[asa] Is you doctor an evolutionist - if so, what then?

Hi all,

This isn't a response to anybody in particular, but just a musing...

It strikes me that a doctor who truly believes in evolution might
actually process the question of treatment of the sick in a very
different way than has traditionally occurred.

In essence, I'm thinking that a truly evolutionary approach to medicine
might be simply to allow all illnesses to take their course and,
consequently, improve the human species by eliminating the unfit through
inaction.

Indeed, I can identify at least one instance in which medical
intervention has had the apparent result of decreased fitness of
particular human individuals;

A recent US study has suggested that daughters born to women who delayed
childbearing and who eventually did so with the assistance of fertility
treatment themselves had difficulties in conceiving;

http://preview.tinyurl.com/4kxbgh

So, it appears, that in this instance medical intervention has actually
compounded a problem (infertility) which might have been avoided by
doing nothing and allowing natural selection to do its thing.

I need not point out that there have been doctors in recent history who
have taken such logic to an extreme - so it's not merely a hypothetical
issue, I think.

One wonders, in consequence, whether one ought to ask a further question
of a doctor who espouses evolution, viz: "and what follows from this
belief?" If the answer is that human persons are mere contingent
outcomes of evolution (i.e. "accidents") then I would wonder why this
person is even motivated to practice medicine in the first place.

Blessings,
Murray Hogg
Pastor, East Camberwell Baptist Church, Victoria, Australia
Post-Grad Student (MTh), Australian College of Theology

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Received on Sat May 31 18:41:09 2008