if technology beats darwinism then will we all have asthma in the future?

[Mike]

since people with asthma have the same chances of having kids as people without it and asthma dosnt kill off enoff people to acctully make us evolve past it. so and this goes for any diesseas please dont go into specifics and just go with the current question. and im talking in thousands of years and yes asthma is passed down through genetics

 

[SocraticDiscourse]

Well that's an interesting question. I think factors like asthma (causes unknown) which generally is known as inflammation of the smooth muscle of the respiratory tract (these muscles are really vestigial structures) will still be selected against. This is because in today's world it still affects people's health and unfortunately their attractiveness. Maybe perhaps you are referring to a very distant future where technology and wealth trump and physical attributes like height, strength, and health then I still don't think the human population will be prone to disease. Why? Well, I think before that happens asthma will be able to be dealt with as early as birth (beta adrenergic stimulation is all that is needed at this point.) I think we might be able to create procedures that automatically stimulate this kind of cellular mechanisms.

 

[origamidrake]

Sure, there are already cases in other abnormalities where technology has made it so that either natural selection cannot keep up with technology, or there is just no selection against these mutations. Examples include myopia which has strong evidence that societies where reading is encouraged at an early age has higher rates of myopia. So since myopia is being corrected for in our society by contact lenses, laser eye surgery, etc, people who have myopia don't have a higher chance of dying so myopia will be here even in thousands of years. And technology for this is so fast that natural selection didnt get a chance to weed out those with myopia in modern society.

there is also evidence that people thousands of years ago had very little myopia probably due to natural selection.