Evolutionary Health

The Miracle of Nature

“We are our own worst enemy.” - I have no idea who said this first, but I’m sure it’s been said countless times over the course of human history.

The tyrants stirred up fear over SARS-CoV2 – a nasty form of the common cold. The thing about viruses (if we admit they exist) is that either they are mild and impact a lot of people or they are severe and kill off (or incapacitate) their hosts before they can spread too much. Either way, it’s not an apocalypse for humanity.

We do have a worry, however, that our own meddling will create and spread something more nasty than nature would confront us with.

Why are humans living so much longer than they did in the past?

First, this is a trick of statistics. Reduction in infant and child mortality has a huge impact on “average lifespan”. If you make it past age sixty or so, you have a life expectancy far above the average of about 78 years old. Most likely you’ll live to 90 or 100 (getting past 110 is pretty tough!). I’m still aiming for 120 (in good health), but not sure I’ll make it.

Most important, in my opinion, is improved living conditions. Two hundred years ago, if you became ill, you didn’t have the luxury of taking sick days and resting in a comfortable bed in a climate controlled home with plenty of nutrition available. I could make a good argument that most people these days consume far worst nutrition than we did two hundred years ago, but that’s a tangent I won’t pursue here. Our nutrition, for a typical person, has dropped off very rapidly in the past one hundred years and especially the past fifty years.

Our improved average lifespan is not due to pieces of paper that declare someone to be an MD or some miracle antibiotic (although antibiotics do have a great role in battlefield injuries or surgeries). Certainly “vaccines” are not responsible for improved health.

Sigh… could we turn off the propaganda machine for a few decades and engage in some serious scientific analysis of the evidence?

Back to evolution, life has always been a constant contest between predator and prey. Enhancements to predators led to enhancements in the prey (or die off of the species that failed to adapt). Evolution hasn’t stopped. Technology has stepped in and disrupted the balance. However we’ve advanced technology so rapidly we aren’t aware of the consequences of our new toys.

Most people know that I consider humans to be the greatest plague on Earth. There isn’t a problem on Earth that wouldn’t be less of a problem if we had half as many humans. However, I’m not a fan of murder or suicide so we need to come up with alternative solutions to our growing population problem. We can certainly argue that the Earth is more than capable of supporting the current number of humans. That may be true. But eventually there is a limit to the number of humans the Earth can support. Nature seems to be very good at dealing with overpopulation. Nature will slow reproduction, inflict plagues and starvation. Humans, in our infinite stupidity, seem to prefer war as a way to curb population (but so far it hasn’t worked). Since starvation and plagues (and war) aren’t very fun (and we all still enjoy boinking each other), we might want to pause, slow down and consider more acceptable solutions.

History has been full of predictions of doom and gloom. They usually fail to factor in human adaption. Were you aware that in 1960 a can of beer used six times as much aluminum? It was profitable to use less aluminum, thus modern cans are thinner and lighter. Good old capitalism at work! Levels of six air pollutants have declined by 77% since 1970 even though population grew by 60 percent and GDP grew by 285 percent. Hey, us humans aren’t completely stupid! Freedom and a few good ideas can go a long way!