A trait that aids in survival is a positive trait Intelligence gives us the ability to survive where we otherwise would not survive. We know how to make weapons to take down gazelles and buffalo, even from a distance, so we don’t need claws and extreme speed. We learned and know how to make clothes and warm houses with fire to survive so we don’t need to grow fur to be temperate or arctic dwellers.
Indeed, one of the things we’ve “lost” is instinct. A bird is born knowing how to make a nest or when to fly south, bees know instinctively how to build a hive. We basically learn everything beyond very basic programming, like beware of snakes and how to reproduce (and that one’s iffy). There are suggestions that tool-making was a driver in making us monkey-see-monkey-do learning creatures and driving our intelligence; and along with that an accumulating body of social knowledge driven by its own form of trial-and-error evolution.
The point the lecturer was making was that it was taking us down a path to over-specialization (As I said, like pandas or hummingbirds) where would could not survive outside the narrow niche we made for ourselves. Of course, to a certain extent we are already there. If society suddenly reverted to George-of-the-Jungle or even pioneer times, many of the 8 billion would no longer survive.
I wonder to what extent modifying your genes to give to your offspring goes, before it’s no longer “your” child? Worse, what defines someone as “human”?
Is it still a 57 Chevy if you cut the roof down to hot rod it, put in a bigger engine and that giant carburetor tower on the hood with nitro injection, paint it day-glo red and jack up the suspension with fat rear tires, make the fins twice as tall, then add halogen headlights and neon under-side lights and a set of dingle balls or fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror?
When is the axe no longer Paul Bunyan’s axe?
Genetic modification of humans is a slippery slope.
Well, yeah, but that’s nothing to do with evolution, and entirely down to “pioneer times” societies not having the infrastructure to support an extra 8 billion people.
A lot of that is adaptive, not genetic. People who do a lot of close work (like reading) develop eyes that focus closer, and are less good at focusing farther.
And some of it is “wear and tear”. We eventually develop cataracts because stuff wears out. We could be genetically better at repairing our eyes, but that’s a metabolic cost. So maybe we’d be less good at fighting off diseases, or running, or …
Not that there aren’t some things we could fix in our genome. But not every “flaw” really is.
Most of those are just-so stories of no great account. Needing glasses in the vast, vast majority of cases will not affect differential reproductive success - humans can survive just fine being near- or far-sighted. Particularly as even in our most primitive state we are pack animals that lean on an extended family group(s) for support.
Cancer is not going to kill the vast majority of people before they reproduce. It’s overwhelmingly a disease of the middle-aged and old. A gene that guarantees that everyone who carries it dies of leukemia at 35 is going to have exactly zero impact in terms of natural selection because mother nature truly does not give a shit if we live past 35. In the case of young people that get serious cancers, virtually none of them reproduce anyway, even today. Modern medicine might keep them alive, but it surely does greatly reduce the possibility of them attracting a reproductive partner. It is much the same with poor immune systems.
It’s a glib argument, but not one with a great deal of merit in my eyes.
But is one’s fitness to survive and pass on their genes dependent on their ability to see well without glasses? Having poor eyesight may make living in modern times more of a hassle, but perhaps not so much that it would prevent someone from finding a mate and having children. In a hunter gatherer situation it may not matter at all.
I’ve known a few people who needed coke-bottle glasses to see at all. I assume in any setting, that would be a severe disadvantage. (and generally, seems to be hereditary). OTOH, I didn’t need glasses until I was an adult. I can still see well enough to drive without glasses, especially in daylight, although DMV may disagree. So a certain degree of poor eyesight is not a death sentence or reproductive disadvantage, even as a hunter-gatherer. And now, thanks to contact lenses, wearing glasses today does not put one at a reproductive disadvantage either.
However, in a tool-making society, not being able to do quality close work well (i.e. Chipping flint, sewing clothes, cooking food) may be less advantageous. Similarly, not being able to aim and hit tonight’s meal may be a disadvantage.
The important point about evolution is differential reproduction. even if it offers a 1% (or less) chance of surviving to get children raised and independent, that is an advantage that causes the mutation to work its way into the population over millennia. The Just-So-Story about fairer skin in subtropical climates, and melanin in more tropical climates, is about the differences in vitamin D production vs. protection against skin cancer. While I can’t imagine vitamin D being a life-or-death issue, obviously better health expresses itself in better reproduction such that this trait was selected for, in certain locales.
