together to manipulate their own environment towards their favor.

Upscale it.

A cell is floating around in the sea, trying to survive. A couple of different cells meet up.

1 produces acid

the other two absorb sun and give off glucose.

They work in conjunction, unaware of the other cells nearby, and survive better than the rest.

Fast forward several billions of years forward.

A cell receives an impulse of Na+ triggering a series of ion channels to rip open by electro-static forces. More Na+ rushes through, triggering the rear end to emit an impulse of Na+ down and outside the cell.

Why? What was the purpose of that? That had nothing to do with survival for that cell. It didn\'t give it nutrients, it didn\'t make it move, or react in any way besides receiving and emitting Na+ surges.

Cells and molecules are not self-aware nor sentient. They can\'t be.

All they can do is accidentally collaborate to build an environment that\'s favorable to their reproduction.

A nerve cell may do something totally irrelevant to it\'s own survival directly, but on many levels above it\'s existence it\'s creating consciousness to avoid dangers.

A Blood cell carrying oxygen? How does that help the blood cell survive? It doesn\'t directly. But it provides oxygen for all other cells to operate and run from the danger.

These cells accidentally collaborate to establish an environment favorable to it\'s own reproduction.

Again, I would not call this natural by \'naturalist\' standards because it\'s creating and manipulating the environment to favor it\'s own reproduction.

I see technology as another layer of this definition of life. Our own molecules, and cells have been manipulating their environment for billions of years - literally.

Technology is no different. Technology can be used negatively, but so are poisonous spiders. There are many different uses for technology, and many different environments.

Technology, to me, is our way of manipulating the environment in our favor.

Being 'Natural' is a horrendous oxymoron that makes no sense at all to me.

'But technology can\'t be there always and if we become dependent on it, our \'environment\', as you call it, crumbles once technology fails.'

Absolutely correct.

In the same way that if the electrons can\'t keep revolving around a nucleus (it will happen), in the same way that cyanide molecules enter a cell causing hypoxia.

It\'s always possible for things to fail. I feel that the higher the \'level\' we look at, the more like it is to fail.

e.g. electrons don\'t fly off nuclei nearly as often as a cyanide molecule infiltrates the environment of a cell.

I\'m not arguing that our current way of manipulating our environment is the best.

I\'m arguing that manipulating our environment is how the entirety of life as we know it works: it\'s natural.

...I don\'t want to proofread. lol I wrote too much.

Sadly, I feel as if I cut so much out of my thought process behind this too...

[vexx32]

The world is realising these problems.

Slowly.

Too slowly, as I see it. Well, I suppose only time can tell.

Ohboy, this is long

When it comes to evolution you can let emotions get in the way.

It\'s purely about what species is still has individuals to reproduce after disasters.

Which is, funnily enough, indirectly related to emotion. It\'s a part of evolution, byt being part of a species, so :/

Would this be an atrocity? By human terms absolutely. I by no means want this to happen.

I\'m only saying that having a diverse genome, diverse humans gives the human species the largest chance at surviving a sudden disaster.

As for making them sterile, it\'s possible. Anything is possible. But again, having a diverse population decreases the chance that everyone will become sterile.

I should also say that having a species too diverse is bad, and pretty much impossible.

Aye. Also, if they become too diverse, the species theoretically splits, so...

Obviously if your each generation has mutations so wildly different from their parents, you\'re going to end up with offspring that are incapable of survival: going outside the limits of survivable diversity. That\'s the outer bounds defining what\'s too diverse, and what\'s acceptable.

Antibiotics extends these boundaries.

Er... in what way do antibiotics prevent mutations at all? It assists with eliminating diseases. That\'s all. xD

And again...antibiotics work with our immune system.

You see it all the time...AIDs patients...it\'s a death sentence. We cannot live without a normally functioning and capable immune system. AIDs patients receive bactericidal drugs, but even that just cannot keep them alive. We encounter far too many bugs every microsecond not to have our own immune system working and survive.

You would have to be on every cidal antibiotic and anti-viral medicine known to man at once. At that point the toxic effects of these medicines would sum together and be a lethal force of their own.

Yep, but if the help is not really needed, it probably shouldn\'t be provided just to make things easier. The easier things are (for us and/or our immune system), the lazier we get. It\'s a matter of balance, I suppose.

