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A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe
(www.nature.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Interesting that 3/10 people globally have myopia (near sightedness)... that's absurdly high. And as the trends stay as they are they are only predicting an increase
I guess it proves humans as a whole are focusing more on screens, books, and other short visions tasks
Focusing on providing safe outdoor spaces for everyone has never been more important
For me it tells me that nature is not selecting good vision anymore. We are fixing our vision on the side of evolution. If this trait is easy to pass on, it doesn't take many generations.
A near-sighted hawk will never survive to live even a short life beyond its childhood nest. But we have glasses...
Humanity will only suffer more and more ailments as medicine gets better and better, is my prediction. As long as the afflicted individuals have time to breed before dying.
I'm only a layman though. Evolution isn't my field. I might be talking out of my ass.
Well like how glasses fix myopia it isnt really an ailment anymore then. Ideally that's what we should be aiming for. Fixing - not making better just to make better
We only see people with PKU (phenylketonuria) or ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) living normally because of our advances in medical fields. Before in our history they would perish (or unfortunately be culled) like the stunted hawk
It's a highly grey area in ethics, but I think as long as we have best interest in mind and dont end up like the humans in Wall-E we should be fine. Star Trek also covers a lot of eugenics topics and in the end they also think humans should take the course of evolution and avoid things like designer babies or genetic enhancements
And its honestly incredible though. Humans literally fighting (and winning) against evolution/nature
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Eugenics_Wars
Honestly, the idea behind designer babies is pretty dope IMO. But only if you take away the bad stuff like diseases and deformities and stuff like that, for the sake of the individual to be born. It gets weird when (most likely, if possible) they'll start to offer babies to order. Like, "what would you like, madame? A professional athlete? Musical prodigy? Please select from our menu, or we can arrange a meeting with our custom-embryo designer for the premium deluxe package."
I agree. Fixing some diseases and deformities while in embryo seems the most effective solution
Obligatory Gattaca link https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
This article is from 2018 and talks a bit about the suspected causes of increased myopia. The theory is that our eyes are responding to the environment and elongating (axial myopia). So it's not that humans have lost the ability to have good vision via selection, it's that we're adapting to screen vision.
Your point about natural selection is well addressed by @Shawdow194@kbin.social already.
This goes against everything I thought I understood about natural selection and evolution.
My understanding was that evolution is based on small, random mutations in genes, occurring constantly, and any beneficial changes will most likely cause that individual to thrive better than others, causing nature to "select" that gene.
But the notion that our eyes would "respond to the environment" and somehow cause the next generation to also have myopia... Wouldn't that necessitate that our eyes have some sort of feedback loop that connects to our reproductive system so that we can pass that on? I don't see any other way around other than this occurring from the lack of natural selection.
Read somewhere it's mostly due to not enough sunlight exposure as kids. The eyes can sense out how much to grow thanks to sunlight, however in the absence of it it causes myopia.
Thanks for shedding some light on this