• Question: Do you think disease can be a good thing?( because it can control the population)

    Asked by purplewolf9 to Andrew, Emma, Marianne on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Great thinking Purplewolf. I like it. Thomas Malthus had a similar idea about population though he placed famine as the lead horseman of the apocalypse. I like how a chap writing at the turn of the 19th C had the same idea as you.

      I’m not sure it can be a ‘good’ thing . Your argument would probably be that more death from disease allows the remaining population to make use of relatively more resources. The problem is that this isn’t a petri dish and we’re not bacteria fighting for nutrients. I think we’ve seen unparalleled population growth partly because of scientific advancements and while this can’t be sustainable it’s difficult to advocate sitting on our hands while people suffer and die.

      Oddly, there is evidence that certain genes persist because they confer resistance to disease. problem is they often have other problems associated with them (the best example is prob. cystic fibrosis which poss. made its sufferers resistant to cholera, typhoid or TB)

      It’s a good film/novel plot: A designer disease that ravages the World picking off selected people by gene targeting ensuring humanity’s survival.

      How would you design such a disease and how would you ensure it left the World a better place? (Yes I am aware that this is dangerous ground. This is exactly what the nazis tried to do). But if you were a crazed megalomaniac on a mission in a film?

    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      What a question purplewolf9!

      I’m sitting here typing this with an awful sore throat, so at this precise moment I’m not a huge fan of diseases!

      From an evolutionary and ecosystem perspective, the bacteria, viruses and other agents that cause disease are part of a complex system, and so play an important role in that system – which includes population control.

      But from a human perspective? Because we are both aware of our environment and have the ability to change it, I cannot see how we could morally justify allowing human diseases to run their course without intervention.

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi purplewolf9,

      I actually asked a very similar question to this when I was at school – we had a doctor come to speak, he may have worked in a maternity/paediatrics department or something like that, and I asked him something like,
      ‘Isn’t seriously premature birth the body’s way of saying something’s gone wrong – if we are keeping these babies alive, arein effect weakening the gene pool?’

      I didn’t mean this to come out badly, it was supposed to be a purely science question. But a lot of people turned on me and even the speaker did as well. He basically called me a Nazi.

      I was by no means advocating some kind of genetic purification programme; I was, similarly to you, just wondering about the effect of removing the ‘natural’ controls on what survives.

      Now, I wouldn’t ask such a question, for a number of reasons.

      First, we’ve been changing the impact of nature on our family trees for a long time – ever since we started to cook food, tend other people’s wounds, help them get better, use tools, make houses, all kinds of stuff.

      Also while there are very many people on the planet, it’s not the number that matters so much – it’s how our resources are distributed. At the moment, it’s the ‘western’ countries using everything, with resources spread very thinly elsewhere. This is an unfair balance – there IS enough food to feed everyone, we just don’t distribute it properly. That’s down to politics and all kinds of factors that hopefully will be resolved one day soon.

      Next, we have evolved emotions. We have empathy, we care deeply for our families and friends and we feel for them when they suffer. This is part of what has made us successful and to ignore our desire to prevent them dying or ease their pain would be counter-productive. It’s easy to say that, in principle, we should ‘let nature take its course’ but when that comes to people we know, suddenly it’s not fair! So it makes sense that we extend this duty of care to people we have never met and that is why we have (and should be very proud of) our National Health Service.

      I suppose there’s another angle, with regard to disease – that of the over-protective bubble and resulting increase in allergies etc. It can be good to get sick, to build up the immune system. We just have to be careful about the serious diseases that can do long-term damage; that’s why we have vaccines for them.

      I hope that is the kind of thing you were thinking of!!

      [edit: I see someone else has mentioned Malthus, good! I forgot about it during my ramble, a colleague interrupted me…]

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