It's something that's got me confused quite often. Why do we need so much medical shit? Hand sanitizer? Germ-killing? Back in the day, people had nothing like this and they didn't miss it. They lived their lives and they lived it better than many today.
The survival of the fitest thing makes a lot of sense, too. That's all I can add, it makes sense and I understand it.

Quote from Blacky

It's okay to be pessimistic :/
I'm pretty sure mankind has created some more diseases, but I guess we will never know.
It sounds like you're blaming parents for a lot of things.
But what decided to stop the parents from teaching their children to cook? Fast food is what. It's cheap, so parents decided to tell their kids to go there instead of eating healthy because its cheaper and healthy things are becoming more expensive you will likely go down to your local fast food shop and eat junk instead of eating healthy fruits, vegetable, etc. So in a way it is sorta the parents fault but you see fast food everywhere, on Tv, buses, buildings, etc, so even if their parents taught you to eat healthy sooner or later you will try fast food and because it tastes so good I'm sure it won't be you're last.
Eating fast food every few days WILL hurt you if you don't eat healthy between those days.
Gaming consoles do kill people. Theres some nerds that play them every ****ing day until they die. There was this guy who didn't eat, sleep, exercise, go to the bathroom because he was playing a frikin video game on a GAMING CONSOLE, guess what? He died. Also, I bet most nerds probably die alone. So if all people were nerds, locked up in you're mothers basement all day playing World of War Craft all day humans will become extinct because no one reproduced. Instead the played video games on a gaming console.
If you took out your anger in a virtual world (lets say Halo) and if you played it enough your mind will get numb, thinking violence is normal and sooner or later you're gonna go on a killing rampage.
Can't argue about parents letting their children watching Tv and turning into addicts though...
Pollution might not be a problem right now but imagine the world, lets say 2,000 years into the future, then you might need to wear gas masks because the air is to toxic. You won't be able to swim in any oceans, lakes because they to, are toxic and clean water will cost $1,000 a litre. Why? Because people didn't think what they are doing to the environment, creating cars, nuclear power stations and wasting water by washing their miserable cars.

Learn to ****ing spell.

Read a grammar book.

And try to make a decent point, with sentences that make SENSE.

Ah, but genetic alteration suggests that certain types of people are undesirable, many would view this as racism and even potential genocide.

EDIT//
Racism was the wrong word, I apologise; Prejudice is much better suited.

Ash, a good point, but I think that the human race has come through far to much to die out from being too frail.

I would say that the majority of people in the world aren't defective and mutated, meaning that evoluton should take its natural course.

And even if we do all end up dependant on medication and other aides, technology will continue to advance, allowing us to live on using new methods of 'keeping us alive'.

Quote from Chimaera

Ah, but genetic alteration suggests that certain types of people are undesirable, many would view this as racism and even potential genocide.

EDIT//
Racism was the wrong word, I apologise; Prejudice is much better suited.

Things like preventing bad joints, weak immune systems, and asthma have nothing to do with prejudice. I'm not proposing straight improvement, only prevention of decay. There would be laws preventing things like the change of skin color, eye color, etc. Only changes essential to survival and health would be made, and only to the degree of normal health, so no super-muscles and hawk-eyes would be allowed to be made.

Quote from Carteana

Ash, a good point, but I think that the human race has come through far to much to die out from being too frail.

I would say that the majority of people in the world aren't defective and mutated, meaning that evoluton should take its natural course.

And even if we do all end up dependant on medication and other aides, technology will continue to advance, allowing us to live on using new methods of 'keeping us alive'.

I don't think you understand the point. In the wild, when a mutation in genes that causes and ill effect, such as less cartilage in the joints, the fact that that organism is less able means it will be more likely to die before reproducing and passing on the gene that gave it less cartilage. This means that bad genes are weeded out by survival of the fittest. (The opposite happens if a different mutation gives better cartilage: this helps it to survive, and so it will be more likely to stay alive longer and reproduce more, therefore passing that good gene on to it's offspring.)


However, in our human society, if a person is born with the same problem, we give them drugs that improve their cartilage. While this helps them physically, it does nothing to change that bad gene, so that bad gene keeps reappearing in future generations.

Now, imagine if this pattern continues for thousands of generations, all reproducing with other mutations. Since only the most extreme mutations aren't passed on (Such as a gene causing the heart to not have formed) through reproduction, all these mutation begin to stack up.

Sure, while this happens, our medical technology becomes better, but the eventual outcome is that usually tiny problems like the common cold becomes a huge issue due to our weakened-through-mutation immune systems, and we become very fragile.

Even worse a fate is we begin to give ourselves cybernetic parts as replacements, therefore sacrificing our humanity for continued health.

If we don't do something about our genes, we will be forced to find "cures" for new more complicated physical ailments, and all of these "cures" will have to be repeated for every child.

And now I feel that this needs to be made into a movie, with this as its storyline, and blah blah blah.

It would be awesome.

Quote from Called

Formatt'd

Wait, so why are we bringing Aliens into this?

Quote from Called

Firstly, its just a possibility. There might be chance that our cutting-edge medical technology may progress even further than we expect. And with that chance, we may even improve the person's genes. Therefore we can stop the early-age of the mutation, and prevent the-

"What this will result in if left unchecked is a progression to lock-kneed, wobbly, frail, obese, pained people who just keep getting new legs, tummy tucks, and hydrocodone to reduce those effects. Eventually, everyone will have so many genetic mutations that weren't removed by natural selection that our bodies simply won't work anymore. "

And-

"Genetic mutations are produced and passed on"

You are missing the point of my post. The debate isn't about whether it can be done, or saying that it WILL happen, its about which solution is better. Stating that we may be able to repair the genes in the future is just restating my point. Not only that, but I also stated that IMPROVING rather than repairing the genes is a very, very bad idea. Read my first post more carefully.

Secondly, there may be significant events between the time of the present and the genetic mutations. E.g. A scientist discovers a new element crucial for the survival of "healthy genes". Problems would be solved and what you just described may just be a small possibility.

Extinction could happen, not just from fraility, but from aliens (Depends on the existence) and events that may seem impossible to occur, but will in the future.

Obviously it can happen in other ways, but this debate is just about extinction through frailty. There's a whole other thread about other causes of extinction.

This is totally out of topic:
How old are you Ash? I'm very interested to know.

I'm 16.