Yes, there is evidence from prehistoric graves that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon were supportive of members of society with significant physical issues.
But that depends on what you define as evolution, too. We’ve modified our environment to the point where we need it in all its complexity to survive. This is a side effect of a big brain and its advantages and disadvantages. As the concern over grain shipments via the Black Sea demonstrates, there are areas of Africa and Asia dependent on social order a continent away. Similarly, the shortage of some medicines here is indicative of our dependence on social functionality in India and China.
I suspect that a tribe does better if they have some members who can see close and do fine sewing, and other members who have good distance vision and can throw an ax at a meal. That may be why our vision is adaptive – to allow people to specialize within a group.
{final period removed to enable quote feature}
This is why enabling some that might not live to reproduce in a more primitive society is beneficial to a more complex one. The more diverse the gene pool, the more responsive the population will be to catastrophic pressures.
In a pure hunter/gatherer society, farsightedness is beneficial to all (see game/desirable plants at further distances). Once society progresses to the point that tool-making, sewing, and other fine-detail skills are advantageous, near-sighted members become important to do tasks the far-sighted ones are not so good at.
By enabling those among us with diabetes, or some of many other maladies, to survive and reproduce, the gene pool is much more varied. As long as the survival of the species is not compromised, this is a good thing.
We cannot predict what pressures a future catastrophe may place on the population, so we cannot predict what traits will be beneficial to permit the species to survive. To give natural selection the best opportunity to allow the species to propagate, a broad variety of traits need to be available when survival is demanded.
Can you please explain what this means ? Not sure what you mean by “social functionality” in the Indian context and how this hypothetical effects the medical supply chain.
I’m not md-2000, and I’m not sure exactly what they mean. But a lot of our drugs are manufactured in India, and if international trade were cut off, i bet we’d have shortages of some important pharmaceuticals.
That’s why it was such a big deal whether Indian firms got rights to make covid vaccines. India was one of the few places with the existing infrastructure and expertise to ramp production of vaccines quickly, and on a large scale.
That can happen domestically too, like a a Black Lives Matters movement can disrupt a pharmaceutical plant. Or panic buying by US customers can trigger shortages even when an item is manufactured in the US (toilet paper for example). Or Railway workers strikes could disrupt the supply chain.
Most recently the dire Baby Formula shortage in the US is because of US domestic manufacturing failure.
So supply chain / manufacturing of anything could be disrupted anywhere in the world. Producing something domestically doesn’t make you immune to disruptions.
By volume, the top three pharmaceutical import sources in 2019 are China, India and Mexico, with Canada, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Israel, Spain and, finally, Ireland rounding out the rest of the top ten, respectively.
However, by value, the top three pharmaceutical import sources in 2019 are Ireland, Germany and Switzerland, with Italy, India, Belgium, Denmark, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan rounding out the top rest of the top ten.
I don’t think China and India are being singled out, i think they are the largest manufacturers of drugs the US imports. It’s just that they make most of our imported generics, and the super-high-cost patented stuff is what’s made in Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland.
I did not see any mention of Ireland, Germany, Italy … or any other white countries when mentioning “social functionality”. Why won’t by “social functionality” in these countries effect the availability of pharmaceuticals in the US ?
By value isn’t the problem. All the out of patent generics account for a huge proportion of pharmaceuticals, but at much lower value. India is also the worlds powerhouse for conventional vaccines. It isn’t the high value within patent drugs that keep the world ticking over. It is the cheap indispensable drugs. India sources 40% of generics in the USA. What becomes more interesting is that China now sources 70% of the active ingredients Indian companies use. Simply because China actually undercut India’s own companies in manufacture.
If we lost the big western pharma companies, we would regress back about 20 years in pharma tech. India and China are what gets us the boring stuff from last century.
A very nice video covering India’s rise is this one. The Asianometry newsletter is well worth a look.
Let’s find out what’s meant by “social functionality”, but i think the list by volume is a lot more meaningful than the list by dollar value. I’m sure i have drugs made in India in my medicine cupboard, and i bet you do, too. (I’ve even privately “imported” drugs from India in two situations. Once because my insurer was being difficult, and once because my mom needed something that bad US regulation had kept out of the US. A steroid available in basically every country other than the US.)
