Measles: Debunked theory, er, stupidity is not an excuse.

[Tom Sawyer]

For those of you who enjoy schadenfreude, here's a story of a couple of people who ran up an $800,000 medical bill because they're idiots.

https://www.statnews.com/2019/03/07/nightmarish-tale-tetanus-unvaccinated-child/

It's really sad that an innocent child was tortured by his parents because of their stupidity, but it's nice that these idiots will be bankrupt for the rest of their lives as a consequence of being morons. It's also one of the few times that I''m glad the US doesn't have UHC, because then the rest of the country would need to be funding the tortureof children as opposed to their shouldering the costs themselves.

 

[ZiprHead]

So they put the kid through two months of agony and almost killed him and still refused to get him vaccinated. Idiots.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

So they put the kid through two months of agony and almost killed him and still refused to get him vaccinated. Idiots.

And the doctors are still engaging with them and trying to change their minds instead of calling Child Services to rescue the kid and have them thrown in prison.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So they put the kid through two months of agony and almost killed him and still refused to get him vaccinated. Idiots.

And the doctors are still engaging with them and trying to change their minds instead of calling Child Services to rescue the kid and have them thrown in prison.

The parents should be thrown in prison for child abuse. The child suffered badly due to their negligence, treat that as any other grossly negligent act with similar consequences.

 

[DBT]

However necessary immunization may be, and I do not dispute this, I sometimes wonder about the long term effects on our gene pool.

For example:

The murky future of the human gene pool

''A conversation I had with a friend made me realize something interesting. Modern medical technology is responsible for the constant degradation of the human gene pool. How? Simple, we allow bad genes to propagate.

Take me for example. I have glasses. Quite a small diopter, but glasses nonetheless. In ancient times, my eyesight genes would have had a negative "evolutionary" pressure from the environment. I would have had for example a somewhat degraded chance to successfully hunt my food, lower probability of noticing a stalking tiger, and hence a higher chance of dying before getting to reproduce. Namely, my bad eyesight gene would have had a somewhat smaller probability of successfully propagating itself, and hence would tend to disappear relative to the better eyesight genes.

Today, this is not the case of course, given that I can readily obtain glasses, my bad eyesight gene has just as much a chance in propagating itself as the better eyesight gene. Since the bad gene stands an equal chance in reproducing itself, it wont die away. Of course, there are many other examples like that. The most extreme would be of course a hypothetical gene which causes infertility that can be circumvented by other means (e.g., with IVF - In Vitro Fertilization). Such a gene would have died off after a single generation, but can now easily propagate until the end of eternity.

This implies that bad genes can now accumulate without necessarily dying off. Of course, if they don't have any evolutionary preference, i.e., they are "neutral" (e.g., if it just as easy for glass wearing geeks to get married), it would take a long time for such a gene to become important (if it doesn't accidentally die off otherwise), since it would require a random walk in the gene pool for it to become dominant.

Is this bad for humanity? Clearly, if a gene can now propagate itself by an artificial mean, it would be able to do so in the future, it only implies though that we will have to rely on more and more means. That is, it would be progressively more expensive, and complicated to keep the human race "reproducing".

Of course, I am not the first to think about this point. Many years ago, I read a book by Arthur C. Clarke called Imperial Earth. The background story is about a guy who lives on Titan (a moon of Saturn, which happens to be the only planetary moon in the solar system to posses an atmosphere, but that's just an anecdote I couldn't help myself from mentioning), and takes a trip to Earth to clone himself. Why? Because he is totally sterile, and so was his father and grandfather...

Makes you wonder what humanity will look like in say 500 years. Doesn't it? ''

 

[bilby]

However necessary immunization may be, and I do not dispute this, I sometimes wonder about the long term effects on our gene pool.

For example:

The murky future of the human gene pool

''A conversation I had with a friend made me realize something interesting. Modern medical technology is responsible for the constant degradation of the human gene pool. How? Simple, we allow bad genes to propagate.

