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The Perfect Body and Evolution

  • Medicine and biotech might be leading to a society of more uniform beings.
  • The goal of medical science, ultimately, is to reduce variation.
  • We'll eventually define the "perfect" body (brain, immune system, muscles, etc) and provide the tools (surgery, pills, cloning, whatever) that will allow every human being to obtain that perfect body.
  • That day science will have removed variation from the human population.
  • The whole point of variation is to facilitate adaptation. Without variation, life would not exist: it would get extinct the first time the environment changes.
  • What happens as biotech and medicine progressively reduce variation in the human population is that we (as a species) become less and less adaptable, and therefore more and more vulnerable. As we increase our individual health, we weaken the species as a whole.
  • Should medical science proceed towards more or less variation in the human population?
  • Is an individual entitled to weaken the whole species for her/his own selfish well-being?