If you were given the opportunity to end all diseases, Would you?

[Dreambiscuit 8,024]

There seems to be some opposition here about people with a bad moral compass being kept alive in the event that all disease was eradicated. Yet what is moral about someone who would appoint themselves judge and jury to the point of letting them, or anyone else, die if they didn't have to? And what about the people with a good moral compass? Surely they have a right to live. The fact is, everyone has the right to live and if anyone has the ability to ease suffering and save lives it's their duty to carry out that ability. Doctors who try to save lives aren't considered a liability to humankind because the people they save may inadvertently help spread disease throughout the world or cause suffering in any of countless possible ways. It's the price of doing business on planet earth. And having more people doesn't just mean there's a potential for more bad things, but also a potential for more good things. Overpopulation isn't the problem it's often made out to be. You could fit the entire population of the world in the state of Florida. So, quite a bit of extra space if it really gets down to it.

The bottom line here is that lives are important, whether we always agree with that fact or not. If given the opportunity to eradicate disease, I would do it without hesitation. 

[Black Sabbath 2,484]

1 hour ago, Dreambiscuit said:

Overpopulation isn't the problem it's often made out to be. You could fit the entire population of the world in the state of Florida. So, quite a bit of extra space if it really gets down to it.

 The problem with overpopulation isn't the lack of space, it's the amount of resources people consume.   

[Br O N Y 382]

Definitly yes! First of all, I think if deseases wouldn't kill anyone anymore, the birth rate would also go down, because more children would survive. And I as a person who doesn't wanna die myself (obviously) think that it would be really hypocritical to expect other people to die because they're destroying the plant, when I do that too. Pretty much everone who comments here uses up way more resouces then the people who are usually dying from deseases anyway.

I think we should strive towards making the lives of everyone as long and pleasant as possible. I think we should never ever rely on people dying as some sort of popupation control. I mean where would we get if we start to for instance deny people medication because we think there is no place for them on this planet.

[Handsome Changeling 1,851]

I don't know... That's a hard question... Diseases exist to keep population down for ALL species. So does this mean for EVERY animal? I'll assume it's just humans for now and say even though I have lost loved ones to disease no. I think they're there for good reason, plus Doctors and nurses are incredible people and deserve the line of work, biological researchers would be pretty pointless too in terms of diseases and cures. Honestly I think diseases are here for a good reason and as bad as some are, they need to be around for a healthy ecosystem to be around (Not like we help the ecosystem anyway though)

[SONICchaos 824]

I know there are alot of implications associated with controlling a pathogen but id like to believe it would help the world more than hurt to eradicate viruses. Tho we could continue doing what we're doing now and creating vaccines but keep samples of viruses contained in sealed labs for...whatever reason. Yeah we'd be safer completely ending them than keeping a possible outbreak source but id like to think having samples to study and manipulate could assist man in better health. 

[Meeps 297]

On 6/30/2017 at 7:14 AM, Dreambiscuit said:

Overpopulation isn't the problem it's often made out to be. You could fit the entire population of the world in the state of Florida. So, quite a bit of extra space if it really gets down to it.

Overpopulation, as others have noted, has very little to do with the amount of space available to humans. It's the resources we consume that is an issue. It would take approximately 10 planet earths for everyone on Earth to live the lifestyle of the average American. Let's not forget that about one third of the earth is comprised of desert, which isn't the most hospitable place ever. Same with mountains. Fitting everyone into one state would require eradicating roads/structures/etc. off the map, and this assertion also depends on most people living on a very small plot of land.. I'm assuming most humans aren't too excited to live a hamster-esque lifestyle.

No, I would not get rid of diseases, as great as it sounds. They serve a purpose, and who knows what issues would stem from removing them as a control factor. I see this question as being similar to the "would you eliminate mosquitos if you could?" Sure, it'd be cool to, but we can't simply assume that all the creatures and environmental factors that depend on them would adjust overnight to their dissapearance with no long-term issues.

