I went to the Wild Animal Park yesterday. Its not hard to imagine but I heard one of the trainers talk about the Cheetah and how a minor injury to their tails or legs can cause them to die. Ofcourse the Cheetah is highly unsuited to survival, with speed being the only tool at hand. Even if the other cats have better survival instincts they definitely need to be on top of their game. Very few die of old age. They need to be at an olympic atheletes level or they dont make it through life.
It seems that this is how organisms feel the pressure of natural selection. Very cozily ensconced in our human skins can we ever feel those pressures. Having understood that there is something called natural selection we can avoid something like it. We wouldnt let our old people die because they are fragile. We would try and save Terri Schaivo if possible. We would not let a race of people suffer because they cant make it on their own. On the other hand we experiment with Cloning and gene therapy and generate chimeras in the process. So are we entering the realm of 'intelligent design'. Never has any species been so dominant in the history of the world.
Or would we evolve to have larger and larger brains since thats most critical for survival and mate selection ? Or are we going to modify ourselves intelligently ?
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Another thought, though not compeltely related is , we are chaging the whole ecosystem through medicine and science and research but what justifcation do we have, that this is the right thing to do ??? Over millions of years many species have been extinct and maybe thats why we are here.
Humans were definately not the first species in the world
i agree we will never know that we r on the right track whether it is with cloning or with the changing ecosystem. and by the time we realize it, it will be too late.
as we r beginning to try and control everything starting form life span to what type of people (genetic engineering) live on this planet earth, i wonder how long we will have freedom to be who we r. imagine someone sitting out there looking at the embryo and saying 'na this is not perfect, trash it' i don't think in that world i would be born.
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