We STILL need our immune system to live day to day and so there is STILL a great amount of selective pressure against it

yes, but if we have antibiotics in everyday use, the overall result will be a weakening.

Eh...Yeah I do know what you mean. But like I just said, we aren\'t really dependent on them so there wouldn\'t really be a weakening like I just said above. We still need an immune system.

There\'s be an overall weakening, particularly against the tougher infections, because the immune system becomes reliant on the help it gets.

You\'ve said this before, that it\'s stopping u

s from developing, say, perhaps a quicker responding immune system because antibiotics help stall the quickness of an infection. And that\'s pretty true.

But then again, is there any point? I mean yeah if we let go of antibiotics and let people die it could help people of the future have better immune systems. But consider these things...

-Future = Millions of years.

-Bacteria, because of their rapid cell cycles and higher than human mutation rates, will basically adapt within a few generations of any -human adaptation.

-There\'s no way to 'Stay ahead' of the bacteria \'naturally\', we\'ll always be at an equilibrium because that is how nature is: meeting it\'s own equilibrium.

Yes... so don\'t let\'s fall behind by accelerating the evolution of bacteria, hmm?

Personally, I don\'t care about people 200 years from now let alone millions of years.

I don\'t really care about the human species, I just...don\'t...I don\'t hate humanity per se, I just kinda care more about my life than someone elses who doesn\'t exist yet.

A species will find a way to exist, if it doesn\'t then it\'s the species fault for not being diverse enough, or able to adapt fast enough.

I know what you mean. People aren\'t really my thing; they annoy the hell out of me. As with anything, exceptions exist... but yeah.

I see the advent of modern technology, medicine, and all that as a way of our species adapting to our environment. I see all this technology as a direct spawn of naturalism. I see technology as being natural. It all comes down to the same things.

I\'m not sure if you\'ll see it in the same light as me, I\'ve thought about this a lot. I got a lot of my ideas from biology and chemistry courses :l

As I said... our bodies are already well-adapted to your environment. It seems a waste to use our minds for something our bodies can already do without external help. Sure, it\'s helped some survive where they\'d normally die, but perhaps it would be better if we simply hadn\'t.

I\'m not sure if you meant '(yeah, only 5!)' as sarcasm or not, but I can tell you that even 1 mutation can be an insurmountable feat.

5 all adding on each other in a positive way seems absurdly unlikely (but possible).

Heh. The mutations were ridiculously easy to recreate in a lab environment... in the real world, viruses mutate and change all the time, simply because of the sheer amount of units that result from a small infection. Statistically, it\'s rare, but in reality it\'s common because of the amount of virii that are present in any one infection...

I don\'t want to say much more because I\'m completely ignorant when it comes to bird influenza.

Well not entirely true. I\'m sure that statement was a bit of a hyperbole, but at least let me throw out there that the cost of vaccines does prevent some vaccines from being developed and others from being distributed commonly.

Aye... I have a slight prejudice towards vaccines... but they\'re better than antibiotics, I suppose, since they encourage the immune system to provide its own response.

i.e. Rabies has a vaccine, but because the infection rate is so low you only get it once you get bite and receive treatment for it.

New York actually had it\'s first case a week ago in over 50 years (he was a foreigner).

This concerns me for our discussion. I\'m getting the impression you all technology is evil and makes us lazier, more incompetent people.

Mainly because of the limited transmission methods. And no, but I take issue with the fact that the majority of technology is geared towards making things excessively easy. Yes, make things possible and doable within a reasonable timeframe, but making it so easy that we just take it for granted is probably not a good thing.

Cars - Were not made out of laziness, but so that we could move farther distances in the same amount of time, and for money. I doubt anyone was thinking 'I don\'t want to walk. Let\'s make something to move for me.' Although I bet that would make a good sales pitch.

Yeah... perhaps not intentionally at first, but these days it seems people just want everything done for them.

Vaccines - Any medicine used an on average person assists our immune system. Even saying that is wrong. Medicine makes our immune system more potent.

Vaccines work by stimulating an immune response so it can be prepared when it does encounter the bug. It\'s purely exposing our immune system to a dead (usually) virus/bacteria and letting our immune system react to it. There\'s no magical 'Look immune system! I did all the work for you!' drug. Period.

Vaccines aren\'t so bad... but there are still some things that can go wrong...

Besides which, they\'re not really necessary. I\'ve never had a vaccine in my life... and I\'m almost never sick. I haven\'t been really sick in over two years.

