There's some highly unwarranted leaping to conclusions, here.

Animals, in general, didn't seem to be very good at resisting novel diseases prior to the invention of modern medicine. The plague (Yersinia pestis) wiped out 1/3 of the European population and it wiped out a lot of other populations elsewhere. Were people who lived before modern medicine better at resisting more familiar, less novel diseases? Maybe. Before modern sanitation people were regularly exposed to more bacteria and viruses. They may have been resistant to some frequently encountered pathogens found in food and water. But people definitely got sick from these common pathogens.

Non-human animals are as likely as us to fall victim to novel pathogens. West Nile Virus is fatal to North American crows, for instance.

It isn't entirely up to the target species how virulent a disease is. Influenza viruses come in many varieties that are established before they reach humans. Their genes are juggled in birds and swine before they get to us. The 1918 variation killed around 50 million people, and you can't blame medicine for that death rate.

After it was introduced into Europe, syphilis probably became less virulent (say, a century after introduction). Small pox, on the other hand, has always killed a large percentage of those infected. It doesn't seem to have moderated much (now it is gone for good). Syphilis has remained totally curable with ordinary penicillin. Gonorrhea, on the other hand, started becoming resistant to penicillin from the get go. Today it is approaching resistance to just about all of the available antibiotics.

IF the Spanish Churro sheep do better in the southeast US, it is probably because the climate they originally evolved in (SW Europe, NW Africa) was closer to the climate of the SE part of the US. Domestic type-sheep aren't native to the US, so maybe there weren't any sheep-specialist pathogens to prey on them. Maybe the Shetlands sheep, evolved in the much colder, wetter north sea Islands got their harmful pathogens from the hotter, drier-evolved Churro sheep.

Modern antibiotics and vaccinations have not been around long enough -- not even remotely long enough -- to affect the "natural" robustness of the human, or most other mammals. It's only been since the 1930s that sulfa drugs were available and the late 1940s that penicillin and other antibiotics were available. The first vaccinations (smallpox) were introduced in 1796. There's been relatively few human generations since then (7, assuming 30 years to a generation).

Animals, in general, didn't seem to be very good at resisting novel diseases prior to the invention of modern medicine. The plague (Yersinia pestis) wiped out 1/3 of the European population and it wiped out a lot of other populations elsewhere. Were people who lived before modern medicine better at resisting more familiar, less novel diseases? Maybe. Before modern sanitation people were regularly exposed to more bacteria and viruses. They may have been resistant to some frequently encountered pathogens found in food and water. But people definitely got sick from these common pathogens. — Bitter Crank

True. Modern medicine is much better at dealing with novel threats to life than nature. But does that success have a cost on the B-side? By saving lives, is medicine holding onto genetic stuff that Nature would have gotten rid of, thus making human populations dependent on Merck (which I believe is one the largest corporations in the world.. if not the largest) ?

Maybe the Shetlands sheep, evolved in the much colder, wetter north sea Islands got their harmful pathogens from the hotter, drier-evolved Churro sheep. — Bitter Crank

I doubt it. All sorts of bugs and fungi love humidity. That's why southwesterners can make houses out of mud and we southeasterners can't. Freakin' mold, termites, and bacteria. Make a structure out of concrete and the elements will have degraded it in 10 years.. trying to erode us all back into the sea.

By saving lives, is medicine holding onto genetic stuff that Nature would have gotten rid of — Mongrel

Our natural defense against bacteria and viruses is gene related, sure. But the variety of antibodies produced is greater than that specified by genes. Plus, individuals gain some immunities by hosting and surviving certain infections. Each individual starts out from scratch, pretty much, as far as immunity goes. Many of the antibodies produced never see action.

After millions of years of co-evolution, neither bacteria, viruses, nor their prey (including us) have won an unequivocal victory. Effective medications and procedures against disease haven't been around for very long, so they will not have had a genetic effect. In rapidly reproducing species (rats, for example) there is a greater chance of genetic change over a given period of time. But rats don't get a lot of medical care.

Prior to modern, 20th century medicine (particularly, vaccination, cleanliness, and nutrition) the average life span was quite a bit shorter than it is now. That is because so many infants died before they were 1 year old. If they made it out of childhood, they had a good chance of living 3 score years and 10. Are we weakening the species by enabling a large number of babies to survive their first year?

Probably not, because the risks that children face after their first year are different than in their first year. First, infants do not have very well developed immune systems. They have a batch of antibodies from their mothers which disappear over the first 6 months. By the end of their first year, they have a much more robust immune system--and this is the case whether they were born in 2016 or 1620.

If children are saved from death by genetic causes like inherited organic defects that would otherwise cause their death in childhood, and they survive and reproduce, we might be tilting the genetic pinball machine in favor of a defect for that child's progeny. (Does anybody still play pinball machines that can be physically tilted?) The same goes for adults: If they would have died at 25 from a genetic defect, and health care enables them to live and reproduce, we tilt the genetic game a bit. However, we are increasingly aware of which organic defects are inheritable and which are not.