[Stone Cold Steve Jobs 22,411]

I would hate myself for it, but no i would not. I would eliminate certain illnesses, but not all of them. If there were no illnesses, the earth would become overpopulated much faster. The biggest problem with that is, earth has ways to cull the population. When we got to be too numerous, odds are good a disease would either mutate and kill more of us off, or a natural disaster of some kind would occur. It's called carrying capacity.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,304]

I would wipe out all terminal or most likely terminal diseases in the snap of a finger if I somehow could. I despise the fact that humanity has to live in fear of getting something like cancer or anything else related to it, so I would eradicate it. I would however keep things like the common cold or even the flu, as those are usually just a hindrance to people and not something fatal. The immune system needs something to keep its strength in check.

[Ganondox 899]

No. Way worse things would emerge that we cannot even comprehend, if no one dies of disease who knows what dying of old age might entail, and if no one dies of old age over population would definitely be a problem. Let's just keep the diseases that suck slightly less. 

Edited August 23, 2017 by Ganondox

[Libra 11,690]

I may just have watched too many movies, but I'm against it, due to something possibly much worse rearing its head.

 

[Travlein 255]

I wouldn't. Diseases are a natural part of this world. And maybe even natures way of thinning out the population. It would be like getting rid of a certain predator to save squirrels. 

[melody5697 195]

I agree with Snowflake Frostflame. And I would like to point out something that apparently hasn't occurred to anyone else. If we got rid of ALL diseases, that would include mental illnesses as well. Most evil people have antisocial personality disorder or another mental illness that's making them evil. Get rid of mental illnesses, and most evil people will become good people, or at least a lot less evil. That would take care of a lot of the world's problems.

[Invincible 2,090]

I wouldn't. You need diseases to improve your immune system - it serves to protect you against more than just germs. 

[Techno Universal 2,575]

Yep undoubtedly I would get rid of all diseases in existence! It's also a part of my life mission to end all surfing on the planet!  

[Sir Hugsalot 8,621]

Hard question. Even at this point earth is overpopulated and resources are slowly becoming scarce. First mankind should learn to be more responsible about its own planet. We can't even leave Earth yet and start a colony elsewhere. When we ruin this world we die along with it, no matter if there will be diseases or not. In the end I'd love to end all the diseases, but first I'd like to see few things changed:

- more awareness about enviroment and eradicating stupid theories, like "clean coal" (I am looking at You, Trump)

- no insane reproduction rate, that will result in depleting resources due to no fatal sickness playing role in reducing population

 

It would be great to save all those people, who suffer now, but overpopulating and turning Earth into a giant, round trashcan will eventually kill every person here. Overpopulating will give the same results, because resources are not infinite and currently most people seem to pretend they are. But yes, if mankind changes on those aspects I would gladly do it. 

[Jedishy 3,542]

Yes, I would. There are many what if this or what if that which I could hem and haw over for many times my lifespan. But there is nothing to say that we can't avoid or solve those what ifs. I mean if I cured all disease we would have time and money to focus on soooooo much more. The manpower or resources that go into diseases such as cancer could now be poured into energy and food production. 

Basically, if I can end suffering but dont out of fear that it might maybe one day bite me in the rear I just could not live with myself. I'd rather fail trying to alleviate suffering then do nothing and let suffering I have the power to stop to continue. 

[Yakamaru 3,076]

No, I wouldn't end all diseases/illnesses. It's cruel and inhumane and I admit this, but we need them as a way of population control.

Africa and Asia are already the cause of overpopulation by fucking more than rabbits. China alone sits on almost 20% of the entire worlds' population. Sorry, you can't out-fuck poverty nor diseases. If anything, I blame Asians and Africans for our overpopulation problem. A problem they themselves caused.

According to 2016, here's a list of population per continent, as according to Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_continents_by_population

Asia: 4,436,224,000

Africa: 1,216,130,000

Europe: 738,849,000

North America: 579,024,000

Australia: 390,901,000

It may sound cruel, but we need LESS people. We are sitting on nearly 3 billion people in poverty. Almost 1 billion are homeless and/or in dire need of medical aid. And the vast majority of them are in Africa/Asia.