Internet - It was certainly not made to make remembering things easier. It was for quicker communication. And remembering things easier? It certainly has not done that. Made us forget things easier? It has not done that either.

I have learned far more using the internet than before. Was it easier? no. Have I forgotten it? No.

Without KSP, I would not know nearly as much, not have been exposed to nearly as much information as I have been.

Is the knowledge really useful, though? It\'s good fun, but yeah. Also, statistically, not needing to remember things as much has in fact made us more forgetful. We rely on the Internet to supply us with information. This has been statistically proven, although it seems that as a trade-off the average IQ is increasing. More intelligence, less memory... I mean, a lot of the generals and leaders in the distant past were said to be able to remember the names (and faces) of every single person in their army... and their armies were not exactly small. Today, we are immensely more forgetful.

Basically, making something easier causes us to get used to it and not try as hard.

These supporting arguments make me think you\'re anti-technology. You seem to have defined 'Limits' to how fast a human should travel, how easy it is for a human to remember information, how he should fight off an infection.

Eh... perhaps. I am undecided. I mean, practically, what use is there to living if one remembers nothing? If one must be supported by a plethora of medical machinery just to stay alive? It seems, well, pointless to me, although undoubtedly someone in such a predicament could find a way to make it worthwhile. We always do...

There\'s no limit to anything. If you\'re to define limits for how a human can interact with the world, YOU are against change. You are limiting how the human species can evolve. You are arguing what should change and what should not.

In a way. I simply believe it would be better if we accepted a few limits. Trying to exceed ourselves has often been the downfall of many societies in the past.

This is why it concerns me. You\'ve contradicted much of what you\'ve said previously with those points.

Eh, i tend to get a little contradictory and confused on occasion.... Sorry xD

To me, technology is a part of human evolution.

I suppose that\'s one way of looking at it.

A molecule is a molecule. It cannot reproduce itself.

In the right environment though, molecules might be attracted to each other. They might react, or cling together by electro-static forces.

Cells are heaps of molecules assembled in a very specific fashion. They can reproduce.

What happened here?

A cell is an environment that is able to reproduce molecules in a similar fashion. Think in relative sizes.

You\'re a molecule inside a cell which is billions of times larger than yourself.

It\'s equivalent to say the cell is your environment, your world. The cell is so large you don\'t even know the limits of the cell, you don\'t know it\'s a cell.

Collectively, millions of molecules unintentionally work together each contributing the environment to affect another molecule. No molecule knows or understands what\'s going on, they just react.

All of this together is what a cell is, and is able to reproduce.

An environment has been formed to recreate the very same molecules.

By \'naturalist\' definitions, I don\'t see this as natural. Molecules seem to be collectively working together to manipulate their own environment towards their favor.

Upscale it.

A cell is floating around in the sea, trying to survive. A couple of different cells meet up.

1 produces acid

the other two absorb sun and give off glucose.

They work in conjunction, unaware of the other cells nearby, and survive better than the rest.

Fast forward several billions of years forward.

A cell receives an impulse of Na+ triggering a series of ion channels to rip open by electro-static forces. More Na+ rushes through, triggering the rear end to emit an impulse of Na+ down and outside the cell.

Why? What was the purpose of that? That had nothing to do with survival for that cell. It didn\'t give it nutrients, it didn\'t make it move, or react in any way besides receiving and emitting Na+ surges.

Cells and molecules are not self-aware nor sentient. They can\'t be.

I\'ll just halt you there and point out that just as anything we may be a small part of is unknowable to us (as the molecules are in a cell), so too is anything in such a small scale. We don\'t truly know for certain whether or not they are self-aware. They appear to be all action and reaction... but that\'s the same with us. Something happens, we do something. Yes, there is thought, but if one assumed you were non-sentient, it would be easy to assume you were a machine. Unpredictability could be explained away by saying you were an imperfect machine.

All they can do is accidentally collaborate to build an environment that\'s favorable to their reproduction.

A nerve cell may do something totally irrelevant to it\'s own survival directly, but on many levels above it\'s existence it\'s creating consciousness to avoid dangers.

A Blood cell carrying oxygen? How does that help the blood cell survive? It doesn\'t directly. But it provides oxygen for all other cells to operate and run from the danger.

These cells accidentally collaborate to establish an environment favorable to it\'s own reproduction.

