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| Yes | 35% | 188 votes | Total: 539 votes | |
| No | 65% | 351 votes |
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Add to FavoritesNature sends waves of lethal flu strains at us, keeps us pinned down in our lifespan with heart disease and Alzheimer's, and insinuates illnesses like MS and diabetes into our numbers. Nature devastates us with floods, famine, drought, and earthquakes. Could the AIDs virus be viewed as a natural way to stabilize population growth? Sure, why not. That's the way nature seems to work.
Nature has rules that transcend any meaning or view we can give to it. In nature, population control is not the cause or purpose of disease. Rather, disease is part of the ecosystem. A deadly disease is the result of a lower life form (a bacteria, rogue cell, virus, or proto-virus) getting nourishment and a domicile for its own civilization. It grows, using the host's resources, until the host dies.
Infectious diseases tend to run rampant in closely-knit or highly mobile populations. That's why the plague ravaged Europe in its population centers. Likewise, the 1918 flu epidemic killed millions... hastened by the close quarters of WW1 troops and massive troop movements. Local populations of mice and skunks have had massive die-offs due to species-specific illnesses for as long as biologists have studied such things. Disease tends to knock down the numbers of highly concentrated populations.
In the world ecology deadly diseases do indeed serve to stabilize population growth... but they can eradicate a species as well. Would we consider extinction to be a natural way to stabilize population growth? You can view it that way, but it seems a bit heavy handed.
Consider the American chestnut tree. 200 years ago there were millions of them. Now there are only a few hundred due to a blight that destroyed the species. Was this nature's way of controlling their population?
Only if "eradication" is part of your definition of control.
It seems that nature does not seek to control anything... instead, it is an interacting set of processes that sometimes controls population, sometimes causes populations to grow, and sometimes ends a species.
AIDs is a subject that BEGS to have greater meaning attached to it. It involves social issues like homosexuality, IV drug use, casual sex, and the unfortunate victims of blood transfusions. It draws in religious, economic, and governmental aspects. We want to make a bigger issue of it.
But when you're talking about disease, nature has no agenda. Disease is part of the ecosystem, and nature does not pay attention to the views and meanings mankind may have. Chestnut blight, cancer, AIDs, rabies... nature keeps its own balance and has its own agenda.
AIDs can be viewed as a natural way to stabilize population growth, but no more than any other disease.
Learn more about this author, Eric Lannak.
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No
The AIDS virus is no more a way to stabilize the population than the Spanish Influenza was. Even the Black Death which killed over 1/4 of the population of Europe could have been prevented from being so devastating. AIDS is more an unnatural way to stabilize the population since the disease is so preventable.
We know how the disease is spread and have for over a quarter of a century. But people still get the disease despite the knowledge. They just don't want to stop having unprotected sex or stop shooting up drugs with dirty needles. It's as if the people are stubborn idiots that almost want to die. Some even actively spread the disease.
When I was in school, people thought venereal disease was a way to control the population because it had been around for as long as medical science existed, it seemed. It was God's curse for committing fornication and adultery. Many think AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality, drug use, and adultery. It has killed more people who had heterosexual sex than homosexual sex. Yet many prostitutes have acquired the disease and are just carriers but not sick from the disease.
It could be that one strain of the virus can be used to fight another strain. If prostitutes have many customers with the disease, different strains that come up against one another may battle each other and kill one another. That could be one way to treat the disease.
I have written about possible ways to defeat the disease. Since it is a virus, it has a relatively simple DNA which can mutate. Its strength could be one of its weaknesses. Genetic overloading may allow a doctor to use a virus or bacterium to deliver extra genetic information that can lock onto the virus and make it unable to reproduce and attack other cells. Hunter/killer cells might also be used to track down the virus and kill it. Chemical dissection of the virus might also sever it to kill it. If we can destroy the disease, that means it would be an unnatural way to stabilize the population.
In the past, disease, war, and famine have controlled population growth. If we had not experienced the two world wars and the growth of communism in the world, the world population might have exceeded 8 billion people by now. Without the Black Plague, the population might have exceeded 12 billion by now. That means famine would have been left to control the population of the world. During the seven year Tribulation period mentioned in the Bible, over half of the population of the world will be destroyed due to all three and the forces of nature. So it could be that by the turn of the 22nd century, the population of the world may be much less than it was at the turn of the 21st century.
Learn more about this author, Rick Badman.
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