Xref: utzoo sci.research:596 talk.politics.misc:21172 sci.bio:1793
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ames!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm
From: michaelm@vax.3Com.Com (Michael McNeil)
Newsgroups: sci.research,talk.politics.misc,sci.bio
Subject: Re: animal research
Message-ID: <2333@3comvax.3Com.Com>
Date: 31 Jan 89 23:24:57 GMT
References: <5963@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <674@intvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: michaelm@3comvax.UUCP (Michael McNeil)
Followup-To: sci.research
Organization: 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 39

In article <674@intvax.UUCP> morimoto@intvax.UUCP (Alan Morimoto) writes:
}Let's take a hypothetical situation here.  Looking at all of the numbers
}given in the examples, you can see that there are millions if not billions
}of people out there that would not be alive today if it were not for medical
}research and developments in new pharmaceuticals.  Yet what do we accomplish
}by all of this.  We end up with a lot of sick people that would not survive
}without medical help.  
}
}So, if there were a major disaster that restricted medical professionals to
}treating those who were injured, i.e. a war, then we would have a lot of
}dying people out there, dying from cronic illnesses.  My point is that maybe
}we need to look at what long term effects we are creating by breeding
}diseases into our future generations.  I can imagine that countries that are
}not as medically advanced inherit a stronger gene pool of people simply
}because the weak will perish.  Will the future of the world be inherited by
}us, the medically pampered, or the third world?

This might be a valid fear -- if medical and biological advances were
to halt and freeze at current techology.  Perhaps this scenario would
happen if animal research were stopped altogether.  Assuming, however,
that all research *doesn't* suddenly cease -- then long, *long* before
degeneration of the gene pool can significantly take place (i.e., a few
centuries from now), we'll have the capability to correct deleterious
genes.  As long as science continues to advance, the problem is moot.

>Alan

--
Michael McNeil			michaelm@3comvax.UUCP
3Com Corporation		hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm
Mountain View, California	work telephone: (415) 694-2916

	We are at present almost completely ignorant of biology,
	a fact which often escapes the notice of biologists, and
	renders them too presumptuous in their estimates of the
	present position of their science, too modest in their
	claims for the future.
		J. B. S. Haldane, *Daedalus, or Science and the
		Future*, 1924