Again, I would not call this natural by \'naturalist\' standards because it\'s creating and manipulating the environment to favor it\'s own reproduction.

Lovely picture, there. Compare that to humanity... and we are just one big thing, each part unknowing of what the others are doing for the most part, but every one having its own purpose.

I see technology as another layer of this definition of life. Our own molecules, and cells have been manipulating their environment for billions of years - literally.

Technology is no different. Technology can be used negatively, but so are poisonous spiders. There are many different uses for technology, and many different environments.

Technology, to me, is our way of manipulating the environment in our favor.

Being 'Natural' is a horrendous oxymoron that makes no sense at all to me.

Interesting argument. By that sort of thinking, natural is simply anything related to living... whatever that is

'But technology can\'t be there always and if we become dependent on it, our \'environment\', as you call it, crumbles once technology fails.'

Absolutely correct.

In the same way that if the electrons can\'t keep revolving around a nucleus (it will happen),

Er, just stop there a moment... just thought I\'d point out we have no idea exactly in what way electrons actually move, and that model itself is rather outdated.

in the same way that cyanide molecules enter a cell causing hypoxia.

It\'s always possible for things to fail. I feel that the higher the \'level\' we look at, the more like it is to fail.

e.g. electrons don\'t fly off nuclei nearly as often as a cyanide molecule infiltrates the environment of a cell.

The more components, the greater statistical likelihood that something will go wrong.

I\'m not arguing that our current way of manipulating our environment is the best.

I\'m arguing that manipulating our environment is how the entirety of life as we know it works: it\'s natural.

Is there anything wrong, then, with trying to do some things better? That\'s all we need do... try to be more conscious and aware...

And yes, I do realise we are trying, but it always appears we don\'t care enough and thus don\'t try as hard as we ought...

...I don\'t want to proofread. lol I wrote too much.

Sadly, I feel as if I cut so much out of my thought process behind this too...

It was a little confused

Good read, though!

[Ydoow]

Er... in what way do antibiotics prevent mutations at all? It assists with eliminating diseases. That\'s all. xD

Antibiotics increase the outer bounds of what is too diverse because more can survive.

It\'s as you said, antibiotics increase the amount of people who can survive infections.

So people with weaker immune systems can indeed survive when without antibiotics they wouldn\'t.

Again, you still NEED an immune system, but perhaps one that does not react quite as quickly.

Yep, but if the help is not really needed, it probably shouldn\'t be provided just to make things easier. The easier things are (for us and/or our immune system), the lazier we get. It\'s a matter of balance, I suppose.

Antibiotics are (should) never be given out when they aren\'t needed. Doctors should never be doing that. They\'re trained not to.

You\'ve said this before, that it\'s stopping uYes... so don\'t let\'s fall behind by accelerating the evolution of bacteria, hmm?

Impossible :l

1) the bacteria would mainly be evolving against antibiotics

2) evolution is always at equilibrium. If someone goes extinct/dies that\'s a part of the equilibrium. It may not be a desired equilibrium, but it still is equilibrium.

Heh. The mutations were ridiculously easy to recreate in a lab environment... in the real world, viruses mutate and change all the time, simply because of the sheer amount of units that result from a small infection. Statistically, it\'s rare, but in reality it\'s common because of the amount of virii that are present in any one infection...

In lab, you can target genes you want to mutate. I\'m not saying that\'s easy, but it\'s much more likely to happen than the randomness in the wild.

It\'s rare for this to happen in reality.

There are 13,588 base pairs in Bird influenza and your talking 5 mutations that have to happen in a very specific order.

These 5 changes are so far undefined, so that could mean 5 base pairs have to change, or 1x+2x+3x+4x+5x base pairs have to change.

And mutations aren\'t a super duper likely thing to happen. There\'s generally decent mechanisms to avoid, detect and correct mutations; although each cell varies in it\'s genome fidelity.

Aye... I have a slight prejudice towards vaccines... but they\'re better than antibiotics, I suppose, since they encourage the immune system to provide its own response.

Indeed better. The only thing Vaccines do is present your body with the antigens your body reacts too, preventing you from being infectious in the first place.

Vaccines aren\'t so bad... but there are still some things that can go wrong...

Besides which, they\'re not really necessary. I\'ve never had a vaccine in my life... and I\'m almost never sick. I haven\'t been really sick in over two years.

I\'m almost begging you to get vaccinated for some of the basic things.