Take me for example. I have glasses. Quite a small diopter, but glasses nonetheless. In ancient times, my eyesight genes would have had a negative "evolutionary" pressure from the environment. I would have had for example a somewhat degraded chance to successfully hunt my food, lower probability of noticing a stalking tiger, and hence a higher chance of dying before getting to reproduce. Namely, my bad eyesight gene would have had a somewhat smaller probability of successfully propagating itself, and hence would tend to disappear relative to the better eyesight genes.

Today, this is not the case of course, given that I can readily obtain glasses, my bad eyesight gene has just as much a chance in propagating itself as the better eyesight gene. Since the bad gene stands an equal chance in reproducing itself, it wont die away. Of course, there are many other examples like that. The most extreme would be of course a hypothetical gene which causes infertility that can be circumvented by other means (e.g., with IVF - In Vitro Fertilization). Such a gene would have died off after a single generation, but can now easily propagate until the end of eternity.

This implies that bad genes can now accumulate without necessarily dying off. Of course, if they don't have any evolutionary preference, i.e., they are "neutral" (e.g., if it just as easy for glass wearing geeks to get married), it would take a long time for such a gene to become important (if it doesn't accidentally die off otherwise), since it would require a random walk in the gene pool for it to become dominant.

Is this bad for humanity? Clearly, if a gene can now propagate itself by an artificial mean, it would be able to do so in the future, it only implies though that we will have to rely on more and more means. That is, it would be progressively more expensive, and complicated to keep the human race "reproducing".

Of course, I am not the first to think about this point. Many years ago, I read a book by Arthur C. Clarke called Imperial Earth. The background story is about a guy who lives on Titan (a moon of Saturn, which happens to be the only planetary moon in the solar system to posses an atmosphere, but that's just an anecdote I couldn't help myself from mentioning), and takes a trip to Earth to clone himself. Why? Because he is totally sterile, and so was his father and grandfather...

Makes you wonder what humanity will look like in say 500 years. Doesn't it? ''

There's no such thing as a 'bad' gene. Genes that propagate are successful; Those that don't are not.

Having genes that lead to great eyesight is pointless, and may even be counterproductive, in an environment where such eyesight is not required to survive.

Evolution has no goals or objectives other than survival; And if we invent rules that don't reflect the environment, we are going to reach false conclusions when applying those rules.

Environmental change is a certainty, but the form it will take is unknown. Myopia might become a liability at some future date - or it might not. It's possible that it might actually be somehow beneficial in helping people to survive and/or reproduce (any girl considering reproduction with me had better have poor eyesight).

Genetic diversity is a good hedge against extinction - so it's arguably better to have a lot of variation than to have everyone closer to some imaginary 'ideal'. Because there's no guarantee that that what we think is an ideal genetic makeup won't turn out to be a major liability.

Any genetic trait could turn out to be 'good' or 'bad' in terms of reproductive success for the population in which it arises. There's no need for us to act on this, because any trait that is genuinely 'bad' in that sense will disappear whether we like it or not.

The version of evolutionary theory you describe here went out of fashion in the 1940s. It's deeply flawed.

Human society is an inseparable part of the environment. That's why zebras and wolves are endangered, but thoroughbred racehorses and lapdogs are not.

 

[DBT]

There appears to be two lines of thought on the issue of 'weakening the gene pool' with some experts arguing for the latter:

Quote;
''This is an interesting question but I'm afraid many of the aspects really are quite unresolved.''

''I think perhaps more interesting is the question of the immune function, that genes that help us fight disease. And here, I think there may be an interesting issue. In developing countries where there's much less access to medical treatment and antibiotics, many children die through infections that are potentially preventable. This, in theory, removes some of those individuals with weaker or poorly attuned immune systems from the population, but in the western culture where more medicine is present, these individuals would grow up. So what happens to them in western culture? My best guess is that these are the people who are likely most prone to asthma and allergies since these are potentially reflections of a poorly tuned immune system and that is what we might predict these have.''

