Poll: Cynical or realistic?

[Confidingtripod]

(If you dont like dark threads stop now) (sorry about any miss-spelling)

I have been thinking about human medicine... and I have to wonder... are we doing the right thing by curing so many deseases when we risk the chance of new ones developing?

And also we are growing as a species so fast how much longer can the earth support us?

Now I'm not one of those people who thinks humanity is bad, nor do I claim to be, but I think that in the future humans may take a drop in population. Wether this drop will be fast or slow I'm not sure but what with climate change it may happen...

So I ask, am I being cynical about people and not seeing everything or is this even slightly realistic in that we cant keep pushing further?

(Keep in mind I dont spend all day thinking about these things so any missed information would be appreciated, and if you want me to give more detail please ask but if you dont agree with me argue, please, rather than insult)

Thank you for voting and of advising me on more options.

 

[Rylot]

While over population may still become an issue recent trends have shown that populations are self correcting, ie people are just naturally having fewer children. While obviously it doesn't hold true for every single corner of the globe in most areas birth rates are decreasing. (I read this somewhere, hell if I can remember where)

Edit: Also so what Furburt said.

 

[Confidingtripod]

However, I believe a far better alternative than cutting off medicines

Sorry, I never meant to say we should cut off medicines I was trying to say...its difficult to describe but in basic... I worry that unless we destroy deseases totally they WILL mutate and we may have an even bigger problem, theres already signs of it happening with diseases that are developing natural antibiotic resistance.

 

[The Rockerfly]

We could really use a world war right about now.


I can't believe I said that

 

[PatrickXD]

Well, we're actually over the amount of people the earth can sustain now, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

However, I believe a far better alternative than cutting off medicines or anything is this. Almost all this population growth is occurring in places like China, India, and Africa. Poor, unstable places. The reason why such large families are needed is because that's the only way the parents can guarantee that enough of their children will live to support the family.

It's a half truth. We have far too many people on Earth to support as we currently live, but it is estimated that we can actually comfortably support up to 10 billion comfortable vegetarians successful, only human nature will never allow that. This is because our tendency to want meat, so cows are bread on what could be lots of extra space for crops. I think it was enough cow to feed about 10 people has to live on enough field to feed over 100.
I'd say with more careful application of food and fuel, and strict family planning regimes (1 child each, the China way of life) the human race could begin to live far more in harmony with earth but as it stands it just isn;t going to happen.

 

[Scout Tactical]

I'm not cynical or realistic. I'm optimistic. Why can't it be a good thing that we're curing disease left and right? If it causes some super-virus, I'm sure there will be those of us that survive or are immune. Take the Bubonic Plague, for example. This will leave whoever survives stronger and better informed, not to mention richer.

It wasn't random that the dark ages ended with the bubonic plague. In the aftermath of the disease, people had more money to sit back and think about why things were the way they were, rather than just eking out an existence. That's what sparked the Renaissance, in my opinion. After all, the Renaissance was a rebirth, a renewal of thought, an a reexamination of old.

 

[rockyoumonkeys]

Yes, the planet is grossly overpopulated, but the solution isn't to let more people die of illness, it's to impose limits on procreation. That might sound excessive, but it's necessary. No more families having 5+ kids. Too many.

Unfortunately, there's no practical way to force people to stop having kids without violating their human rights. Which sucks.

 

[Necator15]

Well, we're actually over the amount of people the earth can sustain now, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

However, I believe a far better alternative than cutting off medicines or anything is this. Almost all this population growth is occurring in places like China, India, and Africa. Poor, unstable places. The reason why such large families are needed is because that's the only way the parents can guarantee that enough of their children will live to support the family.

It's a bit of an oversimplified answer, but I believe that if child mortality rates were reduced, we'd see a brief spike in population growth, before the rate slows dramatically. If we can keep the birth rate under the death rate for a year, the amount of resources needed to fuel the world will drop.

We've actually got a ways to go until we hit our limit. It's theorized to be around 11 billion. So it'll be a bit until we reach that.


As to the "Why cure disease if it'll just make new ones" that's kind of a bad argument to begin with. Disease will constantly evolve with or without medicine, if that's what you're worried about. With things like staphylococcus aureus what is happening is we killed nearly all the bacteria that can be killed with regular antibiotics. Which, although is a form of evolution, isn't mutation. It's also one we can deal with.

No with virii, these are the things we worry about mutating. However, once again the application of medicine doesn't make them mutate. A virus can come in several flavors: Double stranded DNA, Single stranded DNA, double stranded RNA, and Single stranded RNA. Double stranded DNA will almost never mutate (Disease like smallpox, which we've effectively exterminated.), Single Strand DNA can, but it's rare because DNA is very stable.

