Mark Hoofnagle on denialism blog has posted an interesting article on how to fix badly designed humans [Ask A Scienceblogger - Which parts of the human body could you design better?]. I agree with most of his suggestions but he left out some.Childbirth is definitely a serious problem as Mark points out. It's one of the important proofs of evolution 'cause no intelligent designer would ever come up with the mechanism we have now. Another problem is menopause. Very few people who have lived through it (wives and husbands) think it's a good thing. Let's get rid of it entirely. I doubt very much that we would see a massive increase in fifty-year-old mothers.
I'm not a big fan of our immune system. Sure, it has some good points but a real intelligent designer could do a much better job. It looks like it was designed by Rube Goldberg or some drunken sailer. The only thing it's really good at is generating Immunology Departments and thousands of scientific papers.
Let's fix it so that it doesn't get confused by peanut antigens and other ridiculous things that can kill you. We don't want no more asthma and auto-immune diseases. How hard can it be? There's got to be a more simple way of doing the same job.
[Hat Tip: John Dennehy, who has other suggestions for improvement.]
[Photo Credit: A rough diagram of the Immune system]
One criticism I got was that much of my list was from a Western position - a valid criticism, although I don't think fixing childbirth would be necessarily bad for anyone, anywhere.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in societies in which birth control is not readily available, menopause might decrease risk from continuing pregnancies, and that of having children with birth defects.
It might be fine to eliminate menopause as it currently exists, maybe just stop producing eggs without losing the hormonal flux that prevents the secondary side-effects of menopause. But then cancer risk goes up. So that's a tough one. At least assuming we have to devise a solution right now.
We could fix the problem right now if we had an ideal replacement estrogen, that works on some receptors and not others - like Tamoxifen, that wouldn't increase probability of uterine cancer and breast cancer, while preventing the still preventing loss of bone density, and the other physical problems of menopause. Understandably, an area of intense research...
Glad you liked the post.
Could we start with fixing bad vision like, presbyopia? Why does an eagle get vision seven times better than humans? Sounds like we got short changed by bad ID.
ReplyDeleteHow about teeth for crying out loud? Even sharks get several dozens of rows of teeth to stay ahead of the dentist.
And why of all things, does the hair on the top of my head stop growing, and gets thicker in my ears where I need it the least?
I've had enough bad ID.
Yea...let's fix it!
Some commenters discussed regeneration, and I think harm prevention would be a great addition to preventing diseases.
ReplyDeleteAdded to that ability I would like to have organs divided up and distributed in the body cavity. (Bilateral symmetry is many symmetries too few.) I mean, what does it help to grow an organ back if you may die before getting to a hospital or is needlessly tied to your bed while recuperating, perhaps with a risky temporary heart substitute.
Also, seeing how easy overpressure damages brain or eyes, I would like to have some internally facing overpressure relief flaps or sphincters. Call it risk management.
Finally, as our city environment (and I don't think this is a western position) is a lot noisier but safer than the ones we evolved in, I would like to have volume regulating sphincters between the inner ear and its opening. I'm not sure if lecturers would appreciate that ability, tho'...