• Question: do you believe it is morally ok to demolish all diseases that can harm any human being, or do you think we need them to keep us in life order?

    Asked by osmium456 to Aaron, Ananthi, Ashley, Christopher, Emma, Lea on 11 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Aaron Brown

      Aaron Brown answered on 11 Nov 2017:

      Amazing question, and I have to admit, a difficult one to answer. The human population is exponentially increasing and you could argue that natural selection could use diseases to keep the human population at a ‘sensible’ number to ensure there is enough resources to go around. But as humans are compassionate animals with empathy my opinion is I wouldn’t like to see anyone suffer with a disease. It all depends on your opinion and ethics 🙂

    • Photo: Ananthi Ramachandran

      Ananthi Ramachandran answered on 12 Nov 2017:

      You have a brilliant way of thinking, I never thought of it like this! To be honest I don’t like the idea of people suffering so from my point of view if we could get rid of diseases that would be great, but you have made me consider this from another angle and if all diseases went then this could result in Earth becoming overpopulated which would also cause problems of its own……I guess you have to weigh out the pros and cons of both options. This would make a great topic for a debate, maybe you can organise one at school?

    • Photo: Emma Stevenson

      Emma Stevenson answered on 12 Nov 2017:

      This is a really philosophical question! I think Aaron and Ananthi have covered all the pros and cons and I agree. Disease do have a ‘population control’ role but at the same time no-one would want to see people suffer. Hopefully it’s a scenario we’ll never have to face!

    • Photo: Christopher Richardson

      Christopher Richardson answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      That’s a good question! I assume from the way you asked that natural selection or something around the worlds population is something you have been learning about recently? I used to believe that natural population control was part of evolution, a necessary process that takes place in all life on earth and that humans had just become too smart and were able to avoid this, so natural selection has responded by evolving untreatable viruses and bacteria. However I no longer see diseases as a population control for a few reasons that I wont bore you with but many scientists now agree, if you look back through human history at any diseases that have occurred and killed people, even from thousands of years ago, the DNA shows that many of these bacteria and viruses have evolved in cycles and then disappeared after each big outbreak, even at times when the population of humans wasn’t high at all diseases would come kill loads of people then go! This is evidence to suggest that in fact we the humans are a “population control” against the bacteria and viruses with them infecting us and then dying off afterwards. So in answer to your question no I don’t have any problems with eradicating any disease that causes anybody any pain.

Comments

  • Photo: osmium456

    osmium456 commented on :

    Thanks for the reply! I (personally) beleive that we need them to not only keep us at a good global population limit but to challenge us in a way. If you think od this world with no diseases it would seem just too perfect! Nothing for us to work on fixing! And i think that with nothing to fix (nothing of a big value to do) what would we be doing with our lives! Anyway, its really intresting hearing your replies and like to see things from other peoples perspectives! 😊 thanks again!