Now the RNA viruses, that's where mutation comes from. Influenza and HIV are both prime examples of this. They mutate faster than we could ever make vaccines for them (Fun fact: The guy who invented vaccines was probably a psychopath). This is because even double stranded RNA isn't all that stable, and single stranded (HIV) will mutate disgustingly fast. Their mutation has more to do with the nature of virii than it does medicine.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is our medicine is good, and isn't really causing them to mutate at all, and we haven't quite reached our carrying capacity as of yet. Who knows, hopefully we can colonize another planet before that happens... I know it won't happen, but it would be cool.

 

[guess who]

Well, we're actually over the amount of people the earth can sustain now, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

However, I believe a far better alternative than cutting off medicines or anything is this. Almost all this population growth is occurring in places like China, India, and Africa. Poor, unstable places. The reason why such large families are needed is because that's the only way the parents can guarantee that enough of their children will live to support the family.

It's a bit of an oversimplified answer, but I believe that if child mortality rates were reduced, we'd see a brief spike in population growth, before the rate slows dramatically. If we can keep the birth rate under the death rate for a year, the amount of resources needed to fuel the world will drop.

Actually a large part of the problem is that in those places people mortality is going down but people are still having the same large families due to tradition or old habits.

Also we don't really have to worry about china too much because one child and their favoritism of males has given them a really unbalanced population meaning that a lot of Chinese men are going to die alone without children.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Actually, a pandemic would be far more effective. WW2, the deadliest war ever, caused around 50 million deaths in 6 years. A lot, but it's a small percent of the world population at the moment. Losing 50 million would do very little to curb any population growth.

No, what would be needed is a huge virulent disease. Spanish Flu-esque.

Not that I'm saying that that's anything even remotely approaching a good idea though.

I actually considered that and everything gets cured too damn fast for anything to kill off a massive amount of human beings. Plus when it gets to disease level the humans being killed are random, war will allow almost for natural selection

 

[Axolotl]

Well, we're actually over the amount of people the earth can sustain now, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

We're well over what was thought to be sustainable in the 60's when overpopulation became and issue in area such as India. However so far advances in agriculture have managed to vastly increase how many people we can sustain and there's no reason to believe that such increases won't continue.

 

[Confidingtripod]

Ireland is in stage 5 of the Demographic transition [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition].
In that stage there is a slow decrease in population with low birth rates and low death rates, more deaths then births obviously.
Therefore, Ireland and other developed nations are prepared for the percieved future.

You figured out why I was thinking about this, I am irish and so I felt that what is happening here may be what will happen on a smaller scale.

Well, we're actually over the amount of people the earth can sustain now, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

However, I believe a far better alternative than cutting off medicines or anything is this. Almost all this population growth is occurring in places like China, India, and Africa. Poor, unstable places. The reason why such large families are needed is because that's the only way the parents can guarantee that enough of their children will live to support the family.

It's a bit of an oversimplified answer, but I believe that if child mortality rates were reduced, we'd see a brief spike in population growth, before the rate slows dramatically. If we can keep the birth rate under the death rate for a year, the amount of resources needed to fuel the world will drop.

We've actually got a ways to go until we hit our limit. It's theorized to be around 11 billion. So it'll be a bit until we reach that.


As to the "Why cure disease if it'll just make new ones" that's kind of a bad argument to begin with. Disease will constantly evolve with or without medicine, if that's what you're worried about. With things like staphylococcus aureus what is happening is we killed nearly all the bacteria that can be killed with regular antibiotics. Which, although is a form of evolution, isn't mutation. It's also one we can deal with.

No with virii, these are the things we worry about mutating. However, once again the application of medicine doesn't make them mutate. A virus can come in several flavors: Double stranded DNA, Single stranded DNA, double stranded RNA, and Single stranded RNA. Double stranded DNA will almost never mutate (Disease like smallpox, which we've effectively exterminated.), Single Strand DNA can, but it's rare because DNA is very stable.

Now the RNA viruses, that's where mutation comes from. Influenza and HIV are both prime examples of this. They mutate faster than we could ever make vaccines for them (Fun fact: The guy who invented vaccines was probably a psychopath). This is because even double stranded RNA isn't all that stable, and single stranded (HIV) will mutate disgustingly fast. Their mutation has more to do with the nature of virii than it does medicine.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is our medicine is good, and isn't really causing them to mutate at all, and we haven't quite reached our carrying capacity as of yet. Who knows, hopefully we can colonize another planet before that happens... I know it won't happen, but it would be cool.

Thank's for the info, it will add to a more informed disscusion.

And yes being on another planet would be cool

 

[havass]

The only problem with over-population right now is because of third-world countries. Developed countries have a higher standard of living, so mostly will NOT want to have more than 3 kids. Topped with quality medical care, and you get Japan. In third world countires, it's a staple to have many kids. Might be to help them with farming, or to have more chances of having a better life if one of them breaks out of the poverty cycle, or like in China, there's a mindset that boys > girls. What they need is education. Only through education can you break the poverty cycle. That, or you upload a video to youtube and get shot to fame like Justina Bieber.

Or we could always group up a bunch of old people and gas them to death.