Preventing someone's death by a stab wound doesn't tilt the genetic game one way or the other, except if there is an inherited blood clotting disorder. We are designed to recover from injury if it isn't too severe or if it doesn't get fatally infected. Stitching up the stab wound doesn't guarantee we won't die from an infection originating in the wound.

Is Merck the biggest corporation? No, it's between Best Buy and Liberty Mutual Insurance.

71 Best Buy
72 Merck
73 Liberty Mutual Insurance Group

Freakin' mold, termites, and bacteria. — Mongrel

Yeah, I don't see why anybody voluntarily lives south of Iowa.

In rapidly reproducing species (rats, for example) there is a greater chance of genetic change over a given period of time. But rats don't get a lot of medical care — Bitter Crank

This is true. Genetic drift is more significant in human evolution than adaptation. Merck is #93 in the world. Best Buy?

The positions change. Best Buy is a MN based electronics and appliance big box operation. It generates $40b in sales, has 1500 stores, and 125,000 employees. They started in 1966 as the Sound of Music Record stores.

I worked for them briefly as a temp in 1981. The two guys I was working for were starting a video tape business. At the time I thought "Well, that will never go anywhere. Total waste of time." Immediately after I left they changed the name of the business to Best Buy. I took it personally, of course.

In the world or in the US?

In the US. I don't know what its rank in the list of world corporations is. Of the worlds 25 largest pharmaceutical companies, it's Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, then Merck. After Merck it's Johnson and Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZenica, Gilead Scienes, then Takada. There is a second Merck company in the 25th position, which is, if I remember correctly, the German firm that was the result of an international dispute over patents and the original Merck company.

Yes. The point is that Merck is one of the top 100 companies in the world. Best buy is not.

What part of R39.5 billion in revenue do you not understand?. Whatever Merck's standing in the lineup of world companies, Best Buy is going to be close to it, if revenue is compared. They have about the same annual revenue.

There have been people who would say humans should be looked at in the same way we look at sheep. Medicine provides artificial robustness. Take away the medicine and nature would reveal the hidden weakness, devastating human populations in the process.

How would you answer that? — Mongrel

By recognising that there is no absolute standard of capital-N Nature by which to measure 'robustness' by. That is, species fitness is always relative to it's environment, beyond which the very notion of 'robustness' simply no longer makes sense. One could ask in a similar vein if water is making fish less fit as a species because if they were to be on land they would totally die. But this is already to ask a wrong question.

US or global revenue? I mean...does Best buy have a store in Rome?

It's extremely important that we get this settled. Freakin Best buy.

So you're saying that medicine is part of the environment humans are adapted to?

This thread is very confusing.

Not necessarily - one would first need evidence that medicine has significantly altered the human genotype to the point which such alterations have become transmissible between generations. But the point is to not rule out such alterations, and to warn against conceptually fraught notions of such alterations making the species 'weaker'.

There have been people who would say humans should be looked at in the same way we look at sheep. Medicine provides artificial robustness. Take away the medicine and nature would reveal the hidden weakness, devastating human populations in the process. — Mongrel

Well as you may have seen, I think about natural rights a lot, specifically with reference to the USA. So the answer in the US, according to Jeffersonian natural rights, is that anything which increases life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness increases the amount that people can act for the greater good, and the more people can act for the greater good, the more society can be of benefit to all its participants. A government only has authority to act in ways to prevent deprivation of natural rights, and the government's control has to be based on immutable inalienability. As a consequence it has no authority to act on hypothetical 'weakness,' but if a 'weakness' is empirically demonstrated to result in reduction in life, then it has absolute authority to do so.

Indeed. The Burning Issue of Merck vs. Best Buy in World Trade...

Merck sells internationally, Best Buy doesn't. The real question is whether Merck has a drug in its pipeline that can cure Best Buy of its so-so market performance. For that matter, Merck needs a blockbuster for it's own market performance, and it doesn't have a new one, right now.

The larger issue about drugs (especially antibiotics) is their activity way down the line among the bacteria. Bacteria can acquire genetic information without having to mate. A bacteria dies, it breaks up, its DNA floats free, and other bacteria can acquire and incorporate the dead bacteria's genes that are useful. Imagine what is going on in the puddles of India where bacteria that are awash in OTC antibiotics rub up against each other.

Imagine what is going on in feed lots, hog barns, and chicken coops where animals are wallowing in shit loaded with antibiotics. How long do you think it will be before some Indian bacteria will have acquired really bad characteristics and will start spreading? (Answer -- yesterday. It's already happening.) How long will it be before your next rare hamburger slides down your throat, carrying with it entero-bacteria that have learned some new mean tricks?

Yes and combined with overpopulation and the problems of hygiene in densely populated areas. Combine this with capitalist exploitation of resources and populations by corporations and a major epidemic in one of more of these places is only a matter of time.

It won't weaken the species though, just reduce its size to a more manageable size.

What will weaken the species though is environmental pollution, indicated by the marked increase in allergies and dementia.

True. Humans don't do a lot of adaption, but bacteria do. They're adapting to our medicine.