Sooner or later, our overpopulation problem will cause problems. A lot of problems. And at that point, the only solution is another world war. This time around we won't see tens of millions of casualties. We will see hundreds of millions.

[Jedishy 3,542]

6 hours ago, Yakamaru said:

It may sound cruel, but we need LESS people. We are sitting on nearly 3 billion people in poverty. Almost 1 billion are homeless and/or in dire need of medical aid

Dude we are talking 5 percent of the total population with those numbers. That is not that high and shrinking all the time. Food, power and medical tech is put pacing these things. And wealthier healthier, better fed people breed less. Meaning the numbers would slow. 

[Yakamaru 3,076]

46 minutes ago, Jedishy said:

Dude we are talking 5 percent of the total population with those numbers. That is not that high and shrinking all the time. Food, power and medical tech is put pacing these things. And wealthier healthier, better fed people breed less. Meaning the numbers would slow. 

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.html

13.5% in poverty in the US in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty

Here are the worlds' poverty rates, most recent used.

Note that a lot of non-western countries are sitting high on the poverty levels. Way too high.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

"At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day."

So no. It's not 5%. I wish it were that low though. Would make it a hell'uva lot easier to solve the problems.

If only 5% of the worlds' population, some less than 400 million people, didn't have proper housing, sanitation and were on or below the poverty line, we could eradicate those problems within one generation. 30 years at best. But alas, the numbers don't lie.

https://homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/

My apologies. I forgot to be more specific on the homeless issue. I meant those who are homeless and do not have adequate housing: Which is currently at 100 million people.

Edited August 26, 2017 by Yakamaru

[Jedishy 3,542]

Just now, Yakamaru said:

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.html

13.5% in poverty in the US in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty

Here are the worlds' poverty rates, most recent used.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

"At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day."

So no. It's not 5%. I wish it were that low though. Would make it a hell'uva lot easier to solve the problems.

https://homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/

My apologies. I forgot to be more specific on the homeless issue. I meant those who are homeless and do not have adequate housing: Which is currently at 100 million people.

I worked with the numbers YOU gave. Which was 4 billion out of 7 trillion. Which is indeed 5%. I'm not going to check your own data for you.

But the point still stands that we are dropping poverty and homelessness and lives are improving. We are on the cusp of some amazing stuff medically and I can imagine in other areas as well. 

[Yakamaru 3,076]

6 minutes ago, Jedishy said:

I worked with the numbers YOU gave. Which was 4 billion out of 7 trillion. Which is indeed 5%. I'm not going to check your own data for you.

But the point still stands that we are dropping poverty and homelessness and lives are improving. We are on the cusp of some amazing stuff medically and I can imagine in other areas as well. 

Our planet have 7.2 billion people. Not 7 trillion.

Also: 4 billion out of 7 trillion is not 5%. There is a 1,750 times difference. In other words: 0.05%. Going by YOUR math, 0.05% of the worlds' population is at or below the poverty line.

Scratch that. 7.4 billion, according to this:

https://www.census.gov/popclock/

Edited August 26, 2017 by Yakamaru

[Crystal Peppermint 1,108]

It's sad, that people still think about races nowadays, instead of seeing us all as humans.

But back to topic. I wouldn't end all diseases, because death is necessary. Without it, our world would go even more imbalance.

[Jedishy 3,542]

Just now, Yakamaru said:

Our planet have 7.2 billion people. Not 7 trillion.

Also: 4 billion out of 7 trillion is not 5%. There is a 1,750 times difference. In other words: 0.05%. Going by YOUR math, 0.05% of the worlds' population is at or below the poverty line.

Huh just double checked my math, I suck at math anyway so its best I don't do it before my coffee. As far as the number of people on earth yeah you are right. No idea how a screwed that up. Belay my last. 