Then we get the more extreme view;

''So it is surprising to read a recent warning by a leading geneticist who says that the human gene pool may be in trouble. Writing in a major genetics journal, Indiana University biologist Michael Lynch makes an argument that sounds much like the claims of eugenicists a century ago: Because modern medicine has become so effective at helping people survive and have children, it has reduced the ability of natural selection to remove harmful mutations from the human population. If nothing changes, we can expect a “genetic deterioration in the baseline human condition” over the coming generations.''

''As Lynch points out, however, natural selection isn’t just ancient history — it also plays an important, ongoing role in the maintenance of our genes. Genes are not stable things: New mutations inevitably arise in each generation — each of us is born, on average, with scores of new mutations. Most are harmless, but some of them do damage. Without natural selection acting to remove these mutations from the gene pool, they will accumulate over generations and gradually erode our species’ genes, leading to a deterioration in our physical and mental traits.''

 

[barbos]

However necessary immunization may be, and I do not dispute this, I sometimes wonder about the long term effects on our gene pool.

For example:

The murky future of the human gene pool

''A conversation I had with a friend made me realize something interesting. Modern medical technology is responsible for the constant degradation of the human gene pool. How? Simple, we allow bad genes to propagate.

Take me for example. I have glasses. Quite a small diopter, but glasses nonetheless. In ancient times, my eyesight genes would have had a negative "evolutionary" pressure from the environment. I would have had for example a somewhat degraded chance to successfully hunt my food, lower probability of noticing a stalking tiger, and hence a higher chance of dying before getting to reproduce. Namely, my bad eyesight gene would have had a somewhat smaller probability of successfully propagating itself, and hence would tend to disappear relative to the better eyesight genes.

Today, this is not the case of course, given that I can readily obtain glasses, my bad eyesight gene has just as much a chance in propagating itself as the better eyesight gene. Since the bad gene stands an equal chance in reproducing itself, it wont die away. Of course, there are many other examples like that. The most extreme would be of course a hypothetical gene which causes infertility that can be circumvented by other means (e.g., with IVF - In Vitro Fertilization). Such a gene would have died off after a single generation, but can now easily propagate until the end of eternity.

This implies that bad genes can now accumulate without necessarily dying off. Of course, if they don't have any evolutionary preference, i.e., they are "neutral" (e.g., if it just as easy for glass wearing geeks to get married), it would take a long time for such a gene to become important (if it doesn't accidentally die off otherwise), since it would require a random walk in the gene pool for it to become dominant.

Is this bad for humanity? Clearly, if a gene can now propagate itself by an artificial mean, it would be able to do so in the future, it only implies though that we will have to rely on more and more means. That is, it would be progressively more expensive, and complicated to keep the human race "reproducing".

Of course, I am not the first to think about this point. Many years ago, I read a book by Arthur C. Clarke called Imperial Earth. The background story is about a guy who lives on Titan (a moon of Saturn, which happens to be the only planetary moon in the solar system to posses an atmosphere, but that's just an anecdote I couldn't help myself from mentioning), and takes a trip to Earth to clone himself. Why? Because he is totally sterile, and so was his father and grandfather...

Makes you wonder what humanity will look like in say 500 years. Doesn't it? ''

Nearsightedness genes are too common in the gene pool (even in the past) to be all bad. It was proposed that these genes persist because they make people smarter on average. In any case I don't think your theory applies to immunization. If anything it's opposite, without immunization and general preventive measures in modern world most people would simply die and the ones who survive would have genetic protection against these particular diseases but they also will be weaker in other respects, at least in short evolutionary term.

 

[bilby]

There appears to be two lines of thought on the issue of 'weakening the gene pool' with some experts arguing for the latter:

Quote;
''This is an interesting question but I'm afraid many of the aspects really are quite unresolved.''

