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Genetics is probably the most cynical science of them all. If you look at it - most major medical breakthroughs have been made in the 20 century. Today we transplant hearts as if it is the most normal thing in the world. People, who are born with a genetic defect are kept alive due to the progress of medicine. What is of course great news from a humanitarian point of view is disastrous news from a Darwinian point of view. The better our medicine gets, the weaker our gene pool becomes, so basically we're working on our own extinction, because 'Survival of the fittest' is no longer the force that decides who lives and who dies.

At some point in future we'll have to start genetic engineering, simply because we wrecked or own gene pool by letting the sick and the weak survive. I know it sounds terribly cynical, well it is, but from a strictly evolutionary point of view that's what happened and I tend to think that's what happened to the North Star population too. their gene pool simply degenerated.

Or they might be tougher -- they've survived slavery and a whole new set of germs on a difficult, primitive planet without advanced medicine and they've imported Skagaran genes into their gene pool. The only problem is that they all seem to be from the same ethnic group, at least in the settlement we most often see.

This kind of discussion, though, just makes me think how Trek's ancient theory of a Eugenics War in Earth's future history probably isn't so completely out of bounds, just like Paxton's nonsense.

I don't think it's 'wrecking the gene pool' at all. It's just that the survival criteria change depending on circumstances. If we lived in a world where people regularly starved, being able to survive on fewer calories would be an advantage. But if we lived in a frozen wasteland, that might turn into a disadvantage. Same thing with being resistant to disease, or able to write beautiful music, or maintain your sense of spacial awareness while being thrown around in a shuttlepod. Each of these can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on circumstances, and natural selection will reflect that.

I think Cogito has something when he says that the survival criteria change can depend on circumstances. I am reading a book titled 1491 by Charles C. Mann where there is documentation of millions in North and South America dying off from small pox because of European contact with the native populations. Most of this was not an attempt at genocide, though some people where enslaved and generally maltreated. In the past, depopulation estimates have been way too low. It seems this tragedy was a lot due to lack of natural genetic immunity, though. I know JusTripin has read this book too, so maybe she will comment here.

Linda,

I am fairly certain your assessment of the effect of smallpox on the North American native population is spot on. It was not a one way deal though. I remember reading where a few nasty forms of venereal disease were sent back to europe which ravaged the population with an emphasis on the ruling types.

I would tread carefully on the enslaved stuff. Sure it happened, but slavery has been a normal human condition for millennia. The north and south Americans practiced it as did many tribes in central America. it still goes on in Africa today.

Maybe someday we will learn to value each and every human life...

Weeble