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Originally Posted by Aaron W.
If it's so bad, then evolution will take care of it itself.
This is a very strange argument. Evolutionary time scales are very long. Why should I care if breast cancer BRCA1 mutations will be "taken care of" over the long arc of evolution. People are suffering and dying now. There is no described downside at all (and if there was...wouldn't "evolution take care of" that too?), but a clear immediate upside.
You seem to believe genetic diversity is tautologically good, but what is your argument? Don't get me wrong, as some sort of big picture I agree. Population bottlenecks and inbreeding in small populations are undoubtedly very bad. What you failed to argue is why - tautologically or otherwise -
it is bad to reduce the herd prevalence of a known, harmful mutation that disrupts "normal" cell processes, causes cancer in high rates, and has no scientifically identifiable benefit? If you believe that this is tautologically bad, you need to spell out a more sensible argument.
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I believe that there's an implicit assumption in your argument, which is that progress is linear. That is, we're somehow supposed to always try to move for "better" in some sense.
Ok. If I'm discuss health policy, Obamacare for instance, I'm trying to make our society "better" in some sense. So what?
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With this framework, you're basically making the argument that longer life is always an advantage. That it's somehow always better if we can find ways to get people to live longer. I'm not sure if I believe that. Robustness of life and longevity of life are not the same thing.
I don't see how I've implicitly made such an argument. While it is true that many of the clearly identified harmful mutations like cystic fibrosis shorten life, people with this disease also have a horrible quality of life.
It is quite hard to try and pull these disparate themes of yours into anything coherent.