cure disease

[henryman]

what would happen if we found a cure for every disease? How long would people live for? Would the earth be able to sustain ll the people?

[woofgang]

umm, see the trouble is that aging as such is not a disease, it is a natural process and part of evolution. I suspect that as fast as we find ways of staving it off, good old Gaia is changing us to ensure that evolution continues

[Headtime]

I think nature regulates how succesful and abundent different lifeforms are. If we irradicated all disease, the human population would become too large to be sustained. I suspect new diseases that we were not immune to would evolve.

[bernardo]

It depends what you mean by "disease". Ultimately, the general things of growing old like weakness, thinner bones, poor circulation, etc. can be regarded as diseases. Even wrinkly skin is caused by the imperfections of new skin cells growing to replace old ones. Either everybody would live forever and there would be overpopulation and mass starvation, or there would be a natural point at which old people conveniently pop off (with a heart attack, for example) without any intervening disease.

[geedogg]

the bacteria that cause diseases would evolve in the same way that anything else does, however bacteria does so very quickly. so if a drug is found to cure a disease that bacteria would evolve or mutate so that the drugs would not have effect anymore, and these bacteria would re-ignite the infection or disease. so it would be pretty unlikely that this situation would ever occur.

[Mr Bear]

If we cured all diseases, nature would find other ways of knocking us off - like wars for instance. By the way my doctor gave me six months to live the other day. I told him I couldn't pay the bill _ so he gave me another six months