But you are right that we are so dependant on trade that a problem anywhere, India, Ireland, Indiana, can easily lead to shortages throughout the US.
This makes the question even more poignant. If India is only making low value generics while the real expensive life saving drugs come from Ireland, Germany, Italy …. , shouldn’t the “social functionality” of these countries be the focus and not India/ China ? Increasingly it looks like the singling out is because of skin color.
Sorry if anyone made the wrong inferences and took offense.
A recent documentary news item about sporadic shortages not only of cold medicines (demand) but also a number of other interesting and critical medicines was attributed to supply chain issues getting either pharmaceuticals or the precursors for local manufacture of them. The major source mentioned - as others helpfully point out - was India and China. (This news item did not mention Mexico).
COVID has disrupted the supply chains in both countries, like every other, give or take, off and on. “Social functionality” is meant to be a generic descriptor to cover all contingencies, from COVID epidemics to war to social unrest to local catastrophes to economic instability. We have only to look around to see what can break a fragile supply chain - what for example would happen to our pharmaceutical supplies if the floods that affected Pakistan had instead happened all across the Ganges valley? A bunch of idiots protesting COVID shut down the supply chain between Canadian and US auto plants for several days. The war in the Ukraine has disrupted global energy supplies, added to world-wide inflation, and threatened food supplies across Africa and Asia. The recent unusual shipping patterns and economic disruption from COVID caused a shortage of shipping containers and massive port backups. A decade ago, severe flooding in Thailand knocked many of the major computer disk factories offline long enough that there was an extended shortage of disks, and by extension, computers, thus raising the price. Even something very simple - computer GPUs (graphics processors) were ideal for mining bitcoin, and so were impossible to find and the price was bid up high, and a huge amount of power was being expended mining bitcoin. (Insert snide comment here)
Modern society can support an enormous number of people, but it’s analogous to juggling a huge number of balls. Drop one, and the chain reaction can be very disruptive. A storm or medical emergency half a globe away can have world-wide consequences.
It has nothing to do with skin colour. Indeed, the fact is that countries all around the globe are succeeding in joining what used to be a small club of advanced manufacturing nations, by dint of their own effort and capability - and hence becoming part of that same fragile web.
Just to be specific - the new item noted that locally manufactured pharmaceuticals (so presumably under patent and lucrative) relied a lot on precursor supplies manufactured in India and China - so supply disruption there (or shipping from there) was affecting local manufacture too.
Uh, there are cheap drugs that are critical and lifesaving. Most of our antibiotics come to mind. And I’d be in very bad shape without the cheap Omeprazole i take (the drug my boss’s wife brought home for me from India while i fought with my insurance company.)
Just because a drug is cheap doesn’t mean it’s not important or potent.
The expensive drugs are mostly used to treat fewer people, and while they are obviously important to those people, they are less important overall.
Fair point.
And thank you @md-2000 for the detailed explanation.
That brings me to one remarkable achievement by Bush Jr. (we made a lot of fun of this good President ). Bush authorized $48 Billion PEPFAR over 5 years in 2008 to fight HIV/AIDS… "PEPFAR is the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in the world; to date, its funding has totaled more than $110 billion, including funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), to which the U.S. government is the largest donor. " 0https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-u-s-presidents-emergency-plan-for-aids-relief-pepfar/
A lot of HIV/AIDS medicine is manufactured in India and used in Africa and other developing countries, under Bush’s plan/ Big Drug companies tried to bully India into not making these drugs by citing patent restrictions and the like - but India still went ahead.
Ahem - strictly speaking I’d be discreet about mentioning this (even though it is Omeprazole) because there are FDA rules that may prohibit untested drugs in the US (FDA has their own testing even for generic drugs). You or your boss’s wife can get in trouble (theoretically). This maybe borderline illegal to discuss on straightdope.
Also, my sister takes Omeprazole and her doctor asked her to periodically check her Calcium and Magnesium levels (we have risk of Osteoporosis in our family and women are more susceptible to it). Her doctor also had her tested for H-Pylori which causes a lot of acid-reflux. (H. Pylori | Helicobacter Pylori Infections | MedlinePlus)