You may not show symptoms, but you may be an asymptomatic carrier, infecting other people you meet.

Just like Typhoid Mary :l

Er, just stop there a moment... just thought I\'d point out we have no idea exactly in what way electrons actually move, and that model itself is rather outdated.

Yeah, I was just trying to use that as a basic example. The true technicality of electron \'movement\' isn\'t vital to my main point.

The more components, the greater statistical likelihood that something will go wrong.

Yeah that\'s pretty much what I was trying to get across.

Is there anything wrong, then, with trying to do some things better? That\'s all we need do... try to be more conscious and aware...

Not at all! I\'m all for a more positive approach, I\'m just trying to outline what\'s going on

[vexx32]

Antibiotics increase the outer bounds of what is too diverse because more can survive.

It\'s as you said, antibiotics increase the amount of people who can survive infections.

So people with weaker immune systems can indeed survive when without antibiotics they wouldn\'t.

Again, you still NEED an immune system, but perhaps one that does not react quite as quickly.

Yes... I see what you mean. I\'d just like to point out, though, that if we stopped using antibiotics, those with weak or slow immunity would die out and we\'d be left with much more robust immune systems on average. Just a thought.

Antibiotics are (should) never be given out when they aren\'t needed. Doctors should never be doing that. They\'re trained not to.

Well, judging by what I\'ve seen, any infection these days seems to result in a prescription for antibiotics first and foremost. My elder brother recently got a minor infection in his lip (the doctor said it\'s a secondary infection from a cold sore), and although there was a fair bit of swelling, it was pretty clear it would be over and done with soon enough. It had started going down by the time he went to the doctor... yet, despite telling the doctor this, he still prescribed antibiotics. So, uh... yeah. Sure, I\'m no doctor myself, but if it\'s getting better already, why give the person drugs?

Impossible :l

1) the bacteria would mainly be evolving against antibiotics

2) evolution is always at equilibrium. If someone goes extinct/dies that\'s a part of the equilibrium. It may not be a desired equilibrium, but it still is equilibrium.

Perhaps.

In lab, you can target genes you want to mutate. I\'m not saying that\'s easy, but it\'s much more likely to happen than the randomness in the wild.

It\'s rare for this to happen in reality.

There are 13,588 base pairs in Bird influenza and your talking 5 mutations that have to happen in a very specific order.

These 5 changes are so far undefined, so that could mean 5 base pairs have to change, or 1x+2x+3x+4x+5x base pairs have to change.

And mutations aren\'t a super duper likely thing to happen. There\'s generally decent mechanisms to avoid, detect and correct mutations; although each cell varies in it\'s genome fidelity.

In a living organism, there are as you say 'mechanisms' to avoid mutation. We\'re talking viruses. The mutate constantly. It\'s the main way they evolve, and they\'re always evolving. Also, the order of the mutations isn\'t really important (in this case), it just needs those 5 to be acquired somehow. Also... because of viruses\' constantly mutating, the chances it could evolve to that stage are reasonably high, and have probably happened already. The only deciding factor is once again environment. If the virii that develop some of these mutations find themselves slightly disadvantaged in regards to infecting birds, the mutation will spread exceedingly slowly, if at all. If it provides an advantage, then it will become widespread. Conditions vary widely across the world, and bird flu is pretty widespread. Somewhere, eventually, it will evolve this way, but depending on the circumstances, it may not leave that location, or may vanish entirely.

Indeed better. The only thing Vaccines do is present your body with the antigens your body reacts too, preventing you from being infectious in the first place.

I\'m almost begging you to get vaccinated for some of the basic things.

You may not show symptoms, but you may be an asymptomatic carrier, infecting other people you meet.

Just like Typhoid Mary :l

The only problem with that type of vaccine is that they leave behind no 'memory' cells, which give lasting immunity, since those cells last much longer and allow the body to detect similar or identical diseases very rapidly. Vaccines that contain weakened of dead versions of the pathogen are better in this respect. But once again... possibility of becoming infectious if your immune system is weak.

Yeah, I was just trying to use that as a basic example. The true technicality of electron \'movement\' isn\'t vital to my main point.

Yeah that\'s pretty much what I was trying to get across.

Not at all! I\'m all for a more positive approach, I\'m just trying to outline what\'s going on

I know much of what\'s going on... but I often feel like people miss very obvious things... or just plain don\'t care enough :/