''I think perhaps more interesting is the question of the immune function, that genes that help us fight disease. And here, I think there may be an interesting issue. In developing countries where there's much less access to medical treatment and antibiotics, many children die through infections that are potentially preventable. This, in theory, removes some of those individuals with weaker or poorly attuned immune systems from the population, but in the western culture where more medicine is present, these individuals would grow up. So what happens to them in western culture? My best guess is that these are the people who are likely most prone to asthma and allergies since these are potentially reflections of a poorly tuned immune system and that is what we might predict these have.''

Then we get the more extreme view;

''So it is surprising to read a recent warning by a leading geneticist who says that the human gene pool may be in trouble. Writing in a major genetics journal, Indiana University biologist Michael Lynch makes an argument that sounds much like the claims of eugenicists a century ago: Because modern medicine has become so effective at helping people survive and have children, it has reduced the ability of natural selection to remove harmful mutations from the human population. If nothing changes, we can expect a “genetic deterioration in the baseline human condition” over the coming generations.''

''As Lynch points out, however, natural selection isn’t just ancient history — it also plays an important, ongoing role in the maintenance of our genes. Genes are not stable things: New mutations inevitably arise in each generation — each of us is born, on average, with scores of new mutations. Most are harmless, but some of them do damage. Without natural selection acting to remove these mutations from the gene pool, they will accumulate over generations and gradually erode our species’ genes, leading to a deterioration in our physical and mental traits.''

This is nonsense. Natural selection hasn't stopped, it operates the same way it always did. The difference is that the environment has changed. Whenever the environment changes, genes that were previously beneficial stop being beneficial, and/or genes that were previously detrimental stop being detrimental, to the populations in which they are found.

The conclusion that there's any kind of problem here rests on the extremely questionable assumption that our new environment - the one containing vaccines, and modern medicine - will someday revert to our old environment. That's a totally unfounded belief.

If people were suddenly to be presented with a paleolithic (or even a neolithic, bronze age, or iron age) environment, genetic susceptibility to measles, mumps or rubella would be the least of the threats to our survival.

The only value to this conjecture is as a supporting idea for anti-technological and/or anti-human political stance.

It's not just nonsense, it's dangerous nonsense.

 

[DBT]

Quite possibly dangerous nonsense.....yet there we have it, as shown in the given examples, qualified people expressing that view. It's not something that I would argue, just a matter of interest.

 

[bilby]

Quite possibly dangerous nonsense.....yet there we have it, as shown in the given examples, qualified people expressing that view. It's not something that I would argue, just a matter of interest.

Well dangerous nonsense is certainly not a novelty.

The world is swimming in it, and has been since records began.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Quite possibly dangerous nonsense.....yet there we have it, as shown in the given examples, qualified people expressing that view. It's not something that I would argue, just a matter of interest.

But none of those "bad" genes are actually bad. If they reduced survival chances in previous environments but don't do so in today's environment, then the human condition doesn't deteriorate at all if they propagate more in this environment.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

However necessary immunization may be, and I do not dispute this, I sometimes wonder about the long term effects on our gene pool.

For example:

The murky future of the human gene pool

''A conversation I had with a friend made me realize something interesting. Modern medical technology is responsible for the constant degradation of the human gene pool. How? Simple, we allow bad genes to propagate.

A variation on the marching morons. A non-issue--before this will have time to inflict serious damage we will be editing our genes to a sufficient degree it won't be a problem.

 

[DBT]

Quite possibly dangerous nonsense.....yet there we have it, as shown in the given examples, qualified people expressing that view. It's not something that I would argue, just a matter of interest.

But none of those "bad" genes are actually bad. If they reduced survival chances in previous environments but don't do so in today's environment, then the human condition doesn't deteriorate at all if they propagate more in this environment.

As I said, it's not something I'm arguing for, just a matter of interest in the claims being made by some Biologists.....interest not being the same thing as 'novelty,' as bilby said.

