Do you think all the medical advances will be the downfall of humans?

I think we just need to learn how to not have as many children. I mean, are we really dumb enough to continue having kids when resources are running out? If people see overpopulation is a threat, they’re going to want to do something about it, right?

I don’t know; I’m just asking. Or is there too much of the “overpopulation is a myth” that I hear from certain [not always religious] people?

I’d like to think i haven’t wasted my life so i’m going to say no… medical advances can prolongue life it’s true, but their main purpose is to improve QUALITY of life… not make it longer for longevity’s sake.
A person suffering living longer is just cruel.
Overpopulation can be taken care of through education and responsible family planning and should not be blamed on the medical community…
It’s not like your doctor is forcing you to procreate.

BTW i’m guessing you meant artificial insemination and are making an “Octo-mom” reference… implanting that many embryos into a single person in not common or standard practice.. her doctor already got shit for that.

Just the opposite.

I think medical advances will eventually change the nature of the human race for the better – that is if we manage not to use our new knowlege to destroy ourselves first.

With great power, comes great responsibility. It’s not the backward people’s fault that they continue to replicate like a disease, that’s their nature, and no amount of education will not fix the problem, not in a timely manner at least.

It sounds cruel,but it’s not If nations have not advanced to a level where they can develop advanced medicine independently, they shouldn’t be given the state-of-the-art cures/treatment

Quite a few Indians are still mad about the British breaking their social order(as bad as it was) by vaccinating everyone against diseases(which enabled the population boom).

In developed nations, state-of-the-art treatment should be rationed based on the patient’s contribution to her/his field/society.think of it as a perk for their contributions, instead of ability to pay.

Everone else should be made as comfortable as possible (pain/symptom management).

Oh, the irony.
“It’s not the backward people’s fault that they continue to replicate like a disease”
while at the same time…“no amount of education will not fix the problem”.

@HarmonyAlexandria: You’re just… a study in crazy all on your own ain’t ya?

Yes. We are not supposed to live as long, period!!

@shilolo

Governments and NGOs started warning of the dangers associated with overpopulation and began promoting family planning back in the 1950s when the global population was 2.5 Billion.

50 years latter, the global population sits at about 6.3 Billion and climbing, stressing the ecosystem well beyond sustainable levels.

Given the lack of significant reductions that all the previous attempts at education and planning programmes produced,what leads you to believe more-of-the-same will result in a different outcome?

@HarmonyAlexandria: have you got any evidence to show that the population level is unsustainable? Or that we can’t sustain a population twice or four times the current level? Of course, we’ll never reach even twice the current population. It’ll level off somewhere between eight and nine billion, and then, depending on who you listen to, it’ll either decline (and some would say pricipitously) or stay the same. Staying the same would be preferable.

Your notion of keeping medicine from people who reproduce at high rates raises strong ethical cocerns. You are using the same arguments that people in the eugenics movements used. I probably don’t have to tell you who the most prominent eugenicist in history was, do I?

I’ll just say this: no one can predict the future, and no one can know what skills humankind will need to let us survive. If we decide one kind of person is not worth allowing to survive, that may be just the kind of person we need in the future. It is a dangerous game to practice eugenics. Kind of like playing Russian Roulette.

Why acknowledge the advances in medicine yet not acknowledge advances and potential advances in the other sciences? I like to think that the technology will be there along with the increase in population to increase food production not to mention to live on other planets.

@daloon have you got any evidence to show that the population level is unsustainable?

Using the methodology laid out in Jared Diamond’s Collapse, sustainable works out to be 30 million, globally. I’m not that pessimistic.

Most methodologies (using everything from energy to biodiversity to water) put sustainable between 1–2 billion, globally. Here is one such analysis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16050245

Your notion of keeping medicine from people who reproduce at high rates

Why the hell not? They are the ones exasperating the population problem, it’s only fitting they should be the ones who pay the price

It’ll level off somewhere between eight and nine billion
That’s a very conservative(optimistic) projection, I’ve seen a few models that put peak between 11–12 Billion.

No one can predict the future
No one person can with 100% accuracy, but tens of thousands of people looking at the current data and extrapolating can get damn close.

If we don’t rethink what we are doing and make drastic changes quickly, the ecosystem will collapse within 100 years, taking civilization with it. In all likelihood homo sapien will survive, it’s numbers drastically reduced however, and the survivors and their children will be living in another dark age.

OR We can make hard choices, take control of our own destiny, and the species continues on stronger than ever.

If we decide one kind of person is not worth allowing to survive, that may be just the kind of person we need in the future

:D :D :D
It more like business investing than Russian roulette.

We choose to save Google over the mom and pop grocery stores in backwater USA.

While it may be true that past performances is no guarantee of future results, it’s a really safe bet with Goggle. I’m positive they can come up with something that will benefit 100s of millions of people.

@HarmonyAlexandria: do a search on population growth and daloon. You should find a discussion where I posted sources.

@HarmonyAlexandria: What’s so bad about a collapse? It’s only natural. Ebb and flow. Shit happens. We should avoid it sure, but I’d rather let the people decide their own course and take responsibility of themselves than sterilize people, impose birth restrictions, cause unnecessary pain and suffering and god knows what else you have up your dictator uniform’s sleeve.

@HarmonyAlexandria your question makes puppies cry

Haha, I lurve you Dr C. :)