My husband and I were discussing an acquaintance who was recently diagnosed with a chronic disease. The specifics aren’t important but he commented that we seem to be hearing about more people having more diseases. I replied, “everyone has something.”
It’s true. We will probably each be diagnosed with at least one chronic health condition if not more. Part of this is the modern desire to label everything. In the past, people just accepted the aches and pains of aging with little complaint unless they grew debilitating. Now we can and do detect more symptoms and diagnose more disease and prescribe more treatments.
“Rare” diseases will most likely become increasingly less rare in the future. Why? Natural selection is being circumvented by modern medicine. Most diseases have a genetic component; at the very least, a genetic predisposition to develop a given disease. In the past, detrimental traits would affect the “success” of an individual with the disease. Biological “success” means that an organism survives to reproduce and pass on its genetic material. Today almost everyone survives to reproduce. Bad disease? We’ll fix it. Infertility? We’ll fix it. Disease which causes early death? Bank your eggs/sperm and your spouse can use them after your death. Can’t take care of yourself? You can still have children which the government will support.
Yep. I’ve been called crass.
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