My position is currently neutral.

One of the more extreme claims coming from Michael Lynch, apparently a leading geneticist;

''So it is surprising to read a recent warning by a leading geneticist who says that the human gene pool may be in trouble. Writing in a major genetics journal, Indiana University biologist Michael Lynch makes an argument that sounds much like the claims of eugenicists a century ago: Because modern medicine has become so effective at helping people survive and have children, it has reduced the ability of natural selection to remove harmful mutations from the human population. If nothing changes, we can expect a “genetic deterioration in the baseline human condition” over the coming generations.''

''As Lynch points out, however, natural selection isn’t just ancient history — it also plays an important, ongoing role in the maintenance of our genes. Genes are not stable things: New mutations inevitably arise in each generation — each of us is born, on average, with scores of new mutations. Most are harmless, but some of them do damage. Without natural selection acting to remove these mutations from the gene pool, they will accumulate over generations and gradually erode our species’ genes, leading to a deterioration in our physical and mental traits.''

 

[DBT]

However necessary immunization may be, and I do not dispute this, I sometimes wonder about the long term effects on our gene pool.

For example:

The murky future of the human gene pool

''A conversation I had with a friend made me realize something interesting. Modern medical technology is responsible for the constant degradation of the human gene pool. How? Simple, we allow bad genes to propagate.

A variation on the marching morons. A non-issue--before this will have time to inflict serious damage we will be editing our genes to a sufficient degree it won't be a problem.

You appear to be implying that it is a potential problem? That it may become a problem without the future intervention of gene editing?

 

[DBT]

Then there is Steve Jones view of the trend that human evolution is taking; Satagnation.

''Melvin Udall's wicked one liner in the film "As Good As It Gets" may have been intended to pile on the pathos for a group of depressed psychiatric patients, but the phrase works equally well as a sub-heading for Steve Jones' lecture on human evolution.

The point the celebrated geneticist and author is making is that we've reached Nirvana: If you want to know what utopia looks like, he says, just look around you. The human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.

Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn't just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation. In ancient times half our children would have died before the age of twenty. In western societies today 98% survive to the age of 21, and life expectancy is so good that even eliminating accidents and infectious disease would only raise it by another year or two. These days almost everyone gets to hand their genes on through their children.

Mutation too is slowing down as the average age at which men reproduce has fallen. Unlike women, men never rest...when it comes to making sperm. By the time the average man is 28 he's copied and pasted the original sperm - the one he got from his father - about 300 times. The figure for a fifty year old man is well over a thousand. So the fewer older fathers there are the less chance there is for random mutations to slip into the copying process and be passed on to the next generation.

The increasing ease of global travel also means that modern human populations are continually stirring and homogenising the genetic pot. While small, isolated populations can evolve quite quickly, a global gene pool acts to block evolutionary change - the future is brown.

The result is that we're no longer subject to the driving force of evolution - natural selection. We've reached stagnation.''

 

[bilby]

Then there is Steve Jones view of the trend that human evolution is taking; Satagnation.

''Melvin Udall's wicked one liner in the film "As Good As It Gets" may have been intended to pile on the pathos for a group of depressed psychiatric patients, but the phrase works equally well as a sub-heading for Steve Jones' lecture on human evolution.

The point the celebrated geneticist and author is making is that we've reached Nirvana: If you want to know what utopia looks like, he says, just look around you. The human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.

Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn't just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation. In ancient times half our children would have died before the age of twenty. In western societies today 98% survive to the age of 21, and life expectancy is so good that even eliminating accidents and infectious disease would only raise it by another year or two. These days almost everyone gets to hand their genes on through their children.

Mutation too is slowing down as the average age at which men reproduce has fallen. Unlike women, men never rest...when it comes to making sperm. By the time the average man is 28 he's copied and pasted the original sperm - the one he got from his father - about 300 times. The figure for a fifty year old man is well over a thousand. So the fewer older fathers there are the less chance there is for random mutations to slip into the copying process and be passed on to the next generation.