The rest about med and food tech still stands though. 

[Yakamaru 3,076]

19 minutes ago, Jedishy said:

Huh just double checked my math, I suck at math anyway so its best I don't do it before my coffee. As far as the number of people on earth yeah you are right. No idea how a screwed that up. Belay my last. 

The rest about med and food tech still stands though. 

Bwahahaha. xD

All is forgiven. <3

We've been doing selective breeding for the past 20-30 thousand years on everything from crops to husbandry animals. Selective breeding is a natural and indirect way to get the best results for when you are breeding animals. Genetic modification is the next step for any society that is advanced enough to do it. Genetic modification is a a direct way to get the results you want and leaves out problems that selective breeding may give, which is unwanted genetics and/or traits.

We also have energy problems, of which a mix of fission and fusion and hopefully LFTR's will solve, once we get there. Fusion are theoretically producing insane amounts of energy. Combine that with fission for separating the atoms again and LFTR's to take care of the waste, boom, we have a good energy cycle that creates incredible amounts of energy. It sounds dumb and may not work in practice, but it'd be awesome if we had zero nuclear waste and secondary elements created in the process, which LFTR's have proven to create.

Solve energy problems = Solve food problems

Solve food problems = We can start feeding literally everyone

Can also start getting rid of all kinds of diseases and illnesses, not to mention genetic traits people have.

23 minutes ago, Crystal Peppermint said:

It's sad, that people still think about races nowadays, instead of seeing us all as humans.

What do you mean with the first part? What are you referencing to?

There are differences from everything to genetics to average IQ's between all the races and sub-races of our species. They aren't big, but they are there.

Edited August 26, 2017 by Yakamaru

[Once In A Blue Moon 894]

@Yakamaru  I'm not sure about that 80% on under $10 per day; Gapminder puts it at around 57.7%, or 4.21 billion people, in 2015. Obviously there are caveats - your own source indicated that the rise in population that earns over $10 per day mostly came from China, and there is often no standardisation in statistics beyond a national level (although some organisations such as Eurostat do a pretty good job.) There's also factors beyond income - I'm a fan of life expectancy as a good indicator of development, although one could also use more esoteric measures such as internet access* all of which mean that poverty is kind of tricky to pin down (indeed, it is often defined as those below some fraction of the median income, which is going to be a fairly stable percentage of the population.) Hans Rosling, sadly recently departed, gave a really good short presentation on it back in 2010, another short interview in 2015 that gives a quick breakdown of it, but to really sink your teeth into his wider approach to statistics (this doesn't just focus on poverty, but it's an area he often refers to) I'd recommend some of his TED talks (and similar presentations.)

 

To go back onto the original topic, I would be quite happy to end death by illness. Indeed, I think that increased life expectancy along with longer productive lives would actually alleviate one of major problems that we currently face; that developed countries have an aging population - people are living longer, but they aren't working for longer (at the moment.) That means that you have more unproductive members of the population that need to be supported by the working age population^. If the older population didn't fall ill, they could work for longer and be less 'expense' when they do retire whilst still enjoying a quality of life that isn't possible when afflicted by the illnesses commonly associated with older age.

With regards to population, increasing the life expectancy is only going to increase the population by a fixed amount. Hans Rosling (yes, I am a fan of his) explains it very well. 

 

*think about it; a person may have an exceptionally low income, but if they have comparatively cheap internet access then that could go a long way in terms of purchasing power. Everything from education to entertainment is available, and a fair chunk of it free (and although I wouldn't condone it, piracy of non-free products isn't exactly challenging.)  

^Immigration helps this, as immigrants are heavily skewed towards working age and someone who walks into the country in their early 20s hasn't been any expense on state-run infrastructure such as schools or hospitals up until that point, but it doesn't solve the structural issues of people living longer but not being productive for a comparable portion of their increased life.

Edited August 26, 2017 by Once In A Blue Moon
mis-typed $10 as $1. So much for a career in accounting...