Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Pharmaceutical inhibition of evolution

I had a disturbing thought today as I drove in to work.  It has been a thought I've had many times and each time I have found myself uncomfortable with the idea.  Being that we each are a product of nature, innate having evolved from a common ancestor...a primate of some sort...we are still in the process of evolving.  That is unless the prolific use of psychotropic medications have somehow stagnated our evolutionary processes.

Evolution, the grossly over-simplified version, is that we learn a new thing, test its validity and adopt this new behavior, habit, idea as part of a new norm.  As we grow collectively in a neurological sense our DNA changes to incorporate this new 'idea' so that it becomes permanently wired into our genetics so that our off spring adopt this new way of being, thinking doing. An example being the act of standing up to reach the better tasting fruit.  This 'idea' sparked in one individual who then acted on this impulse.  They learned the fruit on the tree tasted better, but the also learned the green fruit was bitter and made their tummy hurt.  So the act of standing up to reach the better fruit caused them to learn which color of fruit to avoid.

Then came the day that the 'one' individual was reaching the fruit in the tree saw an even bigger fruit hanging from a branch a few feet up.  They climbed into the tree ate the fruit and while doing so saw the Saber Toothed Cat stalking his mate. This caused the individual to call out warning his mate and those around them of the cat in the tall grass he could now see over.  In a moment of need they all climbed the tree to get away from the danger and...low and behold they each learned a new survival technique and in the process learned that the fruit in the tree tasted better and gave them more energy while also learning to avoid the green fruit....the evolutionary process in the making.

We see this today in the Snow Monkey populations in Northern Japan.  One monkey, out of thousands, begins a new behavior.  It happens to be washing his food of the dirt then eating it. This new behavior is 'weird' and he is left alone during meal times to clean and then eat his food. Weeks later another monkey joins the first and begins to wash their food..weeks later another joins in and another.  Soon 100 monkeys are washing their fruit and suddenly throughout the population of this monkey colony they all are adopting this new behavior 'overnight'.  Not only this but other isolated monkey colonies miles away where no communication is possible...are each and every one washing their food...evolution in action.  It is now normal behavior for all of these monkeys to wash their food before eating it...all from one individual breaking off and trying something new.

My point being is to question the adverse effect we are experiencing with the medicating of our population.  It can't be good.  I mean the psychotropic medications each have 'suicidal' tendencies as a side effect. A drug that can cause the individual to want to self destruct...to literally remove themselves from the evolutionary cycle because the medication had that effect on their brain function.  That ladies and gentlemen is the antithesis of evolutionary advancement.  What genius has been lost because they were medicated to the point of wanting to commit suicide?

To what degree have we lost the ability to learn a new behavior?  Could it be that a new behavior was deemed by someone to be a 'disease' which had to be medicated away?  Could it be the creative meanderings of a child who does not want to color inside the lines of the coloring book is stifled because 'conformity' is expected?  Music is one form of social evolution. If we didn't make new music from time to time we'd, I think, lose our minds of boredom.

In recent years the idea that vaccines might be causing problems in our children has been met with a violent back lash by a media that is sadly owned, operated and regulated internally by the very same people producing vaccines.  The last thing these people want is for their product to be questioned and the best way to prevent that from happening is to ensure that the truth is never heard...and to have their product forced on the population so that they have no choice but to do what they want...regardless of the dangers presented.

Of course there are the commercials that we get to see every day who tell us how their drug will make our lives better, but with side effects that might cause us to become suicidal or develop cancer, make our hair fall out, deprive us of sexual drive, go blind or even stain our new clothes from anal seepage, but my favorite side effect of all of them is.....instant death.  I don't know about you...but if 'any' medication had that as a potential side effect...I'd say it shouldn't be allowed on the market much less advertised on television.  

In many of these cases the condition the medication is meant to 'treat' is often far less of a problem when you consider that the side effects are so much worse.

So the question I want you to consider is this:  Have we been stagnated in the evolutionary sense by medication?  Have we been stagnated socially by gross commercialism of medication that really should not be advertised to the public? Have we been medicated to the point of having lost our ability to 'think' clearly enough for ourselves to decide what is best for our families and have to be told what is best by a commercial...for a drug that might just cause you to suffer....instant death or anal seepage?   Ew!!!

 You decide...