02 Apr 08
Originally posted by UmbrageOfSnowI think it does. Especially in the young. If a young person is saved by an anti, and would have died without it, then natural selection would have eliminated its genes from the pool. Some children will survive most any biological threat and the ones that do are by definition stronger immunilogically and so its offspring. I agree and elder person dying or not makes no dif, it already did its reproductive duty and the threat appeared afterwards.
Antibiotics do not make humans weaker, unless you want to argue short term normal flora depletion. They don't replace the immune system, in any dose you actually get they are just a supplement to it. There are a ton of microbes that can't actually be cleared in most cases by the immune system alone. They save lives of the elderly and of the young all ...[text shortened]... ho would have died without them. And this doesn't really have any impact on human selection.