 

[hecticpicnic]

education, education to 3rd world counry's becausewe say "why do you have so many children becuse your poor?" and they say we have many children because we're poor" they believe that they are more likey to have somene to mind them when they are old the more children they have, get more people to use contaception there is nothing wrong with less dieases if there was worse healthcare there would be more child and stillborn deaths, and the people who would be dying would be the poor ,homeless and weak"like pregenent woman".medical care is a good thing because if you kill people to survive it defeats the whole point,maybe if people have less children,medical care will not be a problam because it just means people will live longer.it seems you have been watching to many "'____' will be the cause of the world ending" world documentries

 

[Captain Pirate]

We should start colonising Mars now to shift some of the weight of our massive population to another planet.

And then form a new government called the EDF and have some bald guy destroy it all and make his grandson live underground
It'll help expand our scientific discoveries and further our grip on becoming more like the UNSC universal domination.

 

[tomtom94]

I am of the opinion that every single person on the planet should be allowed one child. Consequently, every married couple should be allowed two. Maximum.
We have too many people, I don't know how Britain manages to support 60 million people (a thirtieth of whom are unemployed), we cannot afford any more.

As for diseases mutating, they wouldn't do that if people took their medicine and completed every course of antibiotics before stopping. Apparently lots of people die of TB because they stop taking the antibiotics (because they feel better) before they've killed off all the germs...who develop resistance...etc.

 

[theSovietConnection]

Actually, a pandemic would be far more effective. WW2, the deadliest war ever, caused around 50 million deaths in 6 years. A lot, but it's a small percent of the world population at the moment. Losing 50 million would do very little to curb any population growth.

No, what would be needed is a huge virulent disease. Spanish Flu-esque.

Not that I'm saying that that's anything even remotely approaching a good idea though.

Actually, a pandemic would be far more effective. WW2, the deadliest war ever, caused around 50 million deaths in 6 years. A lot, but it's a small percent of the world population at the moment. Losing 50 million would do very little to curb any population growth.

No, what would be needed is a huge virulent disease. Spanish Flu-esque.

Not that I'm saying that that's anything even remotely approaching a good idea though.

It would be overly effective. With a pandemic there's no real way to tell how much of the population will get sliced. It could be 100 million or as much as 4 billion. There's no way it will wipe out the human race or anything like that, but a pandemic is just far too unpredictable to really be an effective solution to population growth. I'm not insinuating you said it was an effective solution or anything like that, I'm just saying a pandemic isn't a feasible solution.

I agree with both sentiments expressed here. A pandemic would be the easiest way of curbing population growth (that or a nuclear war between India and China, but that wouldn't end well no matter how you look at it) but is far too unpredictable. Factors such as method of transmission, mortality rates, whether or not it can be cured rigt away, and initial areas of outbreak would mean that it could potentially rocket out of control and put us back into a veritable dark age.

My other mentioned method, nuclear war, would be highly effective at curbing growth, by eliminating two of the largest population pools. However, as said, that would also likely end in nuclear winter and possible overradition of the surface.

We could really use a world war right about now.


I can't believe I said that

A world war would actually be a very bad thing, given nuclear weapons and MAD.

 

[Ham_authority95]

Therefore, Ireland and other developed nations are prepared for the percieved future.

Not really, sadly. Developed nations make up a comparatively small percentage of the Earths population. India and China alone make up almost a third of the worlds population.

Countries like Ireland can drop and raise their birth/death ratios as much as they want, the real impact is made in third world nations. If birth rates there keep rising, we could be heading for mass starvation.

Correction:
They could be heading for mass starvation.

Very true, Teddy.

OT: While imposing population control would be good and all, we could only really impose it on our singular nations and not the where huge population growth is coming from. i.e India, Africa, China etc.(Unless we made an international treaty or something.)

Instead, we would need to industrialize all the third world countries that still need tons of kids to continue their linage.

With the education and opportunities brought by industrialization in the the third world, people would stop having 5+ families because they simply wouldn't need that many children.

 

[Brandon237]

While over population may still become an issue recent trends have shown that populations are self correcting, ie people are just naturally having fewer children. While obviously it doesn't hold true for every single corner of the globe in most areas birth rates are decreasing. (I read this somewhere, hell if I can remember where)

Edit: Also so what Furburt said.

Yeah, I also have seen lots of articles and documentaries on this, mostly in first world countries, the population is actually decreasing, more deaths than births, we are at the tipping point for how many people we can have, and I think that there may be something in our genetic code that prevents extreme over-population. Epidemics of diseases are programmed to self-exterminate after so many months, and this also happens with many other gregarious animals, so why not us? It's entirely possible.

 

[Ham_authority95]

We could really use a world war right about now.


I can't believe I said that

A world war would actually be a very bad thing, given nuclear weapons and MAD.

Not only that, but people tend to fuck more often when terrible situations happen(like wars) more often because of the "Well, I sure as hell won't survive this, but my baby might." instinct and "service" to their respective nations.

Plus, there really isn't much else to do while you're in a shelter and the world might end in a few minutes....