The increasing ease of global travel also means that modern human populations are continually stirring and homogenising the genetic pot. While small, isolated populations can evolve quite quickly, a global gene pool acts to block evolutionary change - the future is brown.

The result is that we're no longer subject to the driving force of evolution - natural selection. We've reached stagnation.''

This remains nonsense for the reasons I gave above. I would also add that the claim that "These days almost everyone gets to hand their genes on through their children" cannot be true when fertility rates are below replacement (which they are throughout the developed world).

The age of fatherhood is likewise not declining in the developed world; And even if it did, it has negligible impact on the prevalence of mutations in offspring.

The major driver of mutation in the germ line is crossovers during meiosis, and is independent of the age of the person in whom this occurs. The germ line is not as old as it's host, it is as old as life itself.

 

[DBT]

Then there is Steve Jones view of the trend that human evolution is taking; Satagnation.

''Melvin Udall's wicked one liner in the film "As Good As It Gets" may have been intended to pile on the pathos for a group of depressed psychiatric patients, but the phrase works equally well as a sub-heading for Steve Jones' lecture on human evolution.

The point the celebrated geneticist and author is making is that we've reached Nirvana: If you want to know what utopia looks like, he says, just look around you. The human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.

Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn't just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation. In ancient times half our children would have died before the age of twenty. In western societies today 98% survive to the age of 21, and life expectancy is so good that even eliminating accidents and infectious disease would only raise it by another year or two. These days almost everyone gets to hand their genes on through their children.

Mutation too is slowing down as the average age at which men reproduce has fallen. Unlike women, men never rest...when it comes to making sperm. By the time the average man is 28 he's copied and pasted the original sperm - the one he got from his father - about 300 times. The figure for a fifty year old man is well over a thousand. So the fewer older fathers there are the less chance there is for random mutations to slip into the copying process and be passed on to the next generation.

The increasing ease of global travel also means that modern human populations are continually stirring and homogenising the genetic pot. While small, isolated populations can evolve quite quickly, a global gene pool acts to block evolutionary change - the future is brown.

The result is that we're no longer subject to the driving force of evolution - natural selection. We've reached stagnation.''

This remains nonsense for the reasons I gave above. I would also add that the claim that "These days almost everyone gets to hand their genes on through their children" cannot be true when fertility rates are below replacement (which they are throughout the developed world).

I took that comment as a bit of rhetoric meaning that a greater percentage of people get to breeding age with the survival of their offspring being far more certain than it ever was in the past.

Otherwise, I'm just curious to see what comments come up.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Sounds like my grandfather, frankly.

Grandpa Mark used to measure the distance from his ranch to Salt Lake City in days of travel on horseback. He was disgusted by the fact that I don't know how to ride and care for a horse, and probably couldn't saddle one. Certainly couldn't catch a sage hen and dress it for dinner. Talked about lost knowledge and the dumbing down of the generations.

Of course, at the time he was lecturing me about how stupid it was that I couldn't saddle a horse, I was the Leading Petty Officer for the Nuclear Missile Fire Control Division on a submarine. My knowledge base was not deteriorated, it was just different, and fully functional with respect to the environment I lived in.

So if genes are no longer lethal, is it really a problem if they show up with greater frequency in the gene pool? Has the DNA really deteriorated if it is able to thrive in the current environment?

I will admit that if we suffer an apocalypse, and drop back to a stone age civilization, the skill of programming nuclear weapons will decrease in importance, while Type I diabetes becomes much more significant. But until then, talk about 'deteriorating' gene pool is just prejudice.

 

[fromderinside]

Gee. This works better if I just drop the turd and walk away.

Thanks everybody for proving doing is enough.

Of course if you don't see the point, well, that's why I made the comment in the first place.