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I wonder what this will do to the short term evolution of our species. It's terribly morbid and I really don't think it will come to this but if many people st

I wonder what this will do to the short term evolution of our species. It's terribly morbid and I really don't think it will come to this but if many people start dying due to once easily treatable infections then it could rapidly (within a dozen generations or so) change how our immune system works. A mass dieoff of a species due to a single catastrophic event is unlikely to intensely select for certain traits. A flood amonsgst a non-swimming species is as likely to select for resillience or sleeping late in your tree or some other unpredicable attribute as it is for the "swimming" gene But constant intense pressure could easily single out favorable attributes and I wonder what those will be and what the side effects or emergent traits of those genes will be. Of course we are evolving via technology and society more rapidly than genetically so that could change everything.

mrestko 11y ago
You mean a return to the wold before antiobiotics? The world that existed when my grandparents were born? I doubt the few generations of people born during the "antibiotic era" have any meaningful genetic traits connected with the use of antibiotics
- iamthepieman 11y ago
  Yes, you're right of course. But clearly the few generations of the "antibiotic era" have had a much larger effect on the bacteria than us. We used antibiotic technology to "evolve" resistance to bacteria. Bacteria responded much more rapdily than we could have naturally and is now a different organism than what our grandparents had to contend with. Now our technological "evolution" is unable to keep up with natures and we face a new threat not an old one. One we helped to create.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  Just to put things into perspective, the world population was around 2 billion when penicillin was discovered in 1928. Even without antibiotics we still know about things like sanitation and the importance of clean drinking water, so it's not exactly going back to the dark ages as the article suggests.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    It's going to be pretty bad. https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/02/i-need-antibiotics-that-work-7-health-profs-share-their-antibiotic-resistance-fears/ https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/02/i-need-an... > If we can’t stop the infection, however, we can’t stop the sepsis. A world without effective antibiotics will mean that every one of the 100,000 people who develop sepsis each year in the UK - every one of the 18 million people with sepsis each year worldwide - could certainly die from simple infections like chest and water infections. A human could die from infection every second. > When I started treating people with bacterial infections it was rare that I didn’t have tablet antibiotics that I could treat them with; rare that I needed to keep people in hospital to treat their infections. Now every week, I treat young women with last resort antibiotics for urinary tract infections. Rather than given them a simple 7-day tablet course, they have to stay in hospital for a week or more, or come to the hospital every day for an injection. https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2014/11/18/10-reasons-you-should-be-worried-about-antibiotic-resistance https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2014/11/18/10-reason... > When we discuss antibiotic resistance we talk about a frightening future and rightly ask for action to stop the problem from getting worse. But this doesn't mean it's all just an issue for future generations. It’s estimated that 25,000 people already die every year in Europe because of infections resistant to antibiotics and in the USA the figure is 23,000 people, every year. https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/18/7-more-reasons-you-should-be-worried-about-antibiotic-resistance/ https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/18/7-more-re... > In 2013 there were 480,000 recorded cases of multi drug-resistant TB (TB that can’t be treated by our usual medicines). TB is a bacterial infection that can spread through the lymph nodes and blood stream to any organ in your body. It commonly affects the lungs and while a lot of people might not consider it to be an issue in the UK, or think it couldn’t affect them, this isn’t true. 37 million lives worldwide have been saved by antibiotic treatment for TB since 2000. In some countries, it is becoming increasingly difficult to treat MDR-TB. Treatment options are limited, recommended medicines are not always available, and patients experience many adverse effects from the drugs.
- devcpp 11y ago
  No offense, but did you even read the parent post? The person above clearly points out that a sudden shock may cause more genetic changes through selection than slow deaths. Such a case has never happened in the past, unless I didn't learn about an antibiotics crisis in ancient Egypt.
adventured 11y ago
The human race as we know it today, doesn't have dozens of generations. We'll be a radically different species in just 200 to 300 years, through self-controlled evolution that has already begun. Before the end of this century we'll be directly editing the genome of every child born in the first world. Human evolution is no longer in nature's hands, and it will never be again unless technological progress rolls backwards drastically (at the rate it's accelerating, that is possible but unlikely; it's more likely we're about to achieve lift-off in regards to rapid evolution; if you think CRISPR is interesting, just wait until you see what we have in just 30 years).
- ManFromUranus 11y ago
  >We'll be a radically different species in just 200 to 300 years, through self-controlled evolution that has already begun We are essentially already doing this. We are selecting for cancer and other disease processes when we cure cancer and other diseases in children who would otherwise have died who then survive to reproduce. It's not polite to say this, but that is what is happening.
  - SCHiM 11y ago
    But we're also on the cusp of being able to identify and then pre-emptively remove those genes for the gene pool directly via IVF + screening of the embryo to make sure that it doesn't carry any known diseases and/or defects. Even if we don't actively edit a embryo it will still speed up the evolution of our species.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    We've been changing our selection factors for millenniums. Fire and road building had much stronger effects than anything coming from medical procedures today. Humans are a cybernetic species. Always were.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Are you really selecting for cancer when you do that, or are you merely no longer selecting against cancer?

