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?
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