mrestko 11y ago

You mean a return to the wold before antiobiotics? The world that existed when my grandparents were born? I doubt the few generations of people born during the "antibiotic era" have any meaningful genetic traits connected with the use of antibiotics

iamthepieman 11y ago
Yes, you're right of course. But clearly the few generations of the "antibiotic era" have had a much larger effect on the bacteria than us. We used antibiotic technology to "evolve" resistance to bacteria. Bacteria responded much more rapdily than we could have naturally and is now a different organism than what our grandparents had to contend with. Now our technological "evolution" is unable to keep up with natures and we face a new threat not an old one. One we helped to create.
lucaspiller 11y ago
Just to put things into perspective, the world population was around 2 billion when penicillin was discovered in 1928. Even without antibiotics we still know about things like sanitation and the importance of clean drinking water, so it's not exactly going back to the dark ages as the article suggests.
- DanBC 11y ago
  It's going to be pretty bad. https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/02/i-need-antibiotics-that-work-7-health-profs-share-their-antibiotic-resistance-fears/ https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/02/i-need-an... > If we can’t stop the infection, however, we can’t stop the sepsis. A world without effective antibiotics will mean that every one of the 100,000 people who develop sepsis each year in the UK - every one of the 18 million people with sepsis each year worldwide - could certainly die from simple infections like chest and water infections. A human could die from infection every second. > When I started treating people with bacterial infections it was rare that I didn’t have tablet antibiotics that I could treat them with; rare that I needed to keep people in hospital to treat their infections. Now every week, I treat young women with last resort antibiotics for urinary tract infections. Rather than given them a simple 7-day tablet course, they have to stay in hospital for a week or more, or come to the hospital every day for an injection. https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2014/11/18/10-reasons-you-should-be-worried-about-antibiotic-resistance https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2014/11/18/10-reason... > When we discuss antibiotic resistance we talk about a frightening future and rightly ask for action to stop the problem from getting worse. But this doesn't mean it's all just an issue for future generations. It’s estimated that 25,000 people already die every year in Europe because of infections resistant to antibiotics and in the USA the figure is 23,000 people, every year. https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/18/7-more-reasons-you-should-be-worried-about-antibiotic-resistance/ https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/18/7-more-re... > In 2013 there were 480,000 recorded cases of multi drug-resistant TB (TB that can’t be treated by our usual medicines). TB is a bacterial infection that can spread through the lymph nodes and blood stream to any organ in your body. It commonly affects the lungs and while a lot of people might not consider it to be an issue in the UK, or think it couldn’t affect them, this isn’t true. 37 million lives worldwide have been saved by antibiotic treatment for TB since 2000. In some countries, it is becoming increasingly difficult to treat MDR-TB. Treatment options are limited, recommended medicines are not always available, and patients experience many adverse effects from the drugs.
devcpp 11y ago
No offense, but did you even read the parent post? The person above clearly points out that a sudden shock may cause more genetic changes through selection than slow deaths. Such a case has never happened in the past, unless I didn't learn about an antibiotics crisis in ancient Egypt.

adventured 11y ago

The human race as we know it today, doesn't have dozens of generations. We'll be a radically different species in just 200 to 300 years, through self-controlled evolution that has already begun. Before the end of this century we'll be directly editing the genome of every child born in the first world. Human evolution is no longer in nature's hands, and it will never be again unless technological progress rolls backwards drastically (at the rate it's accelerating, that is possible but unlikely; it's more likely we're about to achieve lift-off in regards to rapid evolution; if you think CRISPR is interesting, just wait until you see what we have in just 30 years).

ManFromUranus 11y ago
>We'll be a radically different species in just 200 to 300 years, through self-controlled evolution that has already begun We are essentially already doing this. We are selecting for cancer and other disease processes when we cure cancer and other diseases in children who would otherwise have died who then survive to reproduce. It's not polite to say this, but that is what is happening.
- SCHiM 11y ago
  But we're also on the cusp of being able to identify and then pre-emptively remove those genes for the gene pool directly via IVF + screening of the embryo to make sure that it doesn't carry any known diseases and/or defects. Even if we don't actively edit a embryo it will still speed up the evolution of our species.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  We've been changing our selection factors for millenniums. Fire and road building had much stronger effects than anything coming from medical procedures today. Humans are a cybernetic species. Always were.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Are you really selecting for cancer when you do that, or are you merely